CGTalk - Eon (3D Scene) Entry: Berter Akyol

BlackDidThis

12-19-2006, 06:29 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166552982_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166552982_large.jpg)

This is my version of the many V/STOL’s interpreted out there. Well at least it is the symmetric pieces of it. It shall be much furthered to a detailed level depending on the Shot angle.

The whole model was based on the book stating it to be a modified “Boeing-Bell” aircraft… and also the fact that the story is not happening in a future far enough for the aircrafts to be too much more improved.
Though I have to personally insist that I find the craft being permitted only one tail rudder was not too well thought of. IT makes it not more insufficient for the air-drag that is to take place, but also obligates the Tube-Rider connections to have to REALLY hang it low in order to not intersect with the singularity or the Tube-Rider itself.

Additionally I have included particular “clinging” sections for the Tube-Rider to lock/unlock itself with.

---> Reference Text (From Page 89):

Sitting next to it—brought up in three cocoons by a subsequent OTV—was a highly modified Boeing-Bell prop-driven vertical/short takeoff and landing aircraft…

It was the most peculiar aircraft he had ever seen. Developed initially for the U.S. Air Force, designed for search and rescue missions, it could rotate its two wingtip-mounted engines through 120 degrees. The five broad blades of each prop could be folded back into the engine nacelles. And in the tail, aimed slightly above the centreline, was a kerosene-oxygen rocket engine, no doubt to provide extra thrust…

Its wings were rakishly forward-swept and were mounted three-quarters back on the fuselage, almost touching the V-tail. It could carry eighteen people and a crew of two, fully loaded, or fewer passengers and a lot of equipment. It was at once airplane and helicopter and rocket. NOTE: the page number is given according to my book witch was printed in August 1986, yours MIGHT vary slightly in page numbering.

---> Reference Links;http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/images/v-22d.jpg (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/images/v-22d.jpg) (Dissection of a V-22)

http://www.air-and-space.com/20031024%20Edwards%20Statics%20Military.htm (http://www.air-and-space.com/20031024%20Edwards%20Statics%20Military.htm) (Great Ref photo’s)
http://jpcolliat.free.fr/x18/x18-4.htm (http://jpcolliat.free.fr/x18/x18-4.htm) (Some alternatives)
http://www.vstol.org/ (http://www.vstol.org/) (The name says it all.. but I used this link least)
http://www.engin.umich.edu/labs/cfd/users/charlton/Thesis/html/node22.html (http://www.engin.umich.edu/labs/cfd/users/charlton/Thesis/html/node22.html) (For the non-Nerds, or those that are not too informed on the construction of the nacelles or similar)

Til Next;

Black

BlackDidThis

12-19-2006, 07:06 PM

(ttp://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=11197)
Tim (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=11197);
Lol, it sure seems un-wise to be messing with Zando the way that he has been equipped! I’d get that Turkey on the table ASAP!
As for the effects.. Well I too enjoy paint Effects as well… might even use them, but this time it was a series of distributed polygonal cubes and a shader with a glow value assigned to it.

Claudio (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?userid=60735);
Thank you very much… Guess it really was a bit to “misty”…
I hope it was a good First-Step though.

Now...
I think I have already said most of the non-boring stuff about the model in the post above, and shall be posting a higher detailed version soon.
To just give you a better follow up on my steps in the making, I put together this *.gif:
http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/V_STOL-WIP_Smll.gif

For those that would want to have a higher resolution version of the *.gif you can click:
HERE (http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/V_STOL-WIP.gif) (353K)

Til later;

Black

BlackDidThis

12-20-2006, 08:30 AM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166603404_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166603404_large.jpg)

The V/STOL had taken around 10-11 days to make so even though the Tube-Rider was a ittle less demanding (I took the atmosphere at the singularity as to be very thin, hence did not worry too much about aerodynamics or Drag-Factors as much)… I had to keep this guy at wait until I had the V/STOL completed so I could match the “mounting” positions.

I prepared three mounts one is a symmetric on for the front and the back. Since it would not be too possible to flip the Tube-Rider around, I found it only logical to have a “in the behind” position from both ends.
And I made a centre mount to connect to the aircraft from above, and included a widening in the middle permitting the aircraft to be able to mount onto this point from the nozzle as well.

---> Reference Text about the “Mounting” (From Page 89):
The V/STOL could be fitted to the tuberider in three positions: like an arrow sticking from the side of a log, nose and refueling nozzle inserted mid-cylinder; in the conjunction of its first mission, inserted "up the cylinder's ass" as Heineman thought of it, as its rocket propelled the tuberider down the middle of the plasma tubes and bore holes to the seventh chamber; or clamped to the cylinder along its belly.

I had mentioned in my earlier post that I DID have some difficulties in mounting the V/STOL without having its rudder split into the singularity for the side… and even worse for the belly-mounting.
So I attempted to make the connectors collapsible depending on their usage. So in the end of the day, when all of it is folded down, the Tube-Rider fits the dimensions as mentioned in the book.

---> Reference Text about the “Dimensions” (From Page 89):
It was a beautiful piece of work: a hollow cylinder twenty meters long and six wide, resembling a giant jet engine with all its guts removed. He peered down the middle of the assembly at the sickle-shaped metal pieces that would clamp down on the mysterious something the cylinder would surround. The clamps now rested on plastic inserts, which would be removed when the device was in place.

In the post you can see them all in their stretched out form…
Since I was originally intending on creating a movie and not a 3D scene I had shown great care in the functionality of these elements…
In this latest development, it is more important to set things correctly according to the shot-angle. So I am leaving the cranes and shock absorbers for the centre.
Maybe will deal with them for a future project… but for now I am only going to have the V/STOL connect from the rear and push it as stated in most parts of the book.

---> Reference Text about the “Pushing” (From Page 154):
Heineman piloted the V/STOL alone, using the aircraft's rocket to push the tuberider along the axis from the first chamber bore hole.

Last of all… I have set a tank in the centre of the Rider as best I can still economising the little space… presuming that there would be some sort of mechanism all throughout axis to lock on the singularity with.

I set it to be sort of like a hearts chambers with some of the piping embossed out of its chassis. The reason for this was mostly to ensure that hydrogen peroxide and oxygen stated can be kept safe and apart from interaction.

---> Reference Text about the “Fuel” (From Page 155):

The designers had estimated the aircraft's fuel use. It could make twenty ascents and descents, and fly approximately four thousand kilometers at cruising speed in the air, before having to tap the tuberider fuel, oxygen and hydrogen peroxide tanks. Fully loaded, the tuberider could refuel the V/STOL five times. And when it was clamped to the singularity, the tuberider could travel indefinitely using the spacial transform effect.NOTE: the page number is given according to my book witch was printed in August 1986, yours MIGHT vary slightly in page numbering

That just about sums it all up for this Mile-Stone… Doubt many read through this…
But I hope it helped some of you out…
Feel free to ask anything about the techniques related to the making shall you need…

Til Next;

Black

BlackDidThis

12-20-2006, 08:41 AM

Again there is not too much left to state after the above post (Which is a little bit TOO long:rolleyes:)

But once again for those interested I created a time-lapse *.gif image of the Tube-Rider as well:
http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/TubeRider-WIP_Smll.gif

Again for those that would be interested in a higher quality version you may check it out:
HERE (http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/TubeRider-WIP.gif) (270K)

Will post the rest of the stuff as I have time;

Black

arturro

12-20-2006, 01:20 PM

great progress! Time is runnuing out, but I hope you will manage to finish on time.
This looks promising
good luck!

BlackDidThis

12-20-2006, 06:41 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166640069_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166640069_large.jpg)

Now time for something I believe I am much better at in modelling to compare to other things:
A HUMANOID! (Preferably realistic)

This is the body of Karen Farley; a unique character that has English parents but is in the Chinese team due to her birth in China.

---> Reference Text about the “Parents” (From Page 74):
Farley laughed. "Thank you. Everyone says my accent is good, but sometimes my words ... Well. What you're really saying, I think, is I don't look Chinese. I'm a second-generation Caucasian immigrant. My parents were British expatriates in Czechoslovakia. They were agricultural specialists, and China welcomed them with open arms when they emigrated in 1978. I was born there."

The model itself took well over a week to achieve what you see here. And another extra week to tweak it to the latest stage (Shall be posted later on).
I am pretty proud of the model actually; it took a LOT of referencing from anatomical imagery to achieve the musculature as best as I can. But the REAL reason for this model to take so long was because I wanted to use it as a base mesh for the other figures as well.

So I had to include the topology that would be able to afford a male figure just as good.

The reason on WHY I chose to do Karen rather than the other lead characters was again because of my intensions to make a movie and not a 3D scene. I had hoped to be able to include a fragment of her scene when she unzips her jumpsuit when with Lanier in the V/STOL (She was going to be of the only characters that were going to be revealing a body underneath the jumpsuit). As well as it being far more complicated to mold out a taller and less “unique” character from the Patricia described.

---> Reference Text about the “Stripping” (From Page 278):
She tugged at her jumpsuit zipper and pulled it down, revealing a T-shirt with a Chinese character on the front, signifying "whale" the Chinese name for the Stone. She shimmied it off quickly and removed white cotton panties.

I was also additionally motivated through her attractiveness and honestly from the descriptions resemblance to my wife’s body (Yes I am a very lucky man)… so I had a good idea of what I was doing.
This is the time-lapse chart from the behind; a front view shall be posted right after.

---> Reference Text about the “Features” (From Page 66):
Behind him, a tall, even-featured blond woman and two Chinese, a man and a woman wearing green caps, removed their gear and shook water off onto the floor.NOTE: the page number is given according to my book witch was printed in August 1986, yours MIGHT vary slightly in page numbering

Preparing the next image right away…

Black

BlackDidThis

12-20-2006, 06:47 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166640467_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166640467_large.jpg)

This is the exact same series of model screen-grabs as above, but from the front for a change.

For those that have had followed up on my usual female models, I have gone for a much more “Fashion model” version for a change… I still tried to keep most of her “Possible” and natural.

I don’t know about you guys, but I always have a lot of trouble with the breasts, and most always have to put a modified sphere or something underneath so I can have a decently/evenly distributed topology.
(I actually had the advantage of having a breast-fed new born… I almost see my wife’s breasts as often as I see our son!)

I have a screen-grab of a “Saving” mistake I did when I had finished the model the first time… which sort of led me to make a more complex mesh to follow…
I’ll try to put that together and upload it later on.

Til next;

Black

BlackDidThis

12-20-2006, 07:06 PM

Artur (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=114690);
Thank you… majority of the models were already finished in order to make a movie as stated in the above posts. I hope the texturing won’t take TOO much.

Now…
Once again, for those interested I tried to put together an animated time-laps of this model.
Please do not see it as an attempt to create a tutorial, as it is not. It is only meant to present to you the steps I took in the making.
So if you have any need to ask on “How” things were done, please feel free to ask.
http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/BaseFigureWIP_Smll.gif

And as before I have a prepared higher resolution for those interested:
HERE (http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/BaseFigureWIP.gif) (518K)

Til Next;

Black

BlackDidThis

12-20-2006, 09:58 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166651910_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166651910_large.jpg)

This is the “Error” I was talking about in the earlier post…

What happened was that the program had locked and shut down while I was working on the leg. And I had actually saved the file AFTER I had figured out the forearm.
So after I opened the file again I went on working with the leg… stupidly NOT checking the forearm.

And thinking all was good, I just went on with detailing/completing the hand with the amount of end vertices that came from the forearm. I had to stop(hence why there were still many tri’s) and literally redo the hand since I had already rotated the thumb into position.
This of course I realised AFTER I had already tried to make up to it by adding geometry to the forearm.

The resulting mesh ended up to be pretty dense actually. I’ll try to post that a few hours later.

Black

BlackDidThis

12-20-2006, 10:05 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166652349_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166652349_large.jpg)

This is the exact same set of meshes as the post above. All I did was to flip them in the X direction for you to be able to see the topology of the smoothed proxy as well.

Here you can also better see her feet. I hope you can understand that I just found “toes” to be too much work for feet that shall be covered with shoes/boots.

Going to be eating something… will post the last form of her after that.

Til Then;

Black

BlackDidThis

12-21-2006, 09:45 AM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166694326_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166694326_large.jpg)

When I had said a few hours later... I was referring more to a range of two or maybe three hours… but I literally had to spend the whole night/morning dealing with our son…

Well none the less… Here it is... the model I had had mentioned to you guys of.

The clay render is the smoothed form of her. The wire you see here is the mesh as it was modelled out. (Painfully; each of the vertices seen there was moved around at least three or four times… it took VERY long to finish this mesh as it is)

I am aware that I have not done a great job from the knees down in compare… But I thought I’d savour that for a “next time”, since I really liked this mesh a lot and DO intend on improving it further.

Only thing I have to particularly state about the topology used for her (fitting as much to the fibre directions of the muscle tissues) is that it would only deform decently with an aid of a volume preserving influence object to replicate the muscular movements, since I have not set any of the vertices vertical to her contours (I used a ready made plug-in called Muscle TK and am very satisfied).

Later today I hope to finish sculpting the morph targets for the other characters with the same mesh.

Til then;

Black

claudiojordao

12-21-2006, 10:30 AM

Hey Black, what a great modeling work.

Sinis

12-21-2006, 05:13 PM

Nice modelling, and good luck to the challenge. Even your modelling work is very nice, at this stage of challenge it would be wise not spend too much time on details such as patricias boobs, if your not planning to show patricia topless :D No offense don´t get me wrong, but theres not much days left on this challenge.
So far looks good, keep up the good work!

VietEmotion

12-21-2006, 05:40 PM

goddamn ... this is very nice:D se.. female body, very good anatomy.

BlackDidThis

12-22-2006, 12:24 AM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166747059_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166747059_large.jpg)

I deformed the base mesh (Which is actually the body of Karen Farley) into most of the characters I need today…

This one for example; is my interpretation of Patricia Vasquez’s body. I haven’t put too much worry on her body to compare to her head. But none the less I DID want to get her right. And Greg Bear’s description is a pretty challenging one to do while still having a convincing model.

---> Reference Text about her “Body” (From Page 33):
Lanier shook Vasquez's hand. She was small and pretty in a fragile way. Round face, silky dark brown hair, thin wrists, narrow legs, broad hips for her size: an altogether unpractical-looking woman, he thought.

On the other characters I was a little bit more free to work on only halves rather than the whole figure. But Patricia apparently had a particularly notable asymmetry on her, so I had to give her both “sides” individual attention.
I took her “Left” to be the noticeably “heavier”.

---> Reference Text about her “asymmetry” (From Page 405):

Her breasts were medium size, very slightly pendulous, one noticeably larger than the other, the skin between them freckled a darker brown.NOTE: the page number is given according to my book witch was printed in August 1986, yours MIGHT vary slightly in page numbering

I also made her considerably shorter than Karen, who has had been described as to be a pretty tall person.

Last of all; I have to confess that I did not go into TOO much sculpting the mesh itself, I rather sculpted a wrap deform to “snug” her into the right proportions, and didn’t care much for minor details.
Even still it WAS a lot of work, (i.e.: The hand and fingers and nails were killers)

I am pretty busy at the while, but I shall try to post from the rest of the models soon.

Til then;

Black

BlackDidThis

12-22-2006, 12:33 AM

Wow...
post a naked woman and your visit counts boosts! It's double what it was :curious:

Claudio (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?userid=60735);
Thank you, you are too kind.

Sinis (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=30309);
You’re warning has been noted… and thank you for the compliments.
I understand that there is TOO much writing to read up there.. but in short I had already started modelling these to make a movie instead of a 3D scene. The only reason I joined in so late was because I wanted to see how far I can go with preparing for the movie (my logic being “If I see it impossible for the trailer, I’ll make a 3D scene instead).

And for especially animating dynamic cloth effects, the breasts are pretty important.

All that said; actually in the book Patricia DOES happen to reveal her breasts… we even know the details on shapes and sizes… but those were Karen Farley’s breasts… not Patricia’s.

Tuan (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=247893);
It was a lot of work… I appreciate your liking it such, thank you.

Til next time;

Black

BlackDidThis

12-22-2006, 01:53 AM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166752398_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166752398_large.jpg)

This time it’s Nobel award laureate Lenore Carrolson’s turn…

There is not as much description of her body to compare… but as a result the whole of the book just gave me some sort of an idea of what she may actually look like. And I went with it.
As proud as I usually am with my memory on things like this… there most definitely may have been parts in the book that describe her body in particular, but I can’t recall anything such.
It is more about her personality and her facial features most of the time.

So I tried to go for a woman of her age and her stated race… more in the area of stereo types than exceptional.

---> Reference Text (From Page 37):
and Lenore Carrolson, a round-faced woman of fifty with gray-blond hair and a permanently friendly, sensual expression, heavy-lidded eyes surrounded by smile lines.NOTE: the page number is given according to my book witch was printed in August 1986, yours MIGHT vary slightly in page numbering

Until the next character;

Black

BlackDidThis

12-22-2006, 06:31 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166812265_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166812265_large.jpg)

One of the more challenging characters... Ser Olmy.

The book doesn’t tell TOO much about his appearance… as in his body… though it DOES state that his particular Neomorph was a common one that was intended on difficult tasks and survival.

---> Reference Text (From Page 37):

“…His present body is adapted for specialty work; it's a popular type and is completely self-contained. His waste systems are also closed. Within his abdomen there is a small power supply; all his wastes are reprocessed internally. He needs to replace his power source and bring in supplementary materials only once a year. He requires water every three months."

"Are you human?" Carrolson asked Olmy pointedly.

"I am," Olmy said. "I presume you're curious about my sexuality?"

"What ... Yes, frankly," Carrolson admitted. Heineman squinted one eye and raised the opposite brow.

"I am fully masculine by birth and choice, and my sexual organs are functional."

So I tried to connect the muscles slightly ahead of the bones structure, deeming to give more power in spite still remaining slim (Theoretically). Hence also the reason I made him pretty tall.

The need to insist on keeping him slim and fit was for the need for water… sort of in the lines of an ideal Fremen from Frank Herbert’s “Dune”.

He appears to be a normal person in first glance, since he didn’t alarm Patricia what so ever in his first introduction to her (Even though … though he apparently is pretty uniquely different than you and me.

