RFX Design: DESIGN • ENERGY • MOTION

Thesis Project: Kobol Interior Modeling Start

2012-02-08T09:51:00.000-07:00

This week I started to work on the interior of the Kobol. This has actually been a refreshing change and I have had fun trying to figure out how to work the environment. I've decided that lighting will be the most difficult challenge of this model because of the many different light sources. I hope to be able to make it close to physically correct as I can, but I also need to keep in mind that this needs to be a bit surreal, because otherwise why do it in the computer?

Organic Modeling 2: Week 1 Head Sculpt

2012-02-02T14:02:00.001-07:00

I have a feeling that I am going to really enjoy this class. I decided that my organic modeling skills weren't really that up to scratch, so I decided with my last spare credits, I would take a class to polish it up. Not only do I get to focus a ton on some of the things that I find most fascinating about anatomy, the class is taught by a dopplegänger of Seth Rogan.

This week our assignment was to see how well knew ZBrush and also gave us a chance to refresh our skills. We were to take the most basic geometric model, a cube, and work from there in sculpting a head of out choice. We were supposed to keep it humanoid, so we could do an alien or human. Since I'll most likely be doing a human head for my midterm project, I wanted to just have some fun with this first assignment. One of the nice things I have learned is that you can have fun first, then worry about topology and technical stuff later.

By the way, it's best to click on the picture to get the full details.

So as you can see, I started off with a cube and began stretching out the vertices to some oblique angles. I don't want to stretch things out too badly because then the distortion would be very evident.

At about this level I could start adding some more defining details about the form.

This is the level where most of the medium details were sculpted in. It's still pretty rough, so I didn't get too detailed. The trick is to move from broad to focused as you work. That helps keep you from getting too much detail too early.

The refinement starts to get a lot more detailed at this stage.

Although you really can't see a huge difference in the details from the renderings, they are subtle enough to be noticeable to the artist.

I wound up doing an alien design for my head. This alien has large olfactory glands and transmits messages to others in his species through pheromones emitted from the orifices in his cranium. Fun stuff and I'm looking forward to doing some more heads as the semester goes on.

Thesis Project: Kobol Polygonal Modeling

2012-01-30T12:35:00.000-07:00

This week I did more detail work on the Kobol model. The semester starts up for me today, so I've got a lot to get going. I'm also on the job hunt, so we'll see how that all goes.

There are a number of things, now that I've translated this into 3D, that don't fully work with the design. I will be doing a bit more sketching to get some ideas of how the mechanics work and how to better terminate the design of the engine exhaust ports.

ZBrush 4R2b: Lazy Day Sculpt

2012-01-24T20:58:00.002-07:00

Every once in a while I run into a creative slump while working on a project. I hit that the other day and decided I needed to do something to reinvigorate my creative juices. This morning I got an email telling me that I could update my version of ZBrush to the latest: R2b (don't ask me about the naming conventions...). I decided that would be a great chance to pull out ZBrush for a quick sculpt using the new hard surface brushes that I have been wanting to try out. So, using Dynamesh, grouping polyloops, Polypaint, and the like, I decided to do another alien bust.

I guess it's sort of an alien environmental suit thingy. Maybe I'll do a time lapse of an alien that would wear this thing.

Thesis Project: Kobol Modeling Progress

2012-01-24T20:12:00.001-07:00

This week I spent some time doing some touch up work with the top surfaces. Thankfully, I was able to remember a few of the tips and tricks that I have picked up during my personal study of Maya and did some massaging to the polygons. I used the original NURBS surface to snap the polygon points to so no matter where I moved them, they always stayed on the surface. That helped to maintain surface continuity and allowed me to help blend things out.

Matching up the top to the bottom has been a pain, though. I got all the way through with it only to discover that the bottom had one more row of edges than the top. I have a few things I can try, but we'll see how well they work.

Thesis Project: Kobol – Modeling Beginnings

2012-01-12T20:10:00.002-07:00

Now that the holiday break is over, I am back to working on my thesis project. The next piece is actually something I have been looking forward to working on for quite some time. The Kobol is an interesting ship, because it's sort of an intergalactic popemobile. Think if a televangelist had a spaceship in a retro-science fiction future and you've got this thing.

Because it's such a fluid shape, I thought of many ways to try and do the actual modeling for it. I wound up going with NURBS to start off with, although I can think of other ways to satisfy the design. We'll see if this approach works. I started off with a few NURBS curves to define the base shape of the hull.

Although I tried this approach, the surface wasn't tangent at the XY plane, so having symmetry would be difficult. I had to try a few other things, but eventually wound up with something worthwhile.

After finding a viable mesh, I started cutting out certain parts and tried to get the topology even across all the surfaces.

One thing I use to always get caught up in when working with NURBS is that I always tried to have the surfaces be completely perfect in tangency to each other. However, once you convert to polygons, usually all the work you've gone through tends to be lost in the conversion. The main thing I needed to focus on, really, was the topology and getting it to flow evenly across all of the surfaces.

Once I did that, I converted the surfaces over to polygons and began adding edge loops to harden up the corners of the angel emblem on the hull.

It's not a bad start, but I might have a bit more work to do if I find out that the other half doesn't work in symmetry. That might merit starting over again, which isn't desired, but might be necessary.

A Super ZBrush Sculpt

2012-01-12T19:55:00.001-07:00

This blog is getting a bit dusty, so I feel compelled to post something. While I had a bit of a break, I decided to take on a short project in ZBrush just to get used to the workflow between it, Topogun and Maya. I wanted to see if I could create a super hero human figure faster using that workflow than the traditional one.

To start off with, I created the basics of a human form using ZSpheres. These little do-hickeys are used for lots of things, including being able to generate meshes from scratch in a short amount of time. Once I got the spheres in relatively the correct place and size, I used the Adaptive Mesh command to basically create a skin over all of the ZSpheres and create a base mesh.

Starting off with this base mesh, I could then subdivide the model a number of times to get a high resolution mesh and be able to sculpt all of the fine details of the muscles. One of the things that came in handy with this was the Dynamesh feature of ZBrush. Essentially, it is a voxel sculpting feature that allows you to re-mesh your model and avoid distortion from stretched polygon edges.

Mind you, this was just in a matter of a few hours I was able to get to this point. If I was just creating a digital sculpture, I could probably leave it at this level and call it good. However, one of the things about creating from scratch in ZBrush is that you don't get good topology on your model. Dynamesh, especially, is a culprit in this because it needs to use triangles to to do the voxel operations (at least that's what I can surmise from my experience with it). Therefore, once I got it to this point, I could take it into Topogun and retopologize the base mesh.

In Topogun, I imported the high-resolution mesh and began to draw out the correct basic topology of the base mesh. I would start off simple in patches, then add edge loops where they were needed on the patches to then line things up. That whole process took about half a day, although I can see some things that need to be better the next time I go forward with something like this.

Once I reimported the base mesh into ZBrush, it adjusted the subdivided geometry accordingly and after a few cleanups, I was able to have a mesh with all the correct topology lines.

I was then able to redefine a few important anatomical features and wound up with a final sculpt, ready to be used to pose or extract clothes from. It was a good exercise, and in total took only about three days versus a week doing it the old fashioned way. If I was a good experience and I can see a lot of potential for character creation from it.

The anatomical proportions need more attention in this, but since it's an exercise, I am not too worried. I'd increase the volume of the legs and maybe the hips. Overall, though, not a bad start.

Current Demo Reel – January 2012

2012-01-03T22:34:00.002-07:00

Thesis Project: End of Semester Summary

2011-12-23T20:50:00.001-07:00

I haven't posted much lately since the semester has ended, mainly because I'm trying to get used to having a third warm body in our home. However, I wanted to post my semester's progress for my thesis class. I still have some tweaking to do with Alex's hair, but I need to call him done soon. For the Robot, I wound up desaturating the colors of the environment so it wasn't so intense. For all intents and purposes, I am calling that model done.

I am doing a short character sculpt just for fun over the break, but at the beginning of January I will need to start working on the Kobol. In just a few months, I'll be finished with this and on my way to graduating with my master's degree!

Dear Santa,

2011-12-23T15:56:00.001-07:00

Dear Santa,

Once again I'm posting this online because I know you have some pretty good data mining algorithms on your servers up there at the North Pole to help you keep up your naughty and nice lists. Thus, I figured this would be easier than mailing a physical letter. Plus, the post office is doomed to closure, so I hear. I would imagine that with the advent of Facebook and the amount of people who post drunk pictures of themselves (3 out of 4 Britons, for example), those lists get a little more off-balanced each year.

Anyway, how have things been this past year for you? (Again, I always feel that there should be some sort of pleasantries before I launch into my ~~list of demands~~ yuletide requests.) Have the polar ice caps melted yet? Or is that global warming thing just a bunch of hooey? There are plenty of lobbyists down here to try and convince us one way or another, but for the most part, I don't really listen to much of anyone in the media. How is Mrs. Claus doing, by the way? Wikipedia tells me that her name is actually YoYo Frost Claus, but honestly, I don't know how reputable that source actually is. I don't want to speculate on the subject either, just in case your wife's name really is YoYo... By the way, I don't know if she is a regular internet surfer, but there are some shocking allegations coming from the offspring of a number of desperate housewives. I am certain they aren't true, but you might want to warn her about the smear campaign against your good name.

Anyway, enough of my inane banter. I actually wanted to let you know that the following is what I am respectfully requesting this Christmas season: nothing.

Yeah, you read that right. I have no requests, wishes, demands, needs, or desires that require fulfillment this year. You see, 2011 has been very fortunate to me, bestowing many a blessing upon me throughout it's existence. I don't know if you've kept track of things, but the following are just a few of the great things I have experienced over the past year:

Just two weeks into 2011, I was able to be sealed to my sweet wife Sarah for time and eternity in the Mount Timpanogos temple. All of our parents and siblings were able to make it, which made it a very special time for us.
In our new ward in Provo, we had the chance to serve as ward service missionaries to our brothers and sisters in the state hospital where we gained completely new and intimate insight into how far-reaching the power of the Atonement really is.
A few months into our marriage, we discovered that we wouldn't be solitary newlyweds by the end of the year!
Sarah finally finished BYU (although the school's bureaucracy has kept her from getting her diploma and officially graduating... maybe you could do something about that).
When we moved from our tiny house in Provo, the amount of help that showed up to help us load were more than we could possibly use, and we wound up with a bit of a bottleneck in loading.
My parents were kind enough to let us stay at their house for a little while during the summer while we were waiting for an apartment to open up in California.
We got to spent a few days with half of Sarah's family up in Oregon.
A little while later, we got to spend time with my entire family for a week at a lodge in Bear Lake,
I passed my mid-point review for my thesis project, which opened the door to finishing my degree up in May.
In August our wonderfully spacious and rent-controlled apartment opened up in Martinez, California. The move across Nevada went seamlessly without any problems. When we got to our place, once again, there were so many people that showed up to help us that we were totally unloaded in half an hour.
I had the chance to get to work on my thesis with a really great guy who works at Lucasfilm. He even invited me out to come have lunch with him at Skywalker Ranch, which is a place I've wanted to visit for a long time.
We got to go spend general conference weekend with my brother Brian and his family up at a condo in Lake Tahoe.
We had the great privilege of having Sarah's parents down to take care of us on Thanksgiving and spend some good time with us.
And finally, our little bundle of joy, Leah Lourena Reynolds was born on December 3rd. The birth went fine and, though our schedule has been wrecked, we're very happy that she is a healthy, content, and energetic baby.

