MAV: Character Modelling Finished

I've almost finished modelling the main character for our film. I've been unable to progress on it during the hectic Going Live project, but now we have a bit more time to focus on our other commitments.

I need to finish off the eyes and make some tweaks. Because the eyes aren't spherical, I'll need to impliment some workarounds to allow them to rotate properly within their sockets.

Going Live: Final Dragon Model.

Finished the dragon model! I'm pretty happy with the result and can't wait to see it animated.The rest of production is coming along smoothly and we're making decent progress. I've also started experimenting with rendering and compositing to test the look of the film. 

MAV: Character Modelling Progress

More progress on our Character for the film, the mixture of organic and hard edge modelling is proving a bit trickier than I anticipated... but It's getting there!

MAV: Character Modelling

I've been modelling the character for our film after recieving Tom's final design. It's difficult to find time during the going live project, but I don't imagine there will be too many problems.

NURBS assignment.

Completed the NURBS assignment, which was to model an environment/scene from a reference photograph. My chosen reference image is below, along with a still from my scene. Quickly flicking between the two, some major differences become apparent. While I was modelling, the reference image was displayed on my laptop and not imported into Maya. In hindsight this was a mistake, but we were given no indication whether it was recommended to import the still.

Having never used NURBS before, it took a little getting used to, but once I got into the swing of things the process was relatively straight forward. I don't expect to use NURBS often at all, and I feel that the exercise took time that could have been more effectively used on other work.

Here's the required camera movement for assessment. I included a lighting pass to make the scene a little more dynamic.

More like... polyGONE. Hehehe.

I've completed the texturing/shading of my polygon boot model, and I'm pretty happy with the result!

For the turnaround below I rendered from a single master layer so there's no post adjustment except adding in a background and vignette. I might go back and render out different passes to experiment with in Nuke. 

I used UVLayout to map the boot, which I found to be far superior to Maya's in-built UV mapping tools. My biggest regret for the entire project was making the texture map 2k, in hindsight I'd make it 4k instead. The lack of resolution is apparent, even at 720p. 

Capturing the texture images was a pain, as the leather boot is relatively shiny and the surfaces are extremely wrinkled... making it difficult to get even detail. There was a lot of adjustment in Photoshop to correct for this. Aligning the images over the UV map was a serious challenge given the structure of the boot, which is made of up only a couple of large sections. Blending the different texture images together while retaining the intricate stitching detail was tedious, and is still not perfect by any means. 

I created a bump map and specular map from the same files, which definitely add a lot of realism to the final output. I'm extremely happy with the overall aesthetic considering I've next to no experience UV mapping/texturing/shading. Here are the different maps used. 

Bump Map

Specular Map

Diffuse Map

Polygon Boot Mk.II

So after losing all my files, the main loss was the polygon boot which was finished. I was hoping the second version would be better, and I think it certainly looks better, but the topology isn't quite up to scratch. There's one or two errors I actually spotted after rendering this turnaround which I hope to go back and clean up, but it's not essential at the moment. 

Decided to go for a video this time, just in case.

Polygon Modelling

We were given a polygon modelling task a couple of weeks ago, which involved modelling an old item of clothing such as a shoe. 

My trusty cowboy boots have recently given up the ghost after 10 years of faithful service, so I figured it was only right to model them so they can survive digitally forever. 

The next stage is to UV map then sculpt additional details, which is when I'll add in more of the wear and tear (of which there is a lot), but the base mesh is completed and you can check it out below!

Veggie Pirates - Spud Gun Turnaround

Salutations! It's been a while, mainly because I've been so busy working my little fingers to the bone for Ticked Off (read: getting fat and playing Worms). However! I've got some nice shiny work to show you guys.

Team Veggie Pirates asked me to design and model a mounted potato canon, to rain down starchy death on the gummy bear infidels. It's been on my to-do list for a while and I finally managed to rattle it out in a couple of days, I wish I'd done it a lot sooner because it was nice to be working on something other than our own film for once.

This was the first design, but Tom and I felt it was the most appealing... complete with strapped on gas cannister, bicycle handle triggers, and a bolted on bucket primed with the finest ammo.

Here's the 3D model turnaround. As per usual, best viewed on youtube here... full screen, HD, yadda yadda.



Stay tuned for some more updates, but the majority of work these days is on the team production blog which you should most definitely be following!

Take it easy,

Kieran