Nearly done!

Just a little more to be done. I've been hi-res-ing as I go and the shaders are essentially done as well. Won't be long until this guy is ready to hit the town!

The Superior Being

Greetings faithful viewers! I apologize for your misplaced faith. A better person would be updating regularly; posting finished works each week. I am working to be that better person again! I have multiple projects on the go but for now I'll just show you one of the simple ones.

That's right. Another dalek. What? Yeah I know I've done them before. What of it?? Is that a problem? Damn right it's not.

Okay, yeah, you have a point. I'm making a dalek, AGAIN. Well I really like daleks and I've had them on the brain lately. The last one I made was when I was at NMC so it's been a long time and I've learned a lot. I wanted to see what my current skills could do with a subject I'm very familiar with.

I had started one from the modern episodes but I couldn't stop thinking about the 'New Paradigm' design. I really like that design for some reason. I think I'm like one of five people on the planet that do. Ah well. So I immediately put it aside and began work on a 'New Paradigm' dalek.

Oh yeah! So this project is an oldie but it's also a first of sorts. This will be the first CG asset I've made that will be built in scale. Usually I just make stuff and eyeball it based on some reference pictures or something. For this I found dalek schematics (the internet is great) so this model will be accurate to the real thing. It will also be the proper size which is helpful for things like integrating it into live-action footage and such.

As usual the modeling stage is the slowest for me. Making sure everything is the right size and such takes even more time. I've built and rebuilt nearly every part so far but I'm getting the hang of it. I'm kind of working on it one section at a time from top to bottom and the dalek's dimensions and angles only get crazier as I go. Hopefully this doesn't slow me down too much and I have some good progress to show next time.

I guess that's it. Thanks for stopping by!

A Shiny Logo!

Holy crap he's alive!!! That's what you just thought, I know. Sorry to scare you like that. I've just been reeeeeeally busy what with moving to a whole new city and all. Once we're all settled though we should see a return to normalcy. My work will, again, get the attention it needs and I'll be pumping out quality images like a . . . factory . . . that makes images. Leave me alone, I'm really tired. Here's a sweet-ass logo:

Not bad, eh? I'm trying to push this kind of work at the sign shop. Hopefully it catches customers' eyes and the demand will sky-rocket.

I didn't design the logo, by the way. Here's the original that a customer brought us. All I did was make it a bit more epic.

And just for kicks, here is the one texture I made for this. Just a simple grunge map to give the specularity some variation.

Well that's about it! Just a quick post to say that I'm still out there, slaving away at the pixel forge. Until next time!

So I saw Iron Man 3 the other day. It was really awesome! . . . Here's Captain America's shield.

My First Matte Painting (also the first time I titled a post!)

Good morning faithful readers! My brain is still a little dopey from all the sun I got yesterday so hopefully I get through this. First, a shoutout and multiple high fives to Andrew Price of Blenderguru.com for his outstanding tutorials! They cleared up a lot issues I ran into during this project and I couldn't have done it without them. And now, let's just cut to the reveal . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=053jvaXSXKU

So what'd you think? Not bad, eh? I certainly enjoyed doing this. When I first learned about using projection mapping in matte painting, I couldn't wait to dive in! The method is so simple yet the results are far better than just a static, flat image. I am now ashamed of all the flat images that I allowed to be broadcast on television. Never again.

Let's break it down! First of all it's the command centre of the Power Rangers! If that doesn't fill you with warm, gooey nostalgia then I can't help you, but I can show this screen grab:

Film and TV enthusiasts may have already recognized the Vasquez Rocks. This unique rock formation has been used countless times over the years.

 

Notice that last one where someone matte painted the hell out of that one rock to create Vulcan's landscape in J. J. Abrams' Star Trek reboot. It's gotten to the point where using the location is kind of an inside joke. It's the Wilhelm Scream of filming locations. The Wilhelm Scream? Anybody? No? Alright then. The point is it's used a lot and it was fun getting to tinker with it myself. The alien looking Command Center itself is actually just a concert hall from a Jewish University somewhere in the States. The angle I chose for mine needed more background so I borrowed from California's Death Valley; another well used location in your favourite movies! 

Google images provided all of the hi-res assets I needed. Thanks Google! Photoshopping them together was pretty straight forward. 10 different photographic elements in all.

So my first matte painting was fun. On to my first projected matte painting! If you're not familiar with the technique, it's basically a process of creating some simple geometry that matches the location in your image . . .

 . . . and then you project your image onto the model from the viewer's supposed point of view. What you end up with is an absolutely awful looking scene that only looks good from that original point of view.

