3D update - Squwarky

It got a little busy at work with handin deadlines approaching before the christmas holidays but here is where little squwarky has got up to. Below is a little evaluation note for me, might not be very interesting to read for anyone else!!

Ok he hasnt got an awful lot further but there has been a lot going on behind the scenes. It has taken me a while to decide whether I would be better off to model the seams or to displacement map them. Then it took me a while to decide how to unwrap him to get the best uvs. I have pelted him at the moment with a split along the belly and straight up through the top of his head which is ok for the seams but for the patchwork texture I think he could do with seperate projections to help avoid the stretching so a whole new set of uvs might be needed, this will also help with creating different shaders for each type of fabric so is probably worth the effort. Then the problem comes with the overlapping uvs which could I suppose be fixed with transparency on the texture but again I think it might be worth remodelling the bird around where the seams will be. I think his head needs to look more seperate and I would like it to be able to turn without stretching the neck and I think the same should go for the wings. Not sure about the tail yet but the seams are not working as it is. Colour wise I just really quickly put together some patterns but looking at him the only ones that really go are those on his head. I could go on but I think that is enough for now!

Text

Have been playing around with paint effects and the toon shaders in maya, starting to get some nice blurry effects, its cool that its in 3D and could be animated or whatever. Loads more settings to play around with when I get the chance.

Maya Modelling

A 3D bird I'll call him Squawky. Squawky is a work in progress. I imagine him having a patchwork style texture nice and plump with lots of nice fabrics and patterns. Maybe Squawky could be a bit tatty and have fluff falling out of his seams and I think his legs and beak should be wire wrapped in yarn or something. He obviously still needs a bit of work on the model, the tail especially, beak and legs but its a start (who knows if there will ever be a finish though!) I am enjoying doing some 3d work again though, and hopefully posting it will encourage me to continue.

Tree Doodles

As I am on a bit of a roll with trees at the momment ( must be something to do with Autumn!) I thought I would post the pictures from my sketchbook with trees in them. I have to confess that I havent touched my sketchbook for months now, but it is always nice to take the time to look back through it, hopefully I can get back into it soon.

 

Below left is a doodle which I probably did whilest on the phone, I cant really remember. I just know that it made me wonder what a doodle might look like in 3D and the result is on the right, hopefully I will get the turntable posted at some point but you get the idea for now.

Bubble Lady

I know where I am trying to go with this one! I have a sketch which I thought I would try and reproduce in 3d, it is the hair made out of bubbles which I wanted to concentrate on. I ended up doing it with rigid bodies and constraints but I think it would be better with dynamic curves, but I just couldnt get them to do anything at all today, I think it may be a bug but will have to test it on another machine. There is a little render of this which may make an appearance some time! It starts off ok then the dynamics go a bit bonkers.