So, as you can tell, life has been pretty good this year. I mean, those are the big things that have just happened to me directly. I haven't even scratched the surface about how many of my friends had kids or got married. Or that Osama Bin Laden finally got his comeuppance. Really, life has been great this year. I have a great support network and all of my needs are constantly met.

In short, I don't want to be impolite, but if you want to skip my stocking this year, I'm totally fine with that. I mean, feel free to still come in and eat the cookies and milk. Heaven knows I don't need those calories in my system. In fact, have all our holiday goodies that people bring over. If you don't eat them, I will. And, believe me, I don't need them!

I guess what I am saying is that if there is a limited amount of Christmas cheer that you're allowed to hand out, feel free to pass on me. I've had the equivalent all year long and it's really quite nice. I know there are those out there with empty bellies, sorrowful hearts, and tired eyes that need blessings more than I do. Of course, if you've got someone on your mind, maybe I should be the one to go give them some Christmas cheer instead. They might appreciate it more from a friend than a fat stranger in a red suit. No offense.

Anyway, it's been quite the year and I've experienced all of the three big M's that are big life-changing events: Marriage, Maternity, and Moving... or are the three big M's "marriage," "maternity," and "mortgage?" Hang on a second...

Marriage, maternity, moving... mortgage? Movie monsters? (Double word score!)

Whatever. What I'm trying to say is that it's been a big year. Supposedly next year the Mayan calendar is set to restart and that has a lot of people worrying that the world is ending. However, I don't think that the word "restart" means the end of the world. Just look at what Hollywood has been doing for the past ten years and you'll see that the world hasn't ended. Maybe the world of good entertainment, but not the whole world. (Besides, the first part of The Hobbit comes out next year!)

Anyway, this has gone on long enough. I just wanted to wish you, your wife, and unionized elf labor force a Merry Christmas! Please watch out for the Occupy Protesters. I hear they might be headed your way to try and blame the housing market bubble burst on you. If they do come that way, I hope the ice caps melt.

Keep it real, Santa!

-Brad Reynolds

P.S. Okay, maybe a flying, time-traveling DeLorean would be nice to have.

P.P.S. Or maybe my own personal robotic bodyguard.

P.P.P.S. Or maybe a Wampug.

Advanced Texturing and Lighting: Haunted House Finishing Touches

2011-12-08T11:55:00.001-07:00

There is very little left to be done with this rendering, thankfully. Right now I am just adjusting tiny things like the ambient occlusion and certain light levels. Eventually, you can get "tweak fatigue" and just have to call the whole thing done.

Still the best creation to date...

2011-12-07T10:19:00.001-07:00

Leah Lourena Reynolds, born December 3rd, 2011 at 4:59 PM at John Huir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, CA. 7 pounds, 3 ounces. 19 inches long. Cries whenever cold. Loves her mommy a lot. Not quite sure what to think of daddy yet, but thinks he's getting better.

Thesis Project: Robot Shader Progress

2011-12-07T10:05:00.001-07:00

This week, due to other activities, I wasn't able to get a whole lot done on this. However, I did do some adjustments to the shaders and textures, trying to get a better bronze look out of the material. I also have been playing around a bit with doing some post-processing like depth of field, lens flares, and glow. More tinkering to come.

Thesis Project: Robot Shaders

2011-11-30T09:22:00.001-07:00

This week I did a lot of work that will save me some headaches further down the road. I finished up doing the initial texture painting of the Robot model just so every piece of geometry could have a texture map associated with it. I had to deal with some corrupted Mudbox files, which is never fun, but eventually, I got something stable that would work for me.

After that, I had to figure out how to be able to link the 53 individual shaders so that they would be easy to tweak down the line. I wound up at first creating a master shader with the basic overall settings. After that, I created another shader that I called a "starter" shader. I then linked certain values like sampling, glossiness, and others directly into the master shader. For the starter shader, I also created three layered texture nodes and linked them to the diffuse color, reflected color, and reflectivity attributes. I then linked the colors of those individual layered texture nodes back to the master shader

Basically, I was then set to copy the starter shader and the starter layered texture nodes, do some reconnecting, add the texture files, and that was it! They were then connected to a master shader ready to adjust the color across all 53 shaders with ease. In the end, if this works the way it should, I'll either love myself or curse myself if it doesn't work out.

Here are a few test renderings of the robot posed with full textures and shaders applied. There is a lot of tweak work to do, but I am now set to finish this guy off.

Advanced Texturing and Lighting: More Tweaking

2011-11-27T14:44:00.001-07:00

Now that I'm down to the last little bit of tweaking shaders and lights, things are starting to look the same. There isn't that much more to speak about in terms of how to set this up.

I did try adding a bokeh shader to the camera to simulate some depth of field. However, without an HDRI light source and a narrow depth of field, it's sort of useless. I'll probably take it out. Some other time I will explain more about that and how the effect works, but for now, I have other things to work on.

The Sounds Inside My Head: A Musical Sketchbook

2011-11-26T17:07:00.001-07:00

I fancy myself a bit of a musician. I ever since I was young, I can say that I had an interest in music. Maybe not talent, but interest. Some of my fondest memories were of me getting to play around with the musical keyboards that my brothers owned. Like most electronics of the late 80s and early 90s, these keyboards had pre-programmed music tracks that you could turn on and off in addition to hundreds of synthesized instruments.

However, I had very little knowledge of how to actually play music at a young age. The rest of my brothers had the opportunity (forced, sometimes) to take organ lessons. (My parents still have their old Wurlitzer sitting in their home and, while some of the keys don't work that well anymore, it still will play just fine.) By the time I reached the age where I was to start learning the organ, Wayne, the teacher of the rest of my brothers, decided he'd had enough of teaching organ lessons. There weren't any other organ teachers in the area, so my dear mother took it upon herself to try and teach me keyboard lessons herself.

Bless her heart. I think we made it through two lessons before she gave up hope on me because I was more interested in dinking around on the keyboard than actually reading music and training my fingers to work opposite of one another.

Eventually her hopes would turn around as I learned the saxophone in junior high and happened to excel in my music classes. During that time I also got my first guitar, a Yamaha acoustic, that for the first six months didn't really get played properly. I was given an ultimatum by my mother that I would either take guitar lessons or she was giving it away. Being the greedy child that I was, I opted for lessons.

And then I found my true musical love.

While I still feel I could pick up a saxophone and play it, I know it wouldn't be like picking up a guitar. I took guitar lessons for a number of years and eventually came to play it in our high school jazz band. That is where my skill really started to develop, since I was being forced to change chords drastically on every beat.

As the years passed, I gained a lot of musical equipment and started to get interested in how to record songs. My first attempts at recording (and at the songs) were laughable and involved routing the guitar into a tape recorder. The quality was so bad that I even cringe now while writing this.

Eventually, I discovered digital recording, although I only knew how to record using a waveform editor. That worked okay until I had to start synching up the tracks. I got lucky sometimes, but others, I was clueless about how to fix. Thankfully, technology got better and I got wiser... and I got one of the most helpful musical creation programs I have been exposed to: Garageband.

After playing the guitar for many years, I one day sat down at my parents' organ and began to play actual music. Granted, it was pretty much only a few church hymns, but they sounded decent. I remember my mother coming in to see me at the organ and asking where in the world I learned to play. It was amusing to me to see that learning how to play the guitar actually helped me understand how to play a keyboarded instrument. I could translate chords with my left hand and could do a decent job at picking out the melody with my right hand. It's not perfect, but it works well enough to get the melody across.

Now, even though I enjoy a good jam session with friends, if I'm doing music, it's mainly for my stuff at home. I now have a MIDI keyboard and USB guitar interface where I write out songs for my own personal enjoyment. I'm not much one for lyrics, so most of what I do is sort of "musical sketches." I thought I would share a few recent additions to my so-called musical sketchbook:

This is actually going to be the music track for my upcoming demo reel (hence the creative title). I needed a track that was only two minutes long, and since I usually write my own music for these things, I had to come up with something.

This track actually evolved during a jam session with a good friend, Matt Banz. Sometimes I just start playing and he comes up with a beat on the drums to fit the tune. This was one of the ideas that came out this past summer.

I have more, but most of them are just sketches, or little musical doodles. They're not fit for the blog. Or human ears.

One of my hopes with doing a career change is that I can get back into music as a hobby. As it was, I would go all day at work as an industrial designer, then come home and work on animation as my hobby. I would like to go to work all day doing my hobby so I can come home and work on my hobby. Some day, perhaps, when the stars align, that dream will come true. Until then, I won't stop "sketching."

Thesis Project: Robot Textures

2011-11-23T09:32:00.001-07:00

This week I dealt with a few technical issues, so the amount of work that I actually got to do was sort of minimal. I decided to finally download and install the student version of Maya 2012 for Mac, seeing that it is a 64-bit application. The thing that has been killing me lately is that Mental Ray for Maya 2010, which is what I have been running previously, runs out of memory on me halfway through preview renders. Doing a batch render every single time I want to test out rendering the robot wasn't exactly what I had in mind.

However, I found my own set of problems when trying to upgrade to Maya 2012. For some reason that I couldn't ever really understand, the nodes in the Hypergraph and Hypershade had no labels on them. I later found out that the text only appeared when you zoomed to an optimal level, but otherwise disappeared. This sort of renders Maya inoperable for the most part, so I had to do some searching on the web to see if anyone else had this problem. I found someone posted something about changing fonts in Maya 2011 for Mac to make it more legible, and that involved editing some of the core files of Maya. However, they had created a script that automated the process, but it was only for 2011. I downloaded it and did some editing to the script so that it would modify 2012. When I ran it, it seemed to solve my no-name problem just fine! Sometimes I know just enough to get myself into trouble.

After doing the upgrade to Autodesk's 2012 applications, I started doing the texture painting for the robot in Mudbox. Mudbox is Autodesk's answer to ZBrush and it allows you to do sculpting as well as painting directly onto a mesh to create texture maps. I mainly have been using it for texturing, as ZBrush has features that I like better for sculpting. The one thing about Mudbox that makes it so versatile in texture painting is the fact that you have layers, just like in Photoshop, and can stack textures on top of one another. Then you can export your whole scene back into Maya with all of the shaders automatically created for you. It's pretty snappy, although there are still a few bugs to be worked out.

