Pixar Intro Parody!

Ok folks, this is the second time I blog about something that isn't created by me. But as with these things I feel they have to be seen by other people. This is a hilarious short about the Pixar's lamp intro. There's nothing that can be said so you just have to watch it.
Be sure to be seated before watching, or you might hurt yourself laughing otherwise.

This is made by these folks:
Writer: Dan Gurewitch, Sam Reich
Music & Sound Design: Carl Sondrol
Animation: Gloo Studios

Enjoy: http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1921845

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Bee model update.

I guess I continued to work on this model, I'm gonna post my updates for today. Gonna continue tomorrow or something, I'm going away for the rest of today.

Cheers.

EDIT: I added the two AO and wire images, as a request by a dude over at CGTalk.com. Because I did those I figured I could add it here as well. Just didn't wanna create another post for that.

Spontaneous model.

Yo.

Today I was browsing the CG Society forums like any other day, then I found a thread where someone posted a link to a new site called www.3dmodelsheets.com. It's sheets (image planes) of various insects, animals and plants. Well, that's what I think it will be, as it's rather new there isn't too many things there yet.

However, I took a look at those sheets and when I saw the bee I just couldn't help myself, I modeled it out. It's still a WIP I think, I want to create real bee textures and such, and possibly work on it in ZBrush. I slapped on a temp texture just so that it looks a bit more pleasant than plain gray stuff (or AO/Clay render).
Well that's all I had to say today, I'll probably continue working on it.

Project Eto.101 - Pre-viz 01

I just wanted to put this up here just because. This clip here is a early pre-viz for the project codenamed Eto.101. It shows scene 4 at sequence 1. There's not much to actually see here but if actually care to understand a bit then you could check the storyboards I have posted here (it's part 3) this clip is about.

Anyway, there's really not much else to tell. I'm on another project right now so I don't have much time for eto.101 but as soon as I'm finished with that I plan to more seriously work on that.

Nexuiz 'Nexus' player model.

To start things off, I've renamed this player model from Ivan to Nexus. The reasoning is that this model is supposed to replace the old one (which was the intention from the very beginning).
Now, there are some stuff that has happened, oh where to start, where to start?

I've continued with the animations and have created several new ones and even posted links to videos for people to see. However, it may turn out that I will have to redo everything again (I'm not sure I wanna go there). The thing is, Nexuiz is using a format called .zym for player models, but the devs wants to get rid of this format and introduce another .dpm. They are essentially the same and the workflow is very similar, however, dpm-format can have several influences (4) while zym only can have 1.
What this means is that zym can only have rather rigid animations, each vertex has to have it's own bone to 100%. The dpm format allows for smoother transformations for it's animations, resulting in a nicer look. Because I've animated with 1 influence I would need to re-paint the weights for the skeleton, and the animations will probably change some.

I've I'm lucky and find a good way to paint and distribute or copy those weights to other meshes I won't have to reanimate everything but just tweak the current animations so they fit better.
If I'm however unsuccessful I either will have to redo all of them or just let everything be 1 influence for this particular model, then in the future use 4 influences.

Only time will tell what will happen. I will probably step back a bit from this and while I re-evaluate the situation and the procedures I may work on something else in the meantime.

Animation test 3:


Animation test 2:

Sword scene finished.

Ok, so I finally finished this piece. Not much different from the last image, didn't have much time to work on it and I just wanted to finish it anyway to jump on to other things.
Re-touched in Photoshop as well.

Sword update

Hmm.. stuff happened, and then more stuff happened, before I knew it, I was creating a entire environment just to be able to display the sword. Ok, here's the deal, I wanted to create a simple background for the sword to be in, however, this simple background turned to become an even greater task than creating the sword. I have now for a few days been building and texturing it. Honestly, I don't know where I'll stop.

The sword however I believe is all but done, might make a few tweaks to the texture/bump map. It will all depend on the lighting I will settle for (which I haven't decided yet). I'm thinking of adding a few more objects into the scene before moving on to lighting. Anyway, I'll post two images, one of the handle of the sword (without bump) then a overview of the shot I'm going for.

