New Model- White Rhino

After several weeks of work, I am happy to present to you my new model- a white rhinoceros!

He has to be my best model to date! That's because I made a work in progress thread for him over on BlenderArtists.org and got a lot of great feedback and help. I should have begun posting over there ages ago! This is what he looked like when I first posted.

 
Believe it or not, I thought he was almost finished then! The base model actually stayed pretty much the same throughout the revisions, though I did make some changes based upon critiques. What the people over at BlenderArtists helped me with the most was the normal map, displacement map, uv map, sculpting, and they motivated me to rig him. The sculpting part was very new to me, never having sculpted then baked a displacement map before, but it made a big difference in the amount of detail I was able to put on the rhino. Though next time I think I'll sculpt in the beginning, then retopo and bake a normal map, because I think that would be easier to set up.

Here's a close up of his face.

And a side view.

Here are some wireframes.

Here's his rig.

And here's a turntable.

As always, you can get this guy here. He's available in BLEND, OBJ, and FBX formats.

I'm very happy with how this rhino turned out! And I'm excited to put what I learned to use on my next model. I still haven't decided what I'll make next, but when I do I'll make a thread for it over at BlenderArtists.org. Here's my profile for over there.

Until next time!

Several Cool Updates

Hi again, everyone! Remember how last time I said I really wanted to focus on my modeling, texturing, and lighting skills? Well, I just got done doing a lot of practice with those last two. I went through an intense learning weekend where I learned a lot about composition, lighting, and Cycles. In fact, I learned so much that I decided to update all of my old models (except for the Bunny and Bobcat). I've given them all new materials to allow them to render in Cycles, and I've exported them all into .fbx format! I'm especially excited about that last part, because now I can use one of my favorite rigs, my great white shark, in Maya!

I'm also very excited about the updates because of how snazzy all my models look with their new materials and Cycles' better way of rendering. I don't know why I stuck with Blender Internal for so long, I should have switched to Cycles the day it came out! Anyhow, I thought you all might be interested to see the contrast between my old renders and my new renders of the same models. Keep in mind that a lot of the sub-par quality of the Blender Internal renders comes from me just not knowing enough about materials and lighting, something that I've improved on a lot (though I've still got tons to learn). I know of many people who can make stunning renders with Internal, so it's not like it's a bad renderer.

Anyway, here are the images! Old images on the top, new images on the bottom.

Great White Shark

 

I tried to recreate the pose of the original. I love how the lighting in the new one shows off the shark's jaw musculature.

Queen Anne Wing Chairs

 

 I didn't like how the old version had no feeling of presence. I used what I learned about composition and focal length (I went a bit lower than the traditional 35 mm) to create a much more impressive looking scene in the new version.

Jade Canine 

 

This is the only case where I still really like the Blender Internal version. A lot of jade does look like the new version, just like a lot looks like the old version, but I just think all the color variation in the old version looks cool.

Cartoony Hammerhead Shark 

 

I like how the highlights are more defused in the new version. I changed the pose to point the other direction because I realized having it point the other way was pointing the viewer away from the next images.

 Screwdrivers and Screws

 These renders are probably the most similar of the bunch. But I think the bottom one has better lighting and a better composition.

Wine and Bar Glasses 

Major change with this one. The biggest is probably the end of the dark blue lighting. And the bottles have some nice reflections going on.

So that's it! Now that I've finished this, I'm going to go back to making new models. I don't think I'll set them up for Blender Internal anymore, though. I read that development on it was discontinued years ago, anyway.

As always, you can get all of these models here, but now you can get them in FBX format, along with the usual OBJ and BLEND.

Until next time!

Cartoony Hammerhead Shark

Hi again, everyone! I'm on winter break now after having finished a great online semester at the Academy of Art University. So that means I've got the time to make a lot of new things to show you all!

My first completed winter break project is my Cartoony Hammerhead Shark model. It's not rigged because I plan to take this month to really focus on my modeling, texturing, and lighting skills. I'll be doing animation practice, too. I got Tangled and Kung Fu Panda 2 on DVD for Christmas, which means I've been able to go through them frame-by-frame and try to figure out what makes them great. But this post is supposed to be about my new hammerhead shark. By the way, he's unique in that he's the first model I've textured for both Blender Internal and Cycles. All you have to do is turn the nodes on and off to switch between renderers. Anyway, here he is!

Here are some wireframes.

 And a turntable.

As always, you can see more images and download him in .OBJ and .BLEND formats here.

Until next time!

A Bobcat That was 2 Years in the Making

I've finally finished making Bobby the Bobcat! For a while I thought he'd never be complete. But I've learned that while it may look like I abandon some projects, I always come back to them eventually. This goes for 2D art and CG work. I just can't stand starting something and not finishing it. But I think 2 years is the most I've let anything drag on. I think I let it go on for so long because school made me forget about him and college kept me too busy to work on him. But now that it's summer break I've been able to relearn/remember everything that I forgot about Blender (since I had been using Maya so much in college) and I was finally able to finish him. The confidence boost I got from my cute bunny turning out well also helped.

Here's a render of Bobby:

And a turntable:

And finally, here's his walk cycle:

He's a lot of fun to work with! I can't wait to do some more serious animations with him and with my bunny character!

You can download Bobby and see more images of him (including his wireframe and rig) here.

Until next time!

Bobby Speaks!

I just finished my first test animation with Bobby! It was a lot of fun animating him, especially his face (I've always loved animating to dialogue). It was a good test run of the rig, too. I found and fixed a lot of things. There are still a couple of things I need to fix, and I think I want to reduce the specularity on his nose, teeth, and tongue materials. I'm going to make another test animation that doesn't have any dialogue, so I can test his legs and torso.

Anyway, here's the animation:

I found this to be helpful when rendering it out:

Quick Tip: Rendering Animations (the proper way)

Until next time!

Bobby is Complete!

Well, I actually still have to do some little weight painting tweaks, so he's more like 95% complete. But that's complete enough to start making renders and animations. And the good thing is that making those will show me what areas need tweaking, so it all works out.

Bobby has a pretty advanced rig. His face is controlled by bones, which are actually drivers that control shape keys. He has IK/FK functionality for his whole body, and his tongue is controlled by bones outside of his head that can be scaled and moved about freely. In IK mode, his fingers are controlled by single bones that can be scaled to automatically curl them inward. Lastly, though this isn't really a rigging thing, his materials are set up so that he can be used with either the Blender internal renderer, or the Cycles renderer.

Here's a Cycles render of Bobby (slight post-work in Photoshop):

He's very happy to finally be out of that T pose! Here's what his finished rig looks like on the IK layer:

And here's what it looks like on the FK layer:

Here is a list of the tutorials I used. They're all very well done!

• Foot/Leg Rigging 
• IK/FK Leg Rigging 
• Spine Rigging 
• Face Rigging 
• IK/FK Arm Rigging 
• Hand Rigging 
• Alpha Mapping in Cycles 

I'm really happy with Bobby! It took a week of day and night work to rig him, but it was worth it! Now to make more test poses/animations and do the final tweaks. I'm also going to make him a walk and run cycle, a lip sync animation, and probably a pantomime animation. I'll post those on here when they're done. When I'm done with everything and Bobby's completely production ready, I'll make him available on Turbosquid.

Until next time!