---> Reference Text (From Page 37):
Patricia turned to face a man she had never met before. He sat on the concrete edge of the underground entrance. His hair was black and short and he wore a close-fitting black suit.NOTE: the page number is given according to my book witch was printed in August 1986, yours MIGHT vary slightly in page numbering

Figured it a good idea to store his “Power-Supply” somewhere around the carrier pelvis…having its outlet literally where we had our umbilical chord attached. I figured that it WOULD be functional in reaching vital organs in need (worked for mammals for Eons!), and that since it was a selection of choice by humans, they would fancy the fact of having the access to the supplementary materials appear some-what like a regular humans body.

Unlike the other male morph target, I had started on Olmy’s crouch … since I intend on just giving him a loose jacket like something leaving the “Tight Black Suit” as to be just about “Skin Tight”. But that is left to a stage I mount his head on.

That just about covers it all for now I would presume…
I’ll get into more descriptions from the book regarding to Olmy when I start on the heads.

Black

BlackDidThis

12-22-2006, 11:17 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166829468_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166829468_large.jpg)

I am setting a title on this as Lanier…
but I think I am going to use this figure as a standard Male Morph Target… since it was particularly very difficult to mould out of a female mesh.

That said, I don’t have too much time, or the need to actually model so many people. IF I happen to, I can always do slight modifications and set a blend between (Advantages of using a single mesh for all the figures).

---> Reference Text (From Page 1):
Tall, with close-cut dense, black hair, Lanier resembled a pale-skinned Amerindian, though he had no Indian blood. Hoffman found his eyes particularly reassuring—gently scrutinizing, the eyes of a man used to seeing across great distances.

I preferred to make him fairly strong built. He has been mentioned often to have a military background,

---> Reference Text (From Page 3):
Before being employed by Orbicom, he had spent six years in the Navy, first as a fighter pilot, then flying high-altitude tankers. He had flown the famous Charlie Baker Delta route over Florida, Cuba and Bermuda during the Little Death, refueling the planes of the Atlantic Watch whose vigilance had played such a crucial role in limiting the war.

And has apparently done some good amount of sports.

---> Reference Text (From Page 28):

Garry Lanier took daily advantage of that to perform gymnastic feats difficult or impossible for him on Earth. He swung back and forth, blowing out his breath forcefully and grunting, holding his legs straight together and propelling himself high over the parallel bars and the pit of fine white sand. It was easy to twist and reverse his position. Almost as easy was swinging his legs into the air, spinning and doing a reverse that way.

The exercise cleared his mind of everything else—for a few minutes, at least—and took him back to his days as a college gymnast.
NOTE: the page number is given according to my book witch was printed in August 1986, yours MIGHT vary slightly in page numbering

So I simply presume that he is very well built. Though I may have gone a little bit too far.
At this point these figures are only bases for the clothes to hang from.

As soon as I am finished on Lanier, I am hoping to model out and pose Palev Mirsky… With literally the same body... maybe a slight bit shorter, not too sure. I believe they both have similar builds.

I guess that just about roughly covers this post. I’ll post a put-together of all five (to compare) in a while…

Black

BlackDidThis

12-23-2006, 04:51 AM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166849458_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1166849458_large.jpg)

This is a sort of comparative table in its own where you can see the characters together… I was in doubt to post it as a cage or a clay render… went for this form of it at the end.
I used a free mel script called “GI_Joe” for the lighting; and rendered it in MaYA’s default renderer, but at high settings.
The meshes themselves are just smoothed out with an exponential value of 2 (Equivalent to smoothing it two times for those that may not know), leaving my scenes poly count to 1721055 verts and 1720960 faces (all quads)

I will be also posting an animated *.gif presenting the morphing from one character to the other.

When I get back (holiday season thingy disables my usual access to this :sad: ) I would like to complete working on the compositing, so I know who or what more to model out.
Sooo…
Not sure if I’ll be able to upload more of my mile stones over the weekend… But I’ll try to

Black

BlackDidThis

12-23-2006, 05:00 AM

Once again, for those interested I little animation of the morphs.

Having a clay render in the mile stone, I figured I would show the mesh for this one
(Though you may want to download the higher resolution to be able to view it decently):

http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/CharacterMorph_Smll.gif

And as before I have a prepared higher resolution for anyone who wants one:

HERE (http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/CharacterMorph.gif)(884K)

Til Next;

Black

BlackDidThis

12-24-2006, 04:13 AM

We are going to be going off to my Father in Law shortly...

And it seems I won’t be able to be on the computer for some while…
So from "already" My family (Dante and Rebecca) and I would like to wish you ALL a very Merry Christmas!

http://blackdidthis.com/Aile/Dante_Santa_4.jpg Sooo... will be hopefully posting something on when we have returned...

Til then;

Black

Ps: Isn't he ADORABLE?!

BlackDidThis

12-26-2006, 09:05 AM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167123947_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167123947_large.jpg)

These are a few of the many photo’s I had gathered from the net, and tried to assign a character to.

Most of the photo’s here are not going to be used… save from the characters chosen for Mirsky and Lanier.
In both cases the model is not especially intended to look like the individuals presented here. They are more for influence and referencing…

---> Reference Links;

High-Res photo of an Edgar Allan Poe Impressionist (http://onceuponanation.org/image/press/hi-res/09_edgar%20allan%20poe.JPG)

Photo/file search for people currently in custody at the Dakota County Jail (http://services.co.dakota.mn.us/jailsearch/index.aspx)

I have to get back to work… I shall be posting more later tonight

Black

Gunilla

12-26-2006, 05:53 PM

Wow, Black! You really seems to be flying with this -amazing speed and quality. That collection of bodies is just super.
And sure, Dante (what a cool name BTW) is a cutie. If I remember correctly he doesn't look much different than from your portrait of him in the womb... adorable, you must be proud :)

BlackDidThis

12-27-2006, 05:14 AM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167196441_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167196441_large.jpg)

Yesterday was very overwhelming with activity (expectably and not too much went according to planned). I was not able to put together the time-laps images of the modelling of the head yet. But now I am modelling out the Frant, and the Jumpsuits that almost everybody is wearing.

So I thought it a good idea to post again some images of reference in the making of the jumpsuit for now and of the Frant later on.

This is a put-together from some time ago… plans changed since. Even though I really had put a lot of heart in the designing of the shoes, I am going to have them all wear trekking/army boots (Since those that will be far enough to have their feet seen are going to be the Russians or the military any ways)

---> Reference Links;

Russians:Russian High Altitude Space Suit (http://www.bsa-science.com/space_exhibit.htm) VKK-3M High Altitude Compensation suit (http://www.redpilot.com/museum/suits/vkk/vkk-3m.html)Americans and the Stoner teams:Sketch of the Jumpsuit for the movie; “Contact” (http://contact-themovie.warnerbros.com/cmp/equip.html)
Pilot Full Pressure Suit (http://<font%20face=/)
Rental Costumes (http://www.globaleffects.com/C_b04_frameset.html)
Image for the MOS Liberator character model from Daz3D (http://www-cache.daz3d.com//store/item_file/1479/popup_3.jpg)
Note that, of the reference Links, I am working on something in the lines of the Pod Suit Sketch – Round2 from the address with the sketches from Contact for the stoners, and the VKK3 High Altitude suit for the Russians if I can manage.And also I am going to try to unzip the Jumpsuit of Karen like the model reference from Daz3D given above.

The Russians suit is KILLING me (And is in the edge of being cancelled)… so is the Frant…
But I am just about calling the Stoners Jumpsuit “complete”. I’ll have to get the images together to be able to post them.
Hopefully later on today;

Black

BlackDidThis

12-27-2006, 05:34 AM

Thank you Gunilla (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=78228);

Honestly I haven’t exactly “flown” through it all… I had modelled most of these around the beginning of this month and the end of last month. I had stated the reason above a few times; I was hoping to be able to post a trailer instead of a scene. And I gave it a shot to see if the time would be enough or not.
So when I ended up submitting for the 3D scene instead of the movie, I had a series of low poly meshes and a lot of practise on the characters to involve.

As for Dante;
Lol... he is the MOST adorable thing that has entered my life yet!
Words fail to describe it.

And yes... Surprisingly he actually DOES look like the illustration (Given that he has developed from that stage on)… in fact the really weird bit was the veins I had placed on his right temple were just about the same place!

Here are two images of him at the time of his birth and about a day later to give you a better idea.http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/Dante.jpg

(For those that may not know what we are talking about… I had attempted to make an illustration of our child BEFORE the birth. You can find it here (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?threadid=351638))

I am going to post the finished form of the illustration in the galleries here… but I really couldn’t make the time for it yet. It turned out to be a very detailed image that can be even printed in gigantic formats.

Well thank you for dropping by again…
I really have to get back to work.. as ALWAYS; I joined in faar too late into the competition :sad:

Black

claudiojordao

12-28-2006, 10:55 AM

Hello Black... congratulations for your amazing work, it seems you really are an expert on "EON"... but don't forget that time is running out... hurry up mate.

BlackDidThis

12-29-2006, 01:53 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167400411_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167400411_large.jpg)

I had some connection problems here to the internet. Thankfully it is all over before the New Years Weekend to come, especially when loved ones are so far away.

I have done some good amount of work yesterday in the free time permitted. I shall hopefully be posting them more regularly since now I have a lot more completed material in hand. But for now... I have a little question that I hoped to get some feed back on…

Of the above screen shot of the Frant’s head… which eye do you like more:
The original version?
OR the one that I have distorted in Photoshop to look smaller?

---> Reference Text (From Page 165):
It stood about seven feet high, skinny, narrow head like a sidewise board with two jutting and unblinking eyes regarding him calmly.

---> Reference Text (From Page 224):
She looked to the rear and saw the flat-headed, knock-kneed brown creature curled in its own berth, watching her with calm, slowly blinking eyes.

---> Reference Text (From Page 254):
The Frant peered down at her, its large brown eyes unblinking. It held out one hand, spread its four slender fingers and curled them again.NOTE: the page number is given according to my book witch was printed in August 1986, yours MIGHT vary slightly in page numbering

I would like to finish him completely tonight.

Black

BlackDidThis

12-29-2006, 02:02 PM

Thank very much Claudio (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?userid=60735);

I don’t know whether I am an expert on anything.. I guess I often summarise it as being a Nerd :)

You are absolutely right BTW…
Time IS running out and I really am trying to make the best of it.

Thanks again!

Black

chandro

12-29-2006, 08:38 PM

i go for the smaller eye. BTW cute baby!

BlackDidThis

12-29-2006, 09:14 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167426882_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167426882_large.jpg)

This is a gathering from a collection of photo’s I had put together as “influence” in the making of the Frant.
I presume you would be able to understand where I was coming from.

In the process, the ONE thing that got me most in doubt was whether the head was flat side ways, or other way around?
My biggest clue was the fact about the eyes “jutting”. But when you look at the head of Nadon (HammerHead) from Star Wars, you’ll note that his eyes are pretty much jutted even though the “flat” side is facing us.

I decided to go for sideways in the end… Both because that is how I mostly pictured a Frant, and secondly to keep from the trap of a HammerHead replica.
I DO plan how ever on making good use of the Ithorians (The HammerHead race) for my project with the Frant.

LINK1 (http://thegnomonworkshop.com/img/gallery/gallery_pops/alvarez/alvarez_k.jpg) (A character model made by Alex Alvarez… I almost always had this creatures image in mind, (but not exactly remembering where I knew it from) while I read the book last time)
LINK2 (http://theswca.com/index.php?action=disp_item&item_id=49005) (This is a series of BluePrints regarding the Hammer-Head toy from StarWars)
LINK3 (http://www.paskovics.com/rogue-collection/wallpapers/figwalls/SWfig-Hammerhead.jpg) (A lay-Out of the Toy)
LINK4 (http://www.starwars.com/databank/species/ithorian/) (info Link to the Ithorians)
LINK5 (http://www.starwars.com/databank/character/momawnadon/) (info on Momaw Nadon, or better known as the “Hammer Head” from Star Wars)

I haven’t had the time as I wished to work tonight... but after dinner I plan to get some better progress. (The Frant is just about finished... I am more worried about the rest of the scene and the texturing)

Til Next

Black

BlackDidThis

12-30-2006, 05:05 AM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167455116_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167455116_large.jpg)

USUALLY I would go for a sort of Eye-Model such as you see in this post I made earlier (via imitating the anatomy of the Eye):
Eye-Model "Master&Servant" (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?postid=2187153)

But lately I have discovered that complex shader networks can help make the eye very convincing even in considerably close-up shots.
The IDEAL would most possibly be a complex shading network combined WITH a decent eye model (with some extra work on the iris AND the pupil if it is to be animated)

The trick here is mostly through the reflectivity and the reflected colour. I generally assign a linear V-ramp through the cameraAngle/samplerInfo (For faking Fresnel).

I'll see if I leave his eye as a simple sphere or not as time procedes...

Black

BlackDidThis

12-30-2006, 11:45 AM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167479097_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167479097_large.jpg)

There was so much more I wanted to do actually... but I had to stop some where... I have to admit that I had really enjoyed the making of the Frant. He was particularly challenging because of some unique features stated in the book.

As you can see through the steps, I had some difficulties on my planning from beginning on… Seems there were parts about the Frant in the book that I kept forgetting about.
Honestly I had liked my Frant more before I had to shorten and thicken his legs to fit… but none the less I tried to do the best with it.

I am going to post a “Front” view of this sequence in the next post. I’ll include some reference texts in that one. And an animated gif in the forums thread post for those interested.

Black

BlackDidThis

12-30-2006, 11:47 AM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167479235_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167479235_large.jpg)

This is the exact same post as the above.
(Save that the model is rotated 180 degrees in Y and has a negative X scale for you to see this side of the Frant)

---> Reference Text (From Page 165):
It stood about seven feet high, skinny, narrow head like a sidewise board with two jutting and unblinking eyes regarding him calmly. Its two long arms emerged from the torso well below where the shoulders should have been and were covered with something similar to the foil ration packets. The legs were short and powerful looking. Its skin was smooth and reflective—not shiny or slimy, but polished like old wood.
---> Reference Text (From Page 208):
A tall creature with a head almost as narrow as a board and jutting eyes rose from behind the ceiling. Its shoulders were wrapped in silvery fabric; otherwise it wore nothing. Its skin was smooth as fine leather and just as brown.
---> Reference Text (From Page 209):
The Frant shook its head solemnly. "Please don't be frightened," it said, its voice like a large bird's, low and warbling.
---> Reference Text (From Page 210):
The narrow-headed, knock-kneed brown Frant climbed farther back through the whiteness and nestled into its own couch.
---> Reference Text (From Page 224):
She looked to the rear and saw the flat-headed, knock-kneed brown creature curled in its own berth, watching her with calm, slowly blinking eyes.

"Hello," it said musically.
---> Reference Text (From Page 254):
The Frant peered down at her, its large brown eyes unblinking. It held out one hand, spread its four slender fingers and curled them again. "Please," it said, its voice like a badly tuned calliope. "I cannot help."
---> Reference Text (From Page 374):
The Frant's wide-extended eyes seemed to naturally convey humor and good spirits. Though she found the word guest euphemistic, at best, she did not resent the Frant's using it.NOTE: the page number is given according to my book witch was printed in August 1986, yours MIGHT vary slightly in page numbering

Will be posting the animation shortly…

Black

BlackDidThis

12-30-2006, 12:01 PM

Like before... whenever I have a series of images in a sequence for a “making” I have tried to put together an animated Time-Laps.http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/FrantWIP_Smll.gif

This image was shrunk to a smaller size so not to kill your download speed. For those that would like to view a version with higher resolution; you can click HERE (http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/FrantWIP.gif)

Also it has been brought to my attention that an earlier *.gif that I had posted for the Tube-Rider was getting stuck in the middle in it’s higher resolution version.
I have fixed and updated it… (I am referring to Post #11 (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=4083208&postcount=11))

Thank you Chandro (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=240497);

Seems you are my only feed back for the subject… and I sort of ended up agreeing with you, even though it made him a bit more human than my hearts fancy.
But instead of shrinking the eyes… I went for enlarging the head :)

Til next post!

Black

BlackDidThis

12-30-2006, 03:27 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167492451_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167492451_large.jpg)

I sort of forgot to post this image… It was a part of the “Frant-Mania” in my last rush…
Now I am mostly occupied with finalising the UV texture coordinates and setting the textures. As well as putting cloths onto these guys :).

Apparently I made more errors in my last post... via the naming convention, posting my front view in my post for the back view of the Frant… I hope this clears things out a bit.

This image is just the torso of the Frant assigned to the same T-Pose I had rendered out Karen, Patricia and etc… a few posts back. The pose and shader is far from complimenting the hard work put into the Frant, but in any case I am happy with the well optimised mesh. IT shall afford nice details that I hope to assign as a displacement map later on.

The shader on it is a test shader with a sampler info assigned to an environment sphere, which is again connected to the reflected colour of the shader.
Just a test to see how it may go... nothing special at this moment.

I’ll try to get close ups of the “displaced” form and the textured forms of the characters… but until then I guess this is of the last of the humanoid bodies you shall be seeing here.

Til Next!

Black

claudiojordao

12-30-2006, 07:56 PM

Hey Black,
Nice to see that your Frant is going just great.
I thought you were going to follow the same suggestions you've gave me about the Frant... the arms coming from the torso, short legs... well, I guess not :)
Keep on your great job, and thank you very much for your help on my thread.

BlackDidThis

12-30-2006, 11:10 PM

Oh but I DID (to my distaste) give the Frant short legs...
I guess the camera angle for the torso fails to portray it.
This guy is 2.10 meters with 85 cm leg length (Working with MaYA Units).
Even though most would fail to call it short in length, I think in proportion; it hits the nail.

Just try to look at the WIP chart post I had a bit above... you'll notice that the Frant gets taller and taller... the legs still remaining the same in length.
And in fact thickened a dear bit at the end (I had made them very slender and I had actually really liked it :sad: )
I kept from making it very bulky looking... just insisted on them "looking" strong and having knock knees, and alien anatomy for a biped. And I hope that the musculature I went for does make them look strong and sturdy.

I WILL consider getting his legs even shorter... but that shall have to be for a later time. Luckily such a proportional deformation is not too much hard work in compare to setting a topology I would enjoy working with.

Thanks again for the feed back... and Good Luck with yours!

Black

walrus

12-31-2006, 01:31 AM

Hey, Black, good to see you back in another Challenge! First off, congrats about Dante! He loks adorable, and you and Rebecca must be very happy. (My wife Talia and I are expecting our first in 5 weeks, so I'm getting to see all the sonograms and stuff that you were focussing on in that last Challenge.)

As for the Challenge, things are looking great so far! Love seeing so many of your works-in-progress demos. And that resource where you found the head images... That was a great link! I've bookmarked it myself, what a terrific resource!