Cheers.

PS. All is done in Maya, I used Photoshop to adjust the levels of the image above as it was too greyish and washed out. The plant and tree are paint effects I converted to polygons if anyone wonders.

A sword WIP.

Yes, I'm creating a sword just for fun. I have only one reference image which I'm creating from, I'm gonna post the reference image after the model is complete.
Now, the whole modeling is done, (the materials are just temp, I just threw something on) and I'm gonna go to unwrapping it followed by texturing based of that reference image.

My first texture pack.

As the title says, I am now releasing my first texture pack. There's not that many textures, 51 files with normal maps included, so around 30 textures (not all textures have normal maps).
The license is GPL so it's all free, use them however you see fit.

I give just a few examples of what textures are inside. The other textures I have released earlier are also included so not all are super new. Also, they might not be the best supreme quality textures but at least it's something, and it's free, so enjoy!

Link: www.kurotorobert.com/ai/freeStuff/ai_Texture_Pack_01.rar

Cheers!

Two more textures.

Here's two more textures, I am providing normal maps as well but keep in mind that I have transparency (alpha) on the SewerLid texture and that certain applications might not support normal map alpha. If that's the case gimme a note and I can export them to .bmp or some other format if you need it.

Cheers!

License: GPL

Finished high poly version of weapon model.

Here's the high poly version of the designed Nex model. Going soon to start on the low poly version, UV mapping and texturing. What else can be said?

Cheers!

Possible weapon model for Nexuiz (Nex).

I've always wanted to create a new Nex model for Nexuiz ever since the current one got in, I never really fancied it. Recently a dude named 'NightRage' on the Nexuiz forums came along and posted some amazing weapon concepts, including a concept for the Nex.
The image planes he provided didn't fully lign up but I made adjustments as best I could. This is what I've done for today (made in a couple of hours), and hoping to finish it up tomorrow, that means the model, not talking about bones, animation and textures yet. This is the high poly version (I have started a bit on the low poly version but the rest will have to wait) which will be used as a normal map.

That's it for tonight, now I'm going to bed.
Cheers!

Tweak... tweak...tweak...

What more can I say? I've sick and tired of tweaking but I want this model to be good, meh. We'll see what people say if they say anything.
Cheers!

EDIT: I changed the two first images, I updated the nose as well.

Male character update

So, I have started to watch the 3D Buzz ADP (Advanced Digital Production) texturing videos and have started to texture this guy. This is a the very base, I will look into incorporating real skin as well, this is in fact my next step.
Just to throw it out there, I'm looking more for a stylized character than a realistic one. I cannot yet tackle a realistic look as I need more to learn. But I feel confident I can get it to look the way I want it, and besides, that is how I wanted this guy to look like from the very beginning. I like the stylized looks.

I'm going to explain the steps I took to get this far.
NOTE: There are seems and some other discrepancies I know, I will fix them so don't worry.

After the whole model was complete in Maya I brought it over to ZBrush and started to create displacement sculpting. Meaning I added more volume and details to make it stand out wherever I wanted, like making the muscles bigger or creating nipples and belly button. However, I didn't create a belly button for the simple reason, it will never show. :) Excess detail is just a waste of memory. I might even think of deleting the toenails as well as they won't show either.

Well then, once the displacement sculpting was done I started to do some more fine details (like pores, wrinkles and stuff). These will be the bump map later on.
Then I exported this displacement map and fine details. I also created a 'feature map' from the displacement map and from the fine details map I created 'cavity map'. This is a function inside ZBrush and when these two are combined in Photoshop along with a base color it resembles a bit Ambient Occlusion. However, I think I'll later on bake AO into the texture anyway. I'll have to see how the real skin will look first.

Then I just went into Photoshop and started to paint some dark areas and lighter areas all over the body along with some very suddle change in color of the skin.

Well, that's that. I'll post more updates as this progress.
Cheers!