More 3D/Computer work

[Auron]

Considering the rate at which I make new stuff (which is really slowly), I decided not to bump my old topic and just start fresh.

I don't have anything from this semester because so far I've just been working on my senior thesis (aka one bigass project), so this is a few random selections from the last year or so that I'm the most pleased with.

Alternate Title Sequence:

Click to view video.

Basically the idea for this project was to take a title sequence of a movie and redo it. Most of the other students in my class decided to do The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, but me and a few of my friends decided to be different and do Clue instead. Plus Clue's title sequence is A LOT shorter (anyone who has seen TGTBTU would know how damn long it is).

Animated Logo

Click to view video.

The idea here was to create a logo for a fictitious company and then animate it. First we had to design 20 or so logos, storyboard animations for 5 best ones, and then animate the best one with sound. I would show off my other 19 or so logos, but I don't really feel like uploading them all now. BTW, the company is supposed to be an underwater real estate/habitation company (my friend used the idea for building houses on the moon for this project before I could get to it).

Old Boot


An old boot I modeled and textured in Maya. Textured procedurally, which means there's no file textures, no UV-mapping, none of that (and file textures are what you get when you look for textures online and upload them into the program).

Fruit Bowl


A project we did based on an old CG Society Challenge where we textured a bowl of pre modeled fruit and tried to make it as photorealistic as possible without using any file textures or image maps. Everything was lit and textured procedurally (aka all shaders).

Setting


And finally, the best of my work so far. I rendered this guy out at a ridiculous 10200x6750 resolution, but I had to shrink it down so as not to mess up everyone's browser. It's kind of unfortunate because a lot of what I love about it is in the little details like this:



I made that rust shader myself without using any files or help from anywhere online. Yeah. And I still think it looks badass.

So yeah, that's pretty much what I've been up too. I mean, there's a few more things, but those are my favorites.

[Antisocial]

Amazing work there, Auron. Especially the windmill scene, which caught me as flippin' sweet.

Truthfully, if the Clue movie began like that, I'd expect something I'd like.

Great job overall.

[Auron]

Thanks for the compliment. I just wish I could draw anything that looked half as good as some of my 3D stuff.

And I just noticed I got the wrong link for the fruit bowl thread. The CG Society link is was looking for was this one: CGTalk - On-Going Challenges

Looking through that thread just makes me a little sad over how much better those people are than me.

[Valigarmander]

Unfortunately, due to my crappy computer I can't view the videos. The pictures look pretty tight though.

[Cosmonautical]

I like the animations a lot, and I think the fruit-plate is your strongest work. You could probably improve it abit by dampening the colors, swinging the apple more towards the purplish spectrum (it's leaning into orange right now) and probably by making the dish a bit reflective. Also, I'm not sure what's going on, but the shadows on the fruit are much darker than they are casting onto the plate. It's a bit jarring, especially on the orange. You'd probably also benefit greatly from some ambient light reflection - the banana has a very strong yellow, for instance, so light should reflect off it with a very feint yellow tone onto the other fruit. If you've already got that sort of reflective ambience at work,

Your airship/windmill scene is niceish, but the ground isn't believably rough, and small details like your repeating woodgrain are noticable. Despite that, if you adjusted the framing to follow the rule of thirds more closely, you're have a strong picture there, as well.

[Heroine of the Dragon]

Seriously cool, Auron!! I really like your work!!

[Auron]

Originally Posted by TOO SCHOOL FOR COOL

I like the animations a lot, and I think the fruit-plate is your strongest work. You could probably improve it abit by dampening the colors, swinging the apple more towards the purplish spectrum (it's leaning into orange right now) and probably by making the dish a bit reflective. Also, I'm not sure what's going on, but the shadows on the fruit are much darker than they are casting onto the plate. It's a bit jarring, especially on the orange. You'd probably also benefit greatly from some ambient light reflection - the banana has a very strong yellow, for instance, so light should reflect off it with a very feint yellow tone onto the other fruit. If you've already got that sort of reflective ambience at work,

Funny thing is I was actually aware of the criticisms before you mentioned them, but like all things Maya in college, over 50% of it boils down to time constraints. You figure, when we started this project, no one in the class even knew where to begin texturing the fruit without using images. And my professor isn't exactly the best teacher in the world, so by the time any of us got any of our fruit right there was basically no time left to adequately light it. And lighting is a hell of a lot more complicated than one might think. Our professor never really taught us how to light anything, so everything is basically a shot in the dark. No pun intended.

Your airship/windmill scene is niceish, but the ground isn't believably rough, and small details like your repeating woodgrain are noticable. Despite that, if you adjusted the framing to follow the rule of thirds more closely, you're have a strong picture there, as well.