Anyhow, best of luck to you and happy new year!

-mike

BlackDidThis

12-31-2006, 05:46 AM

Thank you very much Michael (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?userid=122885);

So you are in this competition as well? :bounce:

I'll browse over and check through it as soon as I can.. I am sure it is more than worth the while.
It's just that I have VERY limited time and once again I am so late in entering the comp... but not putting aside my wish to read through the whole thread before posting (At the moment I am STILL in the process of reading through Gunilla (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=78228) and Linh Mai (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=244686)'s (JohnnyMaster) threads... which are both pretty monstrously long threads), luckily not too may long and demanding ones.

Actually I presume this competition is suffering from the holiday seasons (as well as obligations to read something)... my work to agencies increase like HELL from November on... fortunately I still have the "parent-leave" excuse for Dante ... else I was really going to pass this by.

Dante...
And yes ... Dante has made us VERY happy... Michael (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?userid=122885) I am SO happy you are going to live what I am living now... words REALLY can not explain... the little brat is PERFECT :)
But I also wish for Talia to not suffer anything close to what Rebecca went through in her birth... It was a very, VERY painful 52 hours. She was literally the hero of the whole department because of how she managed to survive it.

The Head Reference Links...
The link?... yes that one was DEFINATELY a life savour (And a real devil to find actually)!...
A whole set of characters that you can NOT find casually!

I had lost my collection of heads/meshes to rent out to studios for productions... so last year I had modelled about 164 or so heads from photos of volunteers (Couldn't afford a photographer for it) in trade of a free model.
Now even though I have more than enough heads in hand... when I need a "character"... I definitely give that link a go. They are TOO unique. I don't even mind the horrid lighting or low res problems attached.

Just DO be aware though... keep from using the images on their own, or too identical. I believe that a copy write issue is attached. That's also why I try to influence from them more than anything.

Now that Dante is fed and asleep, I am going to get down to some more modelling...

Black

BlackDidThis

12-31-2006, 09:56 AM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167558987_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167558987_large.jpg)

This is a pre-visualisation of the scene I hope to achieve…

I am going to be using a 15mm ‘Fisheye’ view providing the extreme close ups to still contain a great amount of the backgrounds (Hence the difficulty of including a 30km diameter without loosing depth) in a sort of Vertigo fashion...

What you have to picture at this moment is the inner surface being well covered with either geometry or textures, if not both (I shall show close ups of the block mounds you see here in a later post)… And the main characters shall be on the floor of Thistledown or Alexandria.
The characters and their direct surroundings shall be pretty vivid… but the distance shall fade.

I am going to have the V/STOL connected to the Tube-Rider in about two thirds of the way (I HAVE to find a way to include it with a closer view. It was hard work getting all those details onto it) If things don’t work out as I wished... I may composite them together into an actually impossible perspective. Not sure yet

I’ll try to test render out one with the characters in it later on to better give you an idea.

Black

fgdf

12-31-2006, 10:54 AM

Good luck!
Very ambicious work in here - so far fx's looking great
good luck

ChewyPixels

12-31-2006, 06:49 PM

Hey Black. Wow! Impressive speed! In the time that I've been away from this challenge you have done more work than I could have done myself in such a short amount of time. I like how this is coming along, but I am not so sure what composition you are aiming for. I guess we will see that soon.

Anyway, keep up the hard work.

BlackDidThis

12-31-2006, 10:24 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167603849_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167603849_large.jpg)

I had REALY wanted to post this head before the New Year…
And I FINALLY finished it earlier today. It is now an hour before the New Year in our time zone.

Even though I had a good share of heads in modelling… this one really took a lot of my time. I have been working on them (This head is only the making of the base mesh. They are a total of 6 heads with the same mesh) for some good time… and I unfortunately have only the base mesh prepared to post.
I didn’t even have the opportunity to prepare an animated *.gif with them… I guess that’ll just have to be for next year! :)

It is almost all quads save from a triangle poly behind the ear. I prepared a sock for the mouth as well but didn’t bother with teeth. I am planning on just using a NURB’s plane with teeth image assigned to it.
The neck was temporary, as I had to trim it to fit the head to the torso (And of course I had to modify it a little as well)

Hope to catch you guys next year!

HAPPY New YEAR every body!!
And especially for Muslims: HAPPY first day of BAYRAM!

Black

BlackDidThis

12-31-2006, 10:36 PM

Thank you very much Bartosz (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=143261)…
The challenge IS always a demanding one… But I guess I went over my head in this one.
The good news is that I am really enjoying it a lot.

Thank you Jesus (http://<b>http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?find=lastposter&t=442251) (hope not to offend, but it felt odd to type that just now);

I stated this a few times above... but unfortunately I am not that fast either… I had started on the project around end November, starting of December.
The only reason I didn’t subscribe/post was because I wasn’t too sure if I was able to make it for the trailer challenge, and wanted to give that a try first. So I modelled everything out that I would have need to some extent... (According to the storyboard) and seeing that it would be impossible to make it as a movie I just gathered up my material and used them for a 3D scene.

The plan was set in this manner so I wouldn’t do the mistake of reposting all my works here in the 3D thread after being unsuccessful in completing the trailer.

As for the scene… Actually now that you say it, it IS really difficult to make sence of the last post… I’ll try to more visually explain it next time.

Thank you both for dropping by,

Black

BlackDidThis

01-01-2007, 04:38 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167669509_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167669509_large.jpg)

Expectably it was a morning of gathering-self-up… and this lived through out the day :)

As yesterday and the day before I worked some bit on the head and body-mesh (Almost completed that now. Hope to be posting it soon). I have had this boot finished a good bit earlier, but never got to post it.

This is the boot I am going to be going for most probably. I had really wanted to model out the design shoe presented in the Jumpsuit “influence & pre-visualisations" post. But I sort of doubt it will fit into my progress so far :sad:

I hope to get you guys rendered out stuff pretty soon (But there are just TOO many models in hand and I want the most of them over with within two days latest)

Til next;

Black

BlackDidThis

01-01-2007, 07:17 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167679047_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167679047_large.jpg)

I know that the previous post looked good, but pretty much lacked the presentation of the “steps” taken. Sooo here is a more clearer one.
(Once again do not take this post as a tutorial, but as a display of my “in-between” steps)

I shall be uploading an animated *.gif file in the forum threads next post as soon as I am done with this here.
The modelling used is just about the same as the method I go for in creating a head (Usually). A method developed and introduced by Dave AKA TheHobbitGuy.

Will be posting the animation in the forum thread now;

Black

BlackDidThis

01-01-2007, 07:25 PM

And here is an animated *.gif of the above post.
http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/ArmyBootWIP_Smll.gif

I had prepared it earlier, but was not sure of posting it or not… I already have too many *.gifs in the thread… I really hope you guys are more enjoying it than anything else.

And for those that would like to have their hands on a larger scaled version of the animation, I have prepared a link HERE (http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/ArmyBootWIP.gif).

Til next post;

Black

angel

01-01-2007, 07:51 PM

Nice boots. Very cool gif too:thumbsup:

leving

01-01-2007, 08:54 PM

I love the geometry in progress posts. The animated gifs are especially nice, as they show alot of the process behind the final product. It's very interesting to see how different people model, because aproaches vary so greatly from one individual to the next. Anyway, coming along swell, and keep up the good work :)

aurora

01-02-2007, 12:55 AM

Men are you finding time to do so much work?!?!? All the new character work is fantasic, I so can't wait to see how you put the whole scene together. Your Way shots are still inspiration to get me to finish so please keep them coming!!!

Juha

01-02-2007, 08:08 PM

Well... what can i say....totaly awesome work Black. you really have used your time well..
i really love your unique style, really impressive. And those gif animations..nice really nice.
i really wait to see the final image, i know it will be amazing..

good luck to you Black....

juha :applause:

BlackDidThis

01-03-2007, 01:39 AM

Sorry guys...
for not having an update for tonight… I was VERY busy the whole day with the texturing and UV lay-outs… And didn’t have a prepared milestone from earlier progresses to fill the gap… Hopefully I am going to post a nice update soon.

Angel (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=62565);
Thank you… I am really glad you like them

Grant (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?userid=254928);
I couldn’t agree more.
Honestly I don’t enjoy competitions and so forth.. But I love the spirit that is supposed to be behind this one: Enforcing people to share their methodology (Well having the advantage of ensuring that the contestant is really capable or not as well of course).

If I were to post every development for a scene as complex as I hope it to improve to; I would have to post per every ten minutes or something… And these little “time-laps” charts are a great way to both share and not loose too much from my time as well.
I am really glad that they are appreciated.

Tim (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=11197);
Hmmm… I am asked that question far too often…
I guess I have the advantages of a few handicaps… Firstly I am an insomniac, and then I am hyperkinetic… can not stay still without doing anything, and WHEN I do something I give full thrust (Had I ever mentioned that I was a speed modelling champion for over a year until I decided to quit?)
But mostly I have the better advantage of being having a new born in the house. And other than working on this project I only have to stay up and deal with him. This isn’t proving to be AS time demanding either since Rebecca (my wife) is also on parent leave since she is to breast feed)

Juha (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=156369)!!
Who is back from the living dead?!
Like usual you are over generous on complimenting my abilities, style, or what not. You personally know the amount of work and time that goes into these… And sometimes I think that “with this much work”… things should have been a LOT more better, and a lot MORE as it is… not to mention already “FINISHED” :sad: .

Now…
I have mapped out all the organic meshes and started on some of my inorganic ones.
That’s one of the thing I hate about UV mapping, you don’t really be able to present a decent progress unless you also create the textures as well.
I am in the process of that as well… Just have to figure out a way to present it to you guys with the same quality I tried to live up to until now in the thread.

I will be back;

Black

aurora

01-03-2007, 02:03 AM

Man I'm envious, I 'used' to be like you a person that rarely ever slept more the 4 hours, anything past 6 meant I was severally ill. But now I'm on this horrid medication that knocks me out within an hour of taking it and for a solid 8 hours. I keep complaining to the Dr that I want to change, but he 'thinks' its great that I'm finally gettting a normal nights sleep. Dr's are evil thats why I never went to Med school and went into research instead and now, now I do CG.
Anyways a major congrat's on having everything mapped! Thats what I'm working on right now and doubt I'll finish in 12 years let alone 12 days. So back to work for both of us.

BlackDidThis

01-04-2007, 04:07 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167926830_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167926830_large.jpg)

I am sorry for taking so long on this last update… which possibly doesn’t even look like an update for the most of you (save from the texture image being projected)

I ran into some serious difficulties using this one mesh and adopting it to the actual characters I had had wanted to model out. The cage didn’t match out, the vertices slid around disabling the territory reserved for painting lips some times end up being the top of the chin for some and etc (Especially for Olmy, since he IS a good amount different to compare.)

So I had to go in and make some subtle changes to the topology STARTING from the lower res cage upwards! :cry:
And also I had to ensure the continuity of particular areas to ease in texturing.

As a result I messed up big time from rushing my head model. And yesterday I literally had to pay the price of it.

Last of all… The texture you see here is most possibly NOT going to be used (Too Low-Res)... I only projected it because it was already in position. I intend on preparing textures I find more appropriate. But shall I now need on from lack of time I have a ready projected texture :)
As for the eyes... they are just three spheres within each other with double sided render disabled. The outer two have reversed faces so you only see them in the back drop (A VERY fast way to make eyes that follow the camera).

Hopefully will be posting more updates within 4 to 5 hours. But I have an animated gif of the Heads WIP readied for my earlier post (the one I hadn’t had time to make an animation for). I’ll post that right away.

Black

BlackDidThis

01-04-2007, 04:13 PM

Tim (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=11197);
Well not EXACTLY everything… but getting there. Hopefully this weekend will be my “Posing” weekend so I can get down to business!

As for the sleeping bit, I think you should do as the doctors say. I have suffered very sever medical consequences from my condition… even a few urgent visits to the hospital. (Ironically one of them was while I was on the “Master ‘n’ Servant” Challenge).

Apparently it is actually faster for a man to die from not sleeping than it is from not eating… live and learn :sad:

A little Story;
As for the time thingy...
I think I am on the same track as you… I want TOO much and the time is TOO little!
My Father had told me of a project that he was given in his early graduation years as a mechanical engineer. They had apparently done a fantastic job. But the time was really JUST not enough.. they needed ONE more day to complete it. They went with what they had and the guys apparently liked it a lot … and given them a whole WEEK to finish it and come back.
And you know what?
They still hadn’t finished it!

Hope that can help you to remember something I keep forgetting :)

NOW…
As I stated in the earlier post, I have prepared the animation Gif for the making of the head.
This time I have also included a render of the latest stage of it.
Something like Four or so years ago I had stumbled across Dave’s radical method of modelling out a head and ever since I have included it into my pipe-line pretty frequently. I WOULD advise those interested to browse through HIS TUTORIAL (http://thehobbitguy.com/tutorials/polymodeling/index.html).

Well without any more to say, here is the animation:
http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/HeadWIP_Smll.gifAnd again; for those interested a higher resolution version can be found HERE (http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/HeadWIP.gif)
(As you should appreciate, because of the textures included the file size has dramatically increased :sad: )

Til next!

Black

BlackDidThis

01-05-2007, 09:47 AM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167990400_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1167990400_large.jpg)

This is just a quick render to show you guys on what I have been busy with for the last two days. A total of 18 different blendShapes; keying most of the unique features the characters I wish to pose should demand.
Heads were definitely as time consuming as the bodies, if not more… especially areas I mad the mesh dense such as the lips and eyes.

Few of the targets were sculpted via ZBrush, and the rest were wrap deformed into shape.

Still working on the textures and they are on their way to completion. Since a close up would be essential I believe I shall post them per character as they finish up.

That said; only three of these guys are going to be having a displacement map… since the rest are far enough.

Still a LOT of work to do :sad: …

Black

Leotril

01-05-2007, 10:34 AM

Nice Job Black.. modeling is going great .. u put a lot of effort and it shows :thumbsup: try to sleep a bit more like 6 hours k.. :wise:

I wass looking at ur post #63 and is kinda the same way i was trying to model mine but i was using splines (nurbs curves) k.. i think that ur using polys am i right? i post some info about my problem in my thread anyway .. i couldn not finish the head i dont think i will for the challenge .. so many problems and not so much experience from my part neither :sad: .. anyways is kinda the same principle but i see that u kinda wrrap the texture is kinda cool.. ok thats it for now all the info ur giving is really helpfull u should get an award for that :applause:

later

chandro

01-06-2007, 01:26 AM

i really like the way you present your thread black, very clean and clear. beside your workflow is amazing. goodluck!!

DaddyMack

01-07-2007, 07:37 PM

Hah! The systematic fanatic is at it again...

:applause:

May the gods speed your hand good sir

BlackDidThis

01-08-2007, 09:51 AM

Sorry again for not being able to post for some time.. and keeping you guys updated… But I have put myself in a pretty difficult situation, demanding a great amount of work from my part.
But I can assure you that the next updates are going to be really big updates (Painting the textures and trying to do as good a job as possible for my part)

Until then I thought I would share something with you guys;
There has been people that have wondered about the last step in my boot presented above (Post #54 (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=4102343&postcount=54)), asking why I had put it soo much in steps and not the last step (For short: how did I do it?).

I usually like examining a model as best as I can before I start, to model as fast and efficient as I may...
And the most optimised method I personally had had come up with for this was by extruding from a cube.

Believe me, it is a VERY simple few steps that I believe you can apply to most every 3D-modelling package:

First you create a cube with two divisions along it’s height:http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/Lace-How2/Lace-How2_01.jpg
Now from top view; you pull It’s vertices to a diamond shape:http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/Lace-How2/Lace-How2_02.jpgSelect the two faces from across each other in the top row and extrude...http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/Lace-How2/Lace-How2_03.jpgNow select the other two faces, but from the bottom row and extrude these this time:http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/Lace-How2/Lace-How2_04.jpgWell you are actually done. That was simply it! ... Yeah, I know it doesn’t look like much…

But wait until we duplicate it a few times…
http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/Lace-How2/Lace-How2_05.jpg http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/Lace-How2/Lace-How2_06.jpgAnd then smooth it (2 divisions here)!

http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/Lace-How2/Lace-How2_07.jpgBecause of the place that the two ‘sticks’ are locked in the centre... the smoothing flattens them in their centre, simulating the structure of a lace.

I know that his may seem a little too simple a method (Hence the reason I included it in a single step above), or primitive, but it takes literally seconds to set up and in non-close up the effects are fantastic to compare to texture maps.

Hope that some of you may also find this of some use. And if you have any questions on how I modelled out any part of the updates posted here please feel free to ask, it is more aflattery than an insult I WILL spare you the time.

Leonidas (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=233998);
Thank you very much, I am very flattered but you are being too generous on your compliments :)
None the less I am very glad that the posts are appreciated... since they do tend to take some bit more of the time that I actually have in hand. I grew a habit of attending these competitions when I have less than a month to finish it :sad:
As for the modelling bit;
When I work with Splines I tend to first sculpt a base mesh out of something to snap onto.
Before the method above… (this was through a guy known in the net as “The Hobbit Guy”)… I used to patch model and try modelling with splines… And I would end up creating a second poly mesh to wrap deform the mesh enabling the consistency of the curves.
Eventually it was only logical for me to end up creating a box model cage that I would later on smooth at a high division level to snap my curves onto.

I have to state though; that the method I used above was a real savoir to the precision and speed I prefer to work with. I have integrated it in my work flow ever since.
I have just up-dated the post #63 (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=4108291&postcount=63) to include a URL link... do pay it a visit as it will definitely be worth the time (I believe).
Actually I gave up on Splines years ago, at least when heads are in concern, I used to poly model and then convert to subD’s… mostly because of the option to crease the edges… But ever since I got my hands on the polyCrease tool for MaYA… I have been only poly-modelling. It has incomparable flexibility… both for modelling and texturing.

I’ll try to visit your thread and see if there might be anything that I can help you out on if you wouldn’t mind.

Chandro (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=240497);
Thank you very much…
I hope to get somewhere in time… I am REALLY trying to work as fast as possible... but it is not always too easy to do EVERYTHING from scratch! :cry:

Robert (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=85530);
Lol... wouldn't know...
By the looks of it I am way over my head… there is SO much more I want to do... let’s see what I am going to be able to fit in!

Hoping to post some serious updates soon;

Black

Juha

01-08-2007, 11:03 AM

:bounce: greatt.. i was just thinking how did you managed o greate those laces... :applause:

im amazed.. your workflow is just stunning. you can print a book from your thread i think.

take care.

