Hi Mike,

Watched your lighting video and have a question...

In the video you mention the sky plugin and the gi joe mel script.


Where can I find these? I searched highend3d and googled but came up short.

Mental ray has a global illumination section in its render options but I was not able to divine how it really works.

I am getting to a point where I would like to start making some renders that are not all BLACK but the only way I have been able to render without the black gloomy default background is to biuld 3 planer walls and apply a texture to them and then render from within this semi-room. Even then my renders come out muddie and not really crisp like the rendors I have seen others post.

In particular I like the Fredderickson renders of the Jawa sand crawler in the one-on-one competition forum.

Cheers!
Rich M

PS- You asked this in one of the tutorials about how important constant patter is. To me I could watch an 80% silent tutorial and it would not bother me. What I want to hear is the main concept, any special command sequences you are typing, the reason some thing is being done and possible alternatives, etc.

The process of pushing, pulling and points, edges and faces is part of the creative process and I don't mind watching that process. In a way some of the videos I have seen where the instructors try to minimize this they can produce some really bad results like - start with a cube, push 2 verts says "Now do this for 4-50 hours and then you get this..." - the screen refreshes and you are looking at a perfect statue of david! That is not my idea of a useful video.

lol - That just brought the image of the spongebob squarepants episode where squidward asks sponge bob to draw a circle and spongebob draws a PERFECT circle and when squidwards asks him how he did it? Spongebob starts by drawing a perfect figure of "David" then says and then I erase some of these "extra bits" and in a flurry of erasing he is left with nothing but a perfect circle.
That would make a really funny April fools tutorial - How to model a perfect sphere. Start with something really really complex then slowing and PAINFULLY keep erasing bits til nothing is left but a perfect sphere. haha I crack me up!

Cheers!