And my classmates all told me my ground was the best thing after the rust. Really, the repeating textures goes back to time constraints again. Because I used some file textures in this one, first I had to find the files, then I had to make them seamless in photoshop so I could repeat them. If I had time to go and UV map every plank of wood, it would have looked much more realistic. However, I still had to texture everything else. Creating the rust texture was a nightmare. And you can't see it in that picture, but the roof of the windmill was being obnoxiously difficult so I just left it after messing around with it for hours. Basically every now and then when you tell Maya to do something, it just says no:



And the clouds are just one gigantic paint affect in Maya too that I had to add in post. Basically 3D takes too damn long to make anything work right.

And as for the rule of thirds, that was just me being a dumbass I guess. Composition isn't my strong suit.

[Cosmonautical]

I'm sorry to hear your prof didn't take the time to teach lighting. If you have maya at home, I'd definitely recommend fiddling with some of the saturation on your fruit plate image, and it's lighting more importantly, since it really does look rather nice (especially the grapes).

Don't take my criticisms too hard, they're just aimed at helping you know where you can improve.

[Jenocide]

I liked your boot even though the fact the laces don't go all the way up bugged me a bit.

Actually, I modeled and textured a shoe as one of my first projects in 3ds Max, but looking at it now is embarassing. Ah~ Nostalgia!

I liked the windmill and the rust looks really cool <3

I spent some time looking at the CG Society link you posted and got a little depressed.

I wish I had those skillz <3

[Auron]

Originally Posted by TOO SCHOOL FOR COOL

I'm sorry to hear your prof didn't take the time to teach lighting. If you have maya at home, I'd definitely recommend fiddling with some of the saturation on your fruit plate image, and it's lighting more importantly, since it really does look rather nice (especially the grapes).

Don't take my criticisms too hard, they're just aimed at helping you know where you can improve.

Oh, I'm not taking it too hard and I appreciate your input. I just felt the need to say my professor is bad and that sometimes Maya just does whatever the hell it wants to.

[Auron]

No new work from college today, however I have recently started working on some more 3D things when I find some spare time in between all of my college work. Some of you may have seen me post this already in the desktop topic in the Misc forum, but I figure this is a better place to go over it in more detail.



This was really an idea I had that was in part inspired by this picture that Val posted in the same topic I had mentioned earlier. I just decided to take it one step further, so instead of rendering out 3D version of characters to make them look like they were made out of blocks, I would make entire scenes from games in 3D pixel by pixel. Now my plan here is to hopefully continue doing these when I have free time, exploring old 8-bit and 16-bit games and such.

Here's a slightly modified version of the picture above with an offset background to try and add further depth and emphasize the 3D nature of the picture:




As well as another (more ambitious) piece I finished on Wednesday




With an alternate Hector version for those who think he's more badass than Lyn




Eventually I plan on setting up an alternate DA page or website for myself and my 3D work once I make a larger library of these. Honestly, I'm hoping the concept behind these is unique enough because I'd hate to continue working on them if someone thought I was copying someone else.

And all of these are being rendered out at 2560 x 1440, I'm just resizing them for viewing convenience.

[Antisocial]

Once again, nice stuff. Looking forward to you expanding your library.

IN 3-D.

[Auron]

^The thing is, anyone who works in 3D would tell you that it's not the setting up of the cubes that sucks, it's the texturing. And boy did that Fire Emblem one take an awful long time.

[Jenocide]

It looks really cool though, so the payoff is good!

[Zaden]

BOOT

[Jere]

I might have seen some similar stuff, but i know better than say copycat just from that.

Btw the pictrues looks AWESOME

[Auron]

You can't view this picture without listening to this:

Click to view video.

Hooray. I finally found some spare time to do this one. I kind of cheated with the background a bit by making it a single plain instead of cubes because the shear amount of cubes kept crashing my computer. And you couldn't see the cubes anyways because they were black, sooo....

Next week I finally have a week off of school, so I'm thinking of either starting a Yoshi's Island piece or maybe doing a walk cycle gif with 3D cubes like this.

I feel like I should come up with a signature to stamp in the corner so no one steals these.

[Jere]

Yoshis island would be awesome!

Or might i propose a Tales of Phantasia one?

[Auron]

Click to view video.

Not sure what I feel like doing next or when I even feel like doing it. Maybe something simpler or 8-bit or something.

[Auron]

Hey hey, I finally got done with my senior animation project. It's kind of disgusting when you think that after two semesters of work I only have 3 minutes to show for it, but whatever. I definitely like the way this one came out compared to the animation I did sophomore year.

YouTube - Four

Comments would be wonderfully appreciated.