Facebook: [link]
WoW Armory Profile (Main): [link]
WoW Armory Profile (Alt): [link]
Last.FM: [link]
Twitter: [link]

Really liking prototype so far, unlike GTA you can kill the strike team they call pretty easily and that kinda encourages you to wreak havoc and massacre citizens. Love the street sweeper 360 CUTTTTTTT
Also i like how most of the environment is either jumpable (dash) or smash-able which gives it a more open feel than GTA

-------------------------------------------------

I just received my pepper project art book and i just have to say its freakin amazing!!
really inspiring stuff guys. dA Pride!

-------------------------------------------------

Ok im kinda addicted to Facebook Mafia Wars now, so please add me if u play!

Ok im over mafia wars now haha..

Also , loving the new easy install Journal CSS

-------------------------------------------------


Im looking for new and interesting movies (Fiction and Non-Fiction)that contain elements of design or other notable concepts for the future

One that I recently watched was Future By Design: [link]
There was also one coming out by Ray Kurzweil (though im not sure if that films released yet)


-------------------------------------------------

Ok so ive been trying to get this to work but it doesnt seem to.
There are General and Active degradation settings which ive set to wireframe (ie i want to to degrade from smooth to wireframe when i pan) but it always seems to default to bounding boxes, even with 0fps minimum. Does anyone know how to fix this so that it only goes down to wireframe?

Also, does anyone know how to increase viewport performance? Im currently using Direct3d 9.0 (ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series) drivers and i was wondering if there was any way to accelerate it further. I have barely 50-100k polys on screen and im getting about 2FPS when i rotate/pan my viewport. Ive had to resort to layer grouping objects in order to navigate smoothly, since i like modelling in 3d space. (will it help if i softmod to fireGL?)

UPDATE: It seems to run alot better using the ATI OpenGL driver, well in wireframe mode anyway, however flat/shaded is still a little slow

-------------------------------------------------

Was just browsing and found an awesome video about Rabbit Hole 3D holographic technology. Some of the pieces I really liked were the corpse in the box that pop out at you and also seeing some of my favourite artists work in 3d, such as Pascal Blanche!

[link]


Anyone know of some inspirational concept artist websites?

Just stumbled on an awesome korean(?) concept artist website:
[link]

I have found a few pics that i love already just from skimming his gallery
a very sexy jet: [link]
futuristic city: [link]

Oh and my 8800GT 256mb finally died, so I have replaced it with a spanky new 4870 1GB

List of concept art galleries:

Mandrykart: [link]
Paperblue: [link]
Tuomas Korpi: [link]
Manu Järvinen: [link]
Tuomas Erikoinen: [link]
Vonmurder (dA): [link]
Turtleart (Many Artists): [link]
Kemp Remillard: [link]
Khang Le: [link]
Iceblink: [link]
Keith Thompson: [link]
Stephan Martiniere: [link]

New featured artist of the <random time period>:

Some of his renders:





I have decided to feature this artist in my journal because he has some really great stuff, yet little exposure.
850 pageviews since Dec 06 !!

Check this guy out cos his models are great, plus he uses VRay too



Some of his renders:





Just popping in to say Hi to all, happy new year (normal and chinese)
Just to let you know, i started a Civil / Structural drafting course and also been playing World of Warcraft / Warhammer Online (got into beta finally !!) which is why ive been so busy lateley!



I decided to start a collection of some people piece from people who deserve some more recognition for their work
Feel free to send me any thumbcodes you think deserve some more attention

Ill start this off:
:thumb33692531:





:thumb63789584:





