3D pose + lighting ref

This was supposed to be a quick perspective reference and I got a little carried away.


I think lighting and texture are my favorite things about 3D.


EDIT: So, I received critique that my reference was too washed out, which is TRUE. I ended up upping the contrast a lot in the final, which was made in, of all things, Tegaki.


I'm not fully happy with it, as is typical, but it was a lot of fun trying out a different process. Next time I'm using Photoshop, though.

3D + Watercolor

... Because these are apparently my favorite mediums all the sudden.

This is a semi-secret project I'm working on, to learn to import into a game engine, something I don't have a lot of experience with. I extruded a cube to make this ugly object (appropriately named "testblob") to see if it would retain smoothing, UV, and texture data. It DOES.


I haven't tested maps other than a diffuse yet, though. I really want to play with self-illumination and animated textures.


I also have recently obtained some new watercolor pencils, which I love since you can get such nice results with so little mess. I wanted to test them out, so I jumped on the Arkaz IRC room and took the first suggestion I got: Narcissa, an NPC vampire from the game.


The anatomy is horrible and there's a lot I should have done differently (the color scheme, least of all...), but overall I'm pleased. I learned a lot about my tools doing this, and that was the point. :) Looking forward to using them again.

Wild Career Change

Not that wild.

Following an enlightening conversation with someone at a DigiPen alum meet, I suddenly realized that all that level design stuff I was doing for fun is something I could do for a job. Crazy!!

I'm working on fixing up my site, but in the meantime I really wanted to get something up here!

These are some areas I made for Arkaz, the NWN1 server I work on, in the Aurora toolset. It's a little old but we still have a lot of dedicated players.



These ones are from Neverwinter Nights 2 and were made for ID Tech as my demo project.




These are some screencaps of the project I'm working on right now. This is the Dragon Age toolset, which is probably both the BEST and most difficult tileset I've used so far. It has 3Ds Max-style rotation and that makes me soooo nerdily happy.




The tower is constructed from a lot of pieces of things that I'm pretty sure aren't supposed to be tower-parts. There's loads of bugs with the level but I'm working on it. I have a story planned based on tarot, should be interesting.

I've been doing this for ages and felt it was "cheating" to use a toolset so I never posted anything about it.

Zach, Andy, and other mythological creatures

Forgot to update!!

I completed my contract work for BrandX Games and they have given me permission to post the final two images! This is "3D Concept art" for an unreleased and unannounced game.



The project was a little rushed, but I think it came out very well for the amount of time I had. I also taught myself ZBrush for this project, and while I'm still fairly new to the program, it's SUPER FUN to model with it and I look forward to doing more ZBrush work!

However, right now I'm trying to get this painting finished!

I think I'm getting close to "finished" but there's a lot of untouched areas here still-- check out Andy's white blob of a spellbook! I also checked my sketch and realized I read some of my lines wrong and gave Zach a huge butt, so I might try to fix that too.

DrowLove By The Sea

This is my final animation render for ANI400.



So, I wasn't able to finish Pyras in time. I pretty much had to choose between all eight models and no animation for the showing on Friday, or something to show off with, and no Pyras. Since Pyras has essentially left DrowLove anyway, I went ahead with this animation today.

It's 105 frames long and loops 18 times to music. c: I'm very proud of it, considering I'm not aiming for an animation job, I think I did well.

I aim to finish Pyras, the weapons and props, and Onion after graduation.

Also, check out this sweet walk Bob did for me! c:

FINALS

I finished Granth, but I have to go work on my sociology paper now, so no time for pretty renders. Pyras might be delayed until after finals, I'll know by Wednesday.

TEAPOTS

TEAPOTS.

Also notice: lue's fixed self-illumination, arinae's fixed skinning and self-illumination, Drea's coat still not fixed, the one teapot I forgot to put a double-sided material onto.

lots of pictures

Fie is done.


