Update! Well Kinda...

Yes, yes... I know updates haven't been happening for quite some time now. I've been caught up with animation, socializing and actually relaxing for a change since the first block is now over. I do have A LOT of things to post... however I have to render them out in a better format. That's going to take a while... For now though, I do have a few odds and ends that I can share. Mostly my animation work so far.

I have the videos hosted on my twitter account. You can add me if you'd like:

@AmateurStumbler

Most likely it'll alert you when I post a new vid since I'm really not doing too much else with it. :P

As I get my stuff together, go HERE to check out my animations for class.

Next update I'll have some stuff from the previous block. Thanks again for all the support! :D

Detail out Head model

So here's my head model that we had to make for class. I'm pretty happy with it... it looks close to a human male... but probably if you squint a bit first :D

It's not a bad start in my eyes, I'm gaining more and more confidence in my abilities as a result of finishing this one. We also just got our next project and wow... I'm going to be busy for the next 2 weeks to say the least. Regardless, check out the shots below and I'll post up some stuff on the new project when I get a chance. :D Thanks for all of your support!

Froggy!

Here's this week's first project... FROGGY! :D

Catching up with myself....

So yeah, the last three weeks have been intense to say the least. Littered with failures and wins.

FAIL:

1) I didn't get to finish the transformer's main body... NOR did I get to match the reference too well. We'll chalk that up to a 'B' Grade.

2) I didn't get to create the head and hair for Baroness. The heels needed work too. Not sure about the grade on that one yet, estimating at least a 'B' Grade.

3) "Sharky" model isn't 100% to reference.


WIN:

1) I did some GREAT looking work (to me) on the transformer, the lower leg, the arm, the hands, the gun, etc I'm proud of.

2) The Baroness that I created has a great body and some nice details. While marred by the butterface aspect it still looks really great (from the neck down). ;)

3) Sharky, while not 100% to reference still looks completed and shaped decently.


Those were the MAJOR events that took place over the last few weeks. I also have stuff from tonight to show... Specifically a model of a human ear.

Enjoy and stay tuned, finals are coming up and they promise to be frightening. O_O


Transformer Reference then Model:








Baroness Reference and Model:







Sharky Reference and Model:





Human Ear Reference and model:

The Tank...

Is not a creation I'm happy with... I spent too much time obsessing over the main body not looking right, only to find that I ate up a good ten hours on 5 versions that didn't work. Which forced me to default to the original blocked out version I had. That said, the objects I DID detail came out fantastic.

Lesson learned? If I find myself obsessing over one part, step back, assess the overall model and balance it out before revisiting the original time consuming part.

I'm sure to apply this to my next model which we received last night. It's a very intricate and involved but I feel up to the challenge thanks to learning from my mistakes. Well, take a look at what I have... All in all... I don't think it's terrible considering this is my second week. :) Thanks for all your support everyone!

HDRI

So I finally had an opportunity to have it explained to me properly. I'm not sure if my execution is precise... but I'd like to think it's close :)

Regardless, enjoy my little test render. I'm off to bed now. I got a LOT of modeling to do tomorrow for this week's project. I'll clue you folks in on what it is exactly as time passes and I get closer to finishing it. :)

Rendered

So yeah, we learned how to render in Lightwave last night. Needless to say, it was AWESOME! I'm still getting the hang of the 3-point light setup, diffuse and Reflection Ratios as well as the transparency and refraction index settings. Regardless check out the render! You'll notice the sloped block in the front isn't producing a consistent color when compared to the tires... that's due to a modeling error on my part. An error I'll be sure not to make again. Also the lighting is a bit too harsh for my taste, I'll work on that a bit more and see where it takes me. In the mean time thanks for tuning in and enjoy!

First Assignment in School!

Hello there to ALL my faithful followers! As promised, I'm posting progress on stuff I learn in school. Right now I'm learning a program called Lightwave. It's a bit different than blender AND it's just as weird sometimes. :P Our instructor has limited us to using only a handful of tools to create what I'm about to show you. For what it's worth, I'm damn proud. Do I feel I could have done better? Of course but there's always next project. ;)

A little bit of background...

