Only a few more weeks to graduation, and still so much to do I feel like I might explode. My research is nearly there though – this is almost the final product – I’ve since rigged the fish so he’s moving slightly, and after stringing it all together found some things I want to go back and fix, and then a few more things in post.
Then an entire other animation to crank out pronto, plus my demo reel…then done!
Still running a little behind on this project – everything has been brought over from ZBrush to Maya now though. I’m having issues with the displacement and normal maps on the heart morphs I built to have it beat – I’m losing my maps and the polygons are getting boxy and fragmented once I leave my target mesh, so that’s something to puzzle out. Otherwise, here are some stills (minus the venom – I’m doing that in AfterEffects to cut some corners) from the animation. I think the cut heart still needs some refinement, or a different lighting setup…
Switching between the stonefish animation and the rotifer, I finally got back into this to do more tweaks on the body/color of the little dude and the lighting for it. Surprisingly, I actually am liking what I’ve got going so far on it. It still needs more work, but I’m happy with the direction it’s going.
I’m still toying with sculpting up the rotifer more, but maybe it’s fine the way it is right now. It’ll probably just come down to how much time is left, because I still want to play with rigging him up so he can swim.
Last night (all night, ha) was an awesome work/catch-up night. I finished the stonefish model, which after finally scrapping the laser scan model I had, took only about 3 hours to model from zspheres and dynamesh in Zbrush. I really love sculpting and painting, I can definitely see myself focusing on that more. I might come back and tweak the model more later.
You know what I don’t love? Lighting. It’s so tedious, and I feel like I sit in front of the computer for hours tweaking one little setting, watching it render, then debating, then repeat. Over and over….Anyway, I’m determined to learn to deal with it this time, and get a good lighting set up.
The first few images are straight from Zbrush, and the last is with him in the scene and some preliminary lighting in Maya…not sure why I’m not getting any shadows on it, but it’s a start.
Mid-sculpting
Finished, side view
Finished, 3/4 view
Chilling out. Waiting to poison someone.
I’ve been delaying working on modeling my actual stonefish for quite a while now, for a number of reasons. But! I have a model of an actual fish (sort of…it’s plaster), which I was able to put through a laser scanner and pop it into Maya and Zbrush for some cleaning and sculpting. The dynamesh in the new Zbrush is amazing – after spending an ungodly amount of time trying to clean up the form in Maya, I threw it into Zbrush and put it in dynamesh mode, which took care of a lot of the junk on the scan model…happiness. Now it’s down to sculpting up the model, fixing holes, and jamming out to Nickel Creek.
Here’s a quick progress shot – lots more sculpting to do still.
I love Zbrush.
This surprised me so much, I had to post about it. The rotifer project I’m working on for the maya class is getting closer to being done, and I’ve been surprisingly able to do most of the work on my little Macbook. However, since I have a more high-tech PC, I switched the file over to that to work on today…and the render looks completely different. The file is the same, the render settings are the same…so it’s something maybe about how the processor handles the file, according to fellow BVIS guru Joe Fullerton. Check out the difference…
Render from Mac
Render from PC
Crazy, right?
Annnd my first animation test render! I was just going to do stills to check on how things were going, but since I’ve animated my little venom blobs I wanted to see how it all worked. A few parts seem a little fast as far as timing, and I’m still working on the muscle cell explosion that happens early on…that’s my goal for this week.
I’ve been playing with more texturing – this time for the interior scene of the stonefish animation with the vessels and muscle cells. I’m liking where it’s going so far…lots of experimentation with Maya’s ocean shader. My venom blobs are getting hit a bit too much with the light and indirect illumination I’ve got going on, so I’ll need to keep tweaking that…
It’s been a slow weekend for school work – I’ve got a few other projects going on, and it seems like weekends are always the time when groceries/laundry/life piles up beyond the point of ignoring it anymore. BUT! I have something new here – rotifer storyboard images for the Maya class, 3D-style. More work to be done here, but I’m liking texturing in Maya.
Page 3 of the storyboard
Biomedical Squiggles 