With the robot, the look I am going for is metal that isn't corroded, but isn't impervious to having material buildup on it. These renderings are straight from Mudbox, so they don't give the best impression of what the shaders will really be doing, but they can give you an idea of the grime I painted on.

The way I plan on going about with this will require some fancy shader programming, which hopefully will work for me. I calculated that I will have at least 53 different shaders for my scene, some of which are very similar, but use different texture maps. This will require creating a master shader and linking the individual shaders to this master shader. I've done a few tests, and it's looking promising. However, I hope I don't screw up my scene by doing this. If it works, it will make tweaking the textures all that easier to do. If it doesn't, then I've got a lot of work on my hands.

Advanced Texturing & Lighting: Haunted House Progress

2011-11-17T17:16:00.001-07:00

This week I spent some time amping up the amount of fog within the room. That required masking out some of the areas of ambient occlusion in Photoshop, but the effect seemed to come across. I also played around a bit with global illumination, which is another way of simulating how light bounces from one surface to another.

Thesis Project: Robot – Image Based Lighting

2011-11-16T08:59:00.001-07:00

This week was quite a rush in trying to finish up the modeling for the Robot. Some of the shapes and structures were quite difficult to figure out, but I managed to get them in the end. The main issues with hard surface modeling, especially with a model with complex curved surfaces, is trying to keep your surface continuity consistent. One wrong move with a vertex and you're done for!

Okay, maybe not really, but it really helps to have really clean, smooth geometry to give the appearance that something has been manufactured. When you apply a nice, reflective shader to a surface like that as well, all of the problems can quickly be revealed.

That brings me to the next point. For this model, I decided that I wanted to try rendering it out using image-based lighting using Mental Ray. Image based lighting allows you to illuminate a model using a high dynamic range image as a light source. In a sense, you are mimicking how light typically reflects and refracts on objects in real life. If you place an object outside and take a picture of it, you'll get a nice highlight from the sun, reflected blue light from the sky, and reflected light from the ground it's sitting on. Mental Ray allows you to fake that effect with fairly decent results.

I wanted to figure out the best image to light this Robot model with, so I lit him using various HDR images and rendered it out to see the results:

An abstract environment

A cityscape environment

A crater environment

A desert environment

A european plaza

A forest meadow

The city of Pisae

A photography studio lighting setup

As you can see, different environments give off different results, but the reflections and highlights are incredibly realistic. While the Robot won't be this shiny because I'll be adding quite a bit of grunge to the textures, this gives me a good starting point to judge my textures by.

A gray model turntable test

Reflective turntable test

Demo Reel 2012: New Intro Work In Progress

2011-11-14T08:29:00.001-07:00

After more than two years of service, I have decided to redo my current demo reel's introductory animation. There are many reasons for doing this:

It adds too much time to the overall reel, which needs to be around two minutes.
It takes too long to display my name.
I have a revised logo since I did the last one.
I have learned a ton of stuff since I did that one, primarily within the realms of lighting and texturing.

I had received some helpful critiques from some classmates as well, so I knew it was time to start working on a new one. I've stuck to the whole mechanical theme of the previous one, but I'm trying to get it down to about eight to ten seconds in total length. For the mean time, I've been focusing on modeling some new robotic arms and getting the shaders right:

Also, I had to figure out how to import my logo model from Cinema 4D into Maya, with a few hiccups in the texturing. After I finish doing the modeling, it will be time for animating. It's my goal to have this rendered out by the beginning of December, so I have some real work ahead of me.

Advanced Texturing & Lighting

2011-11-10T12:01:00.001-07:00

This is just some more tweaking with the lights and textures of the haunted house model. I moved around some lights and added some volumetric fog, but it tends to be a bit diminished with the post-processing I did on the image:

Thesis Project: Robot Modeling Progress

2011-11-10T11:52:00.001-07:00

I haven't posted my progress on this model in a little while. I started over with some of the major pieces of the Robot a few weeks ago and have been working my way forward ever since. The reason I started over was because the surface topology had a lot of artifacts in it that would show up whenever I would smooth the surface, especially where I had to punch holes in the mesh, like on the back.

You can compare this to the original a few months back and see that this is much higher in resolution than the previous iteration. One thing that I also focused on this time around was not getting caught up in making the NURBS surfaces line up perfectly every single time. I found that if I didn't get caught up in making mathematically perfect geometry, I was able to work faster without any real issues to speak of. One thing you have to keep in mind is that the end results are what you are after, even if the process isn't "perfect." As long as the end rendering looks good, you can get away with a lot of cheating!

Once I finish modeling the head, I will do some quick UV mapping, and then I will actually duplicate some of the parts. This saves me time in having to UV map objects that are just going to be mirrored anyway.

Advanced Texturing and Lighting: The Haunted House – Textures

2011-11-06T14:49:00.005-07:00

I think this week was one of the longest I have experienced in a while. A lot of it was spent trying to figure out some weird rendering issues, but also me just having anxiety on where to start. I always have that problem when I start texturing something.

This week we started to add some bounce lights to our scene. Before the advent of efficient global illumination algorithms, this was a very tedious task. Most of the time, you would fake the reflected light in a scene by adding another light and aiming it at the surrounding geometry. Now things have advanced to make that happen in the rendering itself at render time, saving a bit of time. However, there are a few times when you just want to control the lighting a bit more, so you add another light or two.

You can see the contrast from the "Neutral Gray" scene to the textured scene below:

When doing textures, you have to see certain images or textures as what they could be rather than what they are. For example, the floor panels were textured using a photograph of the fence across the street from our apartment. The cracks and grime on the walls are actually in the pavement in our carport. A lot of the textures are the same for all of the geometry, but with a little bit of tweaking with the UVs, so everything isn't the exact same.

This image actually has some fairly complex things happening both with the textures and with the way it is put together. Here is a little breakdown of how things are composited at the moment:

Background plate

Beauty pass (an accumulation of diffuse, specular, reflection, ambient, etc.)

Occlusion pass (to simulate the real world phenomenon)

And finally a glow pass, which I did in Photoshop after the fact

This is an involved process and I have a lot more to do, but the heavy lifting is done for the most part now. I spent some time linking shader values in Maya, so now if I adjust one of the "master" values for the walls, the rest update as well, rather than having to go through and remember the values of each attribute separately. It took some time to set up, but in the end, I know it will pay off.

Cucurbita Maxima 2011

2011-10-30T22:33:00.002-06:00

It's that time of year again where I take a tiny saw and start cutting into the skin of pumpkins. Here are the final results for this year: Captain America and Red Skull.

To show the process of how the effect is achieved:

I had to put in Sarah's contribution to our holiday spirit:

Advanced Lighting and Texturing: The Haunted House

2011-10-28T12:01:00.003-06:00

Now that the character Chimi is complete, we are supposed to be lighting an environment and compositing it together. Typically you will only light an environment when the textures are done, but for this class, we are doing things a bit backwards. We created an additional render layer with all of the scene objects in it and assigned a 50% gray lambert shader as a layer override. That way, we can focus just on lighting the scene.

I decided to go with a creepy nighttime scene with a long green streak of light reminiscent of a hallway door opening onto a supernatural scene. I also used Mental Ray's Final Gather for this rendering, which is a way of calculating how light bounces from one surface to another. In addition, I added in the background plate after rendering, as well as an ambient occlusion pass to bring out the cracks and details of the geometry. As a final note, I duplicated the rendered layer in Photoshop, blurred it slightly, set it to a screen transparency, and then adjusted the brightness and contrast and opacity so that there was some slight glow to the lit surfaces in the scene.

There's a lot of texture creation that needs to be done for this and hopefully I will be able to get it out easily.

A Trip to the Ranch...

2011-10-27T16:31:00.002-06:00

Today I had the wonderful privilege of visiting Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, California, thanks to my directed study advisor, Roger Ridley. Roger works as an assistant technical director for Lucasfilm on a feature animation. The company is split between two locations: Big Rock Ranch where the animation previzualization department is, and Skywalker Ranch where Skywalker Sound and a few other offices are located. He took me on a tour of the beautiful campus and I was constantly wondering if I was at a visual effects company or at a really fancy reception center. Here are a few things I learned on my trip that may or may not be true:

All of the security guards carry lightsabers.
The Ranch has it's own fire brigade.
Saying "This is not the Toyota Camry you are looking for," while waving your hand won't get you a laugh from the security guard at the gate.
The main campus plaza has glass bottom ponds that look over the expansive underground parking garage.
The Ranch grows all of its own food that it serves in the employee cafeterias.
The Ranch has its own vineyards that doesn't serve its wine in its employee cafeterias.
You can order fresh taun taun from the cafeteria when it is in season.
The library is one of the most beautiful private libraries I have ever seen.
A colony of ewoks live in the trees just over the hills.
The cafeteria serves blue milk in tupperware containers, just like they used to to at Mos Eisley!
They have canoes and boats to use for summer parties on the lakes at the ranch.
George's office at the main house is off limits to minor employees.
George has his own private elevator so he doesn't have to see his employees.
George's private elevator goes down to his own screening theater, which has a killer sound system.
George is rumored to have a certain Gungan encased in carbonite in this theater. He uses it as a coffee table.
George has the largest collection of original Norman Rockwell paintings on display at the Ranch. He uses the rest for placemats at his dinner table.
The Stag Theater, named after a diner in George's home town, at Skywalker Sound has the best sound system in the entire world, probably because of the abundance of THX technicians that roam free-range on the ranch.
Each seat in the Stag Theater has its own subwoofer.
There is a rancor pit located in the atrium off of the main house... either that or a wine cellar. I couldn't really tell.
The main house of the ranch contains and displays ancient relics that were supposedly discovered by Indiana Jones: the Holy Grail, the fake Holy Grail, the Shankara Stones, and the Crystal Skull.
The Ark of the Covenant was, unfortunately, still locked up at Area 51.
All of the main characters' lightsabers were on display as well, along with a model of an AT-AT.
A vast majority of the staff is contractually obliged to have facial hair, including the women.
Fanboys are tazed if they get overstimulated by all of the nostalgia. Don't ask how I found this out.

All in all, it was a fun visit and fulfills a lifelong dream of mine. Next up is the lifelong dream of actually visiting the ranch each day and getting paid to do so.

Thesis Project: Alex Shaders & Hair

2011-10-26T20:39:00.001-06:00

This week it was my duty to refine the textures, shaders, and hair of the Alex model for my thesis. There were a lot of technical challenges associated with this week's work. One of the biggest challenges was associated with the lighting of the hair. Typically, there are two ways to do shadows for lights: raytraced shadows and depth map shadows. With raytracing, your image is calculated by casting "rays" from the camera into the scene to figure out how the lighting and shadows will interact. This can create very realistic shadows, but is very heavy on the processor. Depth map shadows work by casing rays from your lights, then generating shadows based on where the light is blocked. It is much easier to produce these, but they can be memory intensive if you want it looking good.

