Moar stuff

First up is the intro to my demo reel. Not rendered yet, but here is a playblast. The animation is still a little wonky, But with the camera shakes, I don't think it will be super noticeable. Ignore the placeholder meshes, they will be replaced with my weapons and shield.

Also attached is the inspiration for the whole piece from EA Mythic's Warhammer Online.




I also took Bryan's advice and tweaked my blend heads. I re-did the lighting so that much more detail is visible and tweaked the material pretty heavily for more of a clay texture. Sadly the badass decimation plug-in doesn't work for blend shapes, since it re-topologizes based on detail. I wish I would have known about that plug-in earlier, I've been using a workaround through 3dsMax that was kind of a pain.

Blend Heads Finished Kinda!!!

Here is the draft render (no background yet) for the blend heads. I ended up having to use the level 4 division out of zbrush, anything higher would crash any available computer. I think enough detail is preserved that making really clean normal/disp maps are probably counter productive.
Custom mental ray shader/lighting setup.

Portfolio Crunch: Now with fiber!

So this Wednesday is the start of what will be the most grueling 10 week crunch I have experienced thus far, and something tells me it will be only the first of many to come.

Up first are some more busts for the blend shape thingy. I'm re-posting the fish-girl and chupacabra-Anubis guy in video form. As well as the last 3 (for now) heads: a mob boss, the basic planes of the face, and the start of a toddler. Not sure if I like the pattern on the fish girl's head...





And after that are the base mesh of my coat of arms: 2-hand orc blade, pump action grenade launcher, and a shield with my logo in place of the Triforce.




SIEGE was this past weekend and I got some really great input on my portfolio stuff, and some very honest criticisms of the Nightmare tower level that I've been doing with Yusuke and Aaron. So one of the many tasks next quarter is to retool most of the assets and textures to make them really pop and actually look next-gen.

Update:
I did some testing in maya just to see how exactly I was gonna do the animated blending of one head to another. So i ended up just using a blend color node in hypershade to blend between one normal map to another (just color in this demo). I initially tried doing really clever stuff with animated gifs, but turns out you can just key the blender attribute :P

Only small snag is that the blender node only has 2 blend targets, I have like 8 heads. So I will have to render each section separately.

Game Jam 2009

So, last weekend was game jam, a 48 hour contest between groups of students from AIA and SPSU to see who could make the best game. All assets, programming, and even game ideas had to be made within the 48 hours.

So my contribution to H.E.A.T. (Hyper Extreme Attack Tanks, lol) was to model 4 tanks, each with its own set of stats. The game itself is sort of a mash-up between Joust, Blaster Master, and Smash Bros. First day was spent on modeling, second day was for title screen and other junk.



Tank 1 is the Slug. Average build, basically the human in D&D terms, ho-hum.
Tank 2 is the Heavy. Obviously has higher attack and defense, but really low jump and speed. Also fire rate is pretty bad.


Tank 3 is the Bike. This one has the lowest attack and the least amount of armor, but it's also the fastest and has really fast fire rate.
Tank 4 is the Pider. Look up Baman and Piderman. Basically average, but with really great jump ability.

some creature bust WIP

Probably will leave these alone for a little while, gotta go make furniture now!

Bust turn arounds

Some busts that I have been working on in very tiny increments. I will post the level that me Yusuke and Aaron have been busting our butts on for the past quarter. But for now I am goin to catch up on sleeeeep. Also, I'm calling the Goya thing done for now.

What does a wraith, a horse and a possesed statue have in common?

They are almost done! Or at least they are progressing along.

So, some more work on the horse. Really trying to get a better understanding of it's anatomy. Once you realize what you're looking at, it's odd how similar their anatomy is to ours.

And the wraith. Textures are mostly done, just got a couple seems to play with. I have been experimenting with ambient and alpha maps on his skin and cloak respectively. I would post actual renders but...



THAT is what maya is giving me right now. The normal map must be completely off the scale. I can either tweak some stuff in maya or I may just render him in unreal. Me, Yusuke, and Aaron are putting together a psychological thriller horror level and I have a feeling he will fit in just great.


Speaking of which we have a segemnt similar to bioshock where when you turn your back, the statues move around. So this is them so far. Gonna clean em up a bit and try to find a plaster matcap (or maybe make one). If not he might be bronze or stone.

Also, the goya sculpt will be getting some more attention now that the wraith and horse are finishing up! WOO!