1. 3D

(2D+3D) 3dtutorials.sk: [link]
(2D+3D) CGTutorials.com: [link]
(Maya) Learning Maya: [link]
(Modelling) 3dLinks: [link]
(Modelling) 3dluvr: [link]
(Modelling) HighEnd3d: [link]
(Modelling) Subdivisionmodelling: [link]
(Modelling + Texturing) 3d Palace: [link]
(Modelling + Texturing) 3d Total: [link]
(Modelling + Texturing) Pixel2Life: [link]
(Modelling + Texturing) Tutorial Guide: [link]
(3DSMax) Allan McKay: [link]
(3DSMax) Neil Blevins: [link]
(3DSMax) ParticleFX: [link]
(3DSMax + Cinema4d) Stuve Animations: [link]
(3DSMax + Textures) Poopinmymouth: [link]
(Cinema4d) Maxon: [link]
(Rhino3D / VRay) Aversis: [link]
(Mental Ray) Jeff Patton: [link]
(Mental Ray / VRay) Hao La's Portfolio: [link]
(Modo) Vertexmonkey: [link]
(UVW Mapping) Waylon-art: [link]
(VRay) VRay Elite: [link]
(VRay Shaders) ???: [link]
(Normal Mapping Tutorial) : Part1 - Part 2 -

2. 2D

(Concept Art) Conceptart.org: [link]
(Game Textures) Pixelmorgue: [link]
HDRI Andrew Whitehurst: [link]
(Metal in Photoshop) Psolver: [link]
(Particle Effects) Particle Illusion: [link]





Create your own visitor map!


.

I am proud to announce the winners for the scifi competition!
All voting lines have CLOSED, and the results have been tallied.


FIRST PRIZE:
1 Year subscription to dA goes to:
for his entry
Jim The Explorerbot -


SECOND PRIZE:
3 Month subscription to dA goes to:
for his entry
The Secret Place -


RUNNERS UP:
1 Month subscription to dA goes to:
for his entry
CE: A Foreign World -


I would like to give a big thank you for all those who supported this competition,
the people who put effort into a brilliant set of images and of course the public who voted:

Got my Thermaltake Ultra Extreme 120 heatsink today, and I am currently running 9 x 345fsb (3.1Ghz) !
Render speeds are great, linear scaling so 29% faster than stock speeds

Im running my new PC, minus the HSF (so at stock speeds) and its flying!
One example, a scene im working on takes 5mins 14sec to render on my X2 3800+ at 2Ghz dualcore
It takes only 1min 23sec to render on this Q6600 (4 x 2.4ghz) thats a speedup of 3.78x !
Its also great because i can render and still browse without slowing down my PC!
Contest voting has been extended till next week since people are still getting votes in

[link]
The sad thing is, i just discovered his thread on conceptart.org a few days ago.
RIP Glen.

Ok, my scifi contest has officially closed!
Now on to the voting:
1. The voting lines will last for ONE WEEK
2. In order to vote, send me a note with a link to the piece you think should win the contest!
3. Only ONE vote per person.

OMG!
[link]
I am definately going to try this if it comes out before Warhammer Online

Remember to get your entries in to the contest (see below), we still have 10 days to go!

Big thanks to for the Normal map tutorials he made! I have added them to my tutorial list as well as here:
Part 1: && Part 2:

I was just looking at learning how to generate normal maps and baking them into materials.
Does anyone know of a good tutorial for this? What i wanted to do is basically import my model into zbrush or something and then create extra geometry then create a normal map, but to do that I need to use DirectX material type which i havent used before. Any tips would be appreciated

Back in the days:
[link]
my first 3d modelling experience, build.exe !

Now we have:
[link]

Today is July 1st so this is the last month before all Scifi Contest entries are due in!
17 more days people! If anyone is still working on their scene by the 18th just submit what you have done so far and we will use that for the entry!

For those of you using sketchup you might like to have a look at: [link]
Never knew google had something like that

Just ordered two Dell 2407FWP monitors, because of the cheap coupon (for those in Aus: [link] 999 AUD (300$ off multimedia pack) - 200$ coupon (pre-gst) comes to 778$ per monitor!

*Awaiting the day that I will have 3840x1200 goodness*

UPDATE: It sucks and i cancelled my sub. to Vanguard SoH time for more 3d work. On another note only 18 Days more to get your entry to the Scifi Contest! Dont forget the deadline.

Got Vanguard SoH cheap today, for 35 AUD (70$ with 50% off) at ebgames,
SO far patching: 4hours 16mins left to go woot!
guess its average for a 17gb (2dvd) game?

So anyway, if its any good ill cya guys in about 2 years!

[link]
new iD software game engine video

I finally bought a PSP today! it is my first nintendo/sony/other console ever!
Plus i managed to get locoroco for cheap too, which was the main reason i wanted a psp!

