still sad

I don't care what anyone says, I'm still very upset that Alias was bought out by Autodesk. I just went to the (blech) Autodesk site. It just ain't right I tells ya, it just ain't right.

:(

Busy week

Not much updating going on here. I've been working at home (a dream come true) and haven't had much time to work on my own stuff. I'm eager to get back to my dwarf character, maybe work on the hands.

Neal Havener of Go Robot Go! came for a visit last week. His wife has some script negotiations going on. It was fun to see them and meet some of their friends.

Fallen behind on sculpting and drawing but I've been getting plenty of Maya and Zbrush in.

Laters.

HomeStarmy

Yesterday I did a phone interview with some of the lead FX supervisors, modellers, animators, and TDs at Blue Sky in New York for a feature in an upcoming issue of HDRI3D magazine. Great bunch of guys, fun to talk to, lots of nerdy tidbits for the magazine. The article is on Ice Age 2. I spent the day wroting the article and watching the first Ice Age.

Tomorrow I get to take the iMac G5 to the apple store, hopefully they will fix the monitor. It literally has like 4 days until the one year warranty runs out. Last time I went to the genius bar some celebrity budged in front of me after I waited for an hour. That's Hollywood.

Today I also spent some time on my environment scene and working on my own MEL script. I'm trying to design an instant brick wall creator. So far I have an interface and the functionality to create the polygon wall based on user input for width height and subdivisions. I also figured out how to automate face extrusion. the next step is the main part of the script which will allow the user to choose between brick, checker, and random patterns for the extrusion. not a terribly useful script but it is a good exercise.

Tonight we had dinner at Luna Park on La Brea. Great mac and cheese and a really awesome, if not super sweet, Dr. Pepper based vodka drink.

Last Thursday i dropped in on Kevin Llewllyn's drawing class at Gnomon. I did an OK portrait, face was a little smushed. Always good to see Kevin though. Watching him draw is an amazing experience.

Mastering Maya 7

Should hit the shelves soon:

Mastering Maya 7

One of the images from my toon shading tutorial is on the back cover. This is my first book authoring credit. I wrote the chapters on Render basics, Particles, and the appendix on Toon shading. Yaay!

Finished watching the Mel 101 DVDs from Gnomon today. Gnomon does it again, great stuff. I'm planning on writing some modelling scripts as soon as I get a little more comfortable.

Wall of non-voodoo

I'm taking a break from the dwarf model to work on an environment. So far this is being done entirely in Maya, no Z brush as of yet. This environment is inspired by the photography of Neil Folbeg (www.visiongallery.com/neil.html). Although the scene I'm doing is not included in the selections on his website. The overall look should be the same, it will probably be black and white as well. Here is an initial render of an early version of the model. I am modelling some details, the rest will be doen with bump maps and maybe soem displacement maps if i need them.




Here's a screenshot:




Not much so far but it should look nice when complete. Looks like it will mostly be a lighting and texture study. I hope to capture the same ethereal quality Neil Folberg has in his work.

I started watching the Gnomon MEL dvds by Kevin Mannens. Nice review of MEL, 'bout time I got seruious with it. The DVD is great so far, a few small mistakes but overall it is becoming one of my favorite Gnomon DVDS. My brothers got me all four DVDS which is way too generous but very helpful.

Yesterday Zoe and I took Daisy on a hike to Runyon Canyon. We went up the hard way, the little dog dragged me up the path. There were about 300 other dogs all over the park. Nutty nutty little dogs.

Last night we had a drink a a local pub on Sunset - Ye Horse and Buggy (sounds like something from teh Simpsons). After a really horrific Old fashioned and a nice safe Guiness we went over to the Rock n' Roll Star wars Thai resteraunt known as Toi. Great atmosphere, OK food. They were playing a recording of a Pixies concert on the TV which made up for all the Van Halen I had to suffer at Ye Horse and Buggy.

Anyways...

Again with the computer problems!

The iMac I bought off my brother just died. Well, the display anyways (Boy am I glad they made the monitor inseperable from the computer!). I can still see the HD via the network. arrg. I was just about to render some stuff for my new demo!!

Anyways. Here's the dwarf head now with leather cap:










This one has some paint effects fur for the lining of the cap, not too bad, I like the worn spots on the fur:




I still need to tweak the textures and then move on to the rest of the body, however I may take a break from him and work on reorganizing my web site a little. I may also start work on an environment scene.

Here is the original sketch for comparison:




I've also been sick for the last few days, coughing up some interesting textures. eeeewwww...

The new 2006 dwarf

OK, so I was sick for New Year's eve and crashed at about 10:30. That's lame. However I did get to enjoy watching "Better Off Dead" with the wife, she cooked up an awesome feast. New Year's day we watched all 3 director's cut versions of the LOTR series. Took about 13 hours. pretty awesome though (and pretty nerdy). Today was a suprise holiday, it rained like hell in LA. They booked me for work but forgot to tell me the office was closed. So I worked on the dwarf at home and watched some Gnomon DVDs. Here's my progress:






I'm not sold on the textures just yet but they are at a level now where I think I can move on to other parts and come back to the skin later. I'd actually like less wrinkles and more pores. The eyebrows and stubble are basic Paint Effects brushes. I'm working on the hat now.