19 June 2009
I just wanted to share my joy, modo 401 was released today. Woohoo! I’m downloading my update as I type and am very excited to take this new baby for a spin. Thank god that Luxology utilizes BitTorrent for a release like this, otherwise I guess the download would take forever with all the modonauts wanting to get the almost 2gb of modo godness at the same time.
To be honest, I should probably go to sleep now as it’s pretty late over here, and it’s some kind of midsummer happening tomorrow – but certain things just can’t wait, not matter what.
Anyway, I am really psyched about the 401 release. I was originally not sure if I wanted to take the plunge and upgrade as I was pretty happy with 302 and also that I use LightWave for the most part of my work. But as the 401 reveal was exhibiting more and more features that fits right into my workflow I simply couldn’t resist and placed my preorder for the update about 2 weeks ago.
Primarily it was the new hair system together with the retopology tools that really wet my appetite and more or less sold me, and then when Pixologic dropped the GoZ bomb about 2 weeks ago with the coming connection between ZBrush and modo I was walking on clouds. No way whatsoever I could pass on that workflow enhancement as that’s something I need over and over again in my daily work.
modo going 64 bit is not to shabby either. Oh well, my download is done – time to install and do some explorations before I go to sleep. I am sure some of the coming updates on this site in the end of June will contain quite a bit of modo 401 involvement. I shall return…
Cheers and good night!
22 May 2009
It’s been kinda quiet in my journal for a while – as I’ve been very busy with some long term projects. I’m really looking forward to when I’ll be able to start publishing content from them. Anyway, to break the silence, as I do a few smaller gigs now and then, here’s a 3D illustration of the 1974 design chair ‘Skopa’ I did for the Swedish magazine Filter recently, which go on sale in stores on May 26th.
Skopa Chair - Published in 'Filter' issue 8, June & July 2009
I’m wondering if I am starting to get typecasted into creating retro chairs? Haha, well, it’s okay – as I find the design, form and colors of the 60’s and 70’s spaceage retro classics very entertaining to work with.
I created this chair completely in modo. I find modo to really shine for these kind of visualization assignments on a tight schedule. The excellent workflow in modo allowed me to model, shade, texture, light, render and deliver this guy in less than a day.
The Skopa Chair - Originally I rendered this in 3K resolution for the magazine.
I’ll probably try to post more smaller assignments in my Journal if things are way to silent for a while. Well, over and out for this time!
27 April 2009
A few days ago I got a question in relation to the article I posted some months back, tips to speed up the modeling workflow in LightWave, concerning the TrueArt’s plugins that I use. How I actually incorporate them in my workflow.
So I thought it would be a nice idea to make a video tutorial on some useful concepts where the tools can speed up the daily workflow. So below you’ll find an EasySplit usage tutorial.
I start the tutorial by going through some basic concepts with the tool, and then I show a shorter modeling session for a few minutes – making a simple pouch and using the plugin to draw in a wrinkle in the geometry, one of many typical cases where it can save some decent amount of time.
This video also gave me the opportunity to try out the new HD support on YouTube, so I recorded it in High Definition 720p, and the HD mode is selected by default in the player, so the video should look nice and crisp even in fullscreen. If you’re on a slower connection, you might want to uncheck the HD button in the player.
Okay, let’s see how this works out, as it was my first attempt to create a video tutorial (except a few quick ones for my own plugins). Well, I hope some of you will find this tutorial useful, and if so I could probably record a few more on different subjects – time permitting.
29 January 2009
Just another quick sculpting doodle…
Doodling Session in ZBrush - Muscle Guy
I had some time to kill today while waiting for renders to finish, and it has been some time since I had a doodle session, so I sketched around in ZBrush for a while and created this character. Nothing special, I just wanted to brush up a bit on male muscularity. Well, the renders are done, and this is how far I got, but it was a fun session. I just a draw out a few ZSpheres and then I worked almost exclusively with the clay brush. I just love that brush. The image above is a screenshot from ZBrush (cropped just above the nudity limit 
), I didn’t bother to make a render of it as I was just having some sculpting fun.
Todays horror moment; when I started up ZBrush my license file had been corrupted somehow, so it shut down. That sent chills down my spine, for real (I found out later that this is not that uncommon that it happens). But a quick call to Pixologic sorted it out and I was up and running again. Gotta love companies with great support. I just hope this doesn’t happen during non office hours while having a deadline, I guess it was good it happened today, so I can prepare and have a backup plan ready if that would ever occur.
Until next time… cheers!