BlackDidThis

01-08-2007, 06:15 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1168280128_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1168280128_large.jpg)

Okay… now is neither this exactly the sculpted form of Patricia... nor the exact texture I am busied with. It is more to srt of post something in-between so I don’t just post you guys a finalised image.
Oh and not to mention that I didn’t exactly bother with building up a body texture, it is a rough silhouette with a uniform hue of the body shapes. (For those interested and into this: I went for an HSV value of 27:375:725 for her uniform skin tone).

I hope that by this time tomorrow you should be able to see a completed version of her with the displacement and etc…

I had to reference a lot from the descriptions on the book. Even though she has the most descriptions about her; they are all obsessed with her SQUARE eyes! I searched all over for what exactly square eyes may mean… but I presume it is the Latin big-eyes that have very beautiful eyelashes contouring it to the illusion of being square-ish… I literally ended up yelling “Alright we’ve got the picture... her eyes are SQUARE!” out loud.
So I guess we had BETTER make her have square eyes :sad:

This is a list of references ONLY about her eyes… (And these are the ones I was able to note down!!)
Reference Text (From Page 11):Her square, intense eyes reminded him of a cat's gaze just before pouncing.
Reference Text (From Page 32):Beneath wide square eyes as black as his own, and a small, sharp nose, she had drawn her mouth into a tight line.
Reference Text (From Page 406):
She opened her eyes—wide and square—and stared up at him.
Reference Text (From Page 409):
Patricia smiled but said nothing. Her eyes however, were bright and Square: cat with a secret.
Reference Text (From Page 426):
Patricia stared at him in shock, eyes square, touched with anger.
Reference Text (From Page 434):
"They'll teach me," she said, regarding him with her large black eyes, not square at all now, not feline, but round and calm.
Reference Text (From Page 497):
Her hair was long, still luxuriantly thick and dark; her face appeared youthful despite her seventy-four years, her eyes black and square and penetrating.

I used series of influence images in her making... but mostly was influenced by a character I found in Daz3D’s commercials (mostly texture) and Queen Amidala (mostly shape and features) from Star Wars and Dr. Sarah Tancredi from Prison Break (mostly attitude, will most possibly influence the final pose most).Refference Queen Amidala_1 (http://ftp.anakinweb.com/episode_1/personnages/queen_amidala/)
Refference Queen Amidala_1 (http://www.maarasuniverse.com/Phantom_Pics.html)
Refference “Real Woman” from Daz3D (http://www-cache.daz3d.com/store/item_file/3445/image_large.jpg)
Refference Dr. Sarah Tancredi (http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hc&id=1808457462&cf=mm) (Though I mostly use pause-shots from the DVD)

I have noticed NOW while browsing around for the notes I had had taken about her eyes, that I seem to have made a serious mistake on the textures… Her eyebrows seem to be far thicker than they should have had been.Reference Text (From Page 425):Patricia shook his hand, her thin black eyebrows drawn together.NOTE: the page number is given according to my book witch was printed in August 1986, yours MIGHT vary slightly in page numbering Well I hope these texts can help you guys out as well as they have helped me out…
This has AGAIN been a very long post; at least it would then prove useful.

Black

BlackDidThis

01-08-2007, 06:20 PM

Hello again Juha (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=156369)…

Lol you are exaggerating again…

Actually I am especially making them like this so you have something to show your students when you guys get on the net together :p
Now seriously; if you had wondered stuff... why didn't YOU ask it first? :rolleyes:
My best to the furry ones and you know who!

Black

BlackDidThis

01-10-2007, 12:11 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1168431056_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1168431056_large.jpg)

I had a horrid result in the amount I am closing up on the star figure in my composition... and instead of leaving it and making my hard work up until now look uglier than it is, I decided to go back in and change the topology of the base mesh (mostly the ears) and completely rearrange the UV map.

The basic problem was that I need to divide it 3 times in order to et the render results you see posted above… that I didn’t like... I wanted to add more geometry to where it was needed, rather than every where!
In this latest updated mesh only smoothing it once (and in distances not even smoothing it) gives fantastic results.

The secondary problem was that the UV map was rushed hence horrid. There were extreme stretch marks along the jaw line (which looks very bad in a 15 mm camera shot).
I have dealt with that matter as well by breaking the UV map a good bit more… sort of got the guts to remove the eyes as well through browsing Linh Mai (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=244686)'s thread. And I have to state that as long as you manage to paint it in a 3D environment or project the texture, it really saves a lot of space.

Now… getting back to work!
Thistledown is ALMOST finished... it was a LOT more fun to compare. I was freer to do a lot of random selections and extrusions.

Will be working on the hair this afternoon.. hope to post it soon…

Black

digikris

01-10-2007, 08:21 PM

Black,

Yeah the UV mapping is always difficult. Doesn't matter how many time you do. Its difficult. It will be easier if you can get the uv map of the model in half first and then duplicate the map. You can cut and sew the uvs may resolve the stretchy problem.

Just a thought.

Hari

BlackDidThis

01-10-2007, 10:12 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1168467142_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1168467142_large.jpg)

Okay… this is my interpretation for Karen; one of the main characters I am planning on including in the main shot.
She will be in the back leaning onto Lanier... I think I am going to leave her facial expression as it is… not going to have her particularly pose of anything.
In a private scene she had with Lanier, she reveals a T-Shirt with “Whale” written in Chinese characters.

Reference Text (From Page 278):
She tugged at her jumpsuit zipper and pulled it down, revealing a T-shirt with a Chinese character on the front, signifying "whale," the Chinese name for the Stone.NOTE: the page number is given according to my book witch was printed in August 1986, yours MIGHT vary slightly in page numbering

The image of the Chinese character is from the book… I scanned and used it to texture the T-Shirt. I will be posting a bigger version of the scan in the thread for those that might be needing it.
The yellow hair-lines are a series of curves that shall be simulated in MaYA to better fit her … it is more work than you would imagine.
I shall be rendering it out with a series of paintEffects hair assigned.

As for her textures to come; I have used one uniform texture for all of the bodies for now… save for playing with the hues a little bit to get it to match the head texture.
After doing a render for testing out how the T-Shirt looks... I think I just may leave her without the Jumpsuit… as the jumpsuits ARE proving problematic. :(

We’ll see

Black

BlackDidThis

01-10-2007, 10:18 PM

Okay…
This is the scan of the book that I had told you about…

http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/Farley'sT-ShirtSign.jpg
(And for those that may make big a mistake;
this is KAREN’s T-shirt… NOT Patricia’s,
so don’t use it on a Patricia model :) )

It is a fairly small image actually. To my part it did good in a way; I made use of the natural texture it had with the paper.
I have not compressed it much so you may use it as it is if need be (It may seem smaller than the post... but that was scaled from this one.. You would be better off using this uncompressed format).

Harikrishnan (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?userid=112265);
Thank you for your time and concern…
I am pretty capable of tricks/techniques laying out the UV’s, and mirroring was in fact what I have used regularly.
That was not exactly the problem I had :sad: …
I have a VERY close up shot to Patricia in particular with a 15mm lens. So the details are very crucial. I would normally tile the UV’s to size…but I am painting the details in 2D and need the UV’s as distinguishable as I may manage.

Hope to finish the textures for the two girls tonight (Damn am I tired actually)

Black

milw

01-11-2007, 03:39 AM

I'm finding your methods and posts to be very helpful- I really appreciate all the effort you're putting into explaining things. I'm sure you notice this already, but it seems the whale character on the rendered Karen T-shirt is mirror imaged... nice job, and thanks for the inspiration!
-cheers- Scott

BlackDidThis

01-11-2007, 03:52 AM

WHAT?!! ... OOOOOPPPS!

Nope i had had REALY not noticed that at ALL ...
and MAN do I feel stupid because of it :sad:
(I guess I really need some rest...
I'll try to rest on the 15th ;))

Thank you SO much Scott (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=172242)! You are a life savour.
I did a mistake that I SHOULD have paid attention to. I had a mirrored instance of the cage and forgot to correct that later on.

It really means a lot that the efforts are apreciated. presenting steps is actually a lot less work than it may seem... but honestly it DOES take up some of my precious time... I fear I may drop on the quality of the in-betweens due to time catching up on me :sad:

Once again thanks for the heads up... I'll make sure I deal with that before the next time I post her!

Black

milw

01-11-2007, 04:20 AM

I'll try to rest on the 15th
ermm, you don't mean the 31st perchance? seeing as the deadline has been extended and all... (I find it strange- on Jan 8 I got the email notice of "last chance, ends Jan 15!", and now with no email notice and no stickys that I can find, we get an extra 2 weeks!)

Keep up the good work!
cheers- Scott

BlackDidThis

01-11-2007, 04:37 AM

:blush: Eeee... yes I do actually.
(Just checked the Submit page.. 20 days and 19 hours left :))
I guess I must really be giving a baaad impression.. two boo-boo's in a row!

Thats just GREAT news!
That should give me time enough to go on presenting the same way as I go. :bounce:
Scott (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=172242), it seems I owe you a drink if we ever meet.
(though it is usually San Diego, Los Angeles and SanFrancisco that I am acquainted with when I make it to the states :sad:)

So when was THIS decided on? I presume it is to compensate on the time loss for reading the book for most contestants?
Once I finish what I have in hand... I think I had had better do some browsing!!

Thanks again!

Black

digikris

01-11-2007, 07:00 AM

Black,

That was good news to me.

gringer

01-11-2007, 08:35 AM

Man, I can't believe how much you've done in such a short time. Nice work!

Cheers :D

BlackDidThis

01-12-2007, 04:13 PM

Thank you ver much Michael (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=151123)... we're all trying our best, I am glad you like the struggle here.

Simple Following Eye Tut;
Seems some people would also like to know what I meant with the “eye” in post #62 (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=4108281&postcount=62)... as well as some that would like to know how it was done.
What I meant…
was that it is basically an eye that even though there is constraining no rotation or translation… follows the camera movement.

How it is DONE is very simple actually... even simpler than the shoe-Laces.

Firstly we need to do some modelling.

http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/SimpleEye-Tut/SimpleEye-Tut1.jpg

Create a sphere
Give it a Black shader (I chose a phongShader with low secularity for the tut’s sake)
Now duplicate the sphere and scale it larger (I have turned on X-ray here on for clarity).
Give that one a shader of its own with a colour of your choice (This is going to be the iris)
Now duplicate and and enlarge it again.
Give this one a White shader.

Well you’re done with the modelling bit.

Now the final step;
This is going to be software specific… but you are going to have to find these attributes in your own.

According to MaYA;
http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/SimpleEye-Tut/SimpleEye-Tut2.jpg
you select the outer two spheres and then go to editPolygon menu and choose to reverse the normals.
Last of all you open the attributes editor for each of the outer two spheres and set the “doublesided” option to “False”
(Actually you could have directly gone here and selected “opposite” instead of flipping the normals... it’s your call)

And that’s about all it takes!
I think I create one between 15 to 20 seconds and it is really handy.

http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/SimpleEye-Tut/SimpleEye-Tut3.jpg

Hope this can help the some of you that would be interested.

Black

chandro

01-12-2007, 04:34 PM

yes, great thread.. seems your into detail both explaining things and you work ,
im wonderin if youre a teacher sort of.

EON (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=214&t=419296)

BlackDidThis

01-12-2007, 09:05 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1168635937_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1168635937_large.jpg)

These are the texture maps I plan on using for Patricia, presented on a phongShader and screen grabbed from MaYA.

The heads are NOT renders… so you are still not looking at the finished results. I am savouring such a render for when I have completed the Displacement and the Diffuse maps. Both of which can be readied only when I am satisfied with the “sculpting” process.
And the hair is only a basis and in case you would see through her hair gaps.

Textures here were achieved from projecting (Only the colour map) and editing in Photoshop (All of them).
Not getting into detail on the preparation of it, due to this not being a 2D thread… but I can state that I tried to give each character a special Specularity map depending on the skin type I would generally expect from the ethnicity and etc… given.
I had really liked the texture I had made the last time… But I think I am a little more proud of this one. We’ll just have to see how things work out.

STILL painting the maps for the rest (Including a full body map for Karen)... Hope to post them as well soon.

As always; feel free to ask any questions of my methods shall you have any.

Black

BlackDidThis

01-12-2007, 09:10 PM

Thank you Chandro (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=240497);

Well there ARE deeper reasons of why I have adapted the habbit of sharing my methods... But that would be a story for another time.

For short; no, I am not a teacher. (Though I was a ballet teacher before I had to stop dancing :).... does that count?)

I am just glad that some of you are enjoying their finds here.

Black

BlackDidThis

01-13-2007, 12:18 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1168690733_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1168690733_large.jpg)

And this time, the texture maps for Karen.
Once again; these are screen-grabs from MaYA and lack the quality a decent render would provide.
Not being lazy here, just don’t see the need yet of this point, since the painted textures are all I intend to display.

Painting the textures;
Actually a possible (understandably) misinterpretation of the previous Mile-Stone has been brought to my attention…
These textures you are seeing now are not photo-projections. The word “projection” is used because of the manner some features have been introduced to the 3D mesh while working within MaYA (Very obvious in the eyes/eye-sockets).
The textures have bee painted out using stamps and textures collected from references.

However I DO plan on photo projections pretty soon. This is just an in-between step I prefer to use (And advise, even if just primitively done) before getting into massive details. It helps remind me where what is, and how it is going to look.

Many of us tend to get carried away in Z-Brush, Mud-Box, or which ever software we use for sculpting out details or baking detailed images… and this tends to show in the grand total (leaving your hard efforts useless)

So the idea here is to choose the brows, the eyes, the skin type, the hair... the shape of the head (Which is again NOT sculpted in either of the above mentioned software, these are obtained through vertice moving and gradually applied wrap deformers/lattices)

Back to Karen;
If you shall notice her bump map is lighter but less contrast in general, high contrast in details. That’s mostly to help pronounce her age, and the uniformity of her Specular to compare is again due to her being Caucasian/being descendent from an English family and so forth.
I also increased the specular colour of her eyebrows to blend them in a little better.

Earlier I came up with a radical option for Olmy… Will try to finish him up and post later today.

Black

CPROD

01-13-2007, 04:23 PM

Wow Black! The tip about the laces is exellent!
Its wicked that you are willing to share you knowledge.

By the way your modelling is very inspiring.

Keep up the great work!

BlackDidThis

01-13-2007, 08:08 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1168718920_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1168718920_large.jpg)

Alright … and ONE MORE Character's textures;

Ser Olmy!
(Once again with screen grabs and not renders… once again without displacement or diffuse maps presented…)

Actually a problem occurred apparently while setting him as a morph target… his nostrils pulled in, even though I had well smoothed them out. I must have done an in-between mistake somewhere, I just don’t know where.
The reason I didn’t correct that yet is that I had a mind to go on in and seriously sculpt out some details onto him.

As for the texture: I just thought that darkening the sockets might be a cool idea… If people go through the trouble of changing their WHOLE body, I find it very natural for men to paint their faces :) .
I AM going to make him a thick bundle of hair as described in the book, but didn’t texture it on here because I WANTED it to look unnaturally blended in.

Even for the specularity map, I have left it sort of greyish with a slight organic tint. This was because I wanted an unnaturally oiled skin complex (that sounded weird!). Sort of like you would do for a concrete shader.
I guess that’s sort of how I decide on the making of my specularity maps. I tend to compare the results I want to a material… to specific metals, or stones and etc… That’s possibly why Karen seems like she is made out of bronze while Olmy here looks as if he is a concrete Life-Cast.

At the moment I am still texturing Carrolson, but I give her and Lanier a break... Thistledown still IS lagging sort of behind :sad: .

I HOPE to be able to get you another update tonight. But no promises.

Black

BlackDidThis

01-14-2007, 01:29 AM

Woow!!
I’ve seem to have gotten over 3000 views and have been past the “first 50 in the most viewed” line for some time now…
Even though I’ve started 11 weeks late and it hasn’t even been a month since I actually participated!!

Never thought it would be such especially when (save from myself) there were only 19 visitor posts.
Guess I am interesting enough to look at :arteest: , but TOO scary to post :argh:

Well none the less:
Just a short “Thank You!” message to all you guys browsing through…
I Know that these numbers are temporary, and as the deadline approaches, these visitor counts will most possibly change to my disadvantage, but as deserved:

Thank you for visiting so often, and for (read=But) NOT SPAMMING:p
It is MUCH appreciated! :bowdown:

Black

Gunilla

01-14-2007, 04:21 PM

Oh my... haven't been around much lately so I've missed a whole lot. I so enjoy going through your thread! Steady highquality work and the way you share your methods is really inspiring... thank you!
I love the modeling gifs - have never seen that method before, and your texturing is wonderful (but I knew that already)
Best of luck for your final steps now and again: It's amazing how much the newborn Dante looks like your painting, did you do a 3d printout of it or was it just luck? :scream:

BlackDidThis

01-14-2007, 11:06 PM

I seem to have idiotically overwritten the texture file that I have been working since last night with the texture I had created last (I use the same naming conventions like all five of them have HeadClr.iff for colour... it is ony the directory names that distinguish them. This was just for ease incase I would convert this into a morphing animation in the future)...
Feeling pretty dull at the moment!
(This was a pretty expensive mistake)

Well for the last few hours I have been trying to fix up my mess... and I hope to be able to posts results from it soon (a few hours soonest: sad: )

Thank you & Welcome to the forums Alexandre (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?userid=227820);
I am so sorry for skipping out on reacting to your post... I must say that I am flattered that this thread was your first post in these forums... it was just that with my uploading a MileStone I was distracted, and it was rude of me.

I'm glad you like the methodology presented and truly hope for them to be of use to you too some day.
I enjoy discovering new methods and sharing them with others, but even still it is not possible for me to cover every topic... like others, feel free to ask me shall there be need.

Hello again Gunilla (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=78228);

I guess old habits die hard... It started with my need to prove that I actually drew the illustrations I did as a child... and now I can't even start a thread without explaining myself :sad:

As for Dante's illustration
(My newest weak point.. I can chat pages about our little squirrel)...

Well yes.. I guess I got us SO integrated into 3D that I have mutated my wife to a 3D-Printer :eek:

Or even WORSE..
Rebecca is actually the name of a 3D printer brand... but I refuse to see her in her actual form!
Naaa ... honestly I was pretty impressed with the similarity myself, though I had a LOT of echographs to examine. It was a period I had more work to do as 2D than I had for 3D... hence the illustration as well. I do wonder though, if I would ever be able to make it as successful in 3D.

