Link Project 003

Now that I had my game plan, I started modeling. With this project I decided that I wanted to challenge myself and simulate clothing. Since I had never attempted simulating clothing and had only seen it done, I just went for it thinking that I was going to simulate everything.I started off by creating my character base in ZBrush. I created links body using ZSpheres then started sculpting.
Here was my result.

I also created a hair block-in that I would base my simulated hair strands off of.

Now that I had my base sculpt done, I imported it into Maya and retopoed the character and made base clothing that I would be able to simulate.

It was here that I started playing around with the dynamics of the clothing to see what I would be able to get away with.

It did not go as planed ...

That's it for today, thanks for reading and I hope you look forward to the next post.

Link Project 002

Back in August I attended Siggraph (a conference for computer graphics), and talked to some recruiters. Some advice I got was adding some live action work to my demo reel. So, I started planning out a live action project. I figured  this would also give me a good chance to work on my generalist skill set and let me explore some things I haven't tried before.
First off, I threw around some ideas of what I wanted to do and ended up settling on creating a Legend of Zelda fan art piece. Here is my concept.

All it states is what I require to create the piece, and I made some quick doodles of what I want to happen.

So with my concept done, I started gathering resources. I really like the way that the wind waker link looks, so I made that my main reference for my model.

So now that I had my main reference, I started the modeling process. Even though I really like the look of my reference, I adapted the character model to my own style. I also wanted to make it a little more realistic to fit the live action setting.

Well that's it for now, thank you for reading and I hope you look forward to the next post.

Link Project 001

Just thought I would make a quick post about my next project. I have started working on it, just haven't gotten around to getting stuff together for making blog post. I will start giving you updates shortly though. Here is a quick teaser of what to expect.

Again please don't hesitate to critique my previous project. Anything helps, that way I know what I need to improve the next time around.

Thanks for reading and I hope you look forward to the next post.

Female Portrait 011

Once I finished the hair, I did some minor tweaks on the skin and set everything up for rendering. Here are some different views of the final render at half quality.

And here is a screen grab of my flow in Fusion. It's not anything fancy but I figured I would show it.

And finally, the final render.

I am happy with the final result. No it's not perfect, and no it's not anywhere near the level I want to be at but it's a start. I learned a lot working on this project and I think it's time I call it finished. There are a lot of things I could nit pick but if I did that I would never finish. I now know that I gotta keep working hard so I can become better and faster. I'm sure one day I will look back on this and think how bad it looks just like I did with my first attempt. But, that is all part of learning and progressing.

I still plan on doing a turnaround with different IBL's but that will take some time since I only have my one work machine. Once I finish that I will add it to my demo reel and possibly create a quick post with it.

Thank you for reading my post and seeing my progress through this project. Since this is done, I plan on going back to a live action project that I was working on previously. Till then, I hope you look forward till the next post.

Female Portrait 010

Alright, well it's been a few days since my last post but I can now say that I am finished. There are a few things that I still want to do but for the most part it is done.

So for the past couple days I have been trying to get the hair coloring to feel correct according to my reference. It wasn't as easy as I was hoping it was gonna be. From the start I knew there was no real way to paint the texture for the hair since it has no UV's. But, I had did some test on my first iteration that gave me some ideas on how to achieve my goal.

What I ended up doing was splitting the hair into sections. I ended up with eight sections. Each section had a ramp texture plugged into the diffuse, secondary specular, and transmission of the V-Ray hair material. The only part that I had a problem with was the back of the hair. I had the look I wanted but I needed it to go the opposite direction.

I did a lot of testing to see if I could get it to go the right direction. I figured out that it was receiving it's information from a V-Ray hair sampler node. The attribute it was using was the distance along strand. Below you can see the nodes in Maya's hypershade.

After trying for a while I decided I needed help. I sought out help from my friends but they weren't sure how to solve the problem either. In the end I decided it was a lost cause and I needed to find another method to achieve what I wanted.

I ended up using the different hair sections that I created to my advantage. I selected specific hair clumps that I wanted to change the color of and assigned them to other hair systems. Doing so, changed the color information to the other hair section I assigned it to. After some time I achieved a look that I was happy with.

I will end this post here just to keep it short. I am posting the final render right after I finish this post though. 

Thanks for reading.