So thus was my dilemma with the Alex model. As you can imagine, trying to trace the light source back between half a million polygons and an additional fifty thousand hair primitives was causing some serious crashes if I wasn't careful. Because I'm still using Maya 2010 for the Mac, I am stuck with a 32-bit program that can't make use of all the extra RAM my machine packs. It's a shame. However, I have heard terrible compatability stories with the newer versions of the Mac OS and Maya's programs. It's sort of a Catch 22 at the moment.

The shaders still feel a bit artificial to me, but that's probably because I'm using regular Maya lights instead of physically accurate lights or an environment sphere. With image-based lighting, the models would look a lot more accurate than what I currently have. I plan on doing image-based lighting with the Robot, because I know he will look a whole lot better than with just plain shaders.

Truth be told, I'm ready to be done with this model. This is the last push!

Advanced Texturing and Lighting: Render Layers

2011-10-24T09:55:00.002-06:00

This week we were working on rendering out turntables for our textured models. Typically, this is where I fail to excel. When rendering in a studio environment, this is where things get very complicated. When you render, you do it in various passes. That means that you render one diffuse color pass, one specular color pass, one shadow pass, one reflection pass, etc. Once you have separated all of the elements in your render, you can then adjust how they look after the fact, rather than having to re-render your entire scene

However, things can get even more complicated when you start breaking up components in your scene. Take the above video of Chimi, for example. When I rendered her out, I had the above described passes, but also managed to split it up between objects in the scene. Her hair has its own set of passes, her clothes have its own set of passes, her skin has its own set of passes, and her eye have their own set of passes. You layer these passes on top of one another in a compositing program like Adobe After Effects or Nuke, allowing you to adjust color, brightness, and shadows all after you have rendered.

With Ugly Ray, here, things are a bit different since he has particle-based hair using Shave and a Haircut. I had to render a separate hair pass and extract its alpha channel in order to isolate the hair. It was a bit backwards, but it worked in the end. All in all, it's not my favorite type of work, but it is necessary to understand how it all goes together in the end.

Thesis Project: Alex – Shaders

2011-10-19T10:32:00.001-06:00

This week was a big shift in duties for my project. I moved away from modeling and onto shaders, which is where my brain starts to get a little bored, honestly. However, I like putting shaders on my models because that's where they really start to come to life.

First things first, however, I had to pose the model in ZBrush, which I had never done before. They have provided a little plugin called Transpose Master that allows you to build a rough rig in ZSpheres and move them around to pose your model. It leaves a few things to be desired, but it sure is an easy way to get your model posed.

Next, I also exported the color maps and normal maps from ZBrush, some of which were the start of my other maps for the shaders. I also exported about a subdivision level 3 version of the model for rendering, so that I didn't have to play with displacement at all. Roughly, the model has about 540,000 polygons on it, which is par with what you'd see for hero characters in the industry.

Last night was the first time I got to see everything all put together. Pardon the terrible haircut. I am using Shave and a Haircut, a Maya plugin, to do the hair and there are some things that I still need to figure out with it. However, it's on it's way.

One other thing I tried that seems to be working out okay is using an image map to control the specular highlights on a single mesh. In times past, you needed to separate the mesh into different pieces in order to apply different specular attributes to it. However, I discovered that you can use a grayscale image to control numerical values inside of a shader, which is how I am controlling the roughness and highlight size of 3 different "materials" on the same mesh.

Initially, there are some issues I noticed:

The overpaint on the pants and boots needs to be increased in order to hide the UV seams.
The skin seems to not be showing the bump map that is applied to it.
The head seems a bit too red, most likely due to a low diffuse weight and too high of a subdermal weight on the subsurface scattering shader.

Those issues will be dealt with along with working on the hair. Right now I have learned a lot, but have a lot more to learn!

Advanced Texturing & Lighting: Ugly Ray's Hair

2011-10-12T19:51:00.000-06:00

This week's assignment was to start with doing hair. Now, our normal assignment was to use Maya Paint Effects to generate hair, but I wanted an excuse to play with another software tool I acquired, Shave and a Haircut. It's a fairly advanced hair system that's fairly easy to use, and I am planning on using it for my project. There's a lot I have to learn...

I wanted to compliment Ugly Ray with some crazy hair, and in fact did three separate hair objects with different properties each: head hair, eyebrows, and stubble.

I'm running into trouble with some shadow settings and other alpha settings that seem to be cropping up, but hopefully I can fix that this next week.

Thesis Project: Alex Surfacing Progress

2011-10-11T17:29:00.001-06:00

This week I started to work more heavily on the tiny details of the Alex model. I went a little sculpting crazy on the clothing and a few of the parts got a little convoluted. So I did a little back tracking and smoothed out some of the more extreme folds, making the areas much more subtle.

ZBrush seems to handle high-resolution modeling much better than my current copy of Mudbox, most likely because it's a 64-bit program. I have enjoyed using it for detailing skin textures and other surface patterns. This week I started the fine detailing of the model, which involved putting a lot more subdivisions into each mesh. I think the total point count for the model lies somewhere around 17 million points. I won't be importing that directly into Maya, but rather one that is closer to something like a million. The higher resolution details makes it much easier to get details out for the normal map when I start rendering in Maya.

I also started using ZBrush's Polypaint tools to create the basic color maps for the character. I will need to do some additional work in Photoshop to get it looking right, but for the most part, it is looking a lot like the concept artwork. Well, actually, it's looking better than that.

ZBrush also has done some impressive additions to their lighting system, which allows for HDRI creation. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten the hang of it just down, so the gamma of each of these images is a bit off. I tried tweaking it in Photoshop, but didn't get the exact results I wanted.

Advanced Texturing and Lighting: Ugly Ray

2011-10-05T20:11:00.001-06:00

This ugly little fellow is Ugly Ray, another model that was provided for us. Our assignment with this was to test out the subsurface scattering skin shaders, which I am glad to get more exposure to. The advances in rendering software had made a huge difference in getting the skin of animated characters to feel more lifelike. Before, the algorithms that were used just made skin look like plastic.

For this, I thought I'd try one of ZBrush's little known features called Pixolpaint. With this technique, you are actually coloring vertexes on the model, rather than pixels. You can then transfer that information into an actual color map for use in Maya or some other renderer. ZBrush is becoming more attractive to me all the time.

One of the nice advantages of subsurface scattering shaders is the nice, realistic, light leak you get coming from this surfaces like the ear here.

We also had to do a "fake skin" shader that used a combination of older shaders to try and get the same effect as a subsurface scattering shader. However, it left much to be desired:

Diaspar: Alex ZBrush Progress

2011-10-05T10:10:00.001-06:00

This week I took another look at the folds on the clothing after getting some honest feedback from my instructors at school. It wasn't looking like I wanted it to, so I took an additional look at how cloth seems to fall around the knees and shoulders. It probably still needs work, but at least I'm getting closer.

On a side note, I've been discovering tools and other things hidden deep within ZBrush that I never knew about before. There are some exciting possibilities for texturing and painting that lie ahead. I'm discovering some insane difficulties with doing displacement in Maya with some of the clothing, so I might wind up using a higher resolution model with normal maps to get the same overall effect.

Advanced Lighting and Texturing: Chimi Lighting - CSI Style

2011-10-05T10:08:00.001-06:00

Although I have been using a 3-point light setup with Chimi this entire time, this week we were supposed to set one up in "CSI Style." In terms of cinematic 3-lighting, most of the time, the basic lighting will be set up with three lights:

Key light: Meant to be your main light
Fill (or bounce) light: Meant to round out the form and keep it from falling too much into shadow. Usually about 2/3rds the brightness of your key light
Rim light: Meant to pop your hero characters off of the background.

In the show CSI, apparently, all of the hero characters have a very strong rim light on them, almost to an absurd degree, even though there is no possible physical light source in any particular scene that would do that.

I didn't push the rim light too much with Chimi, but, then again, I don't think she'll be appearing in any CSI episodes any time soon.

Thesis: Alex Displacement Maps & Retopologizing

2011-09-27T19:40:00.001-06:00

This week I started to delve into some of the technical details of the model. After getting the meshes back from ZBrush, I wound up extracting displacement maps for each of the articles of clothing. A displacement map essentially tells the rendering engine at render time how much to pull or push a mesh a certain direction in space. In addition, at render time, you can set your meshes to subdivide into a finer resolution, thus allowing you to capture minute details without using up lots of memory while animating your model.

There are still some issues that I am discovering with the displacement maps that I'll have to fix. For example, the shoulder hoop on the vest here has some strange artifacts going on with it where it should just be straight.

For the geometry of the head and hands, I wound up retopologizing them to get a better mesh out of them. The mesh I started off with was a fine base mesh, but once I sculpted in the details, I found that some areas needed more detail for certain facial features. For example, the forehead was far too sparse for any type of real emotion to be displayed if I wanted to create a blend shape for facial animation. Topogun allows you to bring in a high-resolution model and essentially draw your new topology straight on the surface. From there you can export displacement maps or output your new geometry for sculpting in ZBrush or Maya. This is why I was excited for the new features of ZBrush as well as learning about Topogun. They now allow for a 3D sketch to be converted into an animation friendly mesh with just a little bit of work:

A Sunday Afternoon Sculpt

2011-09-25T20:36:00.001-06:00

Just playing around some more in ZBrush:

ZBrush 4 Release 2

2011-09-22T17:54:00.002-06:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, ZBrush has just come out with a new release of their software which is a huge game changer for me. The main thing that I love about it is the new Dynamesh feature. In previous versions of ZBrush, you were pretty much stuck with your base mesh and if you stretched your geometry too far, then you would get some very bad results. Dynamesh does something called "voxel sculpting," I believe. Another program called 3D coat has a pretty good explanation on the principle.

This little iguanadon alien thing started out as a simple 3D sphere. With a few pushes and pulls from dynamesh, I was able to eventually get the basic proportions that I wanted and then from there I did the normal ZBrush workflow of adding progressive details, even down to the fine details and textures. I then used Polypainting to get a rough texture on it.

All in all, the whole process from start to finish was about two hours. I'm sure in the future I can get the time down, but this changes a lot of things for me. For one, I'm not afraid of doing character meshes now that I can do this and then bring it back into Topogun to get it some animation-friendly topology. Right now it's only a "sketch," but it still is a heck of a lot quicker than doing a character the old fashioned way.

Advanced Lighting & Texturing: Chimi Materials Update

2011-09-22T13:57:00.003-06:00

These are just some minor updates to the color and bump maps, as well as the properties of the skin of the Chimi character.

