Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you have an email ending in @hotmail.com, @live.com or @outlook.com (or any other Microsoft-related domain), please consider changing it to another email provider; Microsoft decided to instantly block the server's IP, so emails can't be sent to these addresses.
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
Comments
I made a Patchouli!
Work time: literally hundreds of hours, it's something I've been working on and off for years and had to redo a bunch of times.
Fun fact: those falling books are there by accident, something messed up that made the ones on the floor randomly fly off. After a while I realized I liked it.
Special thanks to TVT's Fawriel for the reference picture. Hair texture comes from hairrendering.wordpress.com. I had that eye texture stashed in my computer and I can't seem to find out where I got it from, so...
New de-rule: characters doing complicated poses are now okay.
Notes to self:
Don't keep eyelashes and similar small things separated from body mesh, it's not worth it.
An unappropriate cartoon shader can make it so that an ok topology looks wrong, remember to change it when modeling.
Can you do some sort of crustacean?
Giant enemy crab.
Complete with weak point.
I can't even figure out how to make a sphere in Blender, and I once broke Unity trying to model a tree...
^ It's easy, you just add a cube then crank up the subsurf forever.
If you have a specific issue, I may be able to aid you.
^^ Too late, have a shrimp instead:
Take 1 - 119 minutes, plus a few more for miscellaneous stuff (looking for references, using external programs, etc.)
Take 2 - ~10 minutes
Take 3 - ~20 minutes
Take 4 - ~50 minutes
The reference is this.
Again I tried to stick to a deadline (two hours), and I did for that first picture, but then I felt the temptation to add and fix what's pending and... I guess the end result of 3:20 ain't bad either, although of course that doesn't count checking every two minutes to see how the render's going, that kinda adds up.
Also, those bubbles kept messing with the program, causing it to crash when rendering, I spent hours and hours re-rendering over that and then some time to get an imperfect workaround for the problem (can you tell?).
Notes to self:
Subsurface scattering is not a substitute for translucency, at least not easily.
Remember to save edited external images often.
Stop naming color maps "color map", non-color maps will inherit their names, too.
If you're still taking requests: any Arthurian character.
Archetypical Black Knight is done!:
Work time: a bit over 10 hours. Usual disclaimers apply.
So as to press myself into speeding things up, I thought I'd post whatever I have done by the time I hit whatever deadline I set myself at first (in this case, two hours):
(Not pictured: chainmail links)
Environment map (i.e. the background and its lighting) comes from openfootage.net
Can you make him green?
Here it is:
I made the Angel Falls!:
Work time: approx. 20 hours.
Ahh, I had never sculpted or textured that much. Good times.
Environment map from hdrlabs.com (the Sierra Madre B one).
Note to self: Specifying the UV map will fix the image mapping for a particle system. Sometimes. Seriously, fuck particles.
So I randomly tried to open Maya and would you look at that, it worked now, so I'm finally making the move. Sorry Blender, but your simulators suck, and hey, Maya has Opensubdiv (I nerd'd).
> can't tumble orthographic cameras
> things don't translate perpendicular to the viewport (by default, anyways)
> vertices from n-gons can't be deleted until their respectives edges are
> x, y and z don't lock axes
> mfw
Anyhow, I made this, based on this tutorial:
Work time: gotta get a timer next time.
Learning a new program has been going much more smoothly than last time (pun not originally intended), besides all the general 3d stuff I had already learned this time I now better than to not waste time on "courses" and just get right into making stuff. Expect more shitty renders from tutorials coming soon.
My post seems to have been lost (I thought I commented), but I wanted to say the Angel Falls one looks quite nice. The patches of vegetation in the middle of the picture look a little out of place but it's not too unbelievable.
Also, the Black Knight earlier -- with the incomplete picture -- is sorta begging for a Monty Python reference.
The house looks like a gingerbread house, or something out of Super Mario RPG. Which is not a bad thing at all.
Ooh, I remembered I was supposed to post here.
^ Yeh, I felt that grass looked odd, it's actually there in the real-life thing, but I should've made it stand out less (it stood out even more before I changed it, and didn't want to overdo it.)
I learned this doesn't actually result in a sphere.
Anyhows. Some more Maya learnings. I learned where those horror stories about its UI came from (what's a border edge and why does Maya have an existential bent on not letting me delete them?)
Treasure chest:
Work time - 4:20, before I lost my patience with the texture mapping and left it as is. Instead I tried to find out what I could do in Blender in an hour:
Not good, but can be inproved quickly with a bunch of easy fixes (fixing the wood's specularity, beveling, etc.)
Hastily-made Meteors:
(It's an animation, but you'll need to use your imagination.) Turns out the default settings for a fire system results in better fire than I've ever gotten in Blender.
Brachiosaurus ready for texturing (see below):
Work time - didn't check. I didn't actually follow the tutorial all that much, dude goes slowly and I'm already used to the modeling part of stuff so I just started doing things my way. After a while I started rushing things, I even used triangles (you don't use triangles unless you don't love your mesh).
I also took the liberty to try out Mudbox (a program suited for scultping and texturing, essentially 3D Photoshop)
Just testing out stuff:
Phyrexian Obliterator:
It'd look better with the materials I'd set up for it, but unfortunately a bunch of stuff came up and I'm not sure how to go about fixing it now. Still not phyrexiany, though.
