3D-XJ: June 2012

The dragon has grown up!

Another dragon. The anatomy was pretty fun to figure out!

Wires:

16th Century European Room Interior

Another environment. This was a really great set to work on. There's all sorts of challenging models to make in this set. My reference is from a really nice book, Daily Life in Holland in the year 1566. It's one hell of a mouthful, but this artist, Rien Poortvliet is easily one of my favourite artist. The majority of the set is made in Maya, with the exception of some organic elements. Most of the cloth pieces are ncloth and sculpted. Only exception is that folded up bed cover piece. That's sculpted. Bricks are displacement maps, sculpted in zbrush.

Here are some comparison renders with the ref material:

Renders of some of the more interesting props, with wire overlays

The model I'm most happy with in this set is the willow weave basket. Not so much the model itself, but the problem solving I used to get to the model. Everything just kind of fell into the right place with this one. It took me a weekend to make. No alpha maps, I created a tile-able section of the weave pattern on the basket, duplicated it a bunch of times and then used a bend deformer to wrap it in a circle, finally using a lattice deformer to squish it a bit.

Here's a screen grab of the picture frame, because it's a mess in the overlay as well

Corridor

This is an environment I modelled. The inspiration for this comes from this photo book Titled City of Darkness, by Ian Lambot and Greg Girard. It's a documentary of the slum area in Kowloon known as the Kowloon Walled City, before it was torn down. It's not a place I would wish anyone to live in, but the book is a really good source of inspiration for environment artists!

This set is mostly made in Maya. Exception is the bundle of cloth in the bin in the foreground. That was sculpted, with a base mesh made in Maya.

Here are some prop renders:

Wire frame overlay:

The original reference photo I scanned from the book:

Traditional Medium

Just some traditional medium stuff. Oils, and the like.

This is oil on canvas, painting of the Grand Canyon. I used the palette knife instead of the brush for this piece. Just trying out something new. It's really hard to draw precise shapes with the palette knife, but damn, textures come easy!

Here's the ref photo I used, because, well, one just does not find the Grand Canyon in one's backyard! It's an image from Corbit, but I can't remember who the photographer is anymore. When I find out I'll credit him.

Some still life.......