[link]
Check out the cinematic trailer its sooooooo awesome texturing, geometry the whole shebang!

An interesting (though lengthy) read  
[link]

Went to see Sunshine in the movies today, was pretty cool. Great CG effects and story line was not bad (slightly dodgy but nothing too weird).

I went to the Perth GO3 Expo was an awesome DDR and Cosplay Comp!
I recorded the Cosplay lineup on my camera, however due to the 1gb limitation i missed the last few, so sorry whoever got cut off!

Linky here: [link]

Link to my Mommy's Site for our kitties: [link]



Update: I have changed the forum so that you must register in order to read/post now, due to the increasing number of spam accounts. Please let me know if i have not approved your registration. (or if you were able to register without confirmation, so that i can fix it)

Our new domain is up and running at: [link]
Any old members, please rejoin and lets get rolling! Daemoria, our concept artist has been working on new stuff so hopefully we can get this show back on the road!

big thanks to has kindly hosted the forum for us on his domain



and I started chatting about his idea to create a new 3d community. We have started a brainstorm thread about the site details, but we wish to get more input from other members who might be interested in this community.
Here is the link to our brainstorm thread on Increality's current website forums: [link]



Official Entry List for SciFi Contest:

Here are the final entries for the SciFi Contest.
Voting will commence shortly!

* :thumb54679880: by * by
* by * by
* by * by
* by * by
* by * by
* :thumb59118394: by * by
* by * by
* by * :thumb60006760: by
* by



1. The theme of the contest is Scifi. A fitting subject since i love it so much Simply capture the essence of what you think scifi is, from spacecraft to time travel, futuristic cities or cyborgs.
2. One entry per person
2. Must be entirely your work. No downloading free models or using pre-made models.
3. Collaboration IS allowed, up to a maximum of 2 People, however they must both be able to show contribution in some aspect of the 3d elements (not just someone model and another person doing post processing)
4. Post processing is allowed, however the main focus of the contest is the 3d element, so nothing which borderlines "mixed media"
5. No animation entries. Although it would be nice, i dont think it would really be fair to compare animation and image entries.
6. Timelimit: From the poll, people were hinting at the time constraints they had, so i have decided to give a fair while for this contest. . Three months should be sufficient time, however feel free to let me know if it is too short/long.
7. Prizes: First prize will be a 1 Year subscription to dA, Second prize will be a 3 months subscription and runners up will receive a 1 month sub.
8. Judging will be done by you, the public and i will figure out how this will work if there are more entries than the poll allows. Perhaps some sort of tally or something.
9. Entries: You may send a note to me with either a link to the deviation or the image on imageshack/email etc if you do not wish to post it until the contest is over. You must also state whether you wish to have your piece displayed at time of submission (Therefore you must submit it to dA) or not (In which case i can just put user XXX submitted piece called "name of image" or if you want the name withheld i can just put your user name in the entries.
10. Have fun. And if there are any other questions please feel free to let me know and i will answer them in the rules.



1. 3D

(2D+3D) 3dtutorials.sk: [link]
(2D+3D) CGTutorials.com: [link]
(Maya) Learning Maya: [link]
(Modelling) 3dLinks: [link]
(Modelling) 3dluvr: [link]
(Modelling) HighEnd3d: [link]
(Modelling) Subdivisionmodelling: [link]
(Modelling + Texturing) 3d Palace: [link]
(Modelling + Texturing) 3d Total: [link]
(Modelling + Texturing) Pixel2Life: [link]
(Modelling + Texturing) Tutorial Guide: [link]
(3DSMax) Allan McKay: [link]
(3DSMax) Neil Blevins: [link]
(3DSMax) ParticleFX: [link]
(3DSMax + Cinema4d) Stuve Animations: [link]
(3DSMax + Textures) Poopinmymouth: [link]
(Cinema4d) Maxon: [link]
(Rhino3D / VRay) Aversis: [link]
(Mental Ray) Jeff Patton: [link]
(Mental Ray / VRay) Hao La's Portfolio: [link]
(Modo) Vertexmonkey: [link]
(UVW Mapping) Waylon-art: [link]
(VRay) VRay Elite: [link]
(VRay Shaders) ???: [link]
(Normal Mapping Tutorial) : Part1 - Part 2 -

