Christmas

Speedpaint of my Christmas tree while my mum watches eastenders. Needs more lens flare :D Happy Christmas guys, I will still be uploadin all this year. Gotta get my rooftop finished and stuff so there is plenty to keep me busy. So bring on the bad xmas films and late night gaming and hopefully my new laptop next week so i can see my textures in high resolution testures and cringe :D

Vintage Car Stamp

Vintage and colourful, awesome. I played around with presentation and found and old game called vintage carbon, it has a really nice stamp set up and so i took insipration from that and produced this. I did it in half an hour before I handed in disk, it's alright. My car is a bit dark, maybe should have rendered on yellow like they did...

Better?? You can definitely see it more...ahh its waay better, I admit that.

Anywho on to my next project, I am doing another vehicle for this project in my spare time. I wanted to do something more stylized and only have a diffuse. It will be a nice test of painting skills and a nice break from super high poly stuff.

More Renders

Al right I tried to do a few renders this morning, the shadows are working again...somehow. I fixed some issues I was having and I rendered these out. I probably have to fix the carpet, it would almost look better if it had no normal map on it.

Red looks cool....if I rendered in the center of the scene

Test Render

Okay so I did a test render today and at one point the shadow works then it doesn't and so it's increasingly more and more frustrating. Hopefully I can fix it tomorrow but for now here is some screen short for you Mikey, to see what you think.

At one point my car got abducted when I rendered it...I'd be stupid not to save that image. 

Playing around with a dark render like you have to unlock the car.

And full colour render, really trying to make the gold pop, unfortunately as I said I'm not getting my awesome hard shadows just soft ones and the alpha isn't working again...but that's for tomorrows headache.

Car & Bunnies

So Just working on the textures now and playing with the shaders in Max....playing a little too much but I'm all about the shiny shiny gold. It gives it a stylized look which is pretty cool. It is a bit overdone but this is only me playing about. I hope to finish this bad boy next week. Got some critique from James, he's a really nice guy and was giving me tips on getting the environment done and he set me something quite easy to do so i can get the reflection map working and looking cool. So yeah all the funs are being had, i need to work out the Codemasters shaders though and try get the alphas working.

And as I try to distract myself I work on low poly bunnies....yeah I'm not sure either. But it was just a fun little project to do in my spare time. It's not quite finished but I'm saying it is and moving on, maybe do another low poly project because I enjoyed this one. 

Two different sheets because i couldn't decide on layout. But the story goes bunny is boxing, bunny gets cocky, bunny gets knocked out and then cries...poor bunny :(

Unwrapping finished...or is it?

Well long long hours of unwrapping and I have a result. I tired to be efficient with my space and I think I did okay. So why do I somewhat that it is unfinished? Well I did a test bake with my wheel and the results where less than desirable, some parts stretched and stuff and so I want to do a few more tests and if it's my unwrap I will literally cry lol. Hopefully I am just being stupid and everything will be fine....:( So my tonight is adjust my high poly to fit the low poly more and trying a new new test :D

What have you been working on?

Well low poly vehicle is done as you know, I have been unwrapping for the last few days but it's took me longer than usual due to the fact that Max wants to crash all the time. I dunno what causes this but a constant supply of crashing and forgetting to save can get rather frustrating. Also due to not have max 2012 at home i am limited in awesome unwrap features and so i must wait until tomorrow to get all the parts into my texture space. So by the time James comes I WILL have this unwrapped, I WILL have baked down my normal map and AO's and I WILL have a basic diffuse. And I HOPE to start a colour specular so i can test the brassiness. So yeah i have a couple of days left but that's time enough as long as max and I can stay friends :D

So due to crapiness I have been working on the Bioware Character project, the project is to either design a character  or create an existing character from the Mass effect or Dragonage games and make it. So I decided to make a Drell. It's interesting to get back into character modelling, i do enjoy it and the Zbrush practice is needed for FMP so its a win win situation :)

It's coming along a few more tweaks and it will be done. I've been trying to find a good scale alpha because these creatures are like reptiles but i haven't found a nice one yet but when i do that will finish it off nicely and produce me one nice little mesh to work with :D

OMG Low Poly Finally Done!!

