Ollie, Malcolm so far...sorry it's late!

Hey Guys,

Sorry I've been a bit lazy with the blog recently! Anyway this is what I've been up to...

As you guys know I'm modelling Malcolm for this project 'semi-realistically'. I want to capture him looking as natural as possible, and plan to pose him relaxing in a chair (Which will possibly be red, like the above picture). The lighting I'm going to use will be similar to the Caravaggio below. With a fixed light allowing me to bake final gather into the texture.. I think! The rest of the images show my progress so far, but I really hope you can give me some feedback on likeness, mesh flow or anything really! Before I begin UVing, and setting the pose.

Cheers dudes!



Details:



The Body and wires:




Trying to capture likness...


Zprojections test:



Story so far..!

emma enviroment update

Hi Andrew, and fellow geeks, I hope all is well with you.

The pictures above of how the environment is developing. I need to dress it a bit more and randomise everything slightly, scruff it up a bit and make it look a bit more lived in. This is a link for the big shot of the environment, so I am now working everything for this shot. (I plan to tone down the green)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=7GclYXN0rCU

The biggest difficulty I’ve had is in creating a convincing floor, I originally thought it would be a quick job but has really eaten into my time and I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve built it. The pictures below show the wire frame, shaded and textured view of the displacement map of the current floor, I will develop the displacement map. after trying lots of different methods this was modeled with the paint push tool which is not the best for this sort of detail. I’ve not had any luck finding terrain type tutorials for this specifically in XSI, but plenty for other software. A similar technique is used in alot of them in which displacements maps are layered on top of each other. I’ve not managed replicate this method in XSi as I can’t seem to mix the textures. Although I'm not that happy with the floor its time I moved on from it, but if I have time I think I will have another go at modelling a basic terrain shape starting from a grid, and putting a displacement on. I’ve also thought about using Z-Brush, I’ve played briefly with it but wonder if it could take some time (that i don't have) to get used to it. Do you have any tips on a good, quick, simple way to go about this if I have time to do it again? My next step is to start texturing.

Cheers
Emma