Loren the Dwarf - Sculpt Complete

He's sculpted, baked, and ready for painting.

I used a method of baking and working in layers.  I made the base body, oven baked it for a short time, and used an Xacto knife to shape him a bit better.  Then I did the armor and cape, and baked it so it wouldn't fold.  The final step was the head, hands, feet, and bow.  I accidentally broke the a piece of the cape at this point, but it was fixable by cutting off a little more.  I had no clue how I was going to manage the head while working on it, but it ended up coming together well.

The funny thing is that I ended up rolling a different character to fit into the group better.  On the downside, I don't get to use this handsome piece, or the cool Scottish accent I've been working on.  But on the other side, I get an excuse to make another one!

Trumpet model - Final

I've been sitting on this for several weeks now.  I originally planned on UV'ing and normal mapping this, but I think I'm ready to call it done so I can move on.  Especially with me working 40 hrs a week modeling/texturing/UVing, I don't really want to come home to the same style of work; I'm ready to work on my character model for this summer.

I merged most of the pipes.  Then, I just applied a blinn shader to the parts, and added it to my archives.  Now its time to move on to bigger and brighter things!

Loren the Dwarf

This little fella is going to become Loren the Dwarf, my character for an upcoming D&D campaign.

I'm excited to get back into physical sculpture.  I really enjoyed working on the Flower Story maquettes last year, and it has been just as fun this time around.  I headed over to my friend Sean's place today, and got quite a lot of progress on this little guy (though I didn't take any more pictures).  Right now, he stands 23mm high, and it will probably be closer to 28mm by the end.  I don't know how I'm going to get any detail on something this tiny, but we'll see how it comes out.

Trumpet model - WIP Part Two

I am getting close to the finish line.  Now I'm working on marrying all of the parts together.  I'm running into a lot of trouble with the pipes, because they're hollow, and weld doesn't like getting as close as they are thin.  More to come...

I must say, I do like Max's object coloring; it makes organization rather easy.

 

Trumpet model WIP

This is another project to familiarize myself with 3DS Max's controls.  I got a job for this summer (and perhaps longer), so I want to get practice in.  It's doing hard-edge modeling, and it is important that I work on internals as well as the overall look.

I've been working on this for a few days now.

Flower Story Commentary and Credits

Just finalized the commentary we recorded for Flower Story!  The whole ordeal took two days to record our 9 commentary tracks, some in multiple takes.  I cut it all together with the music using Adobe Premiere (mainly because I already knew how to use Adobe Premiere.)

The commentaries ranged between cool technical behind-the-scenes to totally non-technical ribbing and goofing on each other.  They will be showing up on the DVDs we will producing, along with our movies and any other extras for both movies, making them well worth the price of admission.

Participate in a recorded commentary session?  Check one life goal off!

I also have some (really) quick sketches of the characters I threw together for our credits artist.  I boarded out the poses for him, so he just had to repaint them in the style we were using.  I absolutely love our credits.  It draws the entire production to a close, and it somehow reflects what's going on with our lives, how we're all moving on in different directions after finishing the project.  (Eventually, when I am allowed to post the movie online, that will make a bit more sense.)

(Check out the Flower Story Facebook page here.)

High Heel Boot with Textures and Maya camera in 3DS Max

I finished up texturing the boot and call this model complete!  It's just textured directly from the orthos I had; it looks okay, but more importantly, it was quick.  And with that, I'd say I have a good grasp at modeling in 3DS Max.  I'm ready to move onto the next project.

Another great step, I found a free maya-style camera for Max script.  If anyone else has this problem, check it out here: http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/plugins/mems-max2maya-maya-viewport-navigation-in-3ds-max

I believe that one should learn the controls of a program, rather than try to replace them with another.  However, since I've been going back and forth between Maya and Max so often, this became a godsend.  Really, I'm comfortable with both styles, but it's good to be able to stick with one, just so there isn't that minute of mental lag when trying to get back into a project.

Lutra Orthos

Just finished up the orthos for Lutra, my League of Legends style character.  Unfortunately, with the chaos going on right now between school and potential work, I won't be able to start until the summer.  C'est la vie;  part of the battle is already won!

High Heel Boot

This is just a low poly model I threw together in 3DS Max, as a way to familiarize myself with how the program works.  I used box modeling, and a photographs of a boot as reference.

The transition between Maya and Max isn't too bad, but there are some things I'm used to that may be hard to replace.  The biggest thing is camera controls; camera has to be second nature, and I keep second guessing myself now.  Also, it feels harder to do planar modeling in Max, but that may be because I don't have experience in it yet.  Next step, texturing!

Life Drawing Schmorgasboard

A collection of life drawings from the past 2 years in the UCF Visual Language program.  More to come!