Complete Distraction

As mentioned earlier, Pugly was starting to wear me down a bit. I also realized that my modeling skills suck!

So I decided to work on a tutorial and do something very different for me. I've definitely learned a lot. Still more to learn and improve on, but for now this got me what I needed out of it.

I could easily spend so much more time on this, but must move on and focus on what I can use for my reel and just take this one as a pure learning exercise.

Just a simple Ambient Occlusion texture on it all.
I added a bunch of textures and just made the colors white, and saved some AO for what I got to lazy to texture.

Different environment set up.

Different angle and slight variation on texture and lighting.

Fur WTFs

I just realized the best thing about having a blog is being able to record all the mishaps, which i haven't done!

I couldn't and its a good thing, find my blue Pugly, but I did find some other disaster renders!
I got a yellow one!

This is not an alpha render this is Maya messing with me!

Squirrel!

There is nothing easy about brushing these damn hairs!

Maya be nice to me...

Few Changes

I have to say I am starting to burn out!

I have been so focused on this project these past few days and it is getting a bit exhausting. I need a break now.

I adjusted the proportions. I want him to be this big creature that is almost the center piece of the room. Alternated and re sized the pattern on the wall. Added textures to the floor. I don't know why the rug texture is looking blurry.

I want this room to start looking very Victorian. I don't want to add any more elements until I do an animatic and block the shots out and that way I know what details are needed. It would definitely be nice to have Victorian style chair, mirror and some frames on the wall. They all have this very rich detail and colors to them.

I feel like there's warping going on in the walls but its just the textures. I can't wait to start lighting this well and doing all my favorite compositing and light and texture tweaks out of Maya!

So much more to do...

A Room

I decided to tackle something different today. Pugly has certainly worn me out a bit...but little did I know.

I chose the wall paper to purposely contrast against the tree-branch-like tentacles coming off him! and the more will be revealed later on that choice...

I still need to texture the floor, window, add more details to the wall and even a curtain maybe. Add a background outside and of course LIGHTING !! Proportions are still off also.

I don't think this picture is doing anything justice. But its part of the process and I always like looking back and seeing how far I've gone with everything.

I ran into a major problem when rendering this, and that is the fur! It looked blue! I have no fix for this and have spent over an hour trying to figure it out and it seems some files might of gotten misplaced or aren't being read by mental ray and there fore making my fur blue!! So I redid it!

I am tired!

Furry Trouble

I hate fur!

I thought it would an easier task but so far it has been the most tedious and troublesome aspect of all this.

Trying to just get it bend in certain parts the right way, or show up or just behave the way I want was just exhausting and for the most part I don't think I even succeeded. I gave up. This looks good enough for me right now. The body is so small and not even the focus of the animation, that I am willing to live with it for now. I might just adjust the bottom texture to accommodate for the fur and that is it.

I managed to get the stripes in. Still need to work on the lighting and shadows on all this. Ah...


The fur is starting to bring back some of the cuteness!

He so Fugly!

Finally I can say that the textures are complete...

They are not looking as great as I would like them too, but I think that has to do with the lighting. It's still not set up correctly. Once that is set up then I can go back and start tweaking both texture and lights.

I seem to have a problem with the quality of the textures on, trying to figure that out. Even when using the clone tool in Maya I was getting things blurred!

So much to learn. The fur has been redone so many times. It is still just a simple place holder for now. I will tackle that next!

This has certainly been a challenge! I'm not used to creating anything near realistic, usually all my stuff if cartoony or more textural using paints.

I wanted the tentacle to actually look like tree branches...(my choice in that will be revealed later) and I really like the look of the hard texture against this small piece of tissue holding the eye. Again I think it will all benefit from a better lighting set up, and more advance skills maybe?


I hope the texture are looking like tree branches. I look at it sometimes and worry it's looking more like rock or marble. Don't know how much that matters. I am getting the effect I want. I've varied the iris texture on each eye. I've remodeled the body again and given him a much simpler mouth.
Oh I can sit here and write all night long all the little critiques and changes I'd like to do, but I wont! For now I am content and will move on to the fur!

Redo

My back hurts and I've been slaving away all day and I've got nothing to show!

I actually had to be away for a week. Now I'm back and ready to finish this, but I ran into a lot of Maya issues, of course.

I had to remodel the eye sockets on all the tentacles, and did a bit of remapping my UVs. I definitely came across a few issues I never ran into before. Needles to say I seriously unwrapped one tentacle at least three times.

I am happy now and just going to jump on ahead and start painting textures!

So plan is to try and get the whole body textured, possibly with fur, within the next few days...Maya please don't give me problems!!