We had to create a police car, made out of K'Nex building blocks... So we had to model the pieces in 3d, then assemble the car in 3d space using the parts we built. For those of you who don't know what K'Nex blocks are... http://www.knex.com/products/

Ok so after a good review in class, I've now had the chance to share my progress with you. Enjoy and thanks for all of your support! :)

Below are two reference images:




Here is what I created! =D

Lack of updates...

Yes, obviously there has been a real lack of updates recently because I'm waiting for school to start. That's right, I'll be starting a course on 3d modeling, animation and visual effects soon so I'll be posting my progress from that. I wanted to avoid potentially reinforcing bad habits (that I may pick up through self teaching) so I decided to just stop until class starts. :) Stay tuned and be sure to check out everything up until this point!

Posing oh yeah!

:) Well, I setup the lower half of the body and I rigged the eyes to track a single point. I didn't want to post any pics on the lower half just yet because I need to figure out the whole weight painting thing. You'll notice on the arms that they bend and deform improperly. Also due to weight painting issues (I think). Regardless, enjoy for now and I'll figure out how to fix these little nuances.

Armatures = fun (Part 2)

Another update!

I just finished rigging the top half of the body. I'll do the rest tomorrow but I really like the progress so far. I want to learn a bit more about weight painting to give it some realism, however for the sake of completing the tutorial, I'll hold off until I'm all done. Till next update!

Armatures = fun

I spent today learning about Armatures and started implementing one as per the tutorial I was following. The tutorial walked through creating a skin like texture for the character so I just followed along. I have a different vision for the texture and skin of the character but MUCH MUCH more reading is involved. :) Regardless, I managed to get the top half of the body rigged and weight painted. So I have a pic of that for you. I would have completed the entire rig but I have other obligations to attend to. Perhaps I'll have it done tomorrow or so. In the mean time, enjoy the progress. :D

My little alien friend :P

In an attempt to solidify my understanding of modeling AND go through a proper work flow, I decided to follow a tutorial on Character modeling and Animation in Blender. If you know me by now, you would know that I took matters into my own hands and put my own spin on things. I've been catching up on Star Wars: The Clone Wars Animated Series (3d). So that certainly influenced this one. At any rate, I started this one on Sunday and I finished it this morning. Now I have to read up on how to rig and animate it. For now enjoy these pics. :)

UGH...

Well, power is a bit intermittent at the moment due to crazy winds. I had a render of a wine glass with wine in it going for quite a while, then as I attempted to save the progress the power went out. 3 hours down the tube. :P I re-rendered it and I attached a pic below to give you an idea of what's going... then I realized that I screwed up on the creation of the glass so it's producing a weird artifact near the top of the stem. Also, that mistake is making the "wine" look like it's penetrating past the inside of the glass. :\ So I have to re-render regardless. No biggie, perhaps I'll experiment a bit with some of the built in features and see what I come up with next time. In the mean time, enjoy one of my "stumblings" :D

Garage on a sunny day

So yes, Summer time is quickly approaching and my mind is set on 3 things: Sand, Sun and (of course) Beautiful Scenery. ;) I recently tried out a tutorial on modeling a Garage and took it a step further. I'm a bit limited still because I don't know the tools that well but hey, it's a start. Check it out below!

Have I given up?

NO WAY! I've been learning A LOT about Blender and even some of it's external rendering engines. The results have been AWESOME! Some of the images that come out of LuxRender are fantastic! They just take quite a while on my setup... :P Well... I do have some "almost finished" and "not so finished" renders to share. I've also been fooling around with new modeling techniques like using curves and "spinning". I'll post up what I have but remember these are ... doodles, in a sense.


This is the Jetpack that I started for the Battleoid. Looks pretty awesome here :D


This was my tutorial render, it was the final image I came up with following instructions from another site.


This is Suzanne (Blender's complex primitive for lighting / rendering checks) with a Diamond rendering setting.


Here we have just a simple glass ball.


Last but not least, The martini glass I learned to "spin" from a curve. This one wasn't rendered with LuxRender, this was done with Blender's own internal engine.