As for the illustration we are waiting for my hands to be rid of the load I have, (including a competition you may have heard of) than I shall present it and detail shots in my website's section dedicated to Dante.
We are also planning on selling it's signed high quality prints, and saving all of it's income on his bank account... But all to come in good time (I hope)

I'll let you know when the finished image is uploaded if you wish.

Getting back to fixing my Boo-boo

Black

aurora

01-14-2007, 11:22 PM

Many of us tend to get carried away in Z-Brush, Mud-Box, or which ever software we use for sculpting out details or baking detailed images… and this tends to show in the grand total (leaving your hard efforts useless)

Man thats way to true!

Love the new character work and especially the way you show all the various images. After Tuesday when I get a chance to work harder on mine I have got to do the same. It seems hypocritical for me not to since I'm so pro-tutorial when possible.

Patricia and Karen are fantastic as is Olmy. Just a word of strict book-wise critism Olmy did not have ears.

I'm sad to hear you have not been having such a great day. I can relate to the first part. I just could not get my galaxies to look as good as normal for me. Something about the scale needed for this project is really not working for me. But I did quit working on that and started working on Axis Nader modeling again and ma doing wonderfully. Moral of the story jump to something else for a while and I'll pray you get lucky like I did :)

BlackDidThis

01-15-2007, 12:04 AM

What?!
He DIDn't??

Damn... I always FELT that he hadn't had ears as I read through the series (Yeah got them all... I have 23 books from Greg Bear) ... but when I went back to take as many notes as I can possibly find on each charcter, I couldn't find one thing about the ears not really being there.
I was always open to interpreting it as "not there"... but no description such to what I found.

Got me very disapointed to be honest... because I was pretty happy to not have to do the damn ears!
(have the hardest time with the ears when I do a head, and I was not too much better at deforming it to the shape you see here)

I WILL go through the pages again ASAP... but if you have it noted down ... or remember clearly "when"/"where"... could you find it/tell me about it please?

Black

aurora

01-15-2007, 12:18 AM

I honestly don't remember a description at all of Olmy in Eon. It was not til at least 1/3 the way through Eternity that I remember the first description of Olmy. If I remember right it was sometime around the time he was introduced to the Jart. After that it was mentioned a few times especially when his son is 'born' and Greg compares how he looks compared to Olmy.

chandro

01-15-2007, 02:20 AM

do you have any other thread tutorials? or maybe a gallery?:)

BlackDidThis

01-15-2007, 07:35 AM

Tim (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=11197);
I spent the whole last-night skimming through “Eternity”… Fortunate for me that it was a lot thinner book than that of Eon.

Actually memories of Dante (My son) made Tapi’s confrontations with Olmy a whole different story. I have to state that it is a whole different story to read once you have nights you spend examining your own child… especially when he/she is newly born.
I just noticed some keen fatherly observations that “Examining your own Child”’s similarities can only amplify.

But none the less; unfortunately I couldn’t find anything of the sort about his ears… I HAVE however found these:
About the Jarts and Olmy:
Soon, following an agreement worked out between the Jart mentality and his partial, he would allow the Jart access to his eyes and ears. They could communicate more effectively if they understood each other better.
About Ser Tapi Ram Olmy:
His body image at that time had been a six year old boy, Polynesian in appearance—Polynesians and Ethiopic blacks had been considered the most beautiful of the human races in Ram Kikura's youth—and extremely puckish in behavior.Tapi waited for him, his self-designed image now that of a young man, a good approximation of what a natural son of his parents might have looked like—Olmy's build and unaltered eyes and lips, Ram Kikura's nose and high cheekbones, a handsome young male with the few stylish flaws that were the hallmark of intelligent body-design.The young man's body would be self-contained, but without the reliance on Talsit parts and other maintenance items in short supply. His design would not be able to exist so long without maintenance and nutrition, but for these times it was a better design than Olmy's.

Alas... he has ears... BIG ones :sad: ...

Frustrated... I went through my notes on Eon again…
and found it THERE! : sad:
(TOLD you that I was not too bright at the moment!)
I have it typed AND saved on my HD titled "Ser Olmy" And the line was on the TOP of the list!:
"Things are in quite a riot here, aren't they?" the man said. Patricia realized that he had a nose but no nostrils. His eyes were pale blue, almost blank, and his ears were large and round.
I don’t suppose my Olmy’s ears would be fit to be called “Large”… would you by any chance? :sad:

Chandro (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=240497);
Hmm… methods and short tutorials… I have MANY… hundreds maybe by count... Bu you would really have to browse through a variety of forums; mostly by the name “Black” or similar (If 'Black' has had been already taken).
One that directly comes to mind is a thread in Threedy.com (http://www.threedy.com/site/forum/showthread.php?t=28305) where I had once moderated, hence spent a lot of time in.
In there alone there is a LOT more… but as I said unorganised.

I had some time ago dedicated a lot of information/models/textures/misc to the net... but disappointment in it’s usage from those who accessed it. I have withdrawn all my “freestuff”

I DO plan how ever to present a great variety of more organised tutorials, as well as free stuff again in my website to come:
BlackDidThis.com
(IF I ever make the time for it)

I really need to get back to work now...

Black

BlackDidThis

01-15-2007, 05:09 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1168880985_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1168880985_large.jpg)

This is another of the five characters you had seen the bodies of; Lenore Carrolson.

She is a much elder lady to compare to Karen and especially Patricia. So I tried to make her a little more matt and weathered.
In my earlier attempt I had made her specular in the lines of a tree-bark… but (for those that haven’t read it in the thread) I have managed to overwrite the files :sad: .

I know the hair seems to be platinum blonde, but it is mostly to give a very light under layer. She is originally blonde with streaks of white and grey.
(For those that are wondering... this time the hair was through a filter from Alien Skin Eye-Candy. Matching it seamlessly was a whole other story! :sad: )

Unfortunately this time (even though I put most work in this one… save for Patricia’s) I am really not too proud of the textures. And I feel bad about how it cost me two days.

I think all in all, the textures presented so far are pretty satisfactory for distance shots, and unless I have time enough in my hands, I think I’ll be sculpting Patricia out to very high details only (though I would REALLY want to go in and give Carrolson a better job)

I hope to be able to post Lanier in a shorter period than this one has managed to show up.

Black

aurora

01-15-2007, 08:54 PM

Sorry about that Black, maybe I was thinking of the tears which Olmy did not have but Tapi did. But I could have sworn he had no ears. I also when all the way through Eternity again and sure did not find the passage I though I was thinking of. I guess all these dang late nights blending into early mornings has driven me to early on-set Alzhiemers.

BlackDidThis

01-16-2007, 05:20 PM

No worries Tim (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=11197),

Since I myself even went through reading the book always with a visual image of Olmy without to very little ears, I guess I should accept he fact that it just feels such as you read it all.
I wonder what Greg (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=250015) was thinking… Possibly due to improve his hearing or something?

Well none the less… I think my ears ARE going to have to need to be worked (Read=Enlarged) on :cry:

Black

BlackDidThis

01-16-2007, 05:22 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1168968140_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1168968140_large.jpg)

This is going have to be my pre-visualisation of Garry Lanier, since he turned out far more different than I had had envisioned him to be.
Textures just proved that the wrap deforming and polygon tweaking was simply just not enough to get the features I thought I had achieved. He looks so much better without the textures :sad:.

I gave him a very dense black hair scalp (Which was projected onto a 2D map from the 3D object for a change… For those intrested) for basis of the Hair effects I am to apply (to ensure it to look nice and thick) and I have made sure that he has a nice sharp specularity on the hairs…

I had many models that so gave the feel I had while reading the book, like Michael from Prison Break... or Hell... even Mel Gibson!
But the way that he was constantly brought out to look “Amerindian” enforced me to change all my interpretations, especially when even a senator that doesn’t know him directly asks if he is Amerindian SHOULD tell me that the guy is pretty much unmistakable.

Well in any case, I am going to be re-shaping him a dear amount to get a blend between an American native and what I would prefer for him to look like.

I will post reference texts about him AND all of the characters once I spare the time to render them all out… At this moment I am truly too occupied with modelling out Thistledown :sad:

Hope to be getting more often posts like the earlier times… But there is so much to do that does not fit into 24 hours sometimes…

Black

AIR

01-17-2007, 09:56 AM

WOOOOOOW.
THE MAN HIMSELF.

I dont have time to write longer, but so glad to see you here.

Your nickname appeared on the list, and all good memory's came to my mind.
Anyway,just droped to say Hi to greatest critician here at cg talk, where crits make sence and motivate one to giv it's best.

Best of luck man.... gotta go.:thumbsup::wavey:

BlackDidThis

01-17-2007, 02:12 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169043141_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169043141_large.jpg)

This is one of the many structures created for Thistledown’s architecture, mostly done with straight forward box modelling with a few tool shortcuts. It was (like I believe it was for the some o us) sort of randomised extrusions and an educated guesses.
The only original method used here on this one is the way that I first extruded and shaped the general straight up, and then deformed it to it’s chandelier/golf Tee shape.

Reference Text (From Page 130):
Some of the structures rose to the very limits of the chamber's atmosphere; these were actually thicker at the top than the bottom, like golf tees.
…
The main library was practically hidden beneath a sprawling annex of one of the smaller golf-tee structures.Reference Text (From Page 47):
Lanier leaned back into the cab. "The 'megas' are the big buildings," he explained.Reference Text (From Page 290):
Mirsky examined several buildings along the second chamber thoroughfares before picking one that suited him. It was hidden between one of the giant chandelier-skyscrapers the Americans called megas, and a long row of hundred-meter-high asteroid-rock towers of no apparent utility.NOTE: the page number is given according to my book witch was printed in August 1986, yours MIGHT vary slightly in page numbering

The total I have so far is in the area of about 50 buildings of low and medium resolution. A lot of the buildings are variations of the in-between stages of a few of my more complex ones. It saves serious amount of time for such tasks to duplicate stages that look like they could can give the eel of a completed block/building (just think of the similarity/variations between the buildings WE have)

I’ll most possibly post the mass of them as a Block pretty soon, I just prefer to prepare my textures for that as well first.
But I DO have a few more buildings with their time-laps saved aside. I’ll post them here as I render them out.

I have two doubts I couldn’t come to conclusions yet:

Was very tempted to go crazy on the laying of the blocks.
But then I that when they had the chance to decide on what the city is going to be looking like from day one, they possibly would have the organised “grid” that New York’s first settlers had to suffer from placed in BEFORE hand... Or would they create a very unique lay-out?
The lights... should I leave all the buildings barren of lights save for just ONE visible light in on room? Or should I light-em all up? It definitely adds a lot to the rendering...
I am not too sure on how loyal I remain to the story in this way?

As stated: I'll try to post more of these buildings as I render them out...

Black

BlackDidThis

01-17-2007, 02:14 PM

Damir (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=128055);
Lol... and so is the man full of exagerated compliments to myself.
I fear you have an overexposed impression of me :)

Thank you though for paying a visit... pitty to not have you in this run.

Everybody;

Sorry, but no time-laps animation for this time... I DO have the images none the less... And I will be posting it later on for you guys.

I really didn't have the time.

Black

aurora

01-17-2007, 04:23 PM

Nice Mega!! Me likey lots :)

DimitrisLiatsos

01-17-2007, 07:07 PM

Amazing Thread from Page One to Last. It looks like a Modeling/Shading tutorial....i must admit i really enjoyed finding your thread. Have fun man, awesome work. :bounce:

BlackDidThis

01-18-2007, 04:32 AM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169094757_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169094757_large.jpg)

This is another Tee Shaped Mega that I worked on the most of today.
Actually I had set a goal to not go too far in detailing, and to leave things in the early blocking stage (Until I figure the composition thoroughly)… but I had really enjoyed the way this one was promising to be; so I very unprofessionally went on in and picked out some more features.

I think I am going to make this my “Star” Mega, and try to ensure that it is seen overhead in our close up to the characters.

Shall you notice, I started out a design for the base of it, but left it at its earlier stages to compare to the top bits.
This is because I truly doubt the base shall ever be viewed. In time I shall of course consider perfecting it, but at this time, I fear I shall have to spare only those that I have definitely decided on.

The idea for this one was to make a landing pad... but things got out of hand… and ended up with six branches of overhanging apartments.

To get an idea of the scale; along the edge of the extended bit you can see a micro hair like railing system… those rails are a metre high... and this would render the whole structure to be around 1800 metres high.

I was actually going to render out images from the other buildings worked on, and post them… but this literally dominated my day, along with my life outside the competition.
Just didn’t think they were as eye catching as this one, so I left them aside.
Will be posting other kinds of stuff (mostly texturing related) soon hopefully.

Black

BlackDidThis

01-18-2007, 04:36 AM

Tim (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=11197);
Lol...
Something tells me that you just might like this one a little more.

Thank you very much Dimitris (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=1718);

It means a lot to know that the methods shared end up being a value to others.
As I take a few steps back, I notice that I have gone too much into detail, not only in modling/texturing… but in explaining myself.

But none the less I am really enjoying myself.

Everybody;

Once again I am going to have to state that the animation *.gif files have not been prepared.. I shall post them as soon as I have readied them for you guys.

Til next;

Black

aurora

01-18-2007, 05:07 AM

Yes I do like that alot more. It gives it that chandalier appearance to the Mega's, something I personally felt lacking in the first run. I can't wait to see how you give it size perspective.

01-18-2007, 12:21 PM

A lot of very good stuff here! I like everything!

DarkOracle

01-18-2007, 05:33 PM

I like what I see. Great modeling, can't wait to see more.

Also, Good Luck :thumbsup:

kruzader

01-18-2007, 07:08 PM

Wow, Black... I'm amazed at the amount of detail you put into your models in such a short time. Is it merely a matter of practice? Does it come easily the more you do? Does it take a lot of time to add all the detail? I do my CG as a hobby and usually don't have a lot of time at the end of the day to spend on modeling so I'd love to follow you examples in modeling to speed up the process and turn out more decent models...

I can't wait to see how the scene will look at the end, great work! :)

AIR

01-19-2007, 01:05 AM

I guess you are not avare how big help was your commenting on my artwork in MS challenge.
Im telling you it was,maybe even one of crucial things that helped me get to the end.

Anyway, I see nice modeling abilitys displayed here, really good stuff.Lots of detail,and I like details, but who doesnt.

Its kinda late, Im gonna say bye for now and wish you best of luck to get this to an end where it belongs.

Juha

01-19-2007, 09:33 AM

Darn, looks really good Black. architechture is well designed, i like it a lot.

claudiojordao

01-19-2007, 10:55 AM

Hey Black, your work continues to astonishing me... what a great buildings!
Hurry up my friend.

BlackDidThis

01-19-2007, 09:17 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169241466_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169241466_large.jpg)

This is again a series of in-betweens for a few buildings to be used in the Render scene (References again from the texts stated on post#102 (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=4136461&postcount=102)).
I have been doing some very good progress (Lately not as much with the buildings, but the foreground elements) and I wish I can share the progress of everything with all of you… but even the rendering and putting together of the above post managed to steal from my time some good amount. So Unfortunately most of everything is going to come to you as a whole in the following week :sad:

Most of the in-between elements produced here have proven useful in the making of the rest of the city. Usually what I would do would most possibly be using pre-modelled elements to make up the new buildings and so forth.
Since the objective is to work from scratch, when ever I happen to have a piece that would scarcely look like a building from “some” angle (which is just about EVERYthing that comes out), I put it aside, and tried to use it to crowd up my city. This has saved me a LOT of time for an “Actually pretty impressive looking” Thistledown.
I am hoping to get you guys a render of the city within this week. I still have some more placing to handle, as well as to finish up the high-ways.

As for the modelling bit, they were again straight forward extruding and etc… In just about all of them I made use of four quarter symmetry to gain time.
Shall you notice, the 3rd and 4th ones are extrusions from a generic floor plan… I made a lot of buildings for the city in this way.. most of them even simpler than these ones, hence not really worth setting in-betweens of.
The 5th one was meant to be a Golf-Tee Mega, more going for the chandelier look… but I didn’t enjoy working on it any further to better it… most possibly it is again going to be around to fill in the gaps.

Unfortunately again I will not be able to post any animation, but I shall (When I can) definitely present to you guys a series of animated *.gifs for each and every time-laps I posted here… or even those I haven’t had the time to post :p
I shall try to post a milestone with a great more of the buildings lined up in it…

Til next;

Black

BlackDidThis

01-19-2007, 09:19 PM

Oscar (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=2491), Nico (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=256572), Claudio (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?userid=60735);
That’s Really great… Thank you

Tim (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=11197), Juha (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=156369);
Well I tried to get a character that would look good close up.. then I thought I would make her companions looking as good… and cloths fitting.. all in all a simple blocked out background just didn’t pull it off :sad:

Damir (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=128055);
That was really very touching… and meant a lot... Thank you

The MS Challenge (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/masterandservant/index.php) was an interesting one where I THINK I helped about 40-60 people at a serious level, mostly with private messaging when necessary. It was a period that I had much more free time and when ever I was rendering something /or saving, I would try to give some one else a hand.
What got to irritate me in the end was that in the FAQ thread a guy posted that I was of the people that posted empty/superficial stuff and had no right to say anything about keeping the threads decent (a reply to my “moderating”)… And not ONE of those 40-60 people that spent lines and lines of “Thank you… your post saved my life” or similar stood up to say that it was not true…

Okay I really DO understand that not all of us have been following up on the FAQ thread… but right after it a series of those people actually posted other stuff… evidencing that they did follow.
I doubt there remains a need on what I felt/thought back then...

Well in the conclusion of it… this sort of got me much colder to the CG-Talk society that I had actually grown to like so very much back then. And since then, I am just running around and trying to help people that stick out to me if I can be of any use… but try not to give too much credit to everyone in return.

Please don’t come to the conclusion of “I don’t like you” Damir (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=128055), on the contrary… your coming here and still holding me up so high in value, even though I still find it extraordinarily exaggerated.

How come you haven’t gone for a 3D entry for this run? I enjoyed your works and more importantly your enthusiasm…
When I have the time spared, I shall try and follow up on where you must have gotten yourself to.

Theuns (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=244331),
And/or those intrested in Speed Modeling;
(You just may have gotten much more than you bargained for...)