2. 2D

(Concept Art) Conceptart.org: [link]
(Game Textures) Pixelmorgue: [link]
HDRI Andrew Whitehurst: [link]
(Metal in Photoshop) Psolver: [link]
(Particle Effects) Particle Illusion: [link]




- For pipes and stuff you can just use splines and define the number of sides / thickness of it.
- The "Connect" (and pinch/slide) tool is great for splitting polygons into 2, 3, or more segments evenly
- Chamfer is a great tool for rounding edges (on corners as well as turns, for example you want a 90 degree pipe joint, create a box and move one face perpendicular to the other then connect the edges (1 segment) You can then give the middle segment smooth interpolation by chamfering it.
- Using smoothing groups helps you get a soft lighting effect even if you have low polys (i like to use low poly because it is faster to render/easier to texture)
- Easy way to get lighting done is just use a skylight + default scanline renderer (+light tracer) with HDRI projection from the skylight
- You can turn down the number of rays per sample in your adv. lighting > light tracer for test renders and they will not take as long (i never render 250 r/s until the end)
- For a sharp, defined edge use the Catmull Rom filter (default scanline), Lanczos filter (Mental Ray)
- Assign a key to "Create camera from view" for easy camera positioning
- Editable Poly > Editable Mesh (imo anyway)
- Skylights are non directional, use the Advanced Material Override shader to generate an indirect lighting bump value
- Glow behind transparency plugin can be found at: [link] (make sure you assign material IDs to all objects, and they cant have a mID of 0)
- You need to use shadow maps for volumetric lighting
- you can use "Extrude by normal" instead of by group if you want a more linear extrusion
- Use layers to isolate sections of your scene when they too complex to navigate at a decent framerate
- Fillet selected vertices on splines to smooth corners
- Great smoke material tutorial for max - [link]
- Clone parts of your objects to a separate object by shift + dragging selected faces
- use isolation mode when working with many objects/layers, makes things much easier
- in editable poly you can extrude along spline to save the annoyance of extrude, rotate, extrude, rotate, so on and so on. great for horns, tentacles, exhaust pipes, and many other things.



1. Go to material editor and click Get Material.
2. Select bitmap then choose the hdr file you wish to use
3. Set your Load Settings (i normally use Real Pixels 32bit) and click ok
4. Set Coordinate mapping to environment > Spherical/Shrink Wrap depending on what you like to use
5. Create a Skylight
6. Drag the Material from the Material Editor to the slot in the Sky Colour marked "None", under the Map tick box.
7. Set the amount of blending you want with the sky colour and the map using the slider (0-100)
8. Select "Default Scanline Renderer" in render settings and use Light Tracer for the Advanced Lighting.



1. UVW Unwrapping

- Apply Unwrap UVW Modifier
- Organise UVW's - You may wish to isolate parts
  of the model which contain areas of interest,
  such as decals, text etc.
- Scale down to fraction of bitmap area
- Export at texture size (etc 4000x4000)
- Rinse and repeat for each object in your scene

2. Texturing

- Open exported bitmap
- Clone the UVW area of the first object to
  a secondary layer and fill the background
- Save as PSD format
- Export all your templates into photoshop

.Generally I work on texturing one
                 object at a time, which is actually
                 quite inefficient, but i like to
finalise a template so i can just
import all other templates and work
on them without having to update my
previous objects with the new texture.

