"Santa Hat" "Why I have no Renders" "The Terminator" "Blender 3D Chirstmas Tree" "Blender 3D"

It's been slightly more than a year since Jack Dugan introduced me to Blender.
At first I got really frustrated since I was at the time used to using Maya,
however having all your renders stamped/water marked and not being able to save your work in any form of accepted format so i can use it with other 3D programs eventually got me to drop Maya completely.
Now fast forward one year, dozens of half way finished projects,
tons of idea for animated shorts and whatever other over optimistic projects that were never finished.
I never saved my Blend files nor did I ever save my renders,
time to start!

Well, other than one time I had an animated short of a character drinking coffee,
enjoying his day, getting hit in the head with a marble, then later getting knocked out with a brick. Somehow that decently finished project, my best animated short, got corrupted.

Here is the most recent project causality, that won't be done for Christmas.
Picture him partially clothed with ripped clothing, damaged, scorched steel using Normals Bump Mapping, Displacement and Color UV maps(easy with Blender's texture painting)
carrying a bag of toys on his shoulder and holding a machine gun(that Josh Melling "forced" me to model, err.. inspired me while standing over my shoulder, since I don't have the mind to model unless I'm told what to do).

The background of the scene is/would be an artificial Christmas tree with glass globes,
presents underneath, an extinguished fireplace with hot coals, a brick wall around the fireplace,
pictures on a wooden mantle, and hardwood floors.
Maybe a small table with milk and cookies...

The whole scene would use Blender's internal rendering engine since it's fully integrated into Blender,
unlike my more photorealistic(featuring caustics, photon mapping etc) and preferred rendering engine YafARay.
I'd have some issues getting it to work with the particles of the hat and tree to say the least,
also not to mention YafARay has some occasional but severe integration issues other than particles.

Only if it was 3 weeks until Christmas, I could get most of what I want done.

Renders of what I've done so far (I haven't applied the generic metal material to all the parts, after applying it I'd add special UV mapping to the larger pieces for a non uniform look.)
I didn't model the terminator, but I'm working on rigging him so I can pose him,
plus there are some UV maps that got lost in the 25 saves/versions I've done of him....

P.S. Sorry about the bad/crappy lighting.

The tree is not perfect, but it would work decently enough.
Lighting isn't good, just a test.
I think I'm using at least 400K of particles for the tree.

Umm well I think that's it for today.
Tomorrow I'll do a quasi tutorial on how to make the hat.

Josh Martin