Thesis Project: Alex ZBrush Sculpts

2011-09-20T17:32:00.002-06:00

This week I took my human character, Alex, into ZBrush to do the fine detail sculpting. This is where a lot of the fun is in 3D modeling, because you get to push, pull, carve, pinch, and soften your mesh using a stylus and tablet. It's much more intuitive and rewarding than working with floating polygons in space, and I imagine that most people could pick up on it quick enough. Pixologic, the company that makes ZBrush, just announced some new voxel sculpting tools that makes the conceptual process of 3D modeling a lot more streamlined and artist-friendly.

For the most part, Roger wanted me to not worry about the technical details of the model as I went into ZBrush and just to have fun. He introduced me to a retopologizing program called TopoGun, which I can see as being an indispensable part of any 3D artist's toolset.

Changing around materials is one way to see how different areas are looking in your model. I switch between materials many times during a sculpt and it helps me to see different areas better. Some materials are better for small details while some are better at showing where the cavities on your model are. And there are some that are just goofy...

The goal with this sculpture is to get it looking as close to Mr. Freddie Boath as possible. Unfortunately, I don't have many high resolution reference photos of the young British actor, so I'll have to get it close enough.

I could take it all the way up in sculpting even to the small textures, but that is for the future. Plus, I will probably do that in Mudbox, considering that there are a few textures that have geometric patterns on them. Now that I've done this, though, I want to try out some of ZBrush's new tools. Alas, if I only had the extra time.

Advanced Lighting & Texturing: Chimi Texture Maps

2011-09-15T21:56:00.002-06:00

After gathering a bunch of photos of clothing and textures, I got to work this week texturing Chimi. The surfaces were all NURBS, which are a pain to texture as they are without doing some very difficult texture work. So I spent about a day getting the surfaces into polygons and getting the UV maps on them. I was a bit rough at UV mapping, so you'll have to forgive the roughness, although the textures seem to hide most of it.

I mainly used photographic textures for the clothes, taken from Sarah's wardrobe. I then took the hair and arms into Mudbox to essentially paint in the details by hand. I wound up sculpting the hair and exporting it as a normal map as the bump. The skin required painting the colors, then creating separately saturated and desaturated color maps for the epidermal, subdermal, and back scatter layers of the skin shader.

All in all, it was a good exercise, but it took way too long. I'm sure we'll have more work to do on this or other models, so I can't dilly dally on just one for too long.

Plus, I've got a thesis project to work on.

Alex Modeling Progress

2011-09-11T18:48:00.002-06:00

I'm very happy to have Roger Ridley as my one-on-one advisor for my directed study. Roger went through AAU before in the same program as me and has since worked as a modeler on such movies as A Christmas Carol and Mars Needs Moms. Currently he does programming at Lucasfilm and shows a real passion for what he does. He will be a great asset to draw on while I'm in school.

The model I am having him work with me on is the Alex model. He found some problems with the model (problems being some topology issues that are a real "no-no" in the industry) which were easy enough to fix. My hope for this week is to fix a few more small topology items, then get to work on UV mapping Alex. This Wednesday will be the first time I'll have to bring him into ZBrush and try out some detailed sculpting.

However, I must admit that seeing how Roger does some of his work is a lot more intuitive than my current approach. We'll chalk this model up to a learning experience.

Professional Practices: Artist's Statement

2011-09-11T18:35:00.003-06:00

Another class I am taking this semester is a professional practices class. This is very similar to classes I have taken in the past where you prepare yourself for the real where where they expect results. One of the first assignments was to write an "Artist's Statement," which basically amounts to telling people why you do what you do as an artist. Here's what I came up with:

Ayn Rand once stated, “To achieve, you need thought. You have to know what you are doing, and that’s real power.” The gift of man’s intellect has given him the ability to collect, organize, interpret, and transform the materials of his world into something that previously only existed in the ethereal realm of the mind. Man has the power to create.

Creation is the business I am employed in. Although I run the gamut of tools to turn imagination into reality, the creative power of my mind is the driving force behind my work. Whether it be my own ideas, creations inspired by others, designs of my peers, or a collaborative production, my love of the creative process is what fuels my passion for imaginative work. As I began my career path, I tried to conceive my work through a three word mantra: Design, Energy, Motion.

Design: The structuring of elements into a cohesive design is a crucial part of our existence. Design brings order from chaos, definition from ambiguity, peace from turmoil.

Energy: Every sensory experience that we are exposed to evokes an emotional impact within the beholder. It is essential that the underlying elements be imbued with the correct proportions, materials, and hues, so that it successfully and responsibly fulfills its purpose.

Motion: Time is always in motion. Solutions that are reached during the present will not always stand the test of time. There is always a better way to accomplish something, even if the necessary means to do so are not yet within our reach. Adaptation and a course of continuing education are essential for success in our rapidly advancing world.

I seek after the best possible iteration of an imaginative idea, whether from myself, my clients, or my peers. By witnessing the best of both individual and collaborative creations, I am constantly inspired to continue to seek after that which is just beyond the horizon.

Advanced Texturing & Lighting: Chimi Base Materials

2011-09-11T18:31:00.002-06:00

One of the classes I am taking this semester as directed study credit is an advanced lighting and texturing class. I'm hoping to pick up a few techniques to help out in the texturing of my thesis project. This class will feature a lot of texturing work, but hopefully will teach me a few new things about lighting and rendering that I don't know about yet. One thing about that area of the industry is that it is always changing. Programmers are always looking at quicker ways to do rendering and advanced lighting techniques, so that's one thing to stay abreast of.

In this class I was given the model of a character, Chimi, and this week we were to create and assign all of the base shaders with no texture on them. I mainly used a combination of different shaders from the simple Phong (the name of a particular type of shading algorithm), to anisotropic (which renders out very elongated highlights, like what you would see on brushed metal), and a subsurface scattering skin shader for the face.

I also made a quick 3-point lighting setup and did a turntable rendering to see how the light moved across the surface of each shader.

Unfortunately, most of Chimi is comprised of NURBS surfaces, which are a pain to texture. So this week my task involves converting the surfaces into polygons and UV mapping them. Typically, that is the job of a modeler, not a texture artist, but this class is unfortunately out of date. Oh well, it's just more experience, right?

Thesis Project: Robot Modeling Progress Continued

2011-09-04T17:51:00.000-06:00

I'm getting closer to getting this model completed. Mainly I've been working on it until I could start getting consistent feedback at school. Since classes just started, I might switch back to the Alex model for a while to finish that one up.

This week I divided out the torso and started work on the head and joints of the neck. I changed the hands a bit because I didn't like how they looked in proportion to the rest of the body. I might go back and redo both the hands and head because I'm not really pleased with the topology. Too many artifacts are showing up in both previews and renders.

Either way, though, I'm a step closer.

Thesis Project: Robot Modeling Progress

2011-08-28T21:54:00.000-06:00

This week was the last before school started and I was busy trying to get as much possible completed on the robot. There were some sticky situations with the topography of the mesh, but I managed to get something working that I didn't mind looking at. Once I start adding textures, a lot of the little imperfections will probably start to disappear. After completing the torso, I will have to rebuild the abdomen, but it shouldn't take too long to do.

Back in the saddle again: Thesis Project Beginnings

2011-08-21T18:10:00.000-06:00

I have been noticeably absent from the blogosphere this summer, and for good reason. There have been a lot of personal changes going on in my life at the moment, most of which were actually school related. After preparing for a number of weeks for my mid-point review, I finally got it scheduled and under way. The entire process lasted less than about forty-five minutes, but it was a fairly positive experience for me. I had my presentation reviewed by a committee of five people from the Academy of Art University, all of which had prior professional experience in the field. Gratefully, I passed and got some great insights on how to make my project go smoother.

I started a few weeks later on my project, but ran into a bit of a snag as I was planning on moving my little family closer to school. I did what I could to get things started and wound up blocking in the basics of one model and getting closer to blocking in another. Even though classes haven't started, I wanted to stay up with my schedule.

First off is the block-in for Alex, based off of photographs of the young British actor Freddie Boath:

I've still got a few divisions to make and such before I start the high-resolution sculpting on the model, but this is a fairly good head start. I need to consult an expert before I go much further on this model, but the next step will be to UV map the sucker and then import into ZBrush.

Next, I started work on the robot:

I initially started with creating the body in NURBS surfaces, but I struggled in getting good continuity across the patches. So I set that part aside and started modeling the arm and abdomen. This next week I should be able to finish up the blocking for the main body and part of the head.

Welcome, Leah Lourena Reynolds!

2011-07-12T19:22:00.000-06:00

We thought it would be a boy, girl, ninja, or puppy. Looks like we're getting a ninja girl. It looks like she is already starting her training on avoiding cameras.

Ogre Mudbox Bust Revisited

2011-06-30T16:03:00.000-06:00

I wanted to revisit an old project I had done last year. I started doing a head sculpt of an orge in Mudbox, but never got around to doing the textures. Since I have some time between school, I wanted to keep my skills up. I started doing a high resolution version of the head, then began painting it by hand in Mudbox. After a few days, I got the textures done.

I used a special type of mental ray shader called a "subsurface scattering" shader. It basically simulates how light passes through certain types of translucent surfaces like wax, jade, and even skin. As such, you wind up adjusting colors on the epidermal, subdermal, and deep tissue layers to get the right effect. You can tell from the ogre's skin that it has light scattering through it before it returns out. On the ears, you can get the deep tissue effect where light is somewhat visible through the shallow tissues.

Overall, it could be better, but this was mainly for my own learning. I've never worked with subsurface scattering shaders before, so I wanted the experience.

Thesis Concept Art

2011-06-26T09:54:00.000-06:00

No, I'm not dead... although I felt like it at some point during the past few weeks. I have actually been hard at work creating concept artwork for my thesis project. Due to some unforeseen circumstances (i.e. getting married and moving) I was unable to present my proposal at a midpoint review last semester. As such, I'm one semester behind and am actually not able to take any more classes until I complete the review. So, in order to be prepared for it all, I dug in my heels and whipped out some artwork. I don't know what the committee will think of it, but I can say that, honestly, I did my best.

This title was just for my presentation. I wanted to do something that showed the art style I was looking toward doing.

This was just a mockup of the city of Diaspar. I won't be creating it, but I thought it would add a nice touch as a 1:1,000,000,000 scale model.

I changed the name of the main character from Alvin to Alex, mainly because I didn't want any associations with a particular singing rodent. His costume is meant to feel unnatural, hence the cool, mechanical colors.

The robot went through a number of iterations, but after looking at a bunch of science fiction illustrations and movies, I decided that simpler is better. The rigging will take some effort, but this one could turn out to be a very interesting piece to work on.

Taking a cue from Battlestar Galactica, I named the spaceship "The Kobol." It's meant to be a flying cathedral with lots of symbolism to its structure. I still need to figure out things like the landing skids and other such things, though.

In addition to the exterior, I plan on completing the interior living quarters of the ship. The plan and elevation view of the interior gives some idea to how it functions.