- Add layered textures to your base image
  (whatever details you wish to add, normally
   i use some of the following)
. Fill layer (base layer)
. Darkness layer (helps spec)
. Specular Highlights
. Dirt Layer
. Decal Layer(s)
. Logo Layer(s)
. Text Layer(s)
. Self illumination Layer(s)

  Then i use some layer effects to split my
  texture maps:
. Image Adjustment layers:
* Brightness/Contrast
* Levels
* Colour Balance
  These adjustment layers can let you create
  Spec/bump maps easy, for example
Diffuse = Base layers - spec brightness/contrast
Spec    = Base layers + spec brightness/contrast
SI        = Base layers - Fill Layer + spec brightness/contrast
Bump   = Base layers - spec hilight layer
Opacity = I ususally create new textures for these objects

3. Materials

- I generally use Advanced material override
  with skylight/raytracer
. increase indirect lighting bump value if neccessary

Material Hierarchy:

ADVANCED MATERIAL OVERRIDE
|
|_ BLEND
      |
              |__ Layer1: Diffuse/SI/Bump, no reflect
      |                Specular(sometimes)
      |
      |__ Layer2: High Specular, HDRI Reflect, Bump
      |                Diffuse(sometimes)
      |
      |__ Mask: Spec texture


Feel free to make any suggestions for the Tip Section

Update: Our new domain is up and running at: [link]
Any old members, please rejoin and lets get rolling! Daemoria, our concept artist has been working on new stuff so hopefully we can get this show back on the road!

big thanks to has kindly hosted the forum for us on his domain



Got Vanguard SoH cheap today, for 35 AUD (70$ with 50% off) at ebgames,
SO far patching: 4hours 16mins left to go woot!
guess its average for a 17gb (2dvd) game?

So anyway, if its any good ill cya guys in about 2 years!

[link]
new iD software game engine video

I finally bought a PSP today! it is my first nintendo/sony/other console ever!
Plus i managed to get locoroco for cheap too, which was the main reason i wanted a psp!

[link]
Check out the cinematic trailer its sooooooo awesome texturing, geometry the whole shebang!

An interesting (though lengthy) read  
[link]

Went to see Sunshine in the movies today, was pretty cool. Great CG effects and story line was not bad (slightly dodgy but nothing too weird).

Plus there was an awesome DDR and Cosplay Comp!
I recorded the Cosplay lineup on my camera, however due to the 1gb limitation i missed the last few, so sorry whoever got cut off!

Linky here: [link]

Link to my Mommy's Site for our kitties: [link]



and I started chatting about his idea to create a new 3d community. We have started a brainstorm thread about the site details, but we wish to get more input from other members who might be interested in this community.
Here is the link to our brainstorm thread on Increality's current website forums: [link]



Official Entry List for SciFi Contest:

* :thumb54679880: by
* by
* by
* by
* by
* by :iconBushio:
* by :iconstephenalred:

For those who are curious about the level of disclosure given to your entries, please be sure to include one of the entry templates below when noting me

Entry Templates:

[ Full ]
* thumb######## by icon@@@@@@

[ Medium ]
* <name of submission> by icon@@@@@@

[ Lurker ]
* "Submission1 by AnonymousEntrant1"
* "Submission1 by AnonymousEntrant2" etc.

All entries will be revealed when the contest is over.



1. The theme of the contest is Scifi. A fitting subject since i love it so much Simply capture the essence of what you think scifi is, from spacecraft to time travel, futuristic cities or cyborgs.
2. One entry per person
2. Must be entirely your work. No downloading free models or using pre-made models.
3. Collaboration IS allowed, up to a maximum of 2 People, however they must both be able to show contribution in some aspect of the 3d elements (not just someone model and another person doing post processing)
4. Post processing is allowed, however the main focus of the contest is the 3d element, so nothing which borderlines "mixed media"
5. No animation entries. Although it would be nice, i dont think it would really be fair to compare animation and image entries.
6. Timelimit: From the poll, people were hinting at the time constraints they had, so i have decided to give a fair while for this contest. Closing date is July 18th 2007. Three months should be sufficient time, however feel free to let me know if it is too short/long.
7. Prizes: First prize will be a 1 Year subscription to dA, Second prize will be a 3 months subscription and runners up will receive a 1 month sub.
8. Judging will be done by you, the public and i will figure out how this will work if there are more entries than the poll allows. Perhaps some sort of tally or something.
9. Entries: You may send a note to me with either a link to the deviation or the image on imageshack/email etc if you do not wish to post it until the contest is over. You must also state whether you wish to have your piece displayed at time of submission (Therefore you must submit it to dA) or not (In which case i can just put user XXX submitted piece called "name of image" or if you want the name withheld i can just put your user name in the entries.
10. Have fun. And if there are any other questions please feel free to let me know and i will answer them in the rules.