For The Eye

I just couldn't go to sleep without getting the eye socket and lids better defined. It's looking a lot better and once I start working on blend shapes Ill start to better model it.

I had to smooth out the whole geometry and I'm feeling like I lost the sharp edges. So I'll probably need to remodel that back into the smoothed mesh.

I'm not gonna lie I'm getting creeped out too! This isn't even close to finish! It'll just keep getting more...

Eye See You

What I thought would be a simple task turned out to be a rather tedious one.

My model is now completely unwrapped and I figured the first step in texturing little Pugly would be to start working on the eyes since they seemed simple enough.

Wrong!

I was trying to avoid to the whole painting process and figured I could just create the eyes out of procedural and available textures, but no.
I spent a bit of time painting the iris and getting the right colors and textures I wanted for it. I wanted this nice golden sharp color and I think that's what I've achieved.

Although my drawings look rather cartoony I really want to push my self with this project and create something that had realistic qualities.

So with the shading and texturing of this eye I really tried something more advanced than I'm used to and used the same attributes needed to texture a realistic eye.
I imported a quick light and HDR set up just to test the reflections on the eye. That will still need to be tweaked once I have my whole scene set up, so not going to rush into that just yet.
There's this glare coming down the center that's annoying me, but its not part of the project that I'm going to spend time on now or worry about.

I'm definitetly not happy with the model of the eye around the eye ball and I think my second step will probably be remodelling it and adding more details possibly...agh unwrapping...

Furry Business

One of the things I've been working on all week is getting familiar with the fur tool in Maya. I have it figured out now, expect for the lighting and rendering part, which I will get into later.
The body is unwrapped and ready for texturing and some fur!

But before I start putting a lot of work into any of that I always like doing a bit of research and really visualizing exactly how I want the fur to look.

I'm going to do a combination of base painting on the model and adding fur on top. The fur is pretty heavy in terms of rendering time and I haven't even added anything so I think having a mixture of both will help with that.

Going through some of the different fur presets in Maya I realized I really liked the Squirrel fur. I already know I want the body to have a brownish red look with a bit of pattern.

I looked up a few images and really liked this:




I love the color and this is a really good reference in terms of how the fur lays, length and overall look and texture.

I'm not sure about the fuzzy tail but it is something I didn't think about. I'll just have to try it on my model and see.



Patterns on the body is another thing I definitely want. I have in mind something very simple like just three black lines going down his back, but I still looked through a few other options.

These are some of the patterns I've looked up. Although interesting still not what I was looking for. I realized the closest animal print to what I had in mind was a skunk!

I'm glad I looked it up because there's a lot more details to it than I recall. I like the way the stripe starts at the head then splits and continues onto the tail, so that is something worth taking into consideration when I do my fur!

3d Model

This is the Pugly model I've worked on.

Wouldn't say its the best thing I've ever modeled, but its practice!

I'm a little worried about the super hard edges, but for now I like it. I definitely want to have that contrast between soft and hard edges and try and mimic the edges of my drawing as much as I can.
The difference is that I added a mouth. There might be a few more embellishments, but I am really trying hard to keep things to a minimum and just keep going with all this.
I'm looking at this now and going there's still more I can work on!
It's never over!!! aahhh

Pugly

Pugly!

The name of my first creature to come to life! He is somewhat like a dog, will be furry, cute, even barks but the rest of his body is yea...

Sadly I don't have a scanner at home so I've had to photograph the drawings and its not the same quality : (

Sketches

First step in starting this process was to resurrect a few old sketches. I've drawn a lot of these characters years ago, doodling in the midst of classes. I always had the hopes of expanding on them, and what's a better time than now?


Although I have much gnarlier and more intricate sketches, I'm sticking with the simple looking ones. I don't want to spend too much time on details, and really just want to get this project going faster.
I also want to stick with the theme of "cute creepsters."
Although seemingly cute they have a darker creepy side to them too.

Inspired

So it hasn't been an easy year. After many accomplishments, this year has been like a failure for me.

I had the wrong job for too long, and when I did get a project that I was better suited for, I was not challenged in the right way.

My professional skills have possibly suffered and certainly haven't improved.

Emotionally, its definitely been a trying year and I've had much to over come and still continue to battle.

Which skill set will matter more in the end , who knows?

But for now I have to take charge a bit and try and recover.

I hindered myself a bit this year by trying to finish my film, but the chaos in my life has made it impossible for me to focus on such a huge and ambitious task. I have to let go of that for now, until the time is right, and start smaller manageable projects that I can accomplish and benefit from instead.

So this is what I am trying to do now!

I hope to push my self and most importantly stay focused !