Clicking on the photos will actually give you a full-resolution version of each image, which will show the details much better. I actually should know soon when I will be presenting for my midpoint review. Until then, I have a presentation to run through. Wish me luck!

F22 Raptor Final Images

2011-05-15T15:02:00.000-06:00

Here are some final renderings for this class of the Raptor. Now as I have finished it up, I actually plan on going back and rebuilding it due to some bad geometry on the sides and bottom. Now that I am actually comfortable with the workflow, I should be able to do it in half the time.

And last, but not least, a turntable rendering:

Crossing Borders: Information Overload

2011-05-10T10:20:00.002-06:00

Information Overload

The technological advancements that humankind has achieved in the past few decades have been staggering in their potential. The ability to transfer information instantaneously across the globe is one of the greatest achievements of mankind. There is no doubt that this revolution has significantly accelerated the rate at which individuals can access information. However, with such a rapid change in the pace of technology, it is worth considering that this transformation might have some unintended negative consequences. The digital painting Information Overload seeks to present straightforward, satirical look at the effects that the information age has on a portion of humankind.

The painting features a caricature of a working-class middle-aged man staged against a sickly, green backdrop. The man stares in silent agony at his current predicament while a stream of saliva dribbles from the corner of his mouth. His cranium is humorously inflated to twice the size of a normal human’s while countless communication devices appear to be seemingly embedded in his head. The silhouette of numerous electronic and media company logos bulge precariously beneath his skin. His eyes bear increased signs of fatigue and distraction while his unshaven face suggest that his physical care has diminished due to his circumstances. The blood vessels in his eyes are even reshaped to match the trace paths of a circuit board. As the viewer follows the gaze of his eyes upward, they are greeted with the central focus of the piece: a single glowing power button. His pained expression and gaze seemingly ask the viewer to reach out and press the button, hopefully allowing him some relief from the painful predicament that he has found himself in.

With new ways of exchanging information emerging every day and the rapid increase in the rate of data transmission, it is becoming apparent that humankind’s ability to adapt healthily to this advancement is marginal. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, Wikipedia, and many more have rapidly shaped how the world interacts with and exchanges information, sometimes resulting in negative consequences. A recent experiment was conducted by the Harrisburg University of Science and Technology where the campus blocked internet access to social media sites for an entire week. The resulting responses of students were mixed, ranging from those whose stress level seemed diminished to those who showed the same type of withdrawal symptoms a quitting smoker might experience (Reuters). Another study done by the Cranfield School of Management among teenagers revealed that a third of the 11-18 year olds they surveyed admitted that text messaging shortcuts damaged the quality of their writing and spelling. In addition, it was revealed that a high percentage of teens admitted to directly inserting information from the internet into schoolwork without any changes. From those that admitted, a third deemed it as an acceptable practice despite recognizing that such behavior is considered plagiarism (Associated Press).

In addition to demonstrating physical and psychological reactions to the inclusion of technology in societies, there appears to be a growing transition in social behavior. The generation of individuals born within the past thirty years have recently been labeled the “Me Generation,” mostly due to the increased use of social media and a growing attitude of narcissism. According to North Western University psychology instructor Jerry Green, today’s generation is in a constant state of multi-tasking. Students are texting while they eat, sit in class, or drive down the road. According to Green, “Human Nature is the same as it has always been. We are all born very selfish but eventually learn to put our needs on hold. It is taking this generation longer to grow up than ever before” (Estrada). With the increasing trend of dependence on technology and self-centered mentality, one can only wonder what the next social transition of humanity will entail.

There is no doubt that the advances in technology across the world over the past few decades have had significant positive results. Medical and scientific breakthroughs allow countless individuals to increase their standard of living far above that which they have been able to previously achieve. However, with the exponential increase of information availability, it is questionable if the human mind will be able to healthily adapt. Numerous situations in addition those previously discussed show increased evidence that some humans are unable to effectively integrate these advances as an appendage to their life rather than the focus of it. It is arguable that mankind may have to slow down a bit in order to adapt to this increase in technology or to find an acceptable distribution channel without the negative side effects. Perhaps it would be better for all of mankind to emulate the man portrayed in Information Overload, and find the ‘power button’ for their own technological distractions in life.

Works Cited

Associated Press. "Technology Addiction Disrupts Teenage Learning | Database and Network Journal | Find Articles at BNET." Find Articles at BNET | News Articles, Magazine Back Issues & Reference Articles on All Topics. BNET, 2009. Web. 09 May 2011. .

Estrada, Amy. "Students Say Their Social Media Addiction Earns“Generation Me” Label." Http://collegian.tccd.edu/. The Collegian Online, 08 Feb. 2011. Web. 9 May 2011. .

Reuters. "Social Media Ban Experiment Reveals Facebook, Twitter Users Display Signs of Addiction - FoxNews.com." FoxNews.com - Breaking News | Latest News | Current News. Fox News, 24 Sept. 2010. Web. 09 May 2011. .

From the Other Side of the Mirror

2011-05-08T23:01:00.000-06:00

I have been thinking an awful lot about this subject and feel that I need to at least blog about it. Seeing that today is a day in which many people celebrate the women in their lives, I think today is a relevant day to speak about it.

Now that I happen to be in the "other boat" in terms of my marital status, I feel that my eyes have been opened to just how mucked up the situation is with young single adults, especially within the realm of my own religious culture. I have looked out on countless situations of people desperate to be married, yet not having any sort of success in that arena, and I think to myself, "Was I really like that, too?" It seems so odd to me, being married now, to think that I had some of the same dark mentality plaguing me a year ago. It seems so silly to have let myself drift into such despair when such a bright light was right around the corner.

Let me share a bit about myself that I really haven't shared publicly, but I feel that maybe some might find some solace in knowing about it. For the years following my mission, I felt extremely uncomfortable about dating. There was something that just happened to me that I can't pinpoint to a single cause or incident. I just didn't feel good about myself and trying to find my eternal companion. I wasn't really shy, but this feeling of disinterest seemed to overwhelm me whenever I was supposed to be mingling in any of the young single adult activities that were provided to me when I was at BYU. Mentally, I would check out if I was in those situations and would never be very social.

I eventually succumbed to feelings of great despair and disappointment. I began to mostly believe that there was something horrifically wrong with me and eventually decided that I was unworthy of love. The tiny candle of hope was almost all snuffed out in my heart. I kept hearing from people that I was such a "great guy" and that there was someone special out there. Sometimes relatives or friends wanted to set me up with a girl that they knew and I eventually started to reject the offer straight up front. It was such a disheartening dilemma because I desperately wanted to get married, yet I felt spiritually and emotionally unable to even begin to try.

I wish I could tell you exactly why I felt this way, but I can't. I still can't pinpoint it to anything in particular, it was just a dark time that lasted for several years without reprieve. I can, however, tell you what kept the little flame of hope from completely disappearing from my heart: service in church. It wasn't just simply attending church and going through the motions each week, singing the songs, pretending to pay attention during the lessons. No, none of that put any fire on the tiny smoldering flame in my heart. It was when I got off my keister and started doing things for others that kept that flame still lit. It didn't take away my loneliness, but it kept me going one more week at a time. I eventually had enough experiences to let me know that there is always hope to be had in the future, even if it is beyond this life.

I wish I could tell you that I was over this dark feeling of hopelessness when I first met Sarah. (In fact, one of the things that she remembers from first meeting me long before we went on our first date was the fact that I seemed sad.) I wish I could tell you exactly what it was that started to bring me out of this mentality, but I can't. I can tell you that I had an excellent ward that I really enjoyed being around who were a great social support network. I also dug in my heels with my assignments through the church and found that I felt great when I got them done. Those things helped, for sure, but no single event brought me out of the pit that I had dug for myself.

When Sarah first showed interest in me, I was stunned. I wrongly thought that there must be something wrong with her if she liked me. However, I got a few gentle nudges in the right direction and eventually decided that I had had enough of being miserable and feeling like I couldn't get married. Once I made that conscious decision to change, everything else fell into place and month after our first date, we were engaged. (That hardly does the whole thing justice, by the way...)

I don't know every single person's situation, nor do I mean to imply that everyone's situation can change as easily as mine did. The only thing I really wish to share is a message of hope. I waited seven and a half long years for my wife, and looking back I can see many valuable lessons that I learned as a single adult. I would have married her had I met her right off my mission, and I don't know why it took us so long to find each other, but now that we are together, all of the pain I felt over those years is all but gone.

Going back to my original intent, I just wanted to touch on my feelings towards many of the women in my life. I have many women that I know who are still single and I know yearn constantly to find a man that will treat them right. Some of them go on many dates, and some don't get asked on any dates at all. In truth, it pains me to tears to know that because these women are some of the most intelligent, creative, funny, compassionate, loving, and fun-loving women I know. The sad thing of this whole situation is that these are the same caliber of women that my relatives tried to set me up with, yet I wouldn't even give them a chance because of my selfish attitude. Shame on me for not giving them the chance to feel hope and acknowledge that they are celestial marriage material! And shame on any man now that does the same thing that I did! These women deserve so much better than what they are given and we should be counted lucky to even know them.

The other thing on my mind are those women I know who long to be mothers, but for one reason or another are unable to experience that joy. My heart goes out to them and I hope with all my heart that our God in Heaven will hear and answer the prayers of their hearts.

In short, Happy ~~Mother's~~ Women's Day to all of you wonderful women in my life. To all of my friends, thank you for being such great examples that I can draw on. To my mother, thank you for being the best example I could have of compassion and how to treat others. To my wonderful wife Sarah, thank you for your love!

Hard Surface Modeling: F-22 Weapon Bays, UV Mapping, and Start of Textures

2011-05-08T19:13:00.000-06:00

I finished up cutting out all of the major weapon bays and such for the jet, but decided that I won't have enough time to get this looking good with all of the other bells and whistles by the end of the semester. Anyway, I'll have to add the rest later. In the mean time I wound up UV mapping everything and started on creating the texture maps.

I've got a ways to go this week in creating textures because this thing won't begin to look real without some grunge on it.

Chiaroscuro: Final Assignment

2011-05-08T19:10:00.000-06:00

This isn't due until next week, but I wanted to get a head start on it since I have to start some heavy work on my thesis presentation. The goal of this assignment was to create a still life composition and use all of the techniques that have been developed over the semester to create something nice. It also had to be done on gray charcoal paper, so you're creating both the shadows and the highlights.

I probably should have gone a bit darker, in some areas, but it is interesting how your eyes start to play tricks on you after a while.

Not artsy...

2011-05-02T11:08:00.000-06:00

... but still the best creation to date:

Baby is due December 9th-ish. Everything is looking okay.

