Keyshot, 11 Days Renders etc

Been trying out Keyshot and thought I'd use it as an opportunity to render out what I've been working on as I haven't updated in a while. Anyway this work was for 11 Days To Save the World a student project demoed at EGX 2014 the office models were for use in the demo.
I've also been preparing for an interview as technician for my old course, needed to prepare a demonstration on Unity basics, also applied for a job in property VR, should hear how that went soon :)
I also miiiight be making some creatures for a game too, I don't know much at this stage but it sounds exciting!
But yeah, lots of stuff on the horizon. Feel like I'm slowly getting closer to a job in the industry.

Warlock Town: To Do List

 Finished pre EGX work on 11 Days, will be uploading screenshots/renders soon :)
Didn't enter the competition in the end as I wouldn't of had enough time to get it to a high standard while also working on 11 Days at the same time.

Anyway back to the warlock town...
List for what I need to still model and components for the warlock town

 

Castle (Modular spires, walls, drawbridge)
Mages Guild
Marketplace Tent incl. crates, items for sale - fruit & resources, wheelbarrow
Well
Centaur cave (Torches, will probably sculpt the rock, moss/grass. Unsure about waterfall for now, will get to that once it's all in engine)
Dungeon (Door, steps, pillars/porch)
Maze (Entrance, outer wall, inside modular hedge pieces)
Gargoyle crypt (Crypt and sculpted gargoyle)
Griffin nest
Dragon tower
Tavern and thieves guild. May add more buildings in a similar style around these buildings to give more sense of a town feel?
Swamp (trees and mist effect, might use animating planes for this?)
Statue (base stand, warlock statue)
Shipyard (modular planks and posts, barrels)
Distance: Sculpted modular rock formations
Etc: Trees, rocks, grass, extra decoration to add a bit of life

Update: Stave Church and Copier

 

Started some of the stave church, as most of the parts are repeating I'm trying to keep it modular.

Spent today making a copier for a student game project I'm working on

Lots to do!

Been away in Scotland for the past 2 weeks, so now its time to get back to my ever increasing to do list.

I'm very very tempted to enter this contest:
http://www.creative-assembly.com/graduate-art-contest

Would most likely make a Viking Stave Church as they have a unique interesting look to them.

Doubt I'll have enough time to enter but if I do I'll be coming back to this...

Vulture Skull: Done. Market Tent Update

Removed paint detailing to show wireframe better

Done, once I've got dDo working properly I'll put this in to get a more authentic metal effect.

Adjusted the size and height of the tent and added smoothing groups to the fabric parts.

Dinobird 2?

http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/new-flying-dino-had-four-limbs-and-longest-known-feathers


Came across this and thought it looked really cool, reminds me a bit of Monster Hunter. I've been thinking about giving modelling wings and feathers another go but using planes to get a better layered effect. I won't be making this anytime soon as I need to finish my current projects and will also be doing another environment after that.

Warlock Town: Buildings So Far...

Current project at the moment is recreating the Warlock town screen from Heroes of Might and Magic II a game which holds a lot of nostalgia for me. Majority of objects will be built in Maya however some things like the nest, gargoyle and statue will be sculpted

Dragon Tower, aside from maybe a small amount of tweaking I think this is mostly done ready for texturing, might bevel some edges so they aren't as harsh

Modular castle turret part, at the moment its not very refined at all. I will most likely bevel the corners of the turret holes to make them appear less square

Mage guild, quite pleased with this might add some beams to the roof, like the dragon tower this is pretty much there.

Marketplace tent, not entirely sure about the dimensions looks too tall at the moment

Update: Quick Sculpt & Bird Skull

 Quick sculpt of a weird fish man I did a while ago. Was going for a goldfish look with the big cheeks and floaty fins, may come back to this at a later stage to add final details and texturing.

Been asked to produce a bird skull to act as decoration for Contained

Loosely based the shape on this vulture skull but included influences from other bird skulls.

