Fun With Science
Doing some rigid body dynamic and motion path tests for a new set of safety training videos. Also testing out the Cruiser rig to see how it handles. Might have to add one more null layer so I can make the car slide in turns while sticking to the motion path on the main control for more dramatic videos like J-turns. Blasting cones!
HADOKEN!
Make way for the bad guy
A project from last year I totally forgot about, mostly a personal exercise in lighting, hair and exporting maps from zbrush.
Muscle Hustle
Initial pass on setting up the muscle structures and bone objects for my Puma
Busy Work
Lots of new things going on! Trying to work more technical direction into my animation thesis, working part time for the SFPD as a civilian 3D consultant, advanced quadruped rigging, scripting…everything seems to be moving faster and faster. That’s both exciting and a little scary. Also new video of Zombie walk!
Done in a Snap
An optional assignment for my Texturing and Lighting class, it helped me stay focused…haaaaaaa.
Camera Lens - Modeled, Lit and Rendered
Sometimes Fear Is The Appropriate Response
I need to meet up with my department director to review my thesis journal:
Appropriate response.
Turkeytalk PropShop
Just put the finishing touches on one of the major props for my thesis, the SwitchComb! I might remove the noise on the handle though. Even though it looks neat it may add a realism that I’m not looking for. I found a really good tutorial on getting better metal shaders by using a fresnel Index of Refraction to gauge reflection instead of a straight ahead reflectivity curve. Check it out at http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2007/10/making-better-metal-with-miamaterial.html. The Octopus I had actually made back when I made the balloon dog, just slipped up on throwing it up here.
Also made some progress on the skin shader for my directed study class. I added a texture to the arm and tried it out on a head mesh available for free from the Gnomon website by Alex Alvarez. Once smoothed it kind of looks like Goro from Mortal Kombat, haha. There are a lot of nice zbrush alphas available on there too, and this nice rock tutorial I used back when I was a level designer for HalfLife 2 mods, which is still useful for creating scenes.
The other piece of news is the creation of facial controls and blend shapes for the Zombie! About time! This was the part of the class I was most looking forward to. Parent space switching was pretty awesome too, though it was more about keeping the hands attached to different parts of the body and now I wonder how it can be used in conjunction with props. Next is hooking up the blend shapes and phonemes to the nurb controls.
That bottom version of the zombie has a green variant of the subsurface scattering material from the texture and lighting directed study class.
Hope everybody had a great thanksgiving, I know I did. Thank you to Ohio for all the Christmas Ale! Swoosh!
PS: http://www.freemayavideotutorials.com/??? How did I not know about this?
Happy Late Halloween
An initial skin weighting pass on the zombie, and another update to the skin shader and the fruit bowl. Rawr! Go Giants!
Fruity Tooty
FRUIT BOWLLLLLL. Work in progress, need to texture the bananas, plums and cherries. Apple and pear already have textures and specularity maps, and the grapes have a subsurface scattering shader I’ve been tweaking with a scatter map on the front.
Subsurface Scattering Test
Just goofing around with some shaders. After some tweaking, I think I arrived at a satisfying result for a first time effort!