25 January 2009
Elly - Click for render and breakdown
Alright, it was time to wrap this baby up. I could go on and on to keep detailing and refining her, but I felt I’d reached the point where I’d accomplished what I wanted with this project, mainly researching some new techniques for my workflow and touch some base with FiberFX in 9.6.
The final render can be found in my 3D portfolio together with a breakdown. (I’m so happy I finally got my act together and fixed the framework for my site last week so I can start adding new content without any hassle)
Well, this was the first darling to get completed, I have a couple of more dusty projects I’m resurrecting and completing and this first one was simple enough to get my feet wet with, and it was a great opportunity to explore some of the new LigthWave 9.6 goodies.
Now it’s time to move on towards some more complex characters, and theoretically I should increase my speed some on the next one, as I don’t think I’ll spend any time to do research for new techniques as I did now. I’m in the mood for just using my current arsenal of techniques and do a straightforward project from A to B.
I have a busy week coming up, but I will get the next one started towards the end of it. Until then, cheers!
23 January 2009
Fifth WIP of Elly (Click to enlarge)
Here’s another update of this CG model, I spent some time with her last night. I modeled a new earpiece for her, fixed the clothing to make them a bit more fitting for her and also did some final tweaks to the skin texture and shading, which I am pretty happy with now.
But the major part of the time I spent with her last night went into the hair. Or hair guides to be more specific. The hair in the render to the left is still very temporary, the shading is not correct yet and looks way to shiny, and the shadow has low quality.
I dedicated my efforts towards finding an effecient workflow for styling hair guides. Guide styling can be quite tedious, and I’ve decided that I will take all time necessary for this one to find as good flow as possible for that part of the process, as I’ll have so much use for having a speedy workflow in the hair styling department for all my other characters.
I’ll continue this process tonight and hopefully get were I want to go with her hair, and when the styling is in place, and I have documented a good workflow for it, I’ll fix the hair shading in FiberFX.
If nothing unexpected happens, I’ll have the final image ready by tomorrow, and hopefully be able to post a small breakdown of the process of this character.
21 January 2009
Improved Shading and Textures (Click to enlarge)
Here’s a quick update to the character I worked with last week. I have been really busy, with work and also updating artstorm.net with some improved design and new features (like the turntable function), so I haven’t had time to pick her up for work again until yesterday, where I got some more things done to her.
The image to the right is the latest render of Elly with a few changes since the last post. I haven’t worked anything with the hair yet, so it’s still the same as in the last image, but I did work quite a bit with the skin shading and also tweaked the textures a bit more. The deeper I dig into the simple skin material in LightWave 9.6, the more I like it, it’s pretty capable. Other than the skin and textures I have also updated the eye shading and eye lashes as well.
I can’t get over how amazingly fast the updated render engine is in LightWave 9.6. This character renders in just a few minutes with quite high anti-aliasing in 1K resolution on a now aging Quad Core Q6600 @ 2.4Ghz. the same render takes almost over 15 minutes in 9.5, which was pretty fast anyway. Rendering in 9.6 is incredible. I love it! And has saved my bacon on many tight deadlines already during the autumn of 2008.
I’ll continue working with her tonight, and hopefully wrap this character up to final state. I will do some further tweaking to the texturing and shading, fix the clothing and do a major update to the hair.
20 January 2009
LightWave 3D 9.6… Woohoo! I just wanted to add a quick shout that version 9.6 has been released today and is available for download over at NewTek.
I’m so happy with this release, as about every quirk I had with 9.5 is gone. Actually there is over 600 fixes and feature requests implemented in 9.6. It’s been a long beta cycle for this version, but it’s been worth it. Being a longtime LightWave user myself (since version 3.5) this is without a doubt the most impressive and stable LightWave version released, ever! It’s indeed exciting times for LightWave users these days. Well, all info about 9.6 is available at NewTek’s site, so no point in posting them here. LightWave 9.6 is already doing an excellent job for me producing wonderful renders in a fraction of a time of what 9.5 did (together with all the other new goodies), and it’ll keep me more than satisfied until they bring on version 10.
Just wanted to share some nerdy application joy. Now it’s back to work, in the shiny new release build of 9.6.
15 January 2009
I love turntables, I think they are an excellent way to display a model. I got inspired of what Pixologic did with their ZBrush turntable gallery, so I dusted of my old flash knowledge and implemented a turntable function, as I was anyway doing some fine tuning to the site design.
Here’s a model of mine from 2007 which I tried out the turntable function with:
Now when my portfolio update finally is around the corner, I wanted to have something like this to accompany the content I’ll put there. And it will also come in handy for my ZBrush sketches and doodles here in the journal. So expect to see lot’s of more turntables to spin around in here.
