Phhhheeewww...... ok here we go

Time to catch up on this blog. I have been seriously busy but I finally made some time to get this done.

First up....

First up is one of my new CGI projects. It's a cat shaman. It's pretty much done and I'm happy with how it turned out.

This one is a demon for a scene that I'm going to make. I still have a lot of work to do on the scene but yeah....

Well, I guess that's probably it since I can't seem to find any of my videos so I'll have to look for my camera... : /

Before and After

The main reason for this update is to show how dramatic of a change I have made to my SHIVU. However, before I get to that I would like to say that Val and I are very happy to be going home for the holidays! Can't wait to see everyone when we get there!

Anyways, here's the before and after of my SHIVU bot.

Here's the before....

and the after!

I think it's a pretty big improvement. That's all for that. Got some other projects in the works and I'm still working on this one as well.

SHIVU Pr0ject Re1n1tializing.....

So, I've started up my SHIVU (Simulated Human IntraVenous Unit) project again. I looked up some awesome tutorials and found out how to make some awesome reflections on my robot. Check it out.

(SHIVU and background)

I'm very happy with how the rendered image came out. I discovered a bunch of new techniques along the way and know a BUNCH more about scenes, rendering and how everything works in general. Great stuff!

For anyone who's interested this is the site that I found the tutorials on. VERY good information: 3d tutorials

Major Overhaul

I made some pretty dramatic changes to my SHIVU. I was very displeased with the limbs and their lack of interesting shapes. It just seemed far too normal. However, I did some concept drawing and redid the limbs as well as adding some decals. There still needs to be a lot of tweaking with everything but for now they are as they are. However, I am very satisfied with the results.
I also added some basic feet and am also pleased with those. I think that this project is really coming together even better than I thought that it would. I have not done any dramatic lighting work or done anything that will make it look realistic at the moment. Have a look! :)

Budapest and Skype and WAAIIITTTIIINNGGGG

I'm starting to lose my mind. I can't think of anything.... well, I can think of one think, Budapest. I've never felt so anxious for anything in my life. I look forward to hearing a new language, living in our apartment, calling home to family members. It all seems so exciting!
The thing about going to a different country, especially to live, is that EVERYTHING is exciting. Going to the store to buy food becomes a test in speaking, listening, reading, and general cultural experiences. I've read some blogs about how people hate struggling to communicate but to me that's the whole fun of it. It gets so boring day in and day out mindlessly speaking, driving everywhere, and generally carrying out a relatively predictable exhistance.
Well, on another, lighter note I have still been working on my robot. It's going well but very slow. I worked for a couple hours today and that's pretty much it.
*sigh* well, I can't wait for Budapest and that's that.

The Woman Robot Saga

I'm very slowly building my robot and I even have a scene planned. She's going to be pulling herself away from the wall that she is plugged into. I'm gonna edit in some steam for effect. I'll also build a scene based off of the Hungarian movie "Kontroll". It has these awesome gritty scenes and there was one particular one that I liked. It'll be pretty cool. The torso is going to be tricky and I'm going to have to look at a lot of reference photos for the different parts.

I like the green glow :D. If anyone wants to leave feedback I would love it!

Nice dynamic angle :D

Side view.

Seriously! If anyone has any ideas or critiques let me know. I'm always looking for input!

Woman's Head: Part 2

Here's the next part of the woman I'm making. I'm not sure what I'll do next and I never learned how to do hair so we'll see how that goes. I'll probably do skin textures and stuff like that. This will be my first time doing this. :D

3 quarters view.

Distant side view.

Front view.

Woman's Head

I started on a new project since my "toughbot" was getting to be a little bit of a pain and I didn't want to work on it any more. This is what I've been working on since yesterday. It's a woman's head that I found a picture of online. It's a huge pain to find good reference photos for modeling! I'm almost done with it and will most likely post pictures tomorrow. :D

This is when I was pretty much done with the facial features.

This is where I stopped today. I just need to smooth it and then connect all of the pieces together. The ear was a pain but I found an awesome tutorial that helped A LOT!

Ear tutorial

RUN FOR IT!!!!!!

Totally rigged my "Toughbot" up. I also posed him like he is about to take off sprinting.

