Posts Tagged ‘Modeling’

Well well well, when you get into reworking something like I have done here with Kat’s complete topology it’s bound to take a little bit longer than expected. But here’s a quick update until I’m completely finished with her. Aiming on tomorrow, but you never know. Anyway, here’s an OpenGL screenshot of her new hand in it’s current state compared to the old roughed out placeholder.

Worked on making the hands looking much better

It’s getting there, but I still some tweaking to do until I’m completely happy. Originally I intended this piece to be quite a quick one to improve my work with edgeloops. But since then I’ve got so much into anatomy and correct proportions so I’ve changed my mind and instead I am now aiming for this character to be my most detailed and realistic character yet to this date.

Today I’ve been working on all parts of her body, adding details, especially on her back, adding all the small things like hints of the spine, shoulder blades and lot’s of small bones under the skin. I’ve most details in place but I have a few hours of pushing and pulling vertexes around until I get the nice smooth surface on top of everything that I want to have. I’ll post more images as soon as I am there.

And what you all been waiting for…
Todays Modeling Music: Her Majesty - Happiness

Tags: 3D, Art, CG, Character, Female, LightWave, Modeling, Pin-up, Work in Progress

There has passed some time since my last update of my character Katana. Last time I posted a progress of her I was in the texturing, shading and hair phase. Since then I have improved my skills so much in topology and anatomy so I just couldn’t stand to see her mesh anymore, so I took it back a few steps and went back into the modeling phase to fix her up a bit. She was a bit reluctant at first laying down under the knife, but at last I talked her into it.

So I just wanted to post this quick update of where I am with her at the moment, with her anatomy update.

Improving the proportions of the anatomy

I am by no means finished with the anatomy changes, but the image above shows some of the progress I’ve made so far. I have given her better proportions on the skull and the overall body shape. Started defining the shoulders, neck, crouch, stomach and so on much better. I will post more detailed shots from several angles and closeup wires as soon as she comes off the operating table, sometime tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed everything goes well.

Modeling Music: The Whitest Boy Alive - Dreams

Tags: 3D, Art, CG, Character, Female, LightWave, Modeling, Pin-up, Work in Progress

Lately I’ve been dedicating almost all my polygon modeling time towards the art of the female form when I haven’t been ZBrushing or recovering from dental surgery mayhems.

This character is going to turn out to be something really special, and I’ll have her finished right next to my Kat(ana) character. I just wanted to post an entry about her to get this modeling thread going as well in the blog.

Working on improving my topology and anatomy knowledge

As can be seen, I haven’t really worked on the head yet, but been deep into working with getting a good anatomy topology of the body. I’ll work with this character this weekend, so I’ll have a new post with her on Sunday with better closeups of all the details and the final body modeling in place.

For quite some time I’ve been studying the female anatomy and the belonging topology a great deal to improve my modeling skills in that area as much as I can at the moment. I really hope this character turns out to be very good in that respect. I must send many thanks and kudos to Steven Stahlberg for all the great advice and information I’ve got from him and made myself get into a better habit of research and planning of my models in an early stage. I wouldn’t have learned so much and increased my understanding in this area if I hadn’t got the opportunity to share some of his knowledge. And I have learned to don’t fear the n-gon as much as I used to. ;)

I don’t think this particular character will get any ZBrush treatment. Polygon modeling has its own elegant charm, even though I really do enjoy sculpting. But there is a time and place for everything. And it feels pretty good to be working just inside LightWave’s modeler again. It gives me a very cosy and warm feeling to puzzle and spin all polygons in place.

On an unrelated note, I started editing together my 2007 showreel earlier this week, and it will go online in July. Details to come later.

Modeling Music: The Sounds - Dying to Say this to You

Tags: 3D, Art, CG, Character, Female, LightWave, Modeling, Work in Progress

There’s been lot’s of ZBrushing in the log lately, but I’ve continued working on among other things my Katana character piece at the same time.