1. 3D

(2D+3D) 3dtutorials.sk: [link]
(2D+3D) CGTutorials.com: [link]
(Maya) Learning Maya: [link]
(Modelling) 3dLinks: [link]
(Modelling) 3dluvr: [link]
(Modelling) HighEnd3d: [link]
(Modelling) Subdivisionmodelling: [link]
(Modelling + Texturing) 3d Palace: [link]
(Modelling + Texturing) 3d Total: [link]
(Modelling + Texturing) Pixel2Life: [link]
(Modelling + Texturing) Tutorial Guide: [link]
(3DSMax) Allan McKay: [link]
(3DSMax) Neil Blevins: [link]
(3DSMax) ParticleFX: [link]
(3DSMax + Cinema4d) Stuve Animations: [link]
(3DSMax + Textures) Poopinmymouth: [link]
(Cinema4d) Maxon: [link]
(Rhino3D / VRay) Aversis: [link]
(Mental Ray) Jeff Patton: [link]
(Mental Ray / VRay) Hao La's Portfolio: [link]
(Modo) Vertexmonkey: [link]
(UVW Mapping) Waylon-art: [link]
(VRay) VRay Elite: [link]
(VRay Shaders) ???: [link]

2. 2D

(Concept Art) Conceptart.org: [link]
(Game Textures) Pixelmorgue: [link]
HDRI Andrew Whitehurst: [link]
(Metal in Photoshop) Psolver: [link]
(Particle Effects) Particle Illusion: [link]




- For pipes and stuff you can just use splines and define the number of sides / thickness of it.
- The "Connect" (and pinch/slide) tool is great for splitting polygons into 2, 3, or more segments evenly
- Chamfer is a great tool for rounding edges (on corners as well as turns, for example you want a 90 degree pipe joint, create a box and move one face perpendicular to the other then connect the edges (1 segment) You can then give the middle segment smooth interpolation by chamfering it.
- Using smoothing groups helps you get a soft lighting effect even if you have low polys (i like to use low poly because it is faster to render/easier to texture)
- Easy way to get lighting done is just use a skylight + default scanline renderer (+light tracer) with HDRI projection from the skylight
- You can turn down the number of rays per sample in your adv. lighting > light tracer for test renders and they will not take as long (i never render 250 r/s until the end)
- For a sharp, defined edge use the Catmull Rom filter (default scanline), Lanczos filter (Mental Ray)
- Assign a key to "Create camera from view" for easy camera positioning
- Editable Poly > Editable Mesh (imo anyway)
- Skylights are non directional, use the Advanced Material Override shader to generate an indirect lighting bump value
- Glow behind transparency plugin can be found at: [link] (make sure you assign material IDs to all objects, and they cant have a mID of 0)
- You need to use shadow maps for volumetric lighting
- you can use "Extrude by normal" instead of by group if you want a more linear extrusion
- Use layers to isolate sections of your scene when they too complex to navigate at a decent framerate
- Fillet selected vertices on splines to smooth corners
- Great smoke material tutorial for max - [link]
- Clone parts of your objects to a separate object by shift + dragging selected faces
- use isolation mode when working with many objects/layers, makes things much easier
- in editable poly you can extrude along spline to save the annoyance of extrude, rotate, extrude, rotate, so on and so on. great for horns, tentacles, exhaust pipes, and many other things.



1. Go to material editor and click Get Material.
2. Select bitmap then choose the hdr file you wish to use
3. Set your Load Settings (i normally use Real Pixels 32bit) and click ok
4. Set Coordinate mapping to environment > Spherical/Shrink Wrap depending on what you like to use
5. Create a Skylight
6. Drag the Material from the Material Editor to the slot in the Sky Colour marked "None", under the Map tick box.
7. Set the amount of blending you want with the sky colour and the map using the slider (0-100)
8. Select "Default Scanline Renderer" in render settings and use Light Tracer for the Advanced Lighting.