Here (CG-Challenge threads) it is a little bit more relaxed… but through my 3D modelling and usually the forums I attend to… I have come across this exact question pretty often. Yes I DO tend to model at a definitely above average speed, but in the end of the day I wasn’t BORN like this :)
(Though I am Hyperkinetic and suffer from various side effects from it)

Now the only major advantage I seem to have is that I have been professionally sculpting/illustrating since 17 years of age… And I am far past that age :sad:
But what really got me to improve were simply lots and lots of practice.

The best way I can put this:
Is that while preparing for the talent exams for the Academy of fine arts, I had attended a course for drawing the figure.
And in the class they taught us how we should reference from everything around the model to help configure the location of each of the models elements.
Well so what happened was that after a few courses I managed to develop the “eye” that evidently searches for the aligning windows or corners to my viewpoint, so I can draw the girl/boy.
This is VERY natural, and it develops in everybody that practices… now why I am telling you THIS is because of what I notice happen when I got OUT of the studio: My father was driving me to somewhere... and then I noticed how automatically I was checking the bumpers of the cars in front of us while waiting for the green light!
I was actually checking on what is aligned with what.. how oval or round I saw the backlights and etc…
Now the thing that happened here was after a few sessions of serious and densely concentrated sketching, I started to lock into such an analysis. It may be stronger with some then others, but I am not the only one who lived such results.

This EXACT thing goes on with modelling…
Challenges (You do NOT have to win.. nor do you have to finish in time.. it is all about forcing yourself to a task) forums, friends groups, tutorials (!)… they all sooner or later obligate you to evolve on your works.
It is all about getting the VIEW on how you can model things out… if I go in and tell you step by step on HOW I modelled out the posts so far (maybe save from the head and body.. those two sort of demand organic sculpting experience), you would manage to model them out at as impressive a time period. So the WAY to do each of them is what gets you seriously ahead, hence you need to be able to see what CAN be done as quick as possible.

Now WHAT can you do to improve;
I was always a fast modeller since I managed to get a hang of it.. but then a few years ago I started attending speed modelling competitions in another forum that I later on ended up moderating.
How it goes is: You have an hour to model what ever is given to you that week. That forum cost me a LOT of things, leave alone that it was a serious waste of my time, but in the end of it I believe I have given some people something; and also I have seriously increased my speed in examining/deciding/modelling things out… After (obligation) modelling difficult models within an hour at least once every week (Almost 2 years now for my part), modelling does grow to be an extension of your thoughts.
(An EXAMPLE THREAD (http://threedy.com/site/forum/showthread.php?t=24482) of a session of speed modelling “how-to” )

Now do NOT get an illusion that speed modelling is going to get you to model something fast... That almost NEVER happened to me.
YES; in the end of it I always modelled them honestly within the hour… but it always cost me a few attempts, if not a few tests on figuring out WHAT may work the better. So what I always ended up doing was wasting four maybe five... sometimes even 48 hours to model a simple object that I would easily have modelled and been done with within 2 hours max!
This helps a LOT in the end of it. Because what you discover in one model you can always carry over to your next projects.
Another addition the Speed Modelling competitions have given was the “Rush”! I can not compare the race of modelling against the ticking of the timer… an hour becomes SUCH a short time period at that moment. In fact just like I had had stated above for “sketching from a live model”… this “Rush” becomes some what automated, if not addictive. You end up racing to finish the model up… it keeps you from relaxingly enjoying it maybe, but you get the job done!

I really CAN’T give you step by steps on improving, but what I CAN do is try to give you a few tips/starters.

Tip#1 Practice… and practice a LOT (I shouldn’t even have to be saying this!)
Tip#2 Get very used to “selecting” things… this is a VERY overlooked process that is literally vital to working fast. And of course get used to the tools… accessing them, using them (Being able to decide on what tool shall prove most worthy/speedy is a feature that shall grow on you only through experience)
Tip#3 Always start with as little geometry as you can manage. Try to describe your mesh with the least amount of vertices. When ever you can’t tweak them around to express the model… THEN you add in more geometry. You just HAVE to be able to get used to figuring out what a box-model will look like when smoothed out.
Tip#4 Probably the best way to model out something from real life would be through how it was built IN real life (through personal experience I believe that this rule at least 90 percent of the time holds true)
Tip#5 Always try to stick to quads when ever possible… in fact playing a game of “try to keep the mesh in Quads". I have nothing against triangular polygons… it is just that having quads enables you access to a lot of tools that really speed up your workflow. I would have to SHOW examples... but through experience you shall yourself note the difference.
Tip#6 TRY to draw your concept first as best as you can. Especially if it is not something you are able to hold in your hands. The struggle you show in building a 2D image of a project definitely premeditates you into modelling it in 3D. And it can take a lot less time.
Unofficial Tip: Use MaYA :wise: ... well I don’t know if that has an effect or not… I use MaYA, and here you are reading my post on how to model faster! :p

Besides the last one.. these are little pointers of many that you would develop eventually. I am sorry that they don’t make you super fast instantly… but they might help you get there. As stated over and over... it all comes down to being able to See/Notice methods... and this not only demands creativity, but knowledge as well.
(Again from the same site a good example was THESE (http://threedy.com/site/forum/showthread.php?t=32616&page=12&pp=15&highlight=Puzzle) replies to THIS (http://threedy.com/site/forum/showpost.php?p=357385&postcount=157) request. In the first link I am giving the URL to the page and not to my particular post since there is a good variaty ther... Mine is further down. I had first explained the geometry HERE (http://threedy.com/site/forum/showpost.php?p=357406&postcount=160) before actually doing it)

It is not ALL good;
As with all things.. there are ups and downs.. speed modelling DOES have it’s side effects.

It IS addictive
You don’t really get to relax and enjoy modelling
You become very aggressive if disturbed while in the middle of a project
You become VERY anal! (I am not too sure if this actually IS a side effect… I am VERY anal, and I speed model :rolleyes: )
It even starts dominating your sleep!
Well okay... now to be more serious... there is one general disadvantage...
Your workflow to get a model completed as fast as possible does just that.. gets the model completed. But this usually gives you a LOT more work on trying to texture the model decently (Unless you are also part of the mass majority that just hits some auto command and projects textures… then leaves it at that).

A very decent workflow to go for would most possibly be to select individual faces and to set your UV’s as you go. Because at many models that you start off with a primitive, it is so much simpler to distribute the UV’s to compare to the complex, later stages (NOT referring to the organic models… I more mean things like candles… or I don’t know... weapons, machinery… ESPECIALLY if you want a sort of lath texturing on it). Trust me that it REALLY makes a difference.

So while your bar for your bicycle is still a cylinder… start already distributing things aroung... before you end it into shape (for example) Also in some way “MARK” faces WHILE you are modelling … for example these buildings I did... I would have been in a MUCH better state had I saved my selection of the windows WHILE I had them selected and extruded… get what I mean?

Well I must have given you LOT to read and think about (I am NOT going to go up and check through.. so if there was TOO much nonsense or too many typo’s.. my apologies pre-hand)... for short... there is sadly no way for you to come home to the few hours you have for the computer, and expect to be able to just constantly make best use of it.
Like expectable it is going to take a lot from you first. Try to think it like an old fashion water pump… when you first install it: the pump won’t work at all. What you will have to do is pour a glass of water first into it so it can vacuum correctly… In the result of it, you WILL have a pump that will constantly bring up water… But you HAVE to put the first glass of water from yourself.

All this stated.. I would have to include that: I am FAR from the level of "mastering" I am working to live up to... There is MUCH to learn yet, and just as much to do!:bounce:

Hope this helps you, or at least some one!

Black

Leotril

01-19-2007, 11:18 PM

Hi Black .. i like a lot what ur doing with buildings there :thumbsup: .. thx fro dropping for my thread and the comments about the shader . it looks u didn read the thread completly i dont blame u i didn read ur latest either .. it was quite long but ill manage to read that cuz is very informative as always. :)
Im having a litle problem with the shader i think ill try to explained the problems n the thread.. i got some answers for the pixar forum and other forums i been posting the problem .. ill try that tonight :wise:

oh the buildings :) i need to get back to those .. i spent some time with the head the other night , then the shader now working on some interiors stuff then back to the buildings mostly the golf tee cuz thats teh symbol of the city.. i think maybe not also the chamber thats why is so important to me to aplieed the stone shader to cap 25 km radius if im not wrong ... theres nmo point on modeling stuff in the cap if the stone shader does not work in the Eon scene when i import it so i abandon taht for now..

nice work an cya around

mmoir

01-20-2007, 12:41 AM

Hey Berter,

Nice organic looking buildings , I like the smooth look to them and they will look even better with textures. Look forward to the foreground elements you mentioned and good luck .

AIR

01-20-2007, 02:28 AM

Hey man, I just read trough your reply.
(BTW, have saved the speed modeling essey for later.)

Im sorry I havent read that one of the guy that trashed you, cos I wouldn't go silent about it.(as you noticed,not everyone have been visiting faq, and I cant recall if I have been there, but even If I have, probabaly was just asking challenge related question and just searching ancwer to specific things,thus maybe skiping you or someone else I know,you should share that fact back then, boy would I bite.)I understand your feeling about that, it is justifyed, I would felt iritated to.

There are alot of those things that bother me also here at cg talk, and make me iritated aswell, but then again,, there are as many that keeps me coming back,, like, nice people like yourself,,, beautyfull art that makes me inspired,,,news and other related to cg.

Im not coming to any negative conclusions my man, I just totaly understand you, and further more, am really happy you shared theese things and took your time to ancwer me,
that I appreciate alot.

Anyway, have nothing else on my mind wright now, so im going for night sleep while its night.

I didnt enter 3D just because I wanted to refresh my 2D side again.
I realised how much have I missed it, afterall, I started from 2d back as I kid.
I'd like to hear more of your _for me important_ commenting, looking forward to it.

Im sorry also if I phrase some words that might sound offensive,,Its not deliberate, its just lack of grammar and spelling knowledge.

Seeya Black...

BlackDidThis

01-20-2007, 04:29 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169310558_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169310558_large.jpg)

I was working on this texture set today… It is a method I have developed a few years ago… And went for very often per opportunity (Shall a large scene be demanding).

But I have had to stop on it... realising that this MIGHT be against the rules… I only prepared this post to have something to show the moderators, and ask IF it would be valid or not.

What I did was I modelled out a background… but thinking that it was only for texturing, I didn’t pay attention to creating everything from scratch. I DID use pieces from models already vacant in my HD…

Then I rendered it at my usual 4K(4096x4096) for texturing… but with the Z-Depth evaluation turned on, so I would have a displacement map to use.
(For those interested... the specularity map was a separate render... I turned off all the lights and put a white glowing surface, that was set “not o render itself” but to be visible in reflections, wrapping it around the model… this way only the reflective specularity was rendered)

Naturally I thought this to be a great texture to use on the very far elements (Since I am hoping to show a LOT of the “Stone” due to camera distortion)

But then I came to wonder… EVEN if I am actually only using the render of a model that was not made from scratch only for texturing; am I allowed for using it? Especially since displacements are involved…

In case there are those that shall compliment me for the above model, and so forth without reading:

I DID NOT MODEL THIS FROM SCRATCH!
Read the text.

I shall now message Robert (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=33432) to ask if he can visit and read this post and clarify if for me...

Black

BlackDidThis

01-20-2007, 04:35 PM

Leonidas (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=233998);
Firstly, you really don’t have to come all the way to my thread only to thank me for a post I did on yours. It is really not necessary, in fact pretty odd to my understanding. I am not one of those that believes you have to post on others threads because they posted on yours.. nor that you should post on mine, because I posted on yours.
Your shader looked fantastic.. and IW as very impressed (As I had stated in your thread) But it demanded a little attention which I figured you may need to hear.
Secondly;
I wasted an amount of time in your thread re-reading all the posts… trying to figure out WHAT on earth you may be talking about… evidently I haven’t missed out on anything. The only reason I didn’t solve your problem was because I didn’t know HOW to. I do NOT have the answers to everything. I am sorry.
That said;
I NEVER post on ANY thread without reading through the WHOLE thread.
It is a "Time consuming" habit I have, but in a manner am proud of because it only displays my respect to the thread starter.

I am not exactly offended… but it was not nice to read that I may have skipped something. I ran off to your thread to apologise for being so rude (I find it to be very rude) and not reading.
And I never should have even had to.

Wow Mike (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?userid=116113)!
I was just on YOUR thread the other day… admiring your buildings :) … and here I come to mine reading your compliments to mine…
Thank you very much.. I truly hope that texturing saves the day, because it really hurts to leave hem like this, but I lack the time to go any further in detail to all of them :sad:

Damir (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=128055);
I think I know what you mean… I also love drawing/painting

Most know me as the 3D guy… but belive it or not, I actually can paint as well.
In fact I think I am more capable in painting than I am with 3D modelling and so forth. And I relax more while painting then when modelling.

I don’t know why I personally come back to the forums here… especially the challenges.. I hadn’t wanted to after the one we met. But after that I had wanted to create a perfect illustration of our child before he was born... coincidently the subject was "The Journey Begins (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/journey_begins/)"... So I jumped in (Once again at the LAST month :sad: )!
This time… I think I jumped in more because of Greg Bear (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=250015)... And I had actually wanted to create a trailer… and had I known there was going to be an extending, I may have preferred it.
Buuut as a result I didn’t have the time enough (Joined one month ago) and didn’t have a team… So I decided to go for a 3D scene where I went further into detailing my elements of the trailer.

Once again, I care none what so ever on winning or even finishing in time... I am going to try to... But I (more than ever) want to give you guys a hell of a good WIP thread… So as a result add to THE reason I love the challenge threads so much… Even long after the challenge is over, they are a great fun to browse through and learn more.

Getting back to work… (Render JUST finished! :) )

Black

BlackDidThis

01-20-2007, 08:54 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169326443_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169326443_large.jpg)

I am back to the city again… I think I have to start putting everything together… my project fie is starting to get too big and too messy… Soo decided on creating a check-list and setting things in place.

As with painting, I started from back to front: Bringing me back to the buildings (I seem to have 246 buildings:) … but of them; possibly around 100 really good ones :sad: ... And of course an endless amount of instanced blocks).

Found this model in the lot; it was suppose to be the connecter piece that held the buildings hung on cables.
Stopped on it; even though it was going pretty fine. Just wasn’t sure on how much it would crowd the scene, so I left it (everything totals to a few million poly’s, never had them all in one shot to have the count)

But now I am in doubts... since a whole quarter of Thistledown is to be seen… I guess I should start working on it.
Any comments?
(I don’t exactly mean in the lines of “Do you think the model is cool enough?”… I am more referring to “Do you guys think I should include the hanging buildings to the scene as it is?”)

Well in any case I have my Thistledown scene open in front of me again... when I am finished polishing things up, I’ll try to post the buildings render I had mentioned of earlier.

Black

aurora

01-20-2007, 10:46 PM

I think I have to start putting everything together… my project fie is starting to get too big and too messy… Soo decided on creating a check-list and setting things in place.

LOL's I ran into the same problem this morning as I started working on the interior of Axis Nader. I have a half a dozen different files for the interior and had a hard time remembering what was what to had to do some heavy cleanup and reorganization.

Love the progress your making, any chance you want to get some done on mine too?

Leotril

01-20-2007, 11:16 PM

Berter..

My advice instead keeping on modeling is to start to put the scene togother friend and start rendering and keeping modeling at the same time.. im tring to find the way to doing test render at the same time im modeling more stuff i was thinking about 2 maya instances open at the same time now i thinking batch render cuz i neet work on the same scene if a make a copy of the scene for example im make some lightining changes and some modeling changes ill be kinda difiicult to merge al taht together .. it gives a heache just thinking about at this point :sad:

As for the bulding u done great the latest looks like tube building or suppor or somethg .. im curios about the chamber stuff i know the measurment but what to put on the base of it u know some building are gonna stand above the floor so im havin some thougs about it..

I really like coming by ur thread a lot and ur one of the few peoples thats interested in my stuff im just a newbie in 3d and ur help has been enormeus is that somtimes i get so frustated and probably dont explain myself well or my english any good or im to direct:twisted:

so that ill be it for now

BlackDidThis

01-21-2007, 01:45 AM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169343913_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169343913_large.jpg)

This is a selection from the buildings I am hoping to use. I tried to pick out ones that may seem cool (51 buildings here, but over 200 in total), so you can better see them as a whole. When I had placed all of the buildings, they simply did not fit without covering each other up. But NOW as I saved for the Web... I notice I have a few doubles with very light differences :sad:

Actually I’ve been working on the city all this time, keeping this render/post aside until again I had to wait for something to process.
So the buildings HAVE improved on them since this image… But I already had this ready render in hand with a series of the buildings showing…
Going to leave the “later” version of the buildings to a post with them hopefully laid-out.

Not sure on how YOU guys pictured the city… but I presumed the reason that would force such an advanced civilisation (That actually gained more geometric space AWAY from the centre… it IS a cylinder in the end of it) to make buildings that WIDENED as they got higher would most possibly have been that they needed to save space for very wide roads/highways/etc…
So I am a bit over my head in planning the city lay out. I can see that most of you are well ahead of me in that manner :sad:

As for the hanging building:
Well I decided to go for it any way… I haven’t exactly figured out how I am going to do the hanging mechanism, but I had first wanted to see what I can get away with in the render.
You can see it’s quick form in the top corner.

Okay… got other things to deal with now…
Til next;

Black

BlackDidThis

01-21-2007, 01:46 AM

Love the progress your making, any chance you want to get some done on mine too?
Hmmmm... no offence buuut…
Lets just put it this way;
I really doubt that I will ever be able to live up to the quality your thread and scene has been demanding. :)
If there is any help I can give else wise… Shoot!

Leonidas (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=233998);
Oh I AM busy with the whole scene... believe me :sad:
And unfortunately I would have to do a LOT of optical illusions to maintain the concept image I had said I Wanted to create when I had started the thread :cry:

Below I am going to post the calculations I have made in preparing for the image.

Now on HOW to put what where… I have been doing some calculations,
(This might be for the mathematically inclined to better reason maybe)

The third chambers diameter is not directly given in the book what so ever… so I am presuming that again the diameter is at 50 km as stated for the chambers in general.

Trying to give myself a specific unit system to be able to work with; I created a cylinder of 1/8 width to height proportions and gave it a division count of 64 along height and axis (This was my initial division when I started off… hoping to preserve a 64x64 UV Grid layout as well)

Now with a scaling of 80, 80, 80; I got to a unit distance of 10 MaYA Units per division along height :)
But for the divisions along the axis to match to my 10 units system, I had to firstly increase the division along the axis to 78 (Actually the ideal would be to just have it at 7.850826, but you can’t really have decimals in divisions :sad: )
And this obligated me to increase the diameter of the cylinder to 248.348673 between its symmetrical division vertices which made it to about 248.147649 units between the cross section (Because 78 divisions give you a half symmetry only and not a quarter symmetry) from it’s original 203.800192 units diameter to both sides.