So while I was in LightWave 3D today modeling on Kat we talked about accessories. Yes, you do actually have to talk to your characters while modeling them. How else will they spring to life? And we decided that I should get her a Katana sword. I cleared out my screen and modeled together this piece of weaponry for her.

Katana Sword - LightWave 3D Render

And here is an occlusion render and the wireframe of the above sword.

Katana Sword - Occlusion and Wires

Alright starting to get time for a new update on the progress of how she is coming along as well. She told me she was eager to get a public appearance again. Stay tuned for an update of her shortly unless any new zbrush doodles surfaces first.

Modeling music: Architecture in Helsinki - In Case We Die

Tags: 3D, Art, CG, LightWave, Modeling, Render, Weapon

Alright, this piece has continued to progress. I’ve mostly concentrated on the head since the last update. I have tweaked the mouth and eyes a bit more and also finished the ears and attached them to the skull. I still have some finer adjustments left to do on the facial area before I am completely happy with her and can move on into the texturing phase.

My main focus on this update has been hair styling. As I am using LightWave, there is a couple of different approaches I can take when making hair. This time I went the Fiber Factory route. I got the Fiber Factory plugin for LightWave a few months back, but I haven’t had the time to get into it until now. I spent about a day playing around with the Fiber modeler until I felt completely comfortable with it and had found a good workflow which gave me the control I was looking for. A day well spent. So this is the result of my first Fiber Factory based hair style. Below is a render where I am in the progress at the moment. I still have some tweaks left to do before I am happy with the hair, but I am starting to get the overall style somewhere in the ballpark of where I am going.

Trying out Fiber Factory IV for hair render

And here is an OpenGL shot of the hairguides I’ve sculpted with mainly the Fiber modeler with some additional tweaks in LightWave modeler.

OpenGL shot of the Hair Guides

I must say after having worked with Fiber Factory now, I’ve begun to find it a very useful and powerful hair plugin. I’ll definitely use it a great deal in my coming projects. I did have to switch between Fiber Modeler and LightWave modeler now and then to be able to get it the way I wanted, though, so there is still room for improvements in the hair styling tools. I’ll supply Jon at Binary Arts with my findings and wishes for improved styling tools when this project is finished, and hopefully that might be added to a future version, for an even more elegant hair solution. Hair in CG is something that is quite important to me and fortunately the future for hair in LightWave looks very promising. I am a beta tester of TrueHair, which still have some roads left to travel before becoming production ready, but it starts to show a great deal of potential already. Also, Worley might have a long overdue Sasquatch 3 lurking around the corner in the near future, that might bring even more power to the world of CG hair in LightWave.

Well, back to work. Coming up next is the final tweaks to the facial area, so I can start painting the textures and include that in my next post.

Working Music: Aracade Fire - Neon Bible

Tags: 3D, Art, CG, Character, Female, LightWave, Modeling, Pin-up, Work in Progress

I had some other business to take care of, so I had a break for a few days from this piece. Tonight I got back to her again though, and I have made some more progress to her since the last post. I’ve spend this night working on the facial structure, and have been focusing a great deal on the edgeloops, and I finally think I am starting to get happy with the layout of the wires. As I’ve mentioned in the last post, I primarily make this character to fine tune my edgeloop modeling skills.

I still have some refinements left to accomplish on the head. The ears lack some details and need to be properly attached to the mesh. There is also some loops around the mouth area that I have to work a bit more with before I’m completely satisfied. Other than that I just have to massage around her points a bit to get the features in the face to have the appearance I want them to have.

Here is some shots of her face up to this point. A rendered version and also a version with wires. I’ll continue tweak and refine her head and post a finished version of it later on today.

Katana - Second Work in Progress

Wires of the second WIP

When I’ve finalized the head and attached it to the body, this piece will quickly close in to a finished state. The piece will probably be named Katana and not her as a character. Stages left to complete after the mesh is in place: Add hair and clothes, add a basic rig to pose her, paint textures and model accessories and then it should be prime time for a final render.

