After a year…

Well that was quite a hiatus. I haven’t posted any work since August 2011! So what have I been doing lately? Well for one, I got work although it was a bit brief but it’s a good experience none the less. So due to work, I didn’t get to do much 3D… but that doesn’t mean I stop doing any! Here’s some work that I’ve done (or still am doing) so far:

Here’s a table mirror. Bought an actual mirror long time ago so decided to do some fancy mirror rendering using Maya’s MentalRay. The reflection turns out to be not 100% accurate. If I do want it to be accurate, it’ll probably take much longer rendering/calculating to finish.

These two weapons are from a famous short series in Japan called Hoi Hoi-san. I find the design very cute and simple that I decide to model the weapons to practice on hard surface modelling. Turns out quite well.

I’ve been collecting a plamo called LBX from Bandai. This is one of the model’s equipment.

One Piece is one of my favourite on going manga. This is a model of a submarine lead by a fictional pirate called Trafalgar Law. Fun fact: “Trafalgar” is actually the name of a famous British captain who got his name immortalised in London, a.k.a. Trafalgar Square.

Here’s the latest work I have. It’s AX-00 from the LBX series. It’s still a work in progress and so far I’ve only finished modelling and here I’m testing the skeleton. A few tweaks is needed for the skeleton and then it will be off to rigging and finally animation!

Well that’s it for now. The next post, I’ll probably have animated the AX-00 and maybe plan for some more project. =)

2010/2011 in review…

Masters is finally over, a few works/assignments/projects are made. As a person in the 3D animation work, a showreel is compulsory! Below is a pick of four of my finest work that shows improvement compared to my work during my degree.

Final Project is DONE!

Watch it now!

So was it good? Overall, I guess it is better than what I’ve done on my own so far… Does it has room for improvement? Always does. Will I make another improved version of it? Guess I will if there’s a mood for it.

After a Month…

Of texturing and lighting (and a little bit of editing here and there), the animation is on rendering stage! At this very moment, it is currently rendering shot 3 and there’s still 10 more shots to go but to add something onto this post, here’s a teaser if you may of the animation taken from shot 1 and 2 of the whole animation!

2nd Preview

Last Monday, I’ve had my 2nd preview presentation to show what I have done so far base on a previz which was made before. The strange thing is the preview must be shown in a form where it is the same (or close to) as the final product! Schedule-wise, that’s not possible at 2nd preview so I had to move my schedules around and have the pilot and mech rigged and animated sooner. Below is the resulting previz:

With a lot of things done, I’ve did some modelling of the environment but they are still in the early stages so I won’t be showing it yet. I do however have been texturing the mech using MudBox, Photoshop as well as Illustrator. Here’s the final product of it:

I might change the look a little bit but it is so far quite satisfactory. Hopefully I can make everything to look like they belong together later.

Rigging Done…

But it hasn’t been fully tested yet thus there will definitely be issues encountered during animation. So for the next few days when I’m doing the draft animation, I will be testing the rig and find and fix whatever it is that needs fixing! Anyhow, here’s the current mech rig and a close up of the hand:

It’s all rigid bind since they’re all hard surface models. For the controls, I use nurbs curves and then add some extra attributes especially to control the fingers  using Connection Editor and add functionality for opening and closing the hatch via Set Driven Key.

Day… Erm…

Let’s just say it’s been one month! I was away for quite a while and the “working” mode is taking a while to start. Anyhow, it has restarted and I’ve recently finished rigging the pilot and is moving on to the mech. Once that’s done, I ca start doing a draft animation to be shown for the preview presentation next week. Here’s a quick picture of the pilot posed like he’s walking I guess…

Just to detail it up, the pilot is rigged using Autodesk’s middleware, HumanIK. It’s basically a full IK rig where pulling say his hand all the way to the floor will make the rest of the affected body parts to follow thru so that it will look natural (maybe). Though animating it might be a bit harder when aiming for details, but I think it should be sufficient for this project.