THIS was a serious problem!
The camera I am using had by default a near clip plane of 0.1 units and a far clip plane of 10,000 units, which by MaYA defaults would mean 100 meters.
So presuming the chamber was 25km in radius, my 124.1743365 radius would roughly give me a unit measure for 200 meters per EACH division I set on the cylinder.

Sooo when I used a 35 mm camera lens for the shot, the borehole was something like 332 pixels in render resolution of 5314x7272... and that meant that everything else had going to be WAY too small.
Think of it… if I am comparing 124.1743365 to 25000 metres, then the MaYA units set to calculate in cm would be 2O meters per MaYA unit.

To compensate I tried again with a 15mm focal length, and got a borehole measure of about 10-20 pixels, shot from one cap to the next.
Beware; this could REALLY put you in trouble with the close ups… and MUCH more importantly, with the Near Clip Plane.
I set mine to 0.001 enabling me to render up to 2cm object closeness, and set the far clip plane to 1000 (It is NOT a good idea to keep the gap between the two at an extreme on the camera you are rendering with. A rule of thumb would be to add a zero to the other as you deduct from one, I think Autodesk automated it in the later versions... I don’t know)

So now; as you can imagine (IF you followed that is)... I am in serious doubts to have a shot from the floor up, trying to capture both the characters, AND the singularity. I may do some radical changes over the weekend

I already sort of feared the impression I may have left on people… now I think I may just seem a little weirder… But this is in fact how I work :sad:… I calculate everything my mind can handle about it.

Well back to my scenes now… I am still placing people.

Black

AIR

01-21-2007, 02:34 AM

I like the trailer part of the challenge,would be intersting to see how you think, I've seen some amazing things,, and I just admire that
team effort to put something together.

Anyway, this here is beautyfull modeling.Keep it up Black.
:thumbsup:

digikris

01-21-2007, 03:48 AM

Awesome details Black.

Leotril

01-21-2007, 08:33 AM

Hey
about the third chamber lengh is 30 km i think if im not wrong so im using that for now but ill be nice make longer it will a lot with perpespective ..i use a polygonal cylinder on my first settings in the options settings u get options to specifie that stuff i use 25000 for the radius and 30000 previously i change my measument to meters ok .. i been reading ur stuff but i cannot give specifc options cause im rendering some stuff and maya is busy :(

i got a similar problem with the camera i have to play with those settings to get a look of the tube ..the surface of the tube is aprox if a not wrong 22-23 km from the surface of the chamber in all directions .. i hope this info can help clear things a bit

BlackDidThis

01-21-2007, 10:34 AM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169375649_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169375649_large.jpg)

I hope for this chart to better explain to those that need to better grasp the differences of depth for the focal length.
The cube you see here is 2mx2mx2m
The grid unit is 20 metres, the distance from the cap to the camera is 30 km.

As the focal length grows, the distortion is less, but the gap between elements narrows (Looses depth) leaving very little space to be able to place the buildings.

TOO often on this thread and others, I come across problems with “measurements” of things…
From the book I have had noted down a dear few of them to my personal needs.
So posting them here in case anyone would have use.
(They are from my personal notes, so I can’t state pages, and they MAY seem a bit unorganised/misspelled.. my apologies pre-hand)

Measurements for you to keep in mind;

Asteroid;
Ninety-one kilometers in diameter at its widest, two hundred ninety-two kilometers long. Rock and nickel and iron and not nearly as simple as that.
Polar Crater: no more than a kilometer deep and three or four kilometers wide.

BoreHole;
100 meter wide and 5km above the atmosphere.

First Chamber;
fifty kilometres in diameter and thirty across the floor.
The wall between the first chamber cap and space was only a few kilometres thick in places.

Second Chamber;
The chamber is 50 km in diameter.
Beyond the ramp to the second chamber was a two-kilometre-deep shelf of parkland, irregularly spotted by copses of trees and numerous broad, flat white concrete structures, resembling thick building foundations.
a narrow lake or river about a kilometre across ran east and west completely around the chamber. A suspension bridge with tall, slender, curved towers crossed the water, set between massive concrete anchors.
The biggest structures in the chamber were about 4 km high.
The main cemetery in Alexandria is at two-six degrees and ten kilometres.

Third Chamber;
Atmosphere: around 20km thick
Chamber length: We have to presume 30km
Chamber diameter: We have to presume 50 km
Cables hanging buildings: Cap to cap.
Arched structures; 10 kilometres long

Fourth Chamber;
It has 4 distinct islands.
The hexagonal tower a bout seven kilometres from the wain of water they pass over by train is fifty meters tall and half as broad (Another tower appears only a kilometre away on a slender Pylon)

Sixth Chamber;
The Stairwell they are on has a 45 degree Slope
The damping machinery was originally about three square kilometres.
The northern cap (Unlike all other caps which had been virtually blank) was furrowed by a row of rectangular boxes with elliptical faces. These were spaced like stairs and were at least a kilometre wide.

Seventh Chamber and the way;
Atmosphere/plasma tube barrier; 22 kilometres above chamber floor (Three kilometres from the axis).
Atmosphere is along the way is20 km
Dirt in the way is about a quarter kilometre deep.
The security base is 50 km down the way.
The first artificial structures along the way were 436 kilometres away.
The next one was 872 kilometres along the way.
The wells were15 metres wide and suspended 8 meters above a bowl.
The dimples they sat in were about 500 metres in diameter and 20 metres deep
The Talsit World Gate is 7 km in diameter
Frant World Gate is 5km in diameter.

Trivia;
Twenty-five kilometres below the axis, the Stone's spin produced a force of six-tenths of a g
The gymnastics pit was half a kilometre from the science team compound, midway between the compound and the barbed wire fence that marked the boundary beyond which no one could go(First Chamber)
Platform of the Ministers chambers is 20 km above the platform.
The chain link security fence is Eight-Nine kilometres long.
Olmy’s apartment was about a kilometre away from the northern cap of the third chamber.
The large ponds buried beneath the middle three chambers are shallow. The biggest pond is shaped like a doughnut and circles the fourth chamber. Ventilation ducts from these at three kilometres.
Mirsky’s dive was 15/16 kilometres, he was to release the chute at 3km from the ground
Olmy’s Flaw ship spiralled around the Plasma tube; one full turn on every 15-20 minutes
The Russian compound was 40 km from the NATO compound.

Ironically, this was one of the least typing I had to do :) (it was all copy/paste).
Really have to get back now;

Black

BlackDidThis

01-21-2007, 10:36 AM

Damir (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=128055);

Well I had sort of been upset with not being able to detail the figures and so forth for the trailer… I guess now is my chance… so maybe next time I’ll go for a trailer.
I HAVE a team in mind for a few other productions… but the number far exceeds 4 people… and due to my mass problems of the late, we sort of drifted away :sad:
(Not to mention that save for a few, the award is not really their fee, or motivative reason)
I agree.. there are some very impressive works.

Leonidas (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=233998);

I don’t exactly have a problem with the measurements... don’t worry.
In the end; think I am going for a 10 mm focal length shot… still in doubts.

Til later;

Black

magnifybehnoo

01-21-2007, 10:41 AM

that very impressive I always follow your treath and that help me learn something .:bowdown: :wavey: and sorry about my poor english

digikris

01-22-2007, 09:34 PM

I like the 10mm shot. Looks good in comp and you can give up some maticulous details considering the time you have in hand.

BlackDidThis

01-22-2007, 11:57 PM

Behnood (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?userid=248319);
Thank you very much.. I am rtying as everyone else is. IT means so much that you apreciate the efforts.

Harikrishnan (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?userid=112265);
I think I agree withyou..
I did come to a conclusion in the earlier stages of the project to "deform" the tube and background to better save distortion from happening (hence using a longer focal length) and still faking the effect... but now I think I am enjoying the distortion.. I hope to bring posts on it on Wednesday.

One "Last Tutorial" before the deadline (Well two answers... but one tut :) )...
Some of you know me better than others… and that I usually have close to “NO” intention of finishing in time and submitting the image for the Jury… that I enjoy only breathing the WIP atmosphere and trying to make an image fitting to my personal/critical taste.
Tonight;
I decided to finish it FOR the competition this time. And like all, I am going to do everything (this time for real) to have it completed and presented… so I will have to lack behind in showing some of you how to do stuff.

Actually I enjoy sharing, and explaining things; this time I only hope you will enjoy a finished product in the cost of keeping your various messages/questions until the competition is over.
One last time, I am setting a mini tutorial for questions asked… but please make it be the last until the end of the month (Unless it is very urgent/important).

The FIRST question I keep getting is (MaYA users); “How do you render the wire-frames?”
You CAN use the Hardware Render Buffer (NOT the hardware render option) or just assign the Negative UV map to the transparency value of the shader (if you don’t know how to process it through the Toon Shader).
But actually all the renders you see here are the result of a very impressive plug-in called PolyData (http://products.provide3d.com/polyData)

The Next question I keep getting (Again MaYA users) is; “How do you do the windows on the buildings, and maintain the uniform grid?” (As simple as it may seem… having a practical method IS important when you are dealing with a 1000 (or so) windows).
I have already answered this question to all who have asked… but since it keeps coming up… guess showing it here would be a good idea:
http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/WindowsHow2.jpg

Select the surface/face you want windows and then subdivide it to your liking (Editpolygons drop menu)
And select the faces.
Hit Extrude.
From the history dialogue box, choose to not keep the faces together. And shrink the windows to your liking (You would usually have to extrude once more here).
I presume most of you already do it this way up to here.
Now select the row of edges… I always go to the horizontal ones.
Hit “Bevel”
In it’s history, select offset to be 1.0 and make sure Merge vertices is set to true.
Select the vertical edges (Faces>selection constraints>Nsided>All and next, then grow selection. Show>isolate selected. Edges>selection constraints>Next selection)
Hit Delete Edge from the Edit polygon menu.. this should take care of the orphaned vertices as well.
Note… you COULD have gone in and selected the horizontal AND vertical lines then set to bevel… but when you are dealing with so many windows.. I couldn’t find an easy way to select each of them… let me know if you do though)

Hope this helps the some of you;

Black

BlackDidThis

01-24-2007, 06:44 AM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169621068_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169621068_large.jpg)

Sorry for keeping from updating.. But I was into some serious progress... Today I am on the figures, and by the end of tonight I want to start on my renders...
These are screen-grabs from the jumpsuit's Cage and proxy-mesh; that has been laying around all this time (Not the Russians.. theirs is a pressure-suit)

Actually the idea was to make it wrap her, and then make it a little bit more shabby.
But I really liked more futuristic "diving suit" look... so I left it such til now... today I think I am going to be going in and adding some pockets so I can adjust the suit to the other figures (I am leaving Mirsky's suit for now... I don't think I will have him in the final scene)
I am only not too sure about the collar though… It is upright like this due to laziness rather than design :sad:

The reason of the "Detour" with the NURBS patch to begin with was because of the natural wrinkles you get when you loft from curves not properly aligned.
To encourage the areas I wanted wrinkled, I inserted Isoparms and rotated the CV's SLIGTHLY clockwise or counter clockwise to the previous curve.
After converting the NURBS to polygons, there was literally little work left in that area, even around the crouch... only appending polygons.

I'll try to post some more of the updates I lacked in presenting...

Black
Ps: The censors are there since the text "nudity" can not be mounted on our Challenge posts.. or I haven't found out how yet.

BlackDidThis

01-24-2007, 10:07 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169676437_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169676437_large.jpg)

I was hoping to post more updates… But too may things wrongly developed today, and I only was able to get on the computer.
Right now some (disappointing) renders are occupying my processor, so I thought I would just as well put together some of my earlier texture render test and its textures.

The source images were taken in a Metro-Station in Brussels. The bottom three though are not mine... they are from PhotoStock.
It’s not too difficult to see how I have extracted the textures.

Unfortunately these are about 45 percent coverage shaders... and even though they render fantastic in GI and/or normal lighting, with Ray-Trace and FG (or even FAKE FG) the results are as follows… And this is NOT good news for my part… :sad:

I am back to the blackboard on too many things …

Black

aurora

01-24-2007, 10:22 PM

I deeply sympathize with you Black! I'm running into the same problems. I knew I did not/do not have
time to paint all my textures so I'm trying to cheat be creating a batch of cheap procedurals. But sadly thats exactly what I have cheap procedurals. It just does not make things look real at all. So I'm back at the re-thinking stange and sadder still therres no time for re-thinking.
I wish you much better luck then I'm having!!

BlackDidThis

01-25-2007, 01:47 AM

Lol…
Apparently the answer was staring me RIGHT in the face!! (The disc in the front of the render scene to be more exact)
Today was a horrid day, and I guess my mind is suffering still from the burdens of it :sad:

On the metal disc/saucer primitive, I wondered WHY I didn’t get the texture at first… then I thought to myself that it must have had been from the disc being in the shadows… so that must be a depth map shadow artefact (The scene had a total lighting of 80 lights, 64 of them with depth-maps assigned)
And THAT got me to first stupidly increase the size of the depth-map… and THEN it struck me… I was rendering against one or Mental-Ray’s primary rules:
Do NOT use Depth-map shadows!
(IF you must… then scroll a little more down to activate mental-Ray’s own Depth-map shadows)

Doing a render right now in fact…

I’ll post it when my hands are free.
(The textures are up to a rate handeled, and don't look too bad... but none the less it was not all of my problems with my scene... IT's going to be a LOONG night. Thank you for always being such great suppor!)

Black

BlackDidThis

01-25-2007, 05:24 AM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169702642_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169702642_large.jpg)

You know those times when you just keep doing little test renders, with preview settings… and NOTHING looks right.. but then you suddenly be very stupid and just boost up all the dials/settings to high quality production render? Getting NO where ofcourse...

Well I sort of did that a few times tonight… til I finally got to the solution as posted in the thread.
Aparently I was rendering these with low res Dept-map shadows in mental ray… I forgot to change the settings of my light dome.

As a result now: I like this result much better.

The really spikey piece is suppose to help me picture how the shader would work on the city. I used a projection method called triPlanar projection in MaYA. And used the same for the city (Though it was a little more tricky from the cylindrical ground plane)
The projection uniquely differs from the Cubic projection in a way that cubicProjection is just about the same projection method as cylindrical/spherical… it projects from the centre out but using six planes instead of a 360 degree view.

What this Tri-Planar does is it projects planar from top/bottom, side and front/back (Three Sides). It evaluates the facing angle and switches to the most suitable plane, instead of uniformly spreading from centre out.

In organic modelling it can give a bit of a patchy result… but in buildings or machinery, it works great, and setting it up is just about effortless.

Til next;

Black

chandro

01-25-2007, 07:37 AM

your a professional black, seem youre presenting your work for both student and client.
hope you can update some compostion and some lights:thumbsup:

BlackDidThis

01-25-2007, 10:34 AM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169721261_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169721261_large.jpg)

Originally I had in mind to use it with the Russians (Particularly Mirsky) and as a matching piece to their high pressure jumpsuits… But had left it aside, it wasn’t sure if I Would be able to include Mirsky in it.

But now; after disappointing results in my hand textures, I plan on reintroducing them to the scene (This time fingerless)

The making was practically simple from the moment the hard part of modelling a mesh around the hand was handled:

I selected a variety of edges where I had wished there to be a seam.
Bevelled it with 2 divisions.
Selected the un-bevelled faces.
Extruded, then selecting the faces now created with the extrusion I extruded again.
The rest is up to your settings in the smoothing options of your software.

Good news is today I am only dealing with Eon. I hope to catch up to my time loss from the last few days.

Black

BlackDidThis

01-25-2007, 10:35 AM

Thank you again Chandro (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=240497);

I think we are all trying to present works and follow ups to clients in the end of it :) …
It’s very complimenting that you like mine…
But none the less you are over-exaggerating me.

As for the renderings... I am afraid that shall be tomorrow morning soonest.. I have too many things I would prefer to do (Hence not lock the computer) today.

Black

BlackDidThis

01-25-2007, 09:57 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169762122_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169762122_large.jpg)

Today was mostly rigging/posing/detailing the characters…
until about tow hours ago.

Something my wife had said when I had shown her the collection of my buildings (Before laying them out) for Thistledown a few days ago finally got to me:
“Hey those buildings really would have fit into being from Los Angelis!”needless to say; she was unaware that I was doing Thistledown and not Alexandria!!

She was sort of caught in the flow for probable objectivity, but she DID have a point… So I simply KEPT reusing the same Golf-Tee Giga’s everywhere, and pretty often to live up to the towns chandelier reputation.

The downfall was expectable… it was a little too obvious :sad:

So I just put together a few more Giga’s...
These are three from about 15 more new ones added to the collection, the other 12 being a lot less sophisticated (But with the distance I plan on placing them; it is really not going to matter at all).

I am going to go on working for the rest of the night... I want the characters all finished, dressed, detailed and posed by tomorrow morning so I can do test renders for their shader settings as well.

Black

aurora

01-25-2007, 11:55 PM

I REALLY like those last two buildings!

BlackDidThis

01-26-2007, 09:34 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169847246_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169847246_large.jpg)

Mostly busy setting shaders for everything tonight. And the biggest time loss at the moment is the Normal map extractions (I am extracting just about all of them at 4096x4096).

The rest is procedural and texture files networking (The texture files being also extractions from 3D procedurals/projections as often as possible).

I am taking the longer (but fun) way… which is; modify, then render… then modify, then render... and experiment along the way. It has been a VERY difficult day, and I really need to do this relaxed.

This is a series of try outs for my Frant-shader. (File texture to come yet).. at least for his defuse pass.. the specular pass I am planning on rendering separate and compositing.
Unfortunately I made him too low poly… the normal map is not able to hide it (Last two renders).
He’ll hopefully be finished within a few hours.

I have a Zbrush screen grab from while sculpting (yeah used Zbrush) that I really liked... when I have some free hands, I’ll try to put the together and optimise to a post-able file-size.

Black

BlackDidThis

01-26-2007, 09:36 PM

Lol Tim (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=11197);

If I keep up a few more attempts.. then I am REALLY going to nail it on the head! :)

I noticed that everytday I am doing a new building.. I wish I srtarted on this 100 days ago.. I would hvae had a veeery impressive city! :rolleyes:

Black

aurora

01-26-2007, 10:46 PM

First, your Frant looks amazing and I sure hope that was not an apology for using ZBrush! ZBrush is a valuable and wondeful (although has a steep learning curve) all the more power to you my friend.