Took a good couple of days of painstaking my way through the mesh and recreating geometry and it seemed like it would never get anywhere near 10,000. But finally after so long it went under. I had to compromise on so many things and the topology isn't the greatest thing in the world but at least it's under budget. Now the picture below is ready to be unwrapped. I chose to do it symmetrical to get the most out of my 1024. So It will be hopefully tonight unwrapping it and finishing that up tomorrow then onto texturing for a few days. So hopefully it will be of some sort of loveliness by the time James comes in. Oh and I know i have to fix smoothing groups but i will do that later :D

Opera Coupe High Poly

High poly almost done...who knew high poly took so long. It is my first time doing a high poly like this and yeah it's going quite well but i am wasting a lot of time on it. But on the other hand by doing so I am giving myself an awesome normal map and AO to work with, and that just with a block colour diffuse looks awesome. So only a week for James to come back and I want to have low poly done which i am starting tomorrow, unwrapped, baked down with normal and AO and half textured by that time... Ambitious maybe but if i keep in the habbit of staying in the labs late I can get it done. It's been hard to focus and the mind is an easy thing to wonder but I try my best to keep it on work, but anywho no excuses I will get this one done in 2 weeks time :D

Cheap Photoshop Tricks

So I took the images I have and just when all graphic design on it lol, using Photoshop filters and overlays and such just to try and see what the scene would look like. It's alright seems to fit, not sure I think their might be too much going on so feedback is always appreciated :D Anyway I need to start modelling but right now I'm trying to get some FMP blogs done for presentation of friday.

So follow me, I will lead you into the light :D http://taxidermistfmp.blogspot.co.uk/

The Car Wins

After careful deliberation I decided to go with the car, It is an awesome car and it is great practice texturing conductors and dialectics and different material definition. Unfortunately this is a one off, fortunately I was able to get quite good images at high res so i can study it. I don't have othos which is a bad thing but i tend to have a good eye and I'm sure i can work out everything okay.

P.s. I dont think the woman in the pictures are real but i'm not sure :/

As for the background I was thinking of doing a small little gas station, I need to practice which competitions and stuff. I shouldn't go shopping when i have concepting to do lol.

Vehicle Project

So when I heard we were getting a vehicle project I was dreading it. Because Codemasters were setting the brief I assumed it was going to be a rally car or something of that sort which I know I wouldn't enjoy. But when we got the brief and seen how open it was I got really excited...vehicles, me, excited. These things have never been muttered in a sentence before this point.

What were my first ideas then? I wanted to do a tractor, go right back to my Irish roots and they are generally more interesting than a generic sci-fi vehicle or car. Then I started searching and I got stuck, first there are so many awesome tractor designs but I also then started to fall in love with other vehicles that I would love to model. So here's the results;

Okay so this bad boy is a 1926 William Foster No. 14564 Tractor. It's so awesome, the colour the look its just so cool. But I have one problem with it, it looks more like a gypsy caravan than a tractor and so unfortunately I'm not for doing this one but I though i would add it here because it is an awesome tractor.

This is a trailer...thing...ummmm let me get the name... a Ruston Clover Huller, it's a thresher....whatever that is. But I loved its design, real in game stuff where it just looks like someone has added random components to make it look pretty but have no function lol. But yeh its a vehicle kindof but I don't think I could present it well so nope <3

Now this is a definite contender, it has beautiful awesome colour, awesome scale I can light it awesomely and so it will abide by Sam's Law. I really love this crane, this Ruston Bucyrus Crawler Crane. Yes I done my research lol. After seeing this I completely forgot about the tractor because its so amazing. So yeh this could be the one :D

But then I found this Hornsby chain track tractor, old tractors are the best and it has such an awesome design. It might be a little complicated for the time period we have but it is still up there because of its awesomeness. Very steampunky and I would really enjoy modelling this, but as I say it only has one flaw that its very complicated in some areas.

And once I thought it was all over this 1912 Renault opera coupe came into my radar. I never liked cars I always thought they were boring and I never thought I would actually consider modelling but but I adore the colours and shape of this car. It has a beautiful gold and blue colour scheme which is soooooooooo awesome, the material definition is superb and I so very much want to model it..

And so I am stuck between awesome crane, awesome tractor and awesome car. Views and suggestions would be highly appreciated as I am going to spend the rest of tonight weighing out the pro's and con's to each of these, it does seem right now I am weighing more towards the car. Who knew I would actually find this project interesting :D

PEACE

Abbey Fireworks

So i went to Abbey today to watch the fireworks and stuffs and there was a small fair so i took some really bad blurry reference pictures. Blurry because I was cold and kept shivering and I couldn't find the right setting on my camera and gave up. So yosh nice to see some colour schemes and stuff, but for now this project is on hold and vehicle one is progressing :D So i will post an initial ideas blog tomorrow!