Working Music: Hello Saferide - Introducing

Tags: 3D, Art, CG, Character, Female, LightWave, Modeling, Pin-up, Work in Progress

I’ve begun working on a new character today. I have a pretty good idea where I’ll take her and how the final image shall look. This will end up as a single still only. I’ve focused a great deal on edgeloop modeling on this one, to finetune my skills in that area.

Roughed out the basic shapes of her

The topology of the body is laid out with carefully placed edgeloops. Also I’ve blocked out the basic shape of the head. Now I’ll move on to adding details and massaging all bodyparts into the shapes and proportions I want her to have.

By the way, I’ve named her Katana, consider it a hint where this girl is going.

Working Music: Thåström, Hellberg, Ossler - Sällskapet

Tags: 3D, Art, CG, Character, Female, LightWave, Modeling, Pin-up, Work in Progress

An evening a few weeks back I started working on this living room. Then I didn’t touch it until today. Other things have come in between, like my daytime job. And the last two weeks I have been doing some house cleaning, I’ve gone through every image and animation I’ve done since the 90’s and sorted all renders and all 3D files in a very structured way. It was kind of a mess before. And that feels pretty good to have everything I’ve ever done in order.
I’ve also kept myself busy with some independent filmmaking. But, that I’ll write more about in another blog entry later on.

Anyway, so I loaded up the scene file for the living room I started some time ago and continued working on it tonight. The last time I just blocked out how I wanted the overall layout. So tonight I spent some time sculpting in some details in the objects that were present in the scene. The modeling went pretty quickly, so tomorrow I’ll get very close to finish this image, as I’ll be doing the texturing and lighting. And maybe add some final details and props into the scene.

Now it's actually starting to look like furniture.

Working Music: Elliott Smith - XO

Tags: 3D, CG, Interior, LightWave, Modeling

The heat has been astonishing in Sweden lately. Even I have had a few trips out to the beach getting some variation on my nowadays so white skin. Anyway, Friday night, stayed home for once, and found some time to start on a new project.

I’ve been playing around with my new baby, LightWave 3D 9, as it has now left beta and gone gold and all NDA’s has been lifted. The third party community for LightWave is for the first time in some years growing in the right direction again. Lot’s of interesting announcements lately, with Syflex coming for LightWave and other nice plugins and addons.
Also the 3rd party renderers are starting to arrive. FPrime was the first to arrive a few years back, and has been my best friend for previewing in realtime and doing final renderings with. And now lately Maxwell was released, but it’s at the moment not something that I feel will fit into my budget. Another 3rd party renderer that is really interesting to me is KrayTracing. Kray is the most speedy photonmapping, lightmapping renderer I’ve tried so far, and the results seems to be excellent. And the fact that the price is a bargain if it delivers what I hope does help a great deal when I’m about to make the decision to add another renderer to my arsenal of tools.

So I thought I should do an interior visualization project to try out Kray with. So earlier this night I got into modeling some furniture. And then spent some time setting up a decent lighting. Well, still some road left to travel on this one. Need to tweak the sofas more, add some depth to the rug, and add some accessories around the room, and maybe something on the wall. And of course start working on textures and details. I’ll dig into this tomorrow.

Below is the first render from this project. Rendered in FPrime while working with it. When I’ve finished modeling and are happy with the setup, I’ll do a final FPrime rendering, and then get into Kray with the same scene and start comparing and see what I think of Kray with a finished project, to make final rendering. I’m really looking forward to this little experiment.

First Work in Progress Image of this project

Modeling Music: The Embassy - Futile Crimes

Tags: 3D, CG, Interior, LightWave, Modeling

Okay, todays update. I’ve been refining lot’s of details with his body, and now I’m quite happy with it. Just have some things left to do on the head, before I add his clothes into the object and start the painting of skin and extra details onto him. Will get to that tomorrow probably.

Work in Progress Render

Wireframe of current Work in Progress

Working Music: Conan The Destroyer Soundtrack
(Hey, why not! hehe.. This is fantasy!)

Tags: 3D, Art, CG, Character, Creature, LightWave, Modeling, Work in Progress