Bust:
Maaan, all those timelapsed videos make it look so easy. I guess this is where drawing experience comes in. Maybe it's time I learn to draw?
Dinosaur above:
Ahh, I think I'm getting the hang of it (projection painting does wonders). Unfortunately I don't know how to go about rendering it in Maya:
Notes to self:
I don't have a finished project this time around, just wanted to say that I'm getting into a project that I've been getting into a project that makes me unable to take requests, in case any of you wanted one, I suppose. I do have a work-in-progress, tho:
(She's mostly done, but there are still a bunch of stuff to fix. Damn you hair tubes.)
Ahh, I think I'm already used to Maya's mesh modeling, however I still prefer Blender's, so I think I'll keep it as part of my workflow, it gets tiresome clicking arrows on a pivot, and I like that vertices, edges and faces work the same way. And modifiers. And smooth. And...
And maaan, Goddamnit, Maya really is unforgiving. I ran into a shitload of issues because I tried to do things out of order (adding ears or texture mapping after rigging).
But boy, I had forgotten what it was like to have noiseless test renders in seconds.
And I've come to realize, I've changed how I mentally divide my workflow: it used to be "model head then model torso then [...] texture face then...", now it's "model then texture then rig then...", which I'll take as a good thing.
On non-Maya stuff, I began really getting into rigging. I didn't like it before because a good chunk of it involves tedious skinning work (aka weighting, long story), but exploring beyond that I've learned quite a bit about rigging and it's very interesting to make it so that stuff can do exactly what you want it to do, and involves lots of problem solving.
If all goes fine I might even get into animation, and then I'll become a full fledged generalist. A Generalist Modeller is a jack of all trades. After they get some experience they can choose to become either Organic Modeller or Inorganic Modeller, and after they level up a bit more Organic Modellers can class change into Character Modeller or Creature Modeller, and Inorganic Modellers into Object Modeller or Environment Modeller.
I think I'll eventually go for Character Modeller. Time will tell.
Also, Makehuman (link may not be SFW, haven't watched it) is way, waaay more useful than I was made to believe. (as the name implies program to create humans procedurally).
And I've started learning ZBrush (it's like Mudbox but complicated but also better).
Lots of notes to self:
Select shell will not select that shell's UV vertices. (Is there a "select all UV vertices within a shell" option?)
Soft select will mess with curve guides. And so will the Legacy Default Viewport. What the fuck?
What causes those rigs to get "stuck" is duplicating faces from the mesh. While at it, duplicating faces causes the vertices to lose their smooth skin components, which is what makes it impossible to use Copy Skin Weights, so skin after clothing or find another way to make clothes.
Absolutely make sure everything is ready before mirroring, UV unwrapping, skinning, etc. (in that order), and since HumanIK messes up very often, locking the rig should be the final step.
Just like how XGen primitives are interpolated, they're also extrapolated. Make sure that the resulting primitives there get the desired effect, putting more guides if necessary.
Next time try working with one .mud file per object, it might work out better.
For some reason this never came up until now, but when setting up the UV layout, remember that edges should follow along texture "seams" like in those shoes, lest it looks pixelated.
Apparently Maya doesn't use real-world units for dynamics, even if that's what's used in the interface.
Tentative workflow:
Modeling - Blender.
UV Mapping - Blender
Skinning - Blender?
Rigging - Maya?
Animating - Maya, duh
Texturing - Mudbox
Rendering - ?
I think it's time I post this:
It's been a while since I got into this one. I'm not satisfied with the result, but I've had it in the backburner for quite a while, and some stuff broke while at it (for example, the cloth simulation). I tried my hand at animation, but boy, is it frustrating. I did learn a lot from this project, nonetheless, for example I finally learned how to make things hang from hair.
Maybe one day I'll look back and work more this model, but for now it's time to move on.
As for ZBrush, it really is the Dwarf Fortress of 3D, it's got downright outlandish UI features like having to ctrl+drag twice outside your mesh tool to do some stuff, or clicking 3x3 pixel 'X Y Z' buttons hiding inside another button. That said, it's got some really nice features that will prove very useful. I think I got it to the level I can begin using it and learn as I go, although I don't know what could I do with it.
Rant ended.
Note to self:
Also holy shit I feel so inadequate about the stuff I did during New Media.
Usually, feathers are rendered as a bump map unless they're big primaries. There are algorithms to render feathers as individual objects, but they're the sort of thing you have symposium lectures on.
I think Houdini has a feather tool too -- I know FedEx doubled their Maya stuff through Houdini to generate feathers on their pigeon commercial, but I don't remember if it was a custom plugin or native support. Also, Houdini was the name of my pet bird.
As for sharing my own embarrassments, I found an old flash drive with my NMC projects.
We did our first month in Maya on the 30-day trial. The theme was "urban shithole" and we were supposed to only use a set of given textures. After that we did Blender, but my final project wound up being really sparse because it was during crunch time for a bunch of programming stuff -- I just didn't have time to put in the kind of workshop-clutter it really needed.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/h0f425k3uy4nmeq/AAALv4y1P2j8UeOwBSdAymgWa
I'll see if I can dig up the character renders for the storytelling class (unrelated), but those are even less substantive. I didn't have rigs set up at all and half of them were never even given base primary colors. They were all thrown together in the space of about four days.