JD Pirate Headsup

One of the main considerations for this little project was to try and do stylized hair. Though it's not a big portion of the final render, it was one of the main decisions to finish it. Since I had the experience with styling hair in Blender, I considered blender for rendering --it was so, so intuitive to groom it in blender, I fell in love with it. At the same time, I wanted to try out Zbrush's fibermesh. Also considered Renderman as my choice of renderer. In the end it was a mix of zbrush's fibremesh and good old hand drawn curves. In the end, did a bit of texture adjustments,moved some parts around and tons of shader tweaks.

Comparing the older one and this one, forgive my shamelessness for posting that. I was a Vray noob then. I'm not surprised if I will hate this version one day but yeh moving on.

Big thanks to Dan, Dongjin and Brendan for your fresh eyes. Appreciate it much.

New Beetle Renders

Requested by my friend, Anon. He says, " I would like to see images at a higher rez." Here there you are. Yes Anon, you are anon.

Old New Beetle

I've always wanted to model one of those "vis-dev"cars how Dongjin puts it. Initially, the design started as a generic designed car and after a couple of revisions it still lacked character and I decided to go with a design that catches my eye at a car park lot. The New Beetle. I think it's really the yellow.

Did a bit of research into the New Beetle and was quite surprised it is still being revamped. And they just keep getting better while retaining the essence of the design.

There was a great amount of time and effort devoted to troubleshooting materials, isolating material settings, remaking materials and tweaking render settings. Most of the artifacts have been removed but it's still noisy even after a 6 minute per frame render... lol. I definitely learned much in refining the renders and what each slider and button does. There's more to this car project I have plans for but it will have to do for now as a stand alone.

Indeed Tareq, the last 20% requires 80% more everything.

Ms Practise

Female head sculpt for practise. Dave mentioned before that sometimes sculpts with eyes closed have so much more life in them. Enough said. Agreed. Probably it's due to the default spheres in sculpts that make it look soul-less.
While I was working on this, I remembered a conversation I had with Jowy long time back. It was basically about what features one's ideal girl should possess. I mentioned ones like high cheek bones, pointy nose, big boobs and a$$. So much memories while working on this one. And no, Jowy this is far from the ideal girl, lol. as always crits and comments are welcomed.

"RR"

Couldn't put this guy lying down for now. Did some quick dirty basic colour maps and shader tweaks. No specular maps.

 Comments and critiques are welcomed. :)

"R"!

I logged onto facebook one day and saw this!

Look at him, sooo well proportioned!

It is done by Jon Di Venti, the Great. I immediately dropped every thing I did. It has been some time since I've seen a design that made me want to come back to see more of it. It's a great design and I had to sculpt it. Honestly, I already began sculpting while I awaited his permission.

RIP wacom4

As always life works in wondrous ways- Wacom4 had to break. Maybe Karma hit me because I sold wacom3 to Italy. And my lovely mouse of 6 years double clicks all the time with one click. (I'll sell it to anyone if anyone needs that function.) And my flip flops snapped. This period of time has been a time of breakage and renewal. Sigh... Anyway back to the sculpt.

This was done in Zbrush from the default zsphere and dyameshed after. And then retopoed in Qremesher. Rendered using VRay. Post done in Photoshop. Currently, I feel it is still WIP- there are things I would like to fix. and maybe, just maybe texture it later on.

Homo neanderthalensis = Neanderthal Man

Niˈændərˌtɑls. With things strewn around me, I post this- the neanderthal man a.k.a caveman. As basic I live, the neanderthal is what I strive to be. 

Neanderthal Brothers of 3.

He's done in zbrush with the amazing powers of dynamesh. He's split into different subtools because a warning message pops up each time I try to subdivide. Time to get a new computer.

Mr. Generic Head Sculpt

Mr. Generic head sculpt. I am aiming to do more non-generic ones. Critiques and comments are welcome.

"Terror that flaps in the night."

Dark Wing Duck was done for a Blender competition on facebook organised by Joe Lee Manns. Took my stab at it since Dark Wing Duck was a childhood character I grew up with and also I've been wondering much about Blender. Modeling with the modifiers reminded me of 3DSMax which I do wish that Maya can have one day.

Since it was my first attempt at using Blender. I was googling everything. EVERYTHING. period. From navigation in the scene to rendering SSS and fur. I was a baby, not knowing anything. I wasn't able to do anything without googling for help and thanks to Blender's great online community and tutorials I was able pick it up really fast. The ones I used mainly were Blenderguru, Cgcookie and Youtube. Thoroughly impressed by Blender's rendering speed as well, it took seconds when occlusion was included.

Model sheet supplied.

Modeled, rigged, pose test and simply lit with Blender.

 For the contest, I was still trying to render hair and making it look good till the very last minute. YES, I am amazed by Blender's hair system also it is actually a particle system. and YES, it allows the hair strands to be very easily manipulated. However, I wasn't able to render the fur to look good. for some reason, it was getting blown out in some spots. Furthermore, rendering on an archaic system that runs on XP 32 bit was suicidal. I had to break the model and rendered them part by part and at times Blender just crashed after it finished rendering. F*** me. It was a thorough nightmare.

above is model before hair was added and bottom is with hair added.

Time was running out and I had to just hand in a " decent" render. Deep inside I was devastated, I wasn't able to add fur, and even do proper textures for it. I had a vision for it which didn't pull through. Sigh.

Final submitted image for contest.

After the deadline, I went back and started troubleshooting the file, going to older files for some materials setups, started reading more forums and tutorials. I did learn much in this process but honestly hope to still better it in the future. "The best is yet to be".

Final Rendered Image... for now.

star wars: 1313

I've been busy much working on the awesome star wars: 1313. You know a game is awesome when you just take a look at the logo.

The logo is so grungy and textured, it makes me want to play it NOW!

Honestly, it's sooo good, it got 20 over awards and nominations at E3, 2012. The team is filled with super duper people, all experts in their various fields and when you put them together. BOOM! star wars: 1313 is made. It was thoroughly an inspiring and humbling experience working with these giants. BIG, BIG Congrats to the team. Everyone's hard work did pay off good!

I worked on the blue jumpsuit dudes who come out from behind boxes to say hi. They are shy guys and sometimes they just want to come out and play. Time for laser-tag!

 Pew! Pew! Pew!

 Here are the 3 sections released at E3, 2012.