Hard Surface Modeling: F-22 Weapon Bays

2011-05-02T11:05:00.000-06:00

This week I started adding the weapon bay doors and landing gear doors. I also moved my little family this week, so I didn't have a whole lot of time to work on stuff. I have three weeks to finish this, and I think I can do it. Who knows what condition it will be in, but it will be finished, darn it!

Chiaroscuro: Final Assignment Thumbnails

2011-05-02T11:03:00.000-06:00

Fairly soon I will be starting my final assignment which will be a charcoal drawing on medium gray paper. The first step is to find a pleasant composition:

Once the thumbnails are worked out, it's time to refine and start laying out the drawing.

Hard Surface Modeling: F-22 Polygonal Refinement

2011-04-24T13:19:00.000-06:00

This part of the modeling stage always gets a bit tedious, but it is all worth it in the end. After the conversion to polygons, I began smoothing out the topology so that it was a bit more even. In addition, Maya has an option where you can preview a smoother mesh without actually subdividing the model. Because this mesh uses the same formula to interpolate as a NURBS surface, you can get some nice, smooth results:

What needs to be done now is adding little detail lines where the sharp edges need to be. Since the smoothing algorithm sort of averages everything out, creating more detail is needed where you need definition.

Chiaroscuro: Drawing from a Photo – Part 2

2011-04-24T13:15:00.000-06:00

Here is the final and finished project along with the reference photo. I need some more practice in getting the proportions of the human face down.

As an interesting side note, if you have never heard of the artist Chuck Close, his art was very similar to this. The main exception is that the heads he would depict would be on a canvas as large as 15 feet tall:

Hard Surface Modeling: F-22 Polygonal Conversion

2011-04-17T13:12:00.000-06:00

This week I converted over the NURBS surfaces into polygons in order to do some final detailing. This part will be where I can smooth some things out and not mess up the continuity. There are some problem areas that I need to sort out, but I think I am off to a decent start.

Chiaroscuro: Drawing from a Photo – Part 1

2011-04-17T13:10:00.000-06:00

I've done assignments like this before and then tend to come out okay. First you take a photograph and divide it up into a grid system. Then you use the grid lines as visual references to put all the landmarks together. This is part one of a two part assignment.

I seem to be having a problem with my perception of faces, because I do a crappy job at getting the proportions right.

Hard Surface Modeling: F-22 Refinement

2011-04-10T20:13:00.000-06:00

More progress was made on the surfaces of the F-22 this week. I've also been dividing the main body into the various control surfaces of the aircraft, so it should be much easier to put back together when I convert into polygons. This next week I need to adjust a few more things, but I should be close to converting the entire mesh into polygons for the final touchups.

Chiaroscuro: The Human Face

2011-04-10T20:10:00.000-06:00

I'm not going to lie; human faces are one of my least favorite things to draw from observation. I always get proportions and angles wrong, partially due to the way I am looking/measuring/holding the paper. Anyway, that was the assignment this week. I could use some practice on that.

Hard Surface Modeling: F-22 Bottom Surfaces

2011-04-04T12:59:00.000-06:00

This week I worked mainly on my 3D model, finishing up the bottom surfaces. There are some interesting challenges that I have to overcome in terms of how they all meet together. Next up will be to divide the surfaces up into the various control surfaces of the plane.

Hard Surface Modeling: Top NURBS Surfaces

2011-03-19T14:07:00.000-06:00

This week I started creating the surfaces for the F-22 in NURBS. What you see below is actually the second iteration. I started off using a different modeling approach and didn't like the results I got. In the end, I think this will work out better. I still need to create some transitional surfaces between the cockpit area and the fuselage, but this is a good start.

Chiaroscuro: The Human Torso - Finished

2011-03-15T14:18:00.000-06:00

The finished drawing of the torso. It is always kind of therapeutic to work on a drawing like this every now and then. I couldn't do it all the time, though...

Crossing Borders: Diffusion

2011-03-14T12:29:00.001-06:00

Another class I am taking is called "Crossing Borders." It's more of a culture appreciation class and is one of my required general studies class. For the first half of the class, we have been talking about many topics and I was required to produce an original artwork of my own to tie into one of the topics. For my work, I decided to create a digital sculpture in ZBrush, which I call Diffusion. In addition, I was required to write an essay on how my particular work relates to the topic I chose ("The Merging of High and Low Culture.")

Here are renderings of the sculpture followed by the essay. Enjoy!

Brad Reynolds

Mid-Term Project

Crossing Borders: GS 606 - OL11

Diffusion

With the advent of the digital age, the potential exposure of an art piece is greater than it has ever been before. Anyone with the proper knowledge has the potential to create art and distribute it to an almost infinite audience because of the channels that are available today. Social diffusion, as defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is the spread of cultural elements from one area or group of people to others by contact (Diffusion, Merriam-Webster.com). The digital sculpture Diffusion seeks to form a literal image of this definition in context of the merger of high and low cultures. It also conceptually explores the high potential of viewership or commodification made possible by the technological achievements available today.

The sculpture consists of two major elements tied together by a nondescript base. Two disembodied hands extend toward each other making contact at the tip of the index finger. Where the two fingers meet, both surfaces become fluid and begin to blend into each other. Both of the hands are visually distinct from one another with various evident characteristics, each personifying the concept of high and low culture.

One hand is slender and well-manicured, suggesting an existence free of manual labor. A ring adorns the third finger, a symbol of status and wealth that is displayed for the world to see. The shirt and jacket sleeves are of high quality, another indication of social status and wealth. Contrastingly, the opposite hand is gruff and weathered from a life of impoverished living. Warts and scars are scattered at random across the skin while most of the palm and fingers are covered by a knit glove, tattered and worn out from years of use. The fingers of the hand are meaty and tough with one of the fingertips bandaged up from a prior injury. The clothing that covers the arm is of a destitute quality and condition, with the jacket showing significant signs of wear. Although this is not a direct reflection on the art and taste of the two separate cultures, it is symbolic of the division of class that existed in society prior to the introduction of affordably produced goods.

The gesture of each hand is also worth noting. There are a number of interpretations that can be found with the gestures, however it is left to the viewer to decide the meaning for themselves. The wealthy hand is posed in a manner that suggests a beckoning motion to the poor hand. In contrast, the poor hand has a sense of weakness to its pose, as if it is in its final thrust before drowning. However, its pose could also be interpreted as a gradual increase in strength or awakening. The relaxed manner in which its index finger is extended suggests that the contact with the other hand is purely coincidental. At the point of contact, the hands appear to be melting into each other, although it is not clear which direction the flow is occurring. Or, perhaps, is it occurring in both directions? No singular event can be determined as the defining point where consumerism began to be commonplace in the world. It is evident that goods of mass consumption have become more affordable to all peoples as time has progressed. Andy Warhol once stated that “What's great about this country is America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking” (Andy Warhol Quotes, goodreads.com). However, did this trend begin with the upper class reaching out in a gesture of good will to make their products available to the masses? Or was the rise of a middle class from the lower echelons of society the cause? Alternatively, perhaps was it a mutually generated result of society as a whole growing closer together financially?

An additional point to illuminate is the potential results of offering this particular piece in a digital format. The sculpture, in reality, does not exist as our mind perceives it. It is a series of data nodes– electronic signals that are interpreted by the computer to give the appearance of reality. It is questionable that it is a unique piece of art, partially because the ability to duplicate and alter it is almost effortless. Because it is a visual representation of an electronic signal, does it qualify as art in the traditional sense? In just a few clicks of the mouse, the form can be significantly altered. In a few seconds, the perceived material could be changed from bronze to marble, from marble to glass, from glass to clay, and from clay back to bronze. In traditional sculpture, there would only be one true original piece, even though copies of it could be produced through creating a mold. With the marvels of modern technology, if one so desired, the data that comprises the digital sculpture could be sent to a rapid prototyping company to produce a close to accurate physical reproduction of what the screen represents. Alternatively, the data could be used by a computer-aided manufacturing program to produce a mold for mass production in whatever material was desired. Looking at the work as purely a 2D representation of a sculptural concept, internet technology would allow for potentially millions of viewers to experience this piece. The potential diffusion of this “artwork” is significantly amplified due to the avenues of modern technology. Being a part of a high or low culture no longer is a prerequisite for viewing it if the artist deems it necessary.

With the advancements offered to the world today, the potential audience for an artist is staggering. Emerging mediums and distribution channels allow the chance for peoples of all backgrounds and financial situations to experience the message that an artist chooses to deliver. This places a huge amount of responsibility upon the artist to convey their message in a way that the world will be able to properly interpret. The mediums available today truly have the power to shape the direction of tomorrow.

Works Cited

“Andy Warhol quotes.” Good Reads. Goodreads.com, n.p, n.d. http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1203.Andy_Warhol.

“Diffusion.” Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Merriam-Webster, n.p. 2011. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/diffusion.

Chiaroscuro: The Human Torso

2011-03-14T12:22:00.000-06:00

This week I started off a drawing of a female torso cast. The main exercise here is to determine where the light and dark values are separated on the form. From there, I can start taking the contrast a lot further so that the highlights pop out and the darks recede into the back.

Hard Surface Modeling: F-22 Polygonal Block in

2011-03-14T12:19:00.000-06:00

This week I started off my F-22 model. The first step was to do a rough polygon block-in, even though I will be producing it initially in NURBS. This helps me to understand how I am going to make the surfaces flow from one to another. Granted, it's really rough right now, but I will be able to get it in.

Chiaroscuro: Rendering Fabric Part 2

2011-03-04T10:49:00.000-07:00

Here is the final version of the fabric drawing from last week. There are some things that I need to improve on, but I was fairly pleased with the way this turned out. One of the things I want to try next time is showing the degradation of the light source as parts of the object get further from the source.

Hard Surface Modeling: F-22

2011-03-04T10:47:00.000-07:00

My next model to tackle:

Wish me luck.

Chiaroscuro: Rendering Fabric Part 1

2011-02-28T10:28:00.000-07:00

This week we began a long drawing where we are observing how cloth acts. This helps in teaching how there are long, gradual transitions from light to dark, then sharp edges where the transition is very quick:

Next week, we will be finishing it up!

Hard Surface Modeling: The Wheel Rim Part 3

2011-02-28T10:26:00.001-07:00

This week was essentially the last week for the rims model. I found out this week that we didn't have to model a car for our rest of the term project, but could model anything we wanted, as long as it was a hard surface model. I have to do some searching to see what I can come up with, but it should be fun.

In the mean time, I added some fillets to the model where I could and softened up the edges.

Here is a nice little rendering done with a fake reflected environment.

One of the requirements we had was to do a turntable rendering with an "evaluation" shader attached to the model. That essentially means that you reflect an environment that will help you tell how well your surface continuity is. They provided us with a reflection map...

... but I thought that it was a bit ugly, so I opted for another one that I found:

Chiaroscuro: Composition

2011-02-20T17:10:00.000-07:00

This week we worked on an understanding of composition. Composition is a very important element that will make or break an image. If something isn't composed right, it can feel very plain or uninteresting... or it can feel downright nasty!

