Final Project

Final Project Work in Progress:

[Write some interesting stuff here, I shall!]

Battlefield Revised

Original

Revision

And The Soldier Marches on (along with all his rendering issues!!!)

So, I got farther on rendering my soldier. I got him and his clothing rigged and mostly into place, when all of a sudden I got to render to find out my textures are ALL. GONE.

Just GONE. I don't get it. The files are still there. The settings under all the modifiers are still there... but the UV's and the images to be mapped seem to be missing. It's 9:37 and I'm about this close to imploding from frustration, lack of sleep, stress and hunger (for tacos).


Well, at least I have my Sponge Bob hat on today. That's one little island of joy in this evening's river of suck.

Project 1: Work In Progress Shots

This particular project seems to be going a bit slower then I would have hoped but it's trudging along anyway. I've got all the modeling done. I've got the basics for the textures figured out and I've got all my models textured. After a Blender crash at about 10:40pm last night while trying to get my cloth modifiers to work I decided to call it a night. So, at this point I have to get the cloth modifier issues figured out, get my basemesh male model, pants and shirt rigged for the correct pose, get the cloth modifier applied to the shirt and pants meshes, get the renders from the models and hike them over to Photoshop and then get my epic battle scene created, which shouldn't be too hard. Perhaps I can use a local grassy knoll as the battlegrounds image. The Photoshop work should go quickly and then I'll be done!

Behold, a soldier and his flag (and clothing... and accessories)...

I did have one issue with the UV Image mapping that I'll have to get figured out (below). For some reason the image on the boots seems to have the actual grid/mesh of the exported UV unwrap image. I'm not sure how this happened but hopefully it's an easy fix that I can deal with today or tomorrow.

 

 I've got my fingers crossed that my first project will come together as good my original vision, or as good as can be expected.

Composit

First attempt at compositing an image with a render within Blender. There are some angle and lighting issues, but for the most part it feels pretty good to me. I'd like to mess around with this more to get a more seamless combination of the two elements.

Sculpting Projects

First model using the sculpting mode. It's wonky but keeps the feeling I'm looking for. Creeeeeepy!

Elvin alien... thing.... Um, yeah.

Mantis

Arrays

The Array project was a test in patience... and the integrity of my poor video cards. I had no clue how intensive adding arrays could get, but I somehow managed to bogg down my PC enough while creating and rendering that I ALMOST wasn't able to render the last two of these.

For this one I went simple to get the feel of how arrays work.

I created a somehow organic feel with rather inorganic shapes. I still feel this is indicative of some kind of scaled, boned and clawed reptilian creature like a dragon.

Added a plane and tweaked with lighting. I still have a lot to learn in the lighting department.

The Mighty Screw...

... driver. Screwdriver. The most difficulty was had with the business end of this tool. For some reason I had a very hard time turning a round shaft into a square-shaped tapered end. Everything else was relatively simple, lots of edge loops, subdivisions, scaling and tweaking. New elements this time were colors and a little exploration into the lamp using the sun setting which delivers a wonderful crisp and high contrasting light. Less diffusion and ambiance it seems. That's perfect as I wanted two things: a high contrast of light to shadow on the tool and a nice silhouette-like shadow in the ground.  Dramatic lighting is dramatic.

 

(Much more dynamic/dramatic lighting.)

I'd say today's lesson was a success. I'm feeling pretty good and happy about this so far. Next task, lamps and tables!

Blender Basics The First Fork!

More info to come soon and so forth, but for now, I made a fork!