General Showreel Advice!

Hi Andrew,

Cheers for the feedback. Will try and sort out those two issues, although it might have to be a post hand-in tweak.

I was just wondering what sort of thing you guys in indusrty would like to see on a modelling showreel? At the moment I am planning to show a wireframe, a lambert with ambient occlusion turn and obviously the fully textured model. I have had some conflicting advice as to whether to add in a checkerboard turn as well.

I am sure that all the other modellers would be keen to know what you would suggest as it is coming up to that sort of time.

Many thanks for all your help over the last two terms.

Cheers,

Dan

AM - Biker Dan

Hey Dan

This is looking great.
Two simple tweaks I would suggest:

- Adjust the shape of his left bicep near the elbow crease. The lighting shows that the muscle is looking a little too square. A small adjustment here will go a long way.

- Make sure the denim jean material rests flush with the skin of the biker above the hole on his right knee. At the moment there is a gap creating a deep shadow and a floating appearance.

It's always a good sign if the comments are this minor!
cheers
Andrew

Dan - Biker WIP

Hi All,

Just been mucking around with lighting and textures for a while so I thought I would put up a bit of a work on progress. The lighting is not final but I do think that I would like to keep it on the darker side..........for me it just seems to work for the character. All comments and crits would be much appreciated.

Cheers,

Dan

NB. Obviously, there is no dog in these images yet.........that is kind of my next step. I have also decided to sack off Final Gathering for this render as it is taking too long and the results are pretty average.

AM - Ritchie Medusa

Hey Ritchie

Good to see an update posted.

I checked out the model you sent me and it is in good condition and has the makings of a solid model. I was thinking that if you don't have much time left to rig all the snakes you could do some quick blendshapes to get them positioned, then if you need to animate/rig them later you can morph them back to their original straight pose. I would personally try and get the snakes looking all intertwined and natural before spending too much time rigging, just in case there isn't enough time to get everything completed and you get stuck with an electrocuted looking Medusa :)

Also, if you reduce the poly count on the snakes body and rely on the natural smoothness of subds you will be able to quickly position the snakes and get a look you are happy with.
I would also have all the snake heads facing the same direction similar to the ones on the back of the head. You have rotated the snakes on the top of the head to face forwards, but I would match them to the other snakes, then apply the body twist when you have rigged or are doing your blendshapes.

Looking forward to an update.

cheers
Andrew

AM - Biker Dan

Looking good as always Dan. Sounds like you've been playing around with your displacement maps a lot which is great. Don't be afraid to use bump mapping, it's obviously not a s effective as displacement but you can use it for pores if necessary.
The displacement on his face is looking a little strong and in sharp around the nose and on his cheeks. Tone it down a little and let the shader take care of the rest.
I'm not sure what your plan is for the dog, but it would be great to pose him slightly. Maybe have him leaning away from the biker, but restrained by the bikers hand on his back plate. You could even have his head turned towards the cigar with a worried expression...
Anyway, it's looking great, so keep it up...
cheers
Andrew

Ritchie's OBJ

Hello everyone! I've put a few pics for you to have a look at andrew. The connections for the snakes has turned out well. So far shes modeled, rigged up and I'm on with the texturing. I'm doing a 4k map for the body and a 4k map for the snakes and i'll downsize them when it comes to rendering. I've sent you another obj also if you could have a look for me its much appreciated. Thanks again.

Dan - Biker WIP

Hey All,

Right.......having played around with ZBrush for a bit, my attention has turned to trying to recreate the displacement in XSI with varying success. Mental Ray keeps running out of memory and crashing when you try to get the geometry resolution to go low enouth to get any of the really fine details. Either that or the wrinkles that I have added seem to inflate at rendertime.........it looks pretty wierd! At the moment I am struggling to get the pore detail on the biker's chin and head to come out. I have tried using a combination of displacement and normal maps, as well as exporting out a higher res mesh from ZBrush. The problem seems to be a Mental ray one, but it is all to possible that i have over looked something.

At the moment I am thinking of sticking with the dispacement that i have and trying to add a bum map to the mesh to hopefully get those elusive pores........does that sound like a good idea???

Also, whilst trying to give my brain a break from pondering displacements,I have started to add in some textures.......so here is some of that as well:

mesh with displacement and a normal map (normal map just taken from the last few levels of subdivision, in order to try and pick up the fine detals only.