We started off by arranging our items in various positions and sketching quick, loose thumbnail sketches of the shapes. From there, we picked the ones that seemed the most interesting to us and went one step further in showing some basic value sketches:

From there, we picked the most interesting one and did a final rendering of it:

I can't say that it is my best work ever, but I am slowly learning some interesting things from this class.

Hard Surface Modeling: The Wheel Rim Part 2

2011-02-20T17:06:00.000-07:00

This week in class we again worked on our wheel rims for the cars we will be building. I managed to pick a bugger of a wheel to model up in NURBS, mainly because of the complexity of the surfaces that intersect. I tried my hardest, but in the end, I still have some massaging to do with the surfaces to make it so that they have continuity from one surface to another.

One of the hardest things to do with this model is adding edge fillets to the models. It is a necessary step, but it can be really tricky to get it done. Every edge has to pick up some sort of light reflection to look realistic, even if it is very small.

Finally, I did a little test render (because another classmate of mine did one like this and I liked it a lot). Looking decent, but I can see some areas that need work.

Chiaroscuro: Value Scales

2011-02-13T20:39:00.000-07:00

I can't say that this class is too challenging. I spent an awful number of classes during my undergrad learning how to properly shade geometric forms, which is one of the things we were doing this week. To start off, we learned and replicated different forms of creating a 5-value shading scale for our drawings:

Next, we set up each of our geometric forms with proper lighting and drew them individually in full value.

Finally, we arranged our geometric forms into a composition and rendered it at full value.

Hard Surface Modeling: The Wheel Rim

2011-02-13T20:35:00.000-07:00

This week we started off our car project with the wheels. The surfaces that you see below are NURBS surfaces. NURBS stands for Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines, which is a fancy way of saying, "A surface that is defined by four mathematical boundaries." Every NURBS surface can be infinitely subdivided to whatever resolution is desired at the time of rendering. However, because they are based on uniform parameterization, they are incredibly difficult to texture. They are well-suited for generating large surfaces that need to look mechanical or manufactured, rather than a random organic texture that you'd see on something like a tree. Usually 3D modelers will start off with NURBS surfaces, then convert them to a polygon surface for texturing. It's just one way, in a large amount of ways, to start off with creating a model.

The reference I decided to use was a rim from a 2005 Hyundai Tiburon, I think. I found multiple views of it. Next week, I will begin slicing things up and finishing the model.

Chiaroscuro: Line Value

2011-02-05T21:29:00.000-07:00

This is my last studio drawing class I have to take for my core classes. The title of the class is "Chiaroscuro", which apparently is the Italian term for controlling between light and dark in drawing. I don't think they use it now, but it is a well known term for artists. This week, however, we just focused on our contour drawings. I have a set of basic geometric forms that I set up and draw from. You'll see them used a bit over the next few weeks.

Hard Surface Modeling: Aaaaaaand we're back!

2011-02-05T21:12:00.000-07:00

This week was the first week of the semester. In this class I will be focusing on hard surface modeling. That essentially means that I'll be working on non-organic models (i.e. vehicles, props, etc.). This is a lot more akin to what I did when I was working in industrial design, so I am glad to be back at it. For our first assignment we just were told to model up whatever object we wanted to to demonstrate our skill set. I took about 12 hours and modeled up this FN-SCAR assault rifle that is commonly used with the marines and special forces. It was a fun assignment to get started with, although I can see a lot of things I would have done differently for different purposes.

Current Demo Reel - January 2011

2011-01-11T17:19:00.002-07:00

Ecorchè: Final Images

2010-12-16T07:36:00.000-07:00

Final results for the class:

Organic Modeling: Final

2010-12-16T07:31:00.000-07:00

The final results for the class:

Thesis Project: Semester Summary

2010-12-13T11:47:00.000-07:00

Brad Reynolds

ANM 670

Thesis Project Summary

Abstract:

I would like to create a set of retro-science fiction themed models based on the 1948 novel, “The City and the Stars” by Arthur C. Clarke. The goal of the project would be to learn and demonstrate my skills in modeling, texturing, and rigging.

Project Proposal:

The golden age of science fiction from the mid-twentieth century offers a wealth of potential creativity for a thesis project. During this time period of rapidly increasing scientific discovery and advancement, authors and artists were able to dream up a myriad of imaginative stories and gadgetry, some of which exist today. It is from this era of science fiction that I am selecting the basis for my thesis concept, specifically from Arthur C. Clarke’s 1956 novel, “The City and The Stars.”

The City and the Stars takes place a billion years in the future in the city of Diaspar. Due to apocalyptic events, the last remnants of humanity are all housed within the technologically advanced city that cares for all of their wants and needs instantaneously through a complex central computer system. All inhabitants of Diaspar are actual reincarnations of former citizens, their minds being stored inside the computer system when they die. Because of this, citizens have millions of years of selective memories within themselves during their lifetime.

The main character of the story, Alvin, is a ‘Unique,’ or citizen that was created without any past lives to remember. Because of this fact, Alvin is driven by an insatiable appetite to explore the world outside of Diaspar. Through a series of events, he discovers and travels to Lys, another community of humans outside of Diaspar who have adopted an almost agrarian lifestyle.

Along with a companion gained in Lys, Alvin discovers and travels to Shalmirane, a fortress where the inhabitants of earth fought off the Invaders with unimaginable weapons. During this excursion, they encounter an extraterrestrial creature who is the last survivor of a religious cult dating back to the days before Diaspar. Accompanying the alien is a strange robot that came with the “Master” of the cult when they first arrived on earth millions of years ago. Through a series of events, Alvin is led to the spacecraft of the Master and travels to a distant galaxy where he is introduced to knowledge that will change the lives of both those in Diaspar and Lys forever.

Deliverables

Drawing upon contemporary visual influences of the time during which the novel was written, the style of the models will reflect a nostalgic feel similar to the serial comic books of the 1930s. Two different and distinct visual styles would need to be included since the characters and props are from two long-separated time periods. The general description of the models I would like to produce is as follows:

Alvin: Considered a “Unique” in the city of Diaspar, Alvin has never had a previous life, unlike all the other citizens of Diaspar. During the time of the novel, he has just reached his twentieth birthday and is now considered a full adult, capable of living the rest of his existence unsupervised. Unlike the rest of Diaspar, Alvin does not have an irrational fear of the outside world, but rather has an insatiable appetite for exploration. Physically, Alvin has remained at twenty years old since he stepped out of the Hall of Creation. Although the city of Diaspar will sustain his life, he will not appear to age a day during his existence. Throughout the ages, the citizens of Diaspar have been refining the design of the human body, removing what they deemed to be nature’s unfortunate adaptations. For example, the body is completely hairless, except for the head. Other details such as nails and teeth have been removed, although a different device for masticating food (not described in the novel) has taken its place. Citizens of Diaspar are physically perfect and exist in a variety of heights, weights, and races. The clothing of the residents of Diaspar is merely ornamental, serving no function for protection or storage since the city maintains a constant comfortable temperature and can manifest any object at will. During one of Alvin’s explorations of the city, it is mentioned that he wears a cloak as part of his attire.

The model for Alvin would be considered the “Hero” model and will be the primary focus of the project. In addition to creating a high-level Z-Brush sculpt, the model would have high resolution textures, a muscle system rig, and cloth simulation for his cloak.

The Master’s Robot: Before the isolation of Diaspar, a human religious leader known only in the story as “The Master” began a religious movement that spread across the galaxy. Upon the Master’s death, a number of converts fell away from the movement, but a number remained faithful. One of the last of these followers returned to Shalmirane to await an impending religious event. With this extraterrestrial follower was a robot of unusual design. As the Master’s faithful companion, the Robot was programmed to only obey his commands and not communicate with anyone else. The robot is of an alien design, originally designed by a species not native to earth. The initially noticeable feature is its three lidless eyes, it’s primary sensory input, arranged in a triangle, but not giving a clear indication of where the Robot’s attention is focused. It contains multiple robotic arms and a series of tentacles on its body, although it’s primary mode of transportation is a hover system. Alvin and his companion discover the robot on their excursion from Lys to Shalmirane. It mainly communicates with Alvin through telepathy, although it has the ability to speak.

The robot model would be a medium-resolution model to accompany the hero model. In addition to a medium resolution set of textures, the robot would have have a rig set up for controlling the arms and tentacles.

The Master’s Spaceship: Reputed to be one of the fastest ships to be built, the Master’s Spaceship was also his home. At a hundred feet in length, it has a rounded cross section and is described as being pointed in both ends. Having been buried beneath the sands outside of Diaspar since the days when man first retreated from the stars, the ship is caked with hardened dirt, rock, and sand when it is first discovered by Alvin. Despite this, the ship’s function and hull has been perfectly preserved by its memory circuits. It initially contains no visible signs of windows or doors, but eventually reveals an airlock to its interior. The design of the interior is incredibly homely with comfortable decor. On the anterior wall is an oval viewscreen that covers the entirety of the surface. Arranged around the screen is a semi-circle of couches, flanked by a series of tables with chairs designed for non-human species. The ship is capable of traveling faster than the speed of light and is able to transverse galactic distances in a matter of hours. In addition to its faster than light speed, it also has the ability to compensate for inertia, allowing for a complete and instantaneous stop without detriment to the ship or its passengers.

The spaceship would be another medium-resolution model complete with textures and set-key controls for various mechanical systems like the landing gears, engine vents, and airlock system.

Visual References:

Production Design: Retro Futurism

Bioshock

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Character Design: Retro Futurism/Utopianism

THX 1138

Metropolis

Mood: Warm Glow Mingled with Brooding Uncertainty

Blade Runner

Dune

Concept Artwork:

Current concept artwork has been completed by myself, Nathan Finlay, and Josh Farnworth. Further exploration and development is desired for the final designs.

Task List:

Alvin:

-Modeling

-UV Mapping

-Textures

-Muscle Rigging

-Cloth Simulation

-Rendering

Robot:

-Modeling

-UV Mapping

-Textures

-Rigging

-Rendering

Ship:

-Modeling

-UV Mapping

-Textures

-Rigging

-Rendering

Gantt Chart:

See attached Gantt Chart.

Note: Because I will be transferring on site starting the summer semester, there may be additional opportunities available for collaboration or helping another animation student with their project. If it is decided that my skills could be better used elsewhere, I may take up that opportunity and submit a redirect through the graduate offices.

Ecorchè: The Muscles of the Head

2010-12-13T11:46:00.000-07:00

This week and for the final we are working on the muscles of the head. This is the final stretch and I hope that it pays off. So far, I think it has.

Organic Modeling: Final Push

2010-12-13T11:44:00.000-07:00

This week is the final push for our models. A few more refinements need to be made on mine, but I am getting much closer.