Hack Job

Stretching back to that swordfight project, I finally finished a DT tutorial on mudbox sculpting. Still having a hard time using my tablet in mudbox, hand still cramping up and hover dragging still annoying. I downloaded a mudbox system packtch and it seems to be a bit more stable and functional now, but I've yet to be truly impressed. I managed to rush a messy job of the sword from the tutorial. I'll spend more time making better ones for the actual project. The only reason I'm posting it is cause I haven't posted anything in a while and so I can have an embarrassing reference when I get more proficient. This is a screen capture from mudbox.

And here is the corresponding maya render when the bump, color and specular maps are transferred to the original geometry...

Yeah, ew... but I know it can look better through much study and practice. I just have to work up the motivation to delve into this finicky business. I think the one problem topic I see most often on forums is transferring sculpt maps back into software for rendering... it seems a very uncooperative subject.

Anyway, I was hoping to use mudbox to sculpt and texture the bones I'm modelling for the horror competition. We'll see how that goes. I'll hopefully finish up another tutorial and get started on some more bones this week. Speaking of bones, I just started reading The Lost World by Michael Crichton. I've enjoyed Jurassic Park several times, but never got around to reading the sequel. It's pretty engaging so far.

Happy last week before school (if you go for that sort of thing),
Stuart

Starting some bones

I've gotten a start on my skeleton character.

Humerus, radius and ulna:

 


Lumbar vertebrae with wireframe and UVs:

These are just screen captures for now, still a fair bit of work to do on these bones yet, but I might start blocking out some more like the ribs and sternum. Having some trouble getting good references of all angles or turntables... or physical models... hmmm. Stay tuned for updates.
Stuart

Car script

Last night I did a quick little script for someone on simplymaya that had a problem attaching many cars onto a single motion path. It might not be exactly what they needed, but I learned lots from this script. I learn more about scripting when I actually tackle a real problem, but the tutorials I've been watching have been very informative too.
Here's a screenshot:

I'm going to be starting on a horror character challenge in the next few days, which will give me an opportunity to incorporate some biology and medical animation I hope. Started storyboarding an idea, which I think will be lots of fun. Feeling a tad swamped with projects, but better than doing nothing, right?
Later,
Stuart

My Toy Competition Result

I won the July competition! I was pretty surprised to get the message, cause there were some really awesome entries, and 16 entries in total. You should check out some of the other ones, cause there's a lot of great stuff, including a Chucky doll, some Technic, Mechano, Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots etc. I'll leave it to you if you think I deserved to win or not ;).

July2010-Contest-Winner!

Thanks everyone for keeping up with my progress and commenting. Right now I'm doing some scripting and drawing tutorials, so the blog will be a bit slow, but come Saturday, I'm going to be starting a new challenge (on SimplyMaya this time). I've got a cool concept all up in my head (foreshadowing). Looking forward to it.

If you're wondering why I keep entering competitions, it's not that I'm looking for prizes or recognition, but challenges like these push you toward a defined goal, force you to present your best, give you constructive criticism from other members, challenge you to rise to the skills of others, result in a portfolio piece (with any luck), and are loads of fun. Enough said. The only real downside is that it really wraps you up in a single project for a period of time, but I guess that's just part of life, and it is good to be focused.

Later,
Stuart