I actually figured out how to use biped extras, so I rigged his coat. I'll probably go back and do Drea's coat this same way, but not yet, I need to finish the last two models first.


He doesn't really have enough geometry for a good coat rig, but it works way better than skinning to his legs.

ANGRY WALKING.

So, I added him to the lineup, where he is coincidentally right next to Lueali. I don't think either of them would be particularly happy with that.

He brings some boot colour variation to the group.

Aaand then I did a bunch of renders because I'm getting a kick out of this project.

Flan is the favourite of all my professors. XD Oddly, he translated really well into 3D.

Fie is my favourite, I think. I really like his glasses.

Autem, who is pretty.

Arinae, the first I did. I'm noticing skinning errors on her, and I need to tone down her eyes just a little. She is supposed to have very pale piercing eyes, but right now it's a bit of an overkill.

♥TRUE LOVE♥

She is somehow one of the most expressive ones.

I really like Fie. XD LOOK OUT LUE.

I think I did something strange with Lue's self-illumination. He looks fine in Max, but gets weird shadows on his face in all the renders. I'll probably take a look at that when I get to the point where I am fixing old errors in these models.

Granth is next! These are due on Wednesday, I'm hoping to have them done this weekend.

Texturing Like Crazy

Skeletons are as finished as I am going to worry about getting them for now. I'd like to touch them up a bit, but this is workable unless I get free time, which I don't think will happen, unfortunately.


And Drea makes 3/8 DrowLove models done.


For fun, here's a render before he was skinned properly:

And here is one after skinning. I've noticed a few obvious errors since this, but really, that big coat creates problems for dynamic poses. I might experiment with ways to fix this, but I don't really think I have time, and he works great when he's just walking around.

Finally, I did some fanservicey renders for fun, since I have both Lue and Drea done now. c: I haven't done alternate expressions, though, so they are kind of going :| at each other. ROMANCE!!!

Flan is next!

SKELEBLUE

I'm trying to finish up the skelebots over the next few days.

Blue skele is the "perfect" version. He's got metal parts and is clean and sharp. I want his teeth to look like sharp blades, but haven't finished the texture yet.

I really like how his back looks.

In conclusion, self-illumination maps are now my favourite thing ever.

After Career Day

I didn't update at all for a while, so I have a lot to show this time.
I finished Lueali. This is the render I took for career day. I have one from behind as well, but that's less interesting.

Here's what his wireframe looks like.


This is with a WIP texture, but I did his eyes on several photoshop layers so they can be opened and closed, and moved around to make him look in different directions. I'd like to do different expressions too, but haven't had time.

Close up of the face wireframe with texture. The eyes are mouth are not modelled.

Messing around. XD; I wanted it to look like he was holding a LENSFLARE but it didn't really work, which was too bad.


These are the full resolution textures for Lue and Arinae. I mirrored her face but not his, she's kind of a more symmetrical person. I might redo that, but I don't think I have time. She has such piercing eyes that I don't really want to move them around much anyway.

I've only started Drea. I've got his face finished but haven't touched anything else yet.

Lynda showed me specularity and illumination maps, so I added those to Lue and Arinae yesterday. I really like the look, but I'm not sure it's something that could be used in a game like this. I figure they are extras, the model still looks nice without them. c:

Lue's hair with the spec map on. The alpha lets light through, it's the greatest thing. His hair still doesn't look curly enough for my taste, but it works for now.

This is one of the renders I did for career day. I handed out post card-sized prints with this image, as well as an 18x24 poster.

This is the last print I did for career day. This one was *really* popular, which surprised me a lot, considering it's a photoshop speed painting on top of a render. Well, I had a version without the wonky grass, anyway. This is before the lum and spec maps, but unfortunately the daylight system blows everything out so much that you couldn't see the self-illuminated materials anyway.

I'm putting Drea on hold until I can get some feedback on his texture, so I'm starting Flan instead. I should have some renders of him soonish.