Alien 1 (WIP)

I modeled this guy during the first 2 weeks of Character Modeling 1 (but not for Character Modeling, just for fun), I still didn't understand the importance of poly flow and quads, so there's triangles everywhere.  Based off of my first assignment from Concept and Design, 1st Quarter.  It's funny, just as I was getting these pics ready I realized I almost completely forgot about his claws on his back!

 No Clothes

(lock the door, close the curtains!)

Wireframes

With Clothes

(ready for shoveling coal!)

Here's the original concept page:

(Maya Exp: 6 Months [+2wk])

Spider

I modeled, textured, and rigged this fella during one of my weeks off, and have been making adjustments ever since.  I mostly did it for the fun of rigging it, though half way through I started regretting choosing a spider as my arachnophobia kicked in!

I guess I should take the time to record myself using the rig, no?

(Maya Exp: let's see... these renders were between second and third quarter, so... 6 months!)

3d Modeling 2, Assignment 1

The first assignment of my 3D Modeling 2 class.  Our class only had 2 weeks to work on this (and convert that into student time it equals 4 days) as opposed to the 3 weeks it was intended for.  Was rushing to finish the props before the end of today, and got a little side tracked and started rigging the helicopter.  I still finished  more than I thought I could in time.  I think I have to texture the next model...

  Of all the classes in my 3D Modeling program, only one so far has actually focused on how to model, and that was Character Modeling.

(Maya Exp: 10 months)

I'm Awesome.

Well, I showed them!  I successfully completed all of my finals and passed all of my classes with my usual good grades!  And now, here's my Character Modeling final, completed in roughly 12 hours of work

(Maya Exp: 9 Months)

Materials and Textures Final

The second final, redone in 2 days.  The assignment was to create a texture page of the entire body model, then a separate texture page for the clothed model.  We had to UV everything, and most people didn't do this, but we were also expected to fit everything (minus the full body and the eye) on one texture.

The eye definitely turned out better the second time.  We had to build it from scratch, using graphics tablet and Photoshop filters.  I ended up only using a mouse with the filters and I think it ended up much better than the first one I made with the tablet.

Here's a few renders I put out this afternoon...

This is my first time rendering the eye in such high resolution, and the texture looked a lot better before bumping.  I don't know how it looks on the geo, but in Photoshop for sure looked better!

I'm not entirely sure what happened with the hair, I didn't have time to fix it.  I tried fixing it today, but everything I know that causes that has been fixed and yet it still casts the geometry shadow...

(Maya Exp: 9 Months)

Whew!

Man, the end of that quarter was intense!

The week to finally hand in the finals for each class, first thing, Sunday morning, I wake up bright and early to find my external hard drive has stopped working.  I'd been doing all my school work on there, and hadn't backed it up in the last 6 months.  I'll definitely be backing up every night from now on. But yeah, unfortunately the school has no sort of mercy system setup for that scenario.  Basically I redid 3 months of work in 4 days.  I'm ashamed to say it, but most actually turned out better than the originals.

Chantel, the academic adviser at the school forced me to pick one class to fail so I could focus on 'possible achievements', but if you ask me, it's not really an achievement if you were well aware you could do it.  That's like the opposite of training.  When a high jumper is training for the Olympics, he doesn't set the pole to a height he's sure he can clear...

But in the end I have to repeat character modeling.  The most aggravating part of it is that of all my classes, that was the one I was working the hardest, and doing the best at.  The teacher never had many negatives to point out when critiquing my models.  I understand the subject of the class, I took in every ounce of his teachings and know how to use them.  I'm not going to gain ANYTHING from repeating this course, only losing even more money.

And now that thats out of my system, here's the final for Environment modeling. (and yes I put this together, rendered, and handed it in within 2 days)

(collaborative effort, my work highlighted in bottom right corner)

The teacher specified that 1080p+ resolution was required, but he wants "like crazy 3k res..!"  he then said, in a rather betrayed sounding voice "but of course no one every does it..."  Well Mr. Wang, I did. (^-^ ) [note, original image dimensions; 7500x3240]

(Maya Exp: 9 months)

3D Modeling 1 Final

This was basically the only assignment for 3D Modeling 1.  We worked on this from week 1 to 10.  And yes, I am fully aware of the scale of this structure.  My rigging teacher sensed the 'Halo' in it right away.

note, search lights are shining on the front gate!

 Arial view of the whole main area.

 to get a good comparison for size, when standing at eye level,

the first shell in the rack is about 2 meters above you.

The check-in office.  I had to show it because it was

the first texture I did for this scene.

