New Year, New Goals

Hey everyone!

So it is a new year, 2016!  Happy New Year!  I wanted to start off this year with a new direction and goals.  A friend of mine set for himself last year of making a 3D model every week, and for the most part he succeeded.  I would like to set a similar goal for myself.  To complete a smaller project every week in an attempt to get better and speed up my work.
As such, I am starting with a new project.  I am still going to be working on the other longer projects as well, since I need to work on these for better lighting and surfacing practice, but my hope is I can get on a schedule and use that to speed up those longer projects.  So I will be going back and forth throughout the week on these two projects.  Essentially, I will be doing one quick project focusing on different things, and then one bigger project that will take longer to finish.  So right now, those two are the Starbucks picture, and a brand new Rey Skywalker picture.
Yup, fan art.  But not just any fan art, i am going to attempt to model her in 3D and then stylize her to look like a character from the Star Wars Rebels animated tv show.  That should simplify her enough that I can speed up her production.  I will then pose her and make a still portrait.  If I can, I will try to figure out a basic cloth sim for her robe/sash thing and get some minor animation in it.

So let me for now give you guys a screenshot of where I am right now.  Feedback is welcome!

I am starting off with a single mesh for her boots, legs, pants, and shirt.  I am then going to complete a single mesh for her arms, hands, chest, neck, and head.  After that, the sash thing she has crossing her.  Right now she has relatively human proportions, so I will be using various references from the TV show to stylize her from here.  I also need to finish adjusting her edge flow, although since she is not going to be rigged for animation and only posing, I will not spend too much time on that.

More textures, WIP 9/28

As of right now, I've been putting in the rough placeholder textures.  Even though some of these look good, they aren't anything as good as I hope to get them to.  I still need to refine the textures/materials so they look exactly like the materials in the picture, and then i need to add all the dirt, scratches, etc.  While going through the scene, I've not only seen some geometry issues to fix and started fixing them, but I realized a giant error I'm not sure I want to fix.  It is not easy to see, which is why it might be worth cutting the corner, but the inner brown box that holds all the tongs and scoops (and the stuff within) are supposed to be 3 boxes side-by-side, and one is at an angle.  Not sure how I missed that before, but now that I see it, fixing it involved major overhauling of part of the scene.  I might go back and do this, but not yet.  It is something I will consider, but since it took so long for me to realize it, it isn't a glaring problem.
That being said, I am also struggling with the textures.  I put a granite texture on the counter top and it is not exactly behaving as it normally does.  Renderman is treating it differently so now I have to figure out how, if there is a fix, and how to make it look right.  But for now the placeholder is fine.  All that's left is the wall, the calk, the baseboard, the jugs on top (and their liquid), the small rivets, the limes, adding the geo and textures for the powders, and the background wall, which ultimately should have a metal basket and a lemon in it, which is something else I might add later, but now yet.
Let me know what you think.
(Also I think the IT is putting things in linear space, but for some reason it put this output from rgb and converted it as if it was linear, which darkened it.  So it is too dark now :\  I'll fix that.)

Converted on-the-fly from linear to srgb

Incorrectly converted from srgb to srgb as if it was from linear to srgb, making it too dark.

Materials in Progress... WIP 9/27

Here is where I am with the first step in the materials: rough blocked in materials.  Again, no lights, unrefined textures, no dirt or grime or imperfections yet.  Just putting something basic in place so I can start the process of putting things together.  Also it will be full of noise cause it's only a test render.

Tell me what you think so far.

WIP Sept 24, 2015

So, again sorry for the delay in updating this.  Here is the latest Work In Progress.  I will be doing more soon!

WIP, Tuesday Sept 16th

I had a bit of a delay this weekend, but I have just about finished the modeling.  I have a few minor details to add (like the little feet and screws on the middle holder, better edges and details on the larger holder, and grout along the edge of the wall, a small object toward the foreground I missed before, and the powder in the containers).  I should have all this done tonight, and will start looking at UV mapping and MARI next.  So here is the latest WIP.

WIP, Friday Sept 12th

Almost done with the modeling.  I have the top of the machine int he back to finish modeling, and there are some smaller details like screws, grout, and feet to put in, not to mention the powder in the containers, but I think I'm almost there!  I am pretty satisfied with how the blender containers and handles came out.  Still waiting for Renderman, but I might have to bypass waiting for it, and either texture and light at SCAD on campus (if I can get in), or use 3Delight or Mental Ray.  Well, we'll see what happens next week.

Tell me what you think so far.

WIP. Thursday Sept 11th

So I have been busy trying to figure out some modeling, and looking for work.  That and fixing technical bugs with my computer (please play my music iTunes, I promise to behave.).  Of course it took longer than I hoped, but I have an update, and I hope to have far more for tomorrow.  I am almost done with this phase of modeling.  Afterwards I will do a once over on everything, and look for feedback before focusing on textures and shading.

