some fun

self portrait… in 3d :)

so overall this was an interesting project…  this my my first serious face model from scratch, used blender for the most part in terms of modelling.  blenders base level tools (move, scale, rotate, extrude) are the best i’ve found in all 3d apps…  encountered more hitches with texturing than expected which got me frustrated but i managed to pull off enough hacks to get it to look decent

no zbrush or any bump/normal/displacement maps here, no time for that

so i totally cheated with the textures and just projection painted the reference images straight onto the model… but it actually ended up causing more hassles later on
pretty simple shader, no spec just incidence angle based reflections , hdri lighting etc…

bla bla bla

portrait

self-portrait… face modelling :)

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mr frog

so our “real” as in for marks texturing project is, as predicted, the same as last year. the frog!!!

ooh….

this image is semi-final… as in i’m done with the 3d assets and textures etc, but not so sure bout lighting / composition etc

but first the base mesh (which was provided) and the zbrush displacement map

and here’s an alternate version with no subsurface scattering (the red in the feet) and no spec highlights (compare the front feet)

texturing exercise

so we just finished covering the basics of texturing at school…

it was just uv and photoshop skillz, then as an exercise we got given this monster base mesh (which we already unwrapped) and we had to texture it. it’s not for marks or anything and we had bout 3 days to do it.

so i used it as an excuse to test out my zbrush / modo / photoshop pipeline….
loads of fun! so we getting the big project tomorrow and i’m excited now that i’ve ironed out the little bumps working in different apps…

i’ll upload a few shots so you can see progress from the base mesh onwards…

and the “final” render

tech details… rendered with physical sun/sky, 4k displacement and normal maps from zbrush, 4k diffuse map from modo/photoshop.  simple shader setup with reflections based on incidence angle to give that nice spec outline…
grass from paint effects

the most designer thing ever… (for paul)

so continuing my play with interior lighting i thought of the most designer thing of ALL TIME :p

haha…

so what you do is split your window into 3 panes, coloured cyan, yellow and magenta
you’ll notice those are the primary colours of a subtractive colour gamut (ie print)

subtractive meaning you remove all the colours to get white, opposite of digital colour where you add all the colours to get white, but something funny happens when you filter natural light into these three colours… it looks like it turns white!!! (maybe i’m just making this up though)

so paul, you should do this for your computer room, DESAAANER

p.s.  just look at the shadows behind the chair!!!

pre-vis

i have set up a long term goal for the rest of the year… dominate interior design pre-vis

i would really enjoy working for a small (but good) interior design studio doing fly throughs and pre-visualisation work so i’ve decided to pump out the work for the rest of the year

my first mission is lighting as it’s a rather important aspect :p
so i’ve been playing with hdri, sun/sky, ies and all means of gi… all great fun in modo
(but would kill me otherwise, modo is so fast!!!)

also realised maya has a huge library of stuff for paintFX, great fun

mistakes

mistakes can be fun… document them, print them, stick them on walls

wi-fi

so i just got wi-fi on my own pc so expect more posts…

been spending most my time learning integration between all these 3d apps i’ve been picking up.  so i’ve got nothing to show, but mainly been getting back into zbrush 3 and then making sweet 32 bit displacement maps for modo / maya.

here’s a little vinyl toy i made in modo, i didn’t design it, i own it.  so don’t get too excited, i just copied it.  i tried doing this a while back in blender but without projection painting i gave up!

rendered in 37 seconds btw… gotta love modo!!!

still can’t wait for blender 2.50

looks like i’m going to be doing quite a lot of not-3d work these holidays, mostly web stuff.  oh well, if anything it’ll give me a break from 3d