I was just trying to add my image maps to all the buildings outside of Axis Nader as procedurals just sucked beyond compare. But somehow the UVmaps are not showing up on all the buildings meaning I need to redo the whole outer building modeling. Now I'm really concerned with time since its going to take several hours to get it all done and cleaned up again. At this point I'm half tempted to send my better buildings to you for your project so you'd have enough to finish yours, which is so much better then mine anyways!

BlackDidThis

01-26-2007, 11:34 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169854442_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1169854442_large.jpg)

Here is the close-up I had mentioned of in the earlier post… Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time to detail the model to the extents that I would have proffered to.
But I really liked it a lot (And paying around with it)… so will definitely improve on my Frant after the competition.
I think I’ll do the same for the base mesh… or maybe I’ll leave it for another challenge :)

I was wondering…
As I was doing the jumpsuits… I was JUST about to extrude a pocket, then I realised that I Was just rescaling (wrap deforming) a jumpsuit to perfectly fit other characters with distinctively differing proportions.

That already takes the convincingness of it all away.. then I wondered if when they fabricate a jumpsuit… just like they have different patrons for different sizes, do they also rescale the pockets for all of the sizes?... or do they cut the pockets once and sew them to the appropriate place of each jumpsuit (Save from the children’s sizes of course)?
When you think of it… having one size pocket would be considerably optimised in their production flow.

Too much work and no play turns even Black ito a Dull Grey!
(There are BAD days, and there are REALLY bad days... today was even worse than those)

Black

BlackDidThis

01-26-2007, 11:36 PM

Now that you put it that way... It really does seem like I apologised! :)

Well no.. in an earlier post I had stated on how up til now it was only by pulling vertices and using deformers… I was actually trying to state that finally I sculpted.. But I guess I am really in a bad mood.

As for your model... that’s horrible news Tim (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=11197)!
Did you instance the buildings and then split to separate meshes or something? Really difficult to be of any help from distance (Not to mention using separate softwars)…
If you won’t mind... try sending them over as objects somehow, I’ll see if I can help you save them.
Your models AND your scene are both fantastic and worth every struggle you gave for it. It would be too great a pity for me to stand and watch (I truly doubt that this would be cheating… would it?).

Black

Note: DAMN... Internet explorer seemd to have just locked my processing! :cry:
Was over 80 percent and running for a few hours!

TheThidMan

01-27-2007, 12:17 AM

Some amazing modelling here. Keep up the good work!

aurora

01-27-2007, 06:04 AM

If its any consulation I know exactly what you mean by some days being bad and today being infinently worse.
My problem was I have been using beta software, and found a bug way past the too late stage. My UV Maps did not get copied properly, spelled at all, when I was working on all the buildings.
I then compenstate by making my own mistake. I have been viewing the structures on top of Axis Nader as I'm texturing. So up there all my 'oriented' texture nodes looked all fine and dandy. But guess what the y-axis does not rotate around the z-axis so when you look at structures away from the top (or bottom) the textures stay oriented to the Y and not around the cylinder. What a stupid, embarassing noobie mistake to make. Twenty plus years working with graphics and you'd think I would have thought of that from minute 1.
My hope now is that I can write a quick couple of new node plugins that will give me what I need to replace the ones I'm using allowing for cylindrical work. Either that or I just throw in the towel. So tomorrows a coding day for me. Its going to hard to type with all my fingers crossed :)
Well enough whinning its off to bed so I have a clear head to fix all my problems tomorrow.

I ure hope you have a better day tomorrow too! At least you have great stuff to show for all your issues!

BlackDidThis

01-28-2007, 03:31 PM

I had wanted to do some updates... but there was too much that occupied me the whole of yesterday (Hopefully the message of “things are NOT going easy here” is getting through without further need of my self pity :p ).
But today I am back on track and have been working VERY hard on the scene for a lot of hours.

That said… I had put together a countdown clock for the birth of our child for the website this summer.

I modified it a little this week to give me a countdown to the deadline… And it newly struck me to share it with those that might enjoy it.
There MIGHT be a serious bug, because I used “get TIME” instead of “get UTC hour, minute etc”… meaning that the counter evaluates the millisecond count since 1970, and doesn’t necessarily extract the GMT…
It works fine for me, but I have not tested it on other time zones yet (It's just for the fun of it as a result).
http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/countdown/EonButton.png (http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/countdown/EonCountDown_Win.rar)Note: The button is a Windows .exe file…
Mac users click HERE (http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/countdown/EonCountDown_Mac.rar) (Not tested)
And for those that don’t want download, but to just see it click HERE (http://blackdidthis.com/CGNetWork/Eon_3D/countdown/EonCountDown.swf)
(if you want the *.swf file you can right click and choose “save as”).

Hugh (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=140342)
Thanks

Tim (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=11197);
It really is a consolation actually... Thank you
Well at least I have a beautiful wife... I love her... and she’s still around. And so is our adorable ball of sunshine!
There are too many things that can make me happy still … I am a very lucky man :)

As for your problem;
No offence... but that does sound like a pretty simple mistake.
I guess you must have been too tired from all that has been going on, including the snow you have to constantly tackle.
At first I couldn’t understand what you meant... thinking that a projection would save the day… But as I get it, a projection is what cost it all to begin with. Can’t you rotate the city along the singularity axis to display only on the side that is good to go?
I guess the coding day was yesterday (I was away so sorry :blush: )… sooo what happened?.. Did your genius save the day?

Will be running off to your thread shortly to see if there is any update that burdens sorrow or spares some good news!

BEST of Luck

Black

aurora

01-28-2007, 06:45 PM

Well at least I have a beautiful wife... I love her... and she’s still around. And so is our adorable ball of sunshine!

I'm envious beyond compare and that is somewhat related to how I created such a stupid remedial mistake. But thats neither here nor there now. The plugin did exactly what I designed it to do but alas not suffiecent to give the results I wanted (everything ended up arcing around a circumference based on the position of the ray in relation to a central Null and I needed straight lines not curves. I'll work on that more later after the contest.

A MASSIVE Thank You for the countdown timer. I have it sitting top center of a side monitor to remind me to find time to work and then work hard. Dude you should win something just for everything you have given to/for this challenge!

Congrats on the new website and coming child (theres wher my true envy lies!) Now take a deep breath, clear your head and work your tush off!:arteest:

BlackDidThis

01-30-2007, 11:42 AM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1170157314_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1170157314_large.jpg)

There are SO many things I have improved on the project: Things that I would want to share the process of with you guys..
Seriously a LOT of texturing… styling the characters bloody hair (Those who did NOT style digital hair before can never understand the efforts behind it!), rigging, posing and so forth…

Buuuuuut… there is SO little time and so MUCH more work to do!
I am REALLY not able to get things together to post here… It is really developing against my will. But things have NOT been developing helpful to my project of finishing to this challenge. Fortunately the last day or two have been very stable.
Today I am going to TRY to post as much as I can... otherwise I’ll try to save aside images present as milestones while rendering the animation tomorrow

Now that said…
This is a series of pre-visualisations I went for as soon as I found out that we were NOT suppose to present a high res Final-Image (And went out of their proposed guidelines for the dimensions and went back to one of my favoured 16/9 HD format).

The 2nd and the 3rd images are of the original pose ideas I had for Patricia… She was suppose to be in the foreground and either looking with a daze to the marvels around with her SQUARE eyes, or holding Paul’s letter pressed to her chest and day dreaming.

But now that I have a much more decent format to work on, I have included three more options to go for,
I really liked the first one a lot (She is reaching down for something)… But I fear the task of including the other characters into it. The only advantage would be my ability to include my hard worked V/STOL and Tube-Rider.

In the last one she is going to be holding something in her hand… I am not sure about going for a luminescent object or a technical gadget yet.
What she is to hold in the fourth one again is not curtain… maybe a light source of some kind… But in that one she is going to be on the top of a structure high enough to show the city behind her.

I am including a shot with the series of primitives that came with the software (Naturally these weren’t drawn/sketched) as well for you guys to better understand where I placed what.
Needless to say: That these primitives have literally nothing to do with the original buildings (Or their locations). And that they are only to help me maintain a scence of space.
Til next;

Black

BlackDidThis

01-30-2007, 11:44 AM

Thank you Tim (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=11197);
Yes I am a very lucky man with too many gifts to be thankful for.
As for our child… oh no, no ... We have him around now… it was a whole big event. She had a VERY difficult/painful labour to our son </B>Dante (http://<b><font%20color=).
Earlier in this thread I had given a link to a thread particularly dedicated to illustrating him while waiting. When free you may want to glance at it.</FONT>

Oh and the website… :blush: it is still to come.. that was only a temporary page opened up for Dante’s arrival.

Now I really have to get back to work. I really hope for all to go MUCH better on your part of the competition.
(I am REALLY glad the countdown is put into good use :) )

Best of Luck!

Black

aurora

01-30-2007, 02:48 PM

Ah and I thought Dante was getting a new brother/sister.

I have to say at first I loved the countdown timer but now its scares me. I've done nothing but canned nice looking approachs in order just get something I can finish with what time I have avialble.

Now having said that you HAVE to throw in your tube rider somehow!!

milw

01-30-2007, 04:32 PM

In the last one she is going to be holding something in her hand… I am not sure about going for a luminescent object or a technical gadget yet.

Oh this would be just perfect for the Pi-meter! I have no idea what such a device should look like, maybe it would project a cone of light? Or else I think of some physical device that would sweep a sensor in circular pattern...

Good luck black!

BlackDidThis

01-30-2007, 05:43 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1170179007_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1170179007_large.jpg)

This is a sort of radical method for getting the poses done. But it was all basically a pathetic effort to save time with as little loss of quality as I can manage.
And apparently it is not against the rules, as long as I have modelled out my figure.
LINK (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=412270)

Here is what you do

You export your character as an *.obj file.
You import your file to Poser, and select the (in this case) LowRes character (Newer versions may have better options).
Use the dials or “what not” to fit the low res character to your figure as snug as you can.
Memorise your character, or set a key on frame 2 for this matching state (Important)
Pose your characters double to your hearts content.
Have the default pose (Matching to your figure) be on frame one, and the pose on frame 2.
Export your scene as an *.obj file. Select multi frame export from the options and set it from frame 1 to 2
Import these to your software and set the “pose” to be a morph Target (blendShape)
Assign the imported figures default pose as a wrap deformer to your figure.
Simply “Blend Shape” :) … (you may most possibly have to iron things out from non-matching topology though)
Now unless you have a perfectly matching already rigged figure; the advantages of using Poser here instead of an existing already rigged one (if you have poser) is that Poser doesn’t exactly morph the mesh, as I get it, it moves rigged peaces merges them to each other in a similar fashion to metaBalls. And this makes it easier for the wrap deformer to work after you have scaled the mesh to fit.
I personally never advise you to scale a figure AFTER you rig it .. even if you group it and group it to itself again for the world transformations.

My WHOLE reason for this is my wish to not bother with rigging the Frant… especially since he is so much more complex.. And I really do not want to do a half-arse job on it. I REALLY want to improve this character.

(I am going to have to especially thank my very good Friend Brad from GFX for allowing my access to a Poser… Thank you VERY much Brad! )

Til next;

Black

Note ... the second pose was only humour intended.. :)
It was of the many free poses I found in the pose library of the program.

milw

01-30-2007, 06:10 PM

hm, I wonder if the free Daz3D Studio could also be used- they say it can export .obj (http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/software/studio/-/features?). There's also an FBX exporter plugin but that costs $ (or €?)...

black, where was it said that the 3D model final render did not have to be hi-res nor in 1:1.5 aspect ratio? I looked in the Challenge instruction pages again, but it is not clearly stated either way...

best wishes for completion, and thanks for the countdown timer too! I can't keep it open, watching the milliseconds flash by is too crazy-making!

cheers- scott

BlackDidThis

01-30-2007, 06:19 PM

Scott (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=172242), Tim (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=11197);

I am very sorry for cutting on the answers.. I shall post longy replies as soon as I have my hands free.. you would be amazed at how many progrmas are running at the same time here :cry:

But to quickly clarify Scott (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=172242) question (I believe it important)...
You would find it in the last pages of the FAQ thread.. Which I find VERY stupid actually...
Aparently we are only obligated to visualise the scene in 3D... And the high res render was for illustrating purposes only... so we are not illustrators here, but modelers and etc...

So what happens is at the end you are not given a final image option to upload.. nly an aditional option to upload an animation.
Your final entry size is going to be your regular milestone resolution of 1280 x 1024...
at 150 k file size.

Sorry for the rushed and superfacial answer Scott (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=172242), but should you apreciate.. I am in a pretty tight spot now.

Black

milw

01-30-2007, 06:45 PM

Sorry for the rushed and superfacial answer Scott (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=172242), but should you apreciate.. I am in a pretty tight spot now.

Black
Absolutely! You shouldn't even be bothering to read these forums right now! (unless you are using another PC to web browse while your graphics monster is rendering your animation perhaps?)

thanks and best wishes! -Scott

chandro

01-30-2007, 10:39 PM

Hi Black, just want to thank you for the support!
well im really curious and excited for your final image and animation.. will it be like a trailer sort of?

BlackDidThis

01-31-2007, 08:41 AM

Oh no, no.. infact on the contrtary... faar from it!!

I am only going to present an animation.. how ever it turns out. I had so wished to do a lot... with dynamics and what not (having these rigged characters as well...
But if you guys are expecting an amazing image.. please do not put your hopes too high... the pieces it is going to be made out of is all the stuff you have ben seeing and it's simiallar quality.

so nothing too special... Just something I am prefferably going to be proud of.

The ONE thing I am trying to guarantee is that the image is directly a render... and that it shall have NO post work on it what so ever.

There is almost half a day left and I am far from rendering even my final scene, leave alone the animation. (Wisely used, the time is more than enough... I hope) I had TOO many things distracting me the last ten days.. my earlier tempo was SO good had I managed to keep to it.

Black

chandro

01-31-2007, 09:39 AM

how long will be the animation? im currently rendering 3 hours for 1 pass.. i think i cannot make my animation with hair.. im having problem rendering the joe alter shave with animation.. i just hope this will be extended for another two days (well seems impossible)
but just hope they will not focus on the animation but on the concept and the final image.:D

aurora

01-31-2007, 03:14 PM

I am only going to present an animation.. how ever it turns out. I had so wished to do a lot... with dynamics and what not (having these rigged characters as well...
But if you guys are expecting an amazing image.. please do not put your hopes too high... the pieces it is going to be made out of is all the stuff you have ben seeing and it's simiallar quality.

My animation has been cooking since 8 last night with a half hour to go. My dynamics (pFX and buffer zone stuff) had to get canned do to another render artifact issue. So alot is missing in my animation

so nothing too special... Just something I am prefferably going to be proud of.
I'm deff not proud of my final submission stuff

The ONE thing I am trying to guarantee is that the image is directly a render... and that it shall have NO post work on it what so ever.
Have not even started the render for my final image so it has to be a single pass non-post tweaked too.

In other words we are in identical hell right now so my best wishes hope and prayers that you managed to make it to the deadline without being dead!

Cheers my hard fighting friend! :beer:

taavi

01-31-2007, 06:51 PM

Hey Black-your thread made me speechless :)
It is so... comprehensive (that maight be the right word)
Alltough i hadnt had time to read all thread ;)

I truly wish U good luck and I agree 100% with aurora:
"In other words we are in identical hell right now so my best wishes hope and prayers that you managed to make it to the deadline without being dead! "

Taavi

BlackDidThis

01-31-2007, 09:16 PM

http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1170278174_medium.jpg (http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge/entries/15/12489/12489_1170278174_large.jpg)

I was NOT able to work today… :cry:

This (At the bottom attached) was a post I had had prepared to post at 30 January 2007, 22:22:22...
but I hadn’t had the images rendered out yet. So I had let it wait until I did (Yes I type the milestones sometimes before the image is even readied).

Earlier this morning I gave it another shot, and had a rendering error
(Half-Render at the top, Screen grab of the elements at the bottom… sorry no completed render of this at late).
So I left re-rendering this post’s scene so that I can use all the processor power for the scene and animation.

I had REALLY wanted to complete this scene dedicated to Greg Bear (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=250015)'s book… But simple mathematics says that I can not have an output in 2 hours … It is impossible and truly not worth killing myself for.
So unfortunately I have to pull the plug on this one… I only hope that he had the chance at some time to see some dedication as he browsed through…

I now have a hand-full of models that I am VERY proud of... And I shall use them as part of my portfolio for sure. (My wife says that I am too honest for the competition in modelling everything out … she is a little pessimistic about other contestants).

Unfortunately my last Ten – twelve days were close to my worst days as I can remember, not to mention all the work I had to complete save from this challenge. I wish I had realised then that I could spare myself extra exhaustion (I literally killed myself to get things caught to level). But as I said.. It was a nice opportunity to dedicate to a book I truly enjoyed.

Now I am here staring at my other pre-typed six milestones… and wondering if I even want to bother rendering out images for those or not.
But I am really too tired and most possibly those milestones will never be posted.

Well in the end of it... the towel is down... I have yet once again failed (This is the third now… Damn I made a hobbit of this)

Okaaay…
here is the post in mention that I was SUPPOSE to post last night:

AT LAST!!
I have finalised a series of things... just not too sure on how a few of the characters are going to pose… so I can’t go in and detail sculpt them as I regularly would.
But I have all the body shapes readied, textured and so forth for posing and dressing up.
I know it may not seem to be too much, but all this here was a LOT of work… I had to paint thirty (head and body separate) 4096x4096 canvases of textures for these guys.
I’ll be posting individual close-ups later when I will be much more free.

Painting their bodies this way WAS a sort of overkill... but in proportion to the amount of work put into them, the extra work put into detailing the texture to this quality (wich STILL demands a lot of retouch) was a mere trifle, and an additional motivation for me.

The pipeline I am going for is along the lines of setting the basic scene, preparing all the models, posing the hero characters/elements, arranging the background according to the shot cam (Though this might change now that I found out that we don’t have to submit a high res final image)
Hence the reason you are not still seeing a final scene pre-render of any kind.

I hope to give it to you guys soon (The animation is also being worked on... damn is there a lot to do, I was hoping to include some dynamics, and character animations…But I am not sure if I can now)

Black