Base Maya model

Sculpted detail in Mudbox

 From here I now just need to unwrap the UV's, paint and retopologise. I'm planning to use this model to get to grips with implementing level of detail so I should by the end have at least two variants

Flower Char

Next character sculpt is based on Anna Maystrenko character design https://www.behance.net/gallery/14328857/Character-design

I have started the base mesh in Maya and then altered the shoulders as it would make more sense to make the flower areas separately. I plan to take this mesh into ZBrush however before I do this I will need to spend more time practising with base Zbrush meshes

Mystical Bovine (WIP)

Rough painting inspired by an image of a goose/swan behind an antelope http://llwproductions.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/7-perfectly-timed-pictures-illusion-of-a-winged-antelope.jpg

Think the wings could do with being adjusted higher. May do a side view and make a 3D model of this.

Dinobird: Render

Renders of the bat wings using Maya mentalray.

Renders of the feathered wings, again using mentalray in Maya.

I'm not sure which of the two I prefer, the feathered wings blend in with the rest of the model better than the membrane wings and I also feel that I have painted and textured them to a higher level than the membrane wings, they also add more colour however the membrane wings have a much more prehistoric look to them.

For now this is finished however I plan to still work on this model and add alpha mapped feather textured planes to blend the wings and the body better and also some long colourful feathers maybe on the end of the tail and at the back of the head to give more detail. I plan to do the same with the camel model.

Dinobird: Membrane wings: Paint and opacity

 I had some problems with the lower and thiner parts of the wings where any paint would seep through to the other side making it difficult to get a clean look. To fix this I first tried using orient to surface with the reasoning that this would select only the side of the mesh that I wanted to paint however this didn't work as expected. After this I used flood from camera so the paint would be evenly distrubuted across the wing mesh which is the only mesh unlocked. This worked well and produced the above effect.

These are my references for membrane wings, I have used the top and bottom for projecting and reference of the top of the wings and the middle for the incandescence of under the wings.

I have also edited the colours on the top side of the wings, I'm not sure I like how this looks however so I may return them to their original colour. I have also discovered opacity layers in Mudbox which I have used to make the skin between the limbs semi-transparent. I will test this when I export the model to Maya to see how light travels through.

 

Here I have changed the colour back

I might try and add some holes to the wings making them look a bit more worn and aged as well as maybe some scars.

This is the current state of the membrane wings version of the model

I removed the feathers from the end of the tail as they looked strange so I flattened and smoothed the end into a point more like a lizards tail, I may add more feathers using Maya planes to both the back of the head of the dinobird and the end of the tail.

Dinobird: Membrane Wings

I thought it would look effective to have the membrane wings transparent in the areas which would be just skin so I exported the Mudbox mesh as an .fbx to Maya and applied different materials to it. On exporting back to mudbox this didn't carry over so I will continue painting the wings as a solid object then maybe add an opacity map at the end.

Dinobird: Wings

Today I have been aligning and fixing the distance between the mirrored wings (folded feathered) in Maya so I can import the highpoly export and the low poly for UV's so I can then paint in detail. To do this I used an export of the dinobird body and inputted distances till the right high poly wing aligned then did the same for the right low poly and then the same for the opposite left wings but inputting minus.

 

Added detail to the black and undersides of the wings, now need to refine the underside detail and add detail to the coloured outside

 

I then added normals by using the layer of feathered detail from photo reference.

 

 I think that the sculpted feather are interfering with the feather normals so I will smooth them out to allo wmore detail to show through

Dinobird: Eye

 

 

Added a sphere for the eye and painted it in.

Also painted in more detail to the beige front feathers so they look less flat

I've been interested to see how this would look with membrane wings instead of feather wings, these aren't finished and could do with being posed in a more natural position, prehaps dropped a little or maybe folded. I will most likely continue the feather texture over the backs of the wings with the inside being light blue skin, maybe with a orange or red pattern to match the bill.