Original picture for reference

Full render so far with smooth models

Close-up of tongs (notice the chipped container in the back)

Close-up of container with feet (one broken)

WIP, Tuesday, Sept 9th

Well after taking a short break for the weekend (while working on other projects), I've come back to the Starbucks picture.  Right now, I am (finally) done with matching and placing the objects.  At last I've started making the refined models.  I am using a combination of subdiv and polygons (with a few NURBS).  After experimenting with the Maya 2014 feature of creases sets, which I have worked with before, I've found that while they are are useful, not everything supports it properly.  Case in point, I am planning to render this using PR Renderman (whenever Pixar releases it... they said they'd release it at SIGGRAPH but that was a month ago), so while I wait, I am using a copy of another Renderman renderer, 3Delight.  Apparently, it doesn't like crease sets that much, and there have been other issues.  But I can say this, it is a lot better and faster than Mental Ray.  I haven't gotten to texturing or lighting yet, but with a simple test at full resolution, it took Mental Ray about 1 and a half minutes to render the scene, while 3Delight actually added shadows (turning them on on the default lights) and took only 16 seconds to render the same shot.  Much faster.  So right now, I am using 3Delight, but I am hoping PR Renderman comes out soon.

Until then, here are the visual updates:

No wirefreame

With wireframe

As you can see, I have refined the models of the nozzles in the foreground, as well as the lid in the foreground to the left (also added the indents), refined the cups in the tower, remodeled the containers in the center with better lids and more details, as well as the pumps on them, and the handles sticking out of the containers behind them.  I am hoping tomorrow to finish modeling the containers in the stand, the pitchers on top of the larger case, and get cracking on the machine int he background.  One large challenging piece for that will be the odd-shaped structure on the top of it, which I have mainly avoided for the rough placement, but will need to be figured out and addressed soon.  Once that is done, I will do a once over on the models and their placement, and finally get started on shading and texturing.

I also have plans to start modeling a minor character, from Dexter's Laboratory, as a practice on modeling a character and texturing it.  It should be easy, but will let me explore Mari some more.  More on that later.

WIP, Friday Sept 5th

Here I am in my project.  I had to redo a lot of work from the previous day or two because I discovered that by trying to place the foot of the large machine int he back cause me to realize how off everything is.  How does it go?  It is a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing.  Well thanks to that tiny little cylindrical foot, I had to realign most of the object all because I didn't have the actual dimensions of any of the objects, so I have been forced to eye-ball them.  I think I'm pretty close now, but that did put me a little behind where I wanted to be.  Today I will begin actually refining the models so I can move onto texturing.  I think this is a lesson learned, get measurements.

WIP, Thursday, Sept 04th, 2014

Almost done with aligning objects.  I hope to spend more time tomorrow on this than I could today, so I can catch up.  I hope to have the placement finished and the modeling well under way by tomorrow.  Just have a few nozzles and "stuff" to add for placement, but I think it is coming along nicely.  I'm going to try using subdivs for a lot of this.  I'll start polygon then go into subd.  I also plan on trying out Mari for texturing after that.

WIP Wed, Sept 3rd, 2014

I'll keep this post short.  I have been working on taking one of the existing images and recreating it into CG, rather than taking more pictures.  With the weather misbehaving this week, I rather start working than waiting for it to clear up.  So for now, I am working on one of the Starbucks images I took.  This will be the first of many projects.
The biggest problem I ran into was trying to align the camera to get it just right.  It is still something I'm struggling with perfecting, but I had to do some research to figure out why it was always a little off.  I had already adjusted the focal length of the image, but what I was missing was the size of the digital back.  This is the sensor of the camera, and I had no idea what it was.  I knew it wasn't a full-sized one, so I couldn't use a preset in Maya (which is based on film, like 35mm), so I looked up the size of the sensor for my specific camera online, adjusted the image plane to view the entire image, and voila!  The image now matched a lot closer than it did before.  It is still hard to get it just right, but that is part of the nature of this without having exact measurements and the like.
So for today, I will post an image of the first round of blocked in objects, trying to align them to the positions and sizes as those in the photograph.  I also drew another picture on my iPad, but I am not satisfied with it, and won't be sharing this one right now.  I rather do more work on it or move onto something else.  It was an experiment in technique and I haven't quite figured it out yet.

WIP Tuesday, September 2nd 2014

I said I was going to do it, so here I go.  Due to some unfortunate weather conditions, I was unable to take photographs outdoors, so I took some indoor ones.  I kind of got stuck in a Starbucks, so I decided to use my time there to work on things.  Here are 4 photographs I took (of many), one of which I might start working on turning into a 3D image.  I will try to take some more tomorrow, but after that, I will have to pick one of these (at a time) and dive in to the 3D.  I hope to have some stuff blocked in for tomorrow, maybe more.
Any comments on which (if any) you like?

