3D Modeling: caricature

This is the second (and last) modeling assignment for term 3 - to model a caricature of ourselves.

I decided to make my Simpson-Me that I made through Burger King's simpsonizeme.com, because I really did like how it turned out. I think it does feel a lot like me, and its hard to draw a better caricature of myself.

I think the model turned out pretty well, nice and simple and clean.



Orthographic views


Wireframe

3D Animation: Stuff from term 3

Long time no update, I'm just gonna slap on a bunch of stuff from term 3 to 4 that I should have posted earlier.

I wanted to set up a local video player so I don't have to post all this bad stuff on youtube, but I just never had the time. So here goes:


Ball Push


Baseball Pitch & Bat


Lip Sync 1


Lip Sync 2

3D Modeling: Gastown Group Project

The first assignment for modeling in term 3 was a group project -- modeling a scene somewhere in Vancouver with post-apocalyptic robot remains. Our group chose a spot in Gastown, the thin building is called the "Europe Hotel". Texturing was not required.


Ambient Occlusion

3D Texturing: Skin Shader Test on Jack Sparrow

For texturing class, we get to choose our own project and work on something usable or at least beneficial for the development of our demo reel. I really wanted to test out the SSS skin shader before I use it on my demo reel character, since I have never used the shader before. I used the face mesh of my Jack Sparrow model for the assignment. I struggled a bit with the skin shader but also learned a lot from this exercise, as a result I only got around to texturing the skin and nothing else.

Besides the fact that its incomplete, I am quite happy with the result with using only a bump map. I also got a bit of XSI hair on the face to give it a hint of Jack Sparrow.

3D Lighting: Term 3

It's been a while since my last post. Term 3 was hectic, we did a lot yet it feels like I don't have much to show -- simply because we spent most of the energy on developing ideas towards our final short film the "demo reel". At this point the reel ideas are still in its infancy and nothing solid to show yet, so I am just going to do a quick roundup of the very few assignments we did for term 3.

The assignment for lighting class is fairly self-explanatory, we had to light the same room (provided by the instructor) in a daylight setting and a nighttime setting. I did learn quite a few things from this assignment regarding choice of lights and settings, so here they are:


Daylight Scene


Night Time Scene

3D Animation: Baseball pitch

This is the first half of a baseball assignment, the pitch (the bat will follow later). I have to say I am fairly happy with this because this is probably my best animation assignment so far (I'm still learning of course....).

3D Animation: Term 2 Round Up

A roundup of the 3D animation I did for term 2, these are not very good but I decided to post them anyway. The pose-to-pose are modeled from actual people posing in the classroom.


Pose-to-Pose II


Pose-to-Pose I


Jump


Box Lift

3D Lighting: Bright & Dark Scenes

For our intro lighting classes, we had to light a given scene to match a given reference by using as little lights as possible. I paid special attention to this assignment as I want to excel in lighting, because bad lighting can make the best model with the best textures look like bad 3D.


I used 4 lights in this scene (all spot): 1 main light, 1 rim light, 1 fill light, and 1 extra fill light for the character.


I used 4 lights in this scene also: 1 main light (spot), 1 fill light for the atmosphere (infinite), 1 fill light for bounced light (infinite), 1 extra fill for bounced light from another angle (infinite)

3D Texturing: Airplane (Part II)

My unwrap and texture maps for the airplane I posted earlier.

Link to the original post:
3D Texturing: Airplane (Part I)


Unwrap


Diffuse Map


Bump Map


Reflect Map


Spec Map


Transparency Map

3D Texturing: Airplane (Part I)

These are the final renders for my unwrapping / texturing / lighting assignment for term 2, everything is based upon real-life reference. I think this is not a bad attempt considering its my first time unwrapping something more complicated and textured with only simple shaders (blinn). Plus its my first attempt at lighting.

The plane was not modeled by me, I only did the texturing. It is textured according to an actual surviving airplane (a Mustang) from WWII, the "Old Crow". Reference photos of the actual plane can be found here:

P-51 Mustang Survivors: "Old Crow"
P-51 Mustang Survivors

3D Modeling: Jack Sparrow

It's been a crazy term so far -- we have a big presentation coming monday so I have been pulling off around 10-15 hours at school almost everyday trying to polish up my stuff. As a matter of fact I would still be working at school right now if I didn't already have a previous engagement. All my computers are either broken or malfunctioning this way or another so when I am not at school I have nothing better to do but to update my blog.

Anyway, this Jack Sparrow is for a 3D modeling assignment where we have to model our own superhero. I was going to model batman for a detailed muscle-anatomy study, but I really like Jack Sparrow way more than batman. I took this assignment further (as a challenge to myself) by rigging, lighting and rendering it. This is my first time modeling a character, rigging a character, lighting stuff, and rendering sequence.



The youtube video turned out kind of small and blurry, but this is the actual rendered size of the video.

3D texturing: Spacefighter

This assignment is just an exercise to learn unwrapping and practice texturing with diffuse, bump, spec, and transparency maps. Since this is not about copying references, I exerted random creativity and had a little fun with it.

3d Animation: Beluga

On week 2, we went on a class "field trip" (my first field trip in many years) to the Vancouver Aquarium to study the movement of the Beluga Whales since we are going to animate it in 3D. This kind of research is typical for animators.

I found that 10 out of 10 times when the Belugas swam in front of us (submerged window in the beluga tank), they flip themselves around the swim with their belly pointing up. I don't know if they are just showing off or they do that naturally when they dive deeper in the tank, but that's what they did 10/10 times so I decided to put it in my animation.

3D Modeling: Robotic Animal

The last assignment in modeling is to design, model and rig our own robotic animals. We are free to do anything we like as long as it is half organic and half machine.

We were shown many examples and the animal-side of most were simply an empty shell where the machine dwells. I didn't like that - I want my animal to have a mind and a personality, it is a machine and yet it is not an empty shell. So I made my rabbit the driver of a machine tank.

Concept design:


Stills:

3D Texturing: Kitchen

This is my first attempt at textures and shaders so it is a poor job I have to admit. Anyway, we were given a reference image and the 3D scene file of the kitchen, and were asked to recreate the reference image.


My kitchen, textured according to the reference image below.


Reference Image

3D Animation: Pendulum & Jump

We didn't have many 3d animation classes this term, as a result we don't have many assignments. The jump assignment was especially challenging as I have barely animated before, not to mention in 3D. I used a jumping reference video to do the animation, it could have been better but I'd already spent almost 10 hours on it.


Pendulum


Jump

3d Modeling: Unicorn

Our second 3D modeling assignment is to model a unicorn. The focus of this exercise is to learn how to isolate muscle structure in organic modeling. I am fairly happy with this model, but I kind of spent too much time on the body muscles and ran out of time for the face. I would add more details to the face but I already spent 20 hours on this model and I think that's already too much time spent on a fancy horse.

3D Animation: Bouncing Ball (3D)

We also did a bouncing ball assignment in 3D to parallel what we were learning from classical animation, but here we have a heavy ball and a light ball. This animation looks different from the classical one because we are not dealing with squash and stretch yet.


Bouncing Ball (3D)

3D Modeling: Handsome Dude

For the first 3D Modeling assignment we were given a reference pic (a very stylistic drawing of a handsome dude) and a 3D model of a generic head, and then asked to turn the generic head into this handsome dude. There are barely any instructions on the assignment other than copy the head as much as possible.

This is what I got done after spending around 7-8 hours... probably could be done in less time but I haven't had any experience in 3D software until I came to VFS. I am still not completely happy with this model and many areas could still be tweaked.....