Got a New PC!

To Celebrate I decided to do something to use all the ram by working on something with fur.  Sculpted, rigged and furryfied to the max!

Back to C-47

I was having a problem with rigging the landing gear, but I got it sorted for the moment.  On to rigging the rest of the plane.

Take a guess

It's coming.... those of you that know me well know what this is.... yes it's cycles....

Making Progress on the C-47

I still putter on the C-47 on the weekends.   I took a year break from the movie and am hoping to complete this bad boy soon.

Still working on C-47

I can't believe how much I get humbled by 3D.  I continually work on stuff and it always turns out so so.   I think by the time I'm 80 3D and I will have figured each other out.

Still working on the C-47

Have been using the C-47 as a way of learning better how to do realistic surfaces and textures.  Here's a render of the side of the aircraft.

Modelling a C-47

Sometimes when I'm busy at work I try something different.  I decided to model a C-47 from scratch.  Here it is so far:

You may ask why I'm doing this?  Yeah, I don't really have an answer.  It's just fun for me at a stressful time of life.  I started a BA thread here.

Getting Back to the Simple Stuff...

I actually modeled a Cell Phone Tower (just for fun):

I then placed it in an architectural visualization project for a charity I was helping out.  The Ivy Generator and Sapling add on really helped here.  Used Agisoft photoscan to model all the buildings and the street.

Here is the building with the remodel:

Thanks to everyone who gave me positive comments by the way, encouragement is all I get paid through all this and I appreciate it:)

The struggle for the Art...

It's been a hectic time of life(all the way around).   I've been somewhat discouraged of late as I really feel I'm not good enough at the Art.  I guess what I really struggle with is the detail and the composition.  I'm good at programming and I'm ok at modelling, but I really fall down in the art.  Sometimes I just take ten steps backward.  For example look at Bob two posts down.  I came back to this blog and realized he just looks TERRIBLE.   Man, what was I thinking?  So I took another stab at him:

Ok, so now this is slightly better.  Studied the lips, worked the skin shader and the hair and tweaked some.  Man it's tough getting things right and he certainly he has a long way to go.  Recently I've been working on some architectural visualization projects just for fun and they turned out ok, but I really never have time to do them justice.  

I tried to work on my art a little and I entered a weekend competition.  Having written the cloud generator a while back I thought I could do a good job at it and so I created this:

Needless to say I didn't win, the theme was 'above the clouds'.  This competition made me realize that I really need to work on the Art.  I had a fairly good idea, but the execution didn't cut it.  I got lots of comments like 'hate the black eye'  'the shark looks like he's in a T-Pose'  In my defense it was a weekend competition and I didn't have a lot of time to make this, but still, to fail in the art just irks me.  I think I need to study composition more and also muscles int he face.  Technically I can do almost anything I want to in blender, I just can't seem to do anything appealing aesthetically.  Oh well, it's really not in my nature to give up, so I just keep plugging away....

Still tweaking on the street.

I'm still tweaking on the street little by little.

New Character.... Bob

Here's about three hours work... trying to get better at pumping out characters.....

Volumetrics are in Cycles!

So Cycles has volumetrics now so I thought I'd do a quick test.  This scene has no lights except those coming from the volume.  I'm sure they're working on point densities which I think will greatly help scenes like this.   As for the movie, I've been stalled for a long time because of work and moving households.  Now that things have settled down a bit I think I'll start in again.... sorry for the long time between posts:)

And still tweaking.....

Here's a quick update on the buildings I scanned in...

This street is completely different than the street I did in the past.  These buildings are VERY low poly with all of the effort going into the normal maps and the texturing.  This is a completely different work flow than modelling EVERY detail and then adding tiled and procedural textures to 'dirty it up'.    I think I like this flow a little better, you end up with a few too many flaws instead of too few, but it's faster and I think it looks a little better... any thoughts? 

Back from Ireland...

So I took over 4000 photos on my trip to Ireland most of which were for objects and textures.  I've got quite a library now and the computer has been converting them to models pretty much non stop since I got back.  Here's a couple of buildings I scanned in.  Believe it or not these models are extremely low poly.  Anyway posting a render up to prove I'm still working away on the movie.  I think my original estimate of 10 years to make the movie was a little optimistic.