But I decided not to leave it there and just take some photos, I also wanted to work on brushing up my drawing skills.  I need to keep working on it, and I am hoping to find a modeling session somewhere locally I can go to weekly.  If anyone knows of one, I would be eternally grateful.  So right now the image isn't finished.  I am getting used to my new Wacom iPad pressure sensitive pen, as well as the way Autodesk Sketchbook Pro for iPad works.  So a lot of this was learning and experimenting, but I would like to keep working on this.  I hope to keep doing these daily as well to improve my drawing and visual story telling and lighting.  Still haven't finished the actual line art.  I want to work on the girl more, a lot more, add more detail, and fix a few things.  I only have base color and roughed in shadows, so I have a long way to go yet.

If anyone knows of a tutorial or suggestions for techniques for using Sketchbook Pro, I am all ears.  I'm just starting to learn this stuff, so I hope I can pick it up and start making these faster and better as I go.

So that's if for WIP 1.  Stay tuned for tomorrow!

Composition Final (TECH 420), version 1

Hey everyone!

I have 2 finals down, and (and a half) to go.  Why a half?  I have to take one of my projects and do a simple breakdown, but that's for another post.  For now, I have finished my final for my Compositing for Technical Directors class, which has been teaching Nuke, as I mentioned before.  Our final project was to take an existing live-action plate, which is essentially just a video taken of an environment (in this case) with the intent of adding a CG element to it later.  The CG element we could add was our choice, and I decided I wanted to do something a little different.

In the end, I am not satisfied with the level of detail the model is.  While I did a LOT of work to make it look better, including displacement, specular highlight, specular color, and more, which I did in Mudbox, Maya didn't properly import anything, and I had to fight with it to make it look halfway descent.  However, as a result, I spent to much time trying to fix bugs and errors that I had to stop fixing minor problems and get to the point of the project, which was to integrate the object into the scene.

A LOT of work went into this, but too late I ran into a bigger bug that I've seen before and couldn't figure out.  I'm not even sure how to describe it to get help, and I didn't have any time left to try to repair it or even remove it.  If you look at the object in my scene, it has a sort of polygonal look to it, but I assure you this is a smooth model with no polygonal edges on it.  The problem is the displacement I used fell apart.  I've seen this before, where my displacement lost all definition and became a mass of polygons on the surface that no longer even tried to retain it's original shape, but it only shows up on high resolution renders, so none of my smaller test renders caught it.  So I am NOT giving up on addressing this challenge.  I WILL fix this, and then I will post it.

So for now, enjoy my little scene, and again, if you have any feedback on how I can integrate the CG elements into my scene better (and please refrain from mentioning the texture, polygons/displacement on the object, or the clipping yet because I am already addressing those), I would appreciate it.  Ta ta for now...

Photo Preview

Today I have for you a preview of my final project in my photography class.

The final project in this class is to take a photographer (or other artist), and either try to mimic their style and work, or improve on it.  Since I would rather learn from others, and not show them up, I chose to mimic a photographer.  After much searching, my wife and I found Michael Eastman.  Michael Eastman began taking pictures in 1972, and his work is really impressive!  He has done a series of different subjects, from Americana to horses to abstract to Cuba.  His images have a certain aesthetic appeal I really like, and I find that his study of reflective, refractive, transmitting of light in a city at night is intriguing, bordering on abstract, but with a certain sense of place.  You look at things you see everyday in a new way, or at things people never notice at all that's right in front of them.

Usually his images are of textures and play of light.  I have to wonder how he gets into all these places, but I really enjoy his work.  I spent the better part of a weekend (with some planning beforehand) taking pictures around Atlanta.  Here is a preview of some of these images.

I will also be using a similar aesthetic to follow is Vanishing America series, contrasting the big city with rural country.

In the end, I have to pick a grand total of 10, so that's around 5 for each study.  But what I really care about in this is keeping consistant with te aesthetic and building some good photography samples for my demo reel.

Enjoy!

Beginnings of a film

Today, I want to briefly talk about what the rest of my time as SCAD is going to be dedicated toward.  While I will still take pictures in Photography, Lighting, and so forth, I have to make a senior film, a project that showcases my work.  As thus, I have started working on a story that allows me to focus on lighting and compositing.  I have been working on some updates this this as well, and hope to have some of them in a new animatic before too long.  I want to add a particle effect to the main character, as well as reworking the story a little for a better flow.
Until I have the time to get these changes in here, this is my current animatic.  As soon as I get the changes in place, I will post a new one, and will probably be posting a new blog dedicated to the film as well later on.  So for now, enjoy this short animatic.  If you have any questions or suggestion, feel free to leave them in the comments.

Material samples

I'm late!  But I did spend most of the night working on things.  No worries, i will have 2, TWO updates today (a-ha-haa).

So here is a new sample of textures I made.  Some of these are actually works in progress (as some of my previous posts actually were).  These show fresnel effect, different metals, and a car shader (all custom made).