1. UVW Unwrapping

- Apply Unwrap UVW Modifier
- Organise UVW's - You may wish to isolate parts
  of the model which contain areas of interest,
  such as decals, text etc.
- Scale down to fraction of bitmap area
- Export at texture size (etc 4000x4000)
- Rinse and repeat for each object in your scene

2. Texturing

- Open exported bitmap
- Clone the UVW area of the first object to
  a secondary layer and fill the background
- Save as PSD format
- Export all your templates into photoshop

.Generally I work on texturing one
                 object at a time, which is actually
                 quite inefficient, but i like to
finalise a template so i can just
import all other templates and work
on them without having to update my
previous objects with the new texture.

- Add layered textures to your base image
  (whatever details you wish to add, normally
   i use some of the following)
. Fill layer (base layer)
. Darkness layer (helps spec)
. Specular Highlights
. Dirt Layer
. Decal Layer(s)
. Logo Layer(s)
. Text Layer(s)
. Self illumination Layer(s)

  Then i use some layer effects to split my
  texture maps:
. Image Adjustment layers:
* Brightness/Contrast
* Levels
* Colour Balance
  These adjustment layers can let you create
  Spec/bump maps easy, for example
Diffuse = Base layers - spec brightness/contrast
Spec    = Base layers + spec brightness/contrast
SI        = Base layers - Fill Layer + spec brightness/contrast
Bump   = Base layers - spec hilight layer
Opacity = I ususally create new textures for these objects

3. Materials

- I generally use Advanced material override
  with skylight/raytracer
. increase indirect lighting bump value if neccessary

Material Hierarchy:

ADVANCED MATERIAL OVERRIDE
|
|_ BLEND
      |
              |__ Layer1: Diffuse/SI/Bump, no reflect
      |                Specular(sometimes)
      |
      |__ Layer2: High Specular, HDRI Reflect, Bump
      |                Diffuse(sometimes)
      |
      |__ Mask: Spec texture


Feel free to make any suggestions for the Tip Section

Update #3
------------
Pretty neat tut site I discovered recently:[link]

Update #2
------------
My damn PSU died yesterday, it was some dodgy one which i got with my 60$ case. Since im planning on going Q6600+X2800XTX later this year, i decided to get a PSU which would last for my next pc. I ended up getting the SilverStone Strider 750W (Modular) which is running at the moment. Its pretty sweet!

Update #1
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Link to my Mommy's Site for our kitties: [link]

Some useful tutorial websites:
-----------------------------------

1. 3D

(2D+3D) 3dtutorials.sk: [link]
(2D+3D) CGTutorials.com: [link]
(Maya) Learning Maya: [link]
(Modelling) 3dLinks: [link]
(Modelling) 3dluvr: [link]
(Modelling) HighEnd3d: [link]
(Modelling) Subdivisionmodelling: [link]
(Modelling + Texturing) 3d Palace: [link]
(Modelling + Texturing) 3d Total: [link]
(Modelling + Texturing) Pixel2Life: [link]
(Modelling + Texturing) Tutorial Guide: [link]
(3DSMax) Allan McKay: [link]
(3DSMax) Neil Blevins: [link]
(3DSMax) ParticleFX: [link]
(3DSMax + Cinema4d) Stuve Animations: [link]
(3DSMax + Textures) Poopinmymouth: [link]
(Cinema4d) Maxon: [link]
(Rhino3D / VRay) Aversis: [link]
(Mental Ray) Jeff Patton: [link]
(Mental Ray / VRay) Hao La's Portfolio: [link]
(Modo) Vertexmonkey: [link]
(UVW Mapping) Waylon-art: [link]
(VRay Shaders) ???: [link]

2. 2D

(Concept Art) Conceptart.org: [link]
(Game Textures) Pixelmorgue: [link]
HDRI Andrew Whitehurst: [link]
(Metal in Photoshop) Psolver: [link]
(Particle Effects) Particle Illusion: [link]