So what you do is set up a camera an move it around a bit and you get this uncanny sense of depth. Super cool! That was probably an over-simplified explanation of the process but if you've gotten this far then you are a  trooper and I won't bore you any further. Thanks for stopping by!

It is a symbol of desire. A symbol of victory. Friendships have been forged and friendships have been betrayed in the pursuit of it. This week I present to you my humble homage to the most coveted of monuments; the Tower of Pimps.

What's that? You don't know what the Tower of Pimps is?! Good lord, catch up on your Rooster Teeth! It's good for the soul.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E-1UMsb7wM

So I got to design a logo yesterday for this guy's company. I don't get a lot of these so it was a nice change. I went the extra mile and busted out my 3D skills. Might as well right? Just a simple model made in Blender, rendered with Cycles and then photoshopped the forklift in the back as per the client's request.

Oh and this week's thing-a-week? It's the fancy new title you see at the top of the page! 3D letters are cool!

Holy smokes! Almost forgot this weeks thing! Right, well let's just get right to it!

Tron! I'm really taken with the world of Tron. Even when I was a kid and didn't know anything about it, I was fascinated by it's visual style. It saw the limitations of computer-generated visuals and fearlessly embraced them. It's iconic glowing lines and sleek surfaces were merely the best results you could get at the time.

But what would the original Tron look like with today's awesome 3D software? I don't mean update and change all the designs like the sequel did, just add some realism to the classic. Maybe bridge the gap between the two films a bit.

This was a lot of fun. It's interesting to see what you can do with such simple shapes and just leave it up to the lighting and materials to make it work. That being said, I know that I have a lot to learn about lighting something properly and tastefully but I'll get there. I did learn a LOT more about Blender's rendering and compositing this week. That headlight is way more complicated than you think! I hadn't previously tried the techniques involved and it turned out just how I wanted so that was pretty satisfying.

I've actually had a few of these jazzed-up retro Tron pieces in the works for a while so hopefully I'll have more to show in the coming weeks.

Until next time!

Well, well! Another week already! What is this, week #7? Goodness. I suppose this is a good time to explain my thing-a-week initiative. Well there I've already half-explained it. We're making good time! I found myself getting bogged down in big projects. Big projects that I spend too much time on and eventually lose enthusiasm for. Looking at folders full of unfinished projects I needed a change. Thus began THING-A-WEEK. The premise is simple; start and finish a CG project each week. Doesn't have to be anything mind-blowing, just revel in the satisfaction of actually finishing something. So far it's worked out pretty good! My good buddy Cougan has joined me in this endeavor and his relentless success helps keep me focused!
Anyway, here's this week's:

Right away I'm cheating because this was one of those big projects but this week I wanted it done. Hey, thing-a-week was my idea. I can bend the rules. So this, for the uninitiated is a corridor aboard the Enterprise D from Star Trek: The Next Generation. The series' amazing blu-ray debut inspired me to create something from the 80's icon. Us CG artists can get swept up in the grittiness of the world so I also wanted to do something clean and elegant. People have called the Enterprise D the 'luxury hotel of spaceships' so it seemed like a good choice.
This was a good opportunity to get to know Blender's new Cycles renderer; see what it could and couldn't do. It handles light really well! I was surprised at how good it could make a scene look with minimal setup. There are some things I'm going to improve in the future but for my first big Cycles render, not bad. Tune in next week for another exciting image!

What a week! Really nothing to show for my efforts but it was very educational! My journey into matte painting had really hit a wall but I've managed to solve all of the technical problems that were impeding me. Should be seeing some neat stuff in the coming weeks! In the meantime I thought I'd share something I put together a little while ago.

So this is a fun little thing I put together for an online photo contest. The rules were simple; take a picture of the Omega Supreme figure you see above. I guess there was only one rule. This guy here is the mighty Omega Supreme of Transformers fame and I'm gonna have to talk about this incredibly epic action figure sometime. I took this opportunity to practice my matte painting and put him in a crazy action scene. The layout is actually a bit of an homage to this comic book cover.

It's made up of about 17 different photographic elements, jazzed up with some extra smoke, dust, and lighting effects. I rather like how his red glowy bits turned out. Overall it's not as fine-tuned as I would have liked (the city wasn't nearly as damaged as I would have liked) but the contest had been already going a while and I wanted to get my entry in. That and it's a picture of action figures so how good is it supposed to be, right? Also big shout-out to my good friend Cass who took the original photo of Omega.

Well, this is it. The first post.
 . . . feels good.