Space Marine

Well, the mesh is admittedly looking a bit ragged, but I'm quite proud of this so far considering it's my first go.  I've had to rework bits and pieces after looking more closely at reference images.  That's a lesson for the future - check your references more...

Space marine 3D model

I thought I'd try my hand at modelling a character.  It's far more difficult than I first thought!

GI and Glossy reflections

One of these days I'm going to write a basic tutorial on the mentalray render system as found in 3D Studio Max.

I've just climbed the learning curve on "glossy reflections" and "max reflection distance", chopping my render times down by about 75% in some instances.  Also when I had some free time this week (haha, there's a joke right there) I also made broke a bit of ground with "photon mapping", once again giving a time saving on photo-realistic renders.

Mentalray can produce some really fantastic images with a little understanding, but it tends to take a billion years to do so.  It's only with a lot more understanding that you can get it to spit out similar images in an acceptable time.