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