Super Render

This is a rendered image of my bot after I got the mental ray rendering going. Mental Ray is just a REALLY good way to render things. It has things such as ambient occlusion which actually calculates how the light would hit an object, where it would bounce off to and keeps that going until it practically becomes black. It makes very realistic pictures because the light particles act almost exactly like real light particles. The thing that is tricky about mental ray, rendering and lights is that you have to find the setting that is needed in the lighting menu and also in the render options. If you forget one nothing will happen. Well, anyways here's the picture!

It looks much more realistic when rendered with mental ray, which is why I can't understand poor quality shows on TV. It's literally just a setting that you turn on and it makes a HUGE difference.

So..... close... to being.... done.....

This is yet another update of my "ToughBot" as I've been calling him. I almost totally finished now.... in a way anyways. I've layed out all of the armor, where it's going to be, and essentially defined how the body is going to be shaped. What's left is to add all of the mechanics, rig, pose and maybe animate if I'm not totally burned out on this guy at that point. So here's the updated pics.

Basic front shot.

Here's the legs. I plan on changing the feet though. Right now these are just place holders.

The back....

and the front!

Tough Bot Update

Here's an update on my progress with my newest creation. Bah! I have way too much on my plate and I don't want to do any of it. All I want is to be in Budapest!!!!!! Right now!!!! *regains composer* Anyways, I worked a little on the torso. If you look at the old torso you can see how different it looks when replaced. It took a lot longer to do this area than I thought it would. Mainly because I didn't know how to make the croch area. If anyone wants to give some feedback I would really appreciate it :D

Another Robot

I started another robot. This one's supposed to be more like a fighter than my last one which was a scout bot. He's only a little bit done but I thought it would be fun to post all of my progress. So here's the first!


You can see that the legs are barely started and the joints need to be built but you can get a slight idea of what's going on.

Walk Cycle

I'm taking the next step in my animation. I'm using this walk cycle in order to study things like weight. In this first walk cycle the robot seems to have a decent amount of weight to it. I don't really like that and want it to appear to seem very light weight. I want this to be some sort of scout bot so being heavy at all would not be good. This is also why there is very little armor and why there are many cameras on the front. After making a short animation using environments and such I'll start making other types of robots.

Slacking..... a lot : /

So I've been putting off rigging for a REALLY long time. However, today I took the initiative. It's not that I don't want to do it.... but it's just so much easier not to do it. Aaaaaaannnyways, I had some of it done but decided to finally finish it out. So here it is (drum role)..... the first test video of the legs.

The Knee Joint

A quick update of the robot. He's almost completely done. I just finished the knee joints. This was basically my 3rd attempt at knees. The first ones were basically just a place holder. In my concept drawing I made them very indistinct. You can see them in some of my previous posts. I then decided that I wanted them to look very organic so I looked up some reference photos of knee joints. I started to make them but I realized they looked far too organic and didn't fit with the rest of the robot at all. The version that I have now seemed like a good compromise and fit with what I wanted the robot to look like.

The next step will be to rig the robot. I'll post some hardware renders so I can have pictures of what the model looks like with the invisible joints. Then I'll move on to animating and looking for a nice scene to put the robot in. Lastly, I'll do some sort of short film test for this guy! Enjoy!

I Missed the Cameras!!!!!

I can't believe it but I noticed after looking at my last post that you can't see the cameras at all! So here ya go. I put a lot of work into them so enjoy!

Robot!!!!: The Sequel

Just a quick update on my robot. I was meaning to change the eyes to look more like camera lenses. Well, today I took care of that.

I also finished the feet, which I didn't take a picture of before, so I only need a few more things and my creation will be complete.

And another...

The Robot... is not quite finished...

Here is a post of my most recent project. I'm creating a robot based off of a concept drawing I did. It's not even close to being done. It's mainly just detail work but that always takes the longest. Here are some pics of my progress.

The light pink parts are supposed to be like an artificial muscle structure.

I wanted some parts to still look robot though, so I made sure to keep the main part of the body very robotic.

I also added some wires, which I still need more of, that connect the camera lenses to the main portion of the body.

Enjoy!

This is not such a great blog....

Alright. I'm probably the only one ever reading this but hopefully that will change when I actually start posting stuff. I've been doing a lot of CGI lately and for anyone reading this and you want to get a free version of Maya you can go to the student community on the Maya website and sign up and get a 6 month student version of the program. students.autodesk.com

I downloaded a program called mudbox as well which allows you to model your creations in a much more detailed manner! After learning Maya it's incredibly similar and very easy to use.

This is something I made using a combo of both programs