Quick Animation

Here's a real quick animation from my short to give an idea of the limited techniques I plan on using throughout. The character is dead at first because the movie clip isn't on camera at the beginning.

Flash BG test

I've been working on storyboards, and an animatic for the short I'm working on, and finally got around to doing my first background. It still needs a little fine tuning, but it's mostly done. Let me know what you think.

Flash short character designs

Here are my character designs for the Flash short. These are the preliminary, so they may change when I get feedback. The hunter is a character I actually designed a while ago. If you flip through my archives you'll see him, but the turkey is a design that hasn't been posted before. Let me know what you think!

Back to School

I've just started my last semester at school! Almost done. I'll still be working on the high poly stuff, but for the next few months it will have to take a back seat to a Flash short that is a class assignment.

I love 3D, but I have a lot of fun with Flash as well, so this will be a cool class project for me. The assignment is to have a fully finished 2 min. short done while completing other assignments as we learn. The start of the class is just going over stuff I already know, but it will give me a chance to get better and pick up little tips along the way. I'm sure after getting past the initial "getting to know the tools" part of class I'll learn a lot of cool tips and ways to improve my Flash workflow.

I'm working out the story right now, but I'll post my progress on this assignment, and any 3D work I do in the meantime.

CRAP!

I just realized that my computer is having major issues rendering displacement maps in mental ray. I'm following the instructions from Mudboxhub.com, which is the best site for Mudbox help I've found, and my computer keeps crapping out when I try to render my maps in Maya. This is really pissing me off! I don't want to finish my model if it can't be animated. Time to do some research. That sucks because the art side of things is making me happy. There is always some annoying hurdle when you get some momentum going. Oh well, I figure it out.

Mudbox WIP

Here's the latest experiment with Mudbox I'm working on. Taking a simple base mesh from Maya, modeling all detail in Mudbox, and bringing the displacement back into Maya. I still need to figure out how to get the results I want in Maya- my early tests made me realize I need to learn how to optimise displacement map settings in Maya. Time to do some research!

This model has 3 subdivision levels so far. I plan on adding much more detail to it: veins, skin texture, wrinkles, etc. This is also only part of the creature I have planned (my scanner died on me or I would upload my concept sketches) , the rest will be attached to the spine. I think I will get rid of the eyeball up front, because it wasn't built into the original mesh and it won't deform correctly. Maybe I'll just retop the original if I can figure out how to make it work with the displacement map that I will export from Mudbox. I'm having a lot of fun with this new high poly workflow. It opens up a new level of freedom when modeling!

I almost forgot to add that I got some inspiration for the design from my friend Emmett's drawing.

Mudbox Tests

Here are my first two modeling experiments with Mudbox. I'm breakin' in to the high-poly stuff. I'm starting with Mudbox (coming from Maya it is much eaiser to teach myself), but I plan on learning zBrush too. I didn't get into too much detail yet, still figuring out all the tools. My next model I plan on putting as much detail as possible. The attempt at a Meats Meier-ish wire character taught me a lot. It's not a very high poly model- the renders are from Maya- so I may play with that type of model for the next one, but make it much more detailed.