TIP SECTION:
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- For pipes and stuff you can just use splines and define the number of sides / thickness of it.
- The "Connect" (and pinch/slide) tool is great for splitting polygons into 2, 3, or more segments evenly
- Chamfer is a great tool for rounding edges (on corners as well as turns, for example you want a 90 degree pipe joint, create a box and move one face perpendicular to the other then connect the edges (1 segment) You can then give the middle segment smooth interpolation by chamfering it.
- Using smoothing groups helps you get a soft lighting effect even if you have low polys (i like to use low poly because it is faster to render/easier to texture)
- Easy way to get lighting done is just use a skylight + default scanline renderer (+light tracer) with HDRI projection from the skylight
- You can turn down the number of rays per sample in your adv. lighting > light tracer for test renders and they will not take as long (i never render 250 r/s until the end)
- For a sharp, defined edge use the Catmull Rom filter (default scanline), Lanczos filter (Mental Ray)
- Assign a key to "Create camera from view" for easy camera positioning
- Editable Poly > Editable Mesh (imo anyway)
- Skylights are non directional, use the Advanced Material Override shader to generate an indirect lighting bump value
- Glow behind transparency plugin can be found at: [link] (make sure you assign material IDs to all objects, and they cant have a mID of 0)
- You need to use shadow maps for volumetric lighting
- you can use "Extrude by normal" instead of by group if you want a more linear extrusion
- Use layers to isolate sections of your scene when they too complex to navigate at a decent framerate
- Fillet selected vertices on splines to smooth corners
- Great smoke material tutorial for max - [link]
- Clone parts of your objects to a separate object by shift + dragging selected faces
- use isolation mode when working with many objects/layers, makes things much easier
- in editable poly you can extrude along spline to save the annoyance of extrude, rotate, extrude, rotate, so on and so on. great for horns, tentacles, exhaust pipes, and many other things.

HDRI Howto:
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1. Go to material editor and click Get Material.
2. Select bitmap then choose the hdr file you wish to use
3. Set your Load Settings (i normally use Real Pixels 32bit) and click ok
4. Set Coordinate mapping to environment > Spherical/Shrink Wrap depending on what you like to use
5. Create a Skylight
6. Drag the Material from the Material Editor to the slot in the Sky Colour marked "None", under the Map tick box.
7. Set the amount of blending you want with the sky colour and the map using the slider (0-100)
8. Select "Default Scanline Renderer" in render settings and use Light Tracer for the Advanced Lighting.

My Texturing Process:
-------------------------

1. UVW Unwrapping

- Apply Unwrap UVW Modifier
- Organise UVW's - You may wish to isolate parts
  of the model which contain areas of interest,
  such as decals, text etc.
- Scale down to fraction of bitmap area
- Export at texture size (etc 4000x4000)
- Rinse and repeat for each object in your scene

2. Texturing

- Open exported bitmap
- Clone the UVW area of the first object to
  a secondary layer and fill the background
- Save as PSD format
- Export all your templates into photoshop

.Generally I work on texturing one
                 object at a time, which is actually
                 quite inefficient, but i like to
finalise a template so i can just
import all other templates and work
on them without having to update my
previous objects with the new texture.

- Add layered textures to your base image
  (whatever details you wish to add, normally
   i use some of the following)
. Fill layer (base layer)
. Darkness layer (helps spec)
. Specular Highlights
. Dirt Layer
. Decal Layer(s)
. Logo Layer(s)
. Text Layer(s)
. Self illumination Layer(s)

  Then i use some layer effects to split my
  texture maps:
. Image Adjustment layers:
* Brightness/Contrast
* Levels
* Colour Balance
  These adjustment layers can let you create
  Spec/bump maps easy, for example
Diffuse = Base layers - spec brightness/contrast
Spec    = Base layers + spec brightness/contrast
SI        = Base layers - Fill Layer + spec brightness/contrast
Bump   = Base layers - spec hilight layer
Opacity = I ususally create new textures for these objects

3. Materials

- I generally use Advanced material override
  with skylight/raytracer
. increase indirect lighting bump value if neccessary

Material Hierarchy:

ADVANCED MATERIAL OVERRIDE
|
|_ BLEND
      |
              |__ Layer1: Diffuse/SI/Bump, no reflect
      |                Specular(sometimes)
      |
      |__ Layer2: High Specular, HDRI Reflect, Bump
      |                Diffuse(sometimes)
      |
      |__ Mask: Spec texture


Feel free to make any suggestions for the Tip Section