 I wanted to get a shot of the sunset in there, and of the little chairs

and rifles stationed at each tower.  I arranged each tower with a different story.

 On top of the main building.  Even this high up, it's hard to see,

but that red glow on the horizon is actually a massive crater.

I modeled all the way past the horizon line because of the scale of the main scene.

(there's a cockroach hidden in this scene somewhere,

I still wonder if he ever found it...)

85,000 tris total.

(Maya Exp: 6 Months)

IT'S ME!

This was the mid term assignment for Character Modeling 1, though he actually took the whole 1/2 of the quarter to walk us through it.  Then at the end of the day we handed it in, he's all "Good work guys!  You all put a lot of effort into your work!  Now model the head of someone who doesn't exist, due next week."

(Maya Exp: Well, this is 3rd quarter so... 7.5 months)

When I grow up.

Flight

I think this was the assignment between Mid Term and Finals for 3D Animation 1, 2nd Quarter.

(Maya Exp: around 5 months)

More Recent...

I'm sneaking in a more recent piece that wasn't part of school, though now that I think of it, I did make this before the end of 2nd quarter... Now it suddenly doesn't feel so long ago...
Read the description for more!

(Maya Exp: So, this would be under 6 months)

Flour Sack

I think this was the mid term for 3D Animation 1 class, 2nd Quarter.  Read description for more...

Let me know if you get the reference ;D

(Maya Exp: 18 weeks (approx.))

Mini In-Class Assignments

Here are some of my in-class assignments from 3D Modeling 1, 2nd Quarter.

I know this isn't much of a model, this was the intro to textures, and UVing objects in Maya.  Practicing things like UV layout choices and getting best resolution for file size.

Next we had to model a pop can, and create our own texture with out being provided the image to make it with.

This might have been the next class, or the one before, but it was to model a bullet from a reference image plane, and to match the material to the real thing.  Apparently the other class didn't get to model ballistics...

Oh yeah, we had to model three versions, one that looks smooth and sharp in the right places through the use of normals, one from the use of beveling the edges, and one from using smooth mesh preview (the future of [or present "~_~] of character models)

You can download these for free from here.

(Maya Exp: 14 weeks (approx.[technically 12 weeks due to a 2 week break between 1st and 2nd quarter])

2nd Quarter

So, now I'm getting into my work from Second Quarter.  So far it's been three months since I was introduced to Maya.  I've still got A LOT of other, non-3D work from quarter one, which I might slip in here and there.  But right now, it's just the 3D work.  I'm a little fuzzier on the order of things because I had more than one class focused on Maya, even more now in my 3rd quarter.

First Animation

Here's my first animation, and the final assignment for Basic 3D Concepts.  Read video description for more...

(Maya Exp: 11 weeks [he took alot of time, and numerous mini assignments leading up to this one, between the last post and this one])

Interior (fourth assignment [i think])

Ok!
I'ma try and not type very much as this one's got alot of renders.
image 1: though the assignment was for an interior, we start outside..!

 image 2: now inside, looking out to where we just were.  I understood bump maps, but unfortunately, not normals.

 image 3.

 image 4: to the left, the entrance to the main night club, straight, back stage.

image 5: CU of door+"employees only" sign. 

image 6:looking through the door window. 

image 7: now backstage. 

image 8: around the corner. (a curtain blocks the view out) 

image 9: the stage. 

image 10: "security camera" type view of the whole night club area.  I should take this time to mention this is a futuristic night club.

image 11: some type of wall decoration, took me forever to find something 'night club-ish' to fill that wall!

image 12: And then there's this thing...  since I was still new to this, I didn't know how much was too much, or any other way of getting good looking stuff, besides simply increasing the poly.  all in all, I think the bar area ended up being over 800,000 tris. It would look good had I been able to do more render passes.  I did a prototype of each type of glass to make sure before duplicating, but that was before lighting it, and so with the new club lights, all the nice soft glows I had became giant, blinding flares.

image 13: I think this was supposed to be the shot of the window... maybe...  or maybe showing that I actually modeled the underside of the bar too...

image 14: showing where the white spots on the walls are coming from... THE DISCO BALL..!..  say, why is it called disco?  that sounds like a board game involving some sort of 'disc' gimmick... I'll let you imagine that...

image 15: I'm thinking maybe there's a connection to the broken Holograph stool and the many futuristic shot glasses on the bar.  During the Basic 3D Concepts class, my friends kept asking me how I can spend so much extra time on my projects, and looking back, I really don't know.  I guess I just didn't have constant homework like I do now...

(Maya Exp: I think 5 weeks..?  I don't remember if this was a 2 week project or more(or less).  I'll just go with 5 weeks total)