I'm using Maya so there doesn't appear to be a "self illumination" option by that name. Google searching for the solution only seems to show how to create neon lights/tron-looking objects, which I don't think is what I'm looking for.

So with some experimenting I've set its ambient color to white, which seems to have a similar effect (Get rid of any shadows not painted/AO'd on).

I can't just screenshot the viewport because for some reason the viewport renderer makes the fins or body fully transparent unless I render them.

From that point I followed the AO tutorial that was posted in the thread, setting the AO map in photoshop the way Jacque said to do it and this was my result:

In maya you can go into your shader options and turn up incandescence to 100 The transparency error your getting is a problem i get in mayaviewport whenever i'm using alpha, its annoying and i don't think there's a fix

I think you want the Ambient Color to be pulled all the way to the right and the Diffuse to 0, as far as Maya goes. That's what I've been doing anyway.

You don't have to bother messing with it shader-side. In the Maya viewport go to Lighting > Use No Lights.

Originally Posted by BrendtheCow

You don't have to bother messing with it shader-side. In the Maya viewport go to Lighting > Use No Lights.

I think they're talking about rendering it out, rather than a screengrab of the viewport.

Originally Posted by gilesruscoe

In maya you can go into your shader options and turn up incandescence to 100 The transparency error your getting is a problem i get in mayaviewport whenever i'm using alpha, its annoying and i don't think there's a fix

Thanks, but this just seems to make my model/texture pure white and glowing.
So I loaded the texture into the incandescence field instead, and that seemed to work except that it doesn't allow the alphas to work properly.

Originally Posted by Tigerfeet

I think you want the Ambient Color to be pulled all the way to the right and the Diffuse to 0, as far as Maya goes. That's what I've been doing anyway.

Yeah, this is what I ended up doing.

Yay for learning the hard way! :P

Finished my monkey

WIP turtle, 270 tri, 256^2 texture

http://p3d.in/qnXB6/shadeless

Originally Posted by gilesruscoe

Here's what i did for the first week of the course, it's been a good learning experience so far and we're only just getting into the 3rd week! D:

Ahah, looks great. Just one thing to point out:
Squid, like cuttlefish, have eight arms arranged in pairs and two, usually longer, tentacles.

And that's why they are Decapodiformes ("10 feet/arms")

Didn't have enough polys to add all those tentacles haha :P just had to stick with 4

Ahhh, that explains it. Its just a bit "alien" this way :P

But remember only 2 are large and the other 8 are shorter (could save some polys there - probably not enough though).

Cheers

Originally Posted by JacqueChoi

Week 1: Make A Critter
Make a small creature that should be based on something real and existing, not something made up, or fantastical. It should look as if it belongs in the same world as the reference images we have provided below.

Can you tell me what this "Summer Bootcamp" is? can anyone join it? do you just give us challenges to help us improve or what?