Rainy Window: Finished

Here is the final render of the Rain Droplet piece. I used about 2000 passes for this render in Cycles but the gain is still apparent. I did a little retouching in Photoshop to try and de-noise the image, as well as add in a glare and lens flare. This piece was my first CG project to use the Compositor. The Compositor is basically Photoshop except in 3D and all of the tools are nodes, so the entire render is affected by the changes.

Rainy Window WOP

As a free week, I started more 3D tutorials, mainly using Blender. I'm making a rainy window scene but have hit a couple of bumps along the way. My random particle system for distributing the raindrops is going haywire and not rotating the droplets properly. All the rain drops have been modeled by hand and should be a nice turnout after working out some kinks over the weekend.

Maya Dynamics: Stormy Ocean Simulation

In this image, I rendered out an ocean scene completely based on calculations. As I constantly try to understand the vast application of Maya, I've drifted into the piles upon piles of dynamic options the program has to offer. This stormy ocean started as a calculated body of still water with then different values added to things such as wave height, frequency and maximum and minimum values. As I write this, the animation is rendering out, frame by frame, tied together with a camera which bobs with the waves of the ocean.

Cycles Tea Scene

As a side project, I've been really trying to step up on my 3D art skills. I've been trying to make the transition to Maya to use the Mental Ray renderer but Blender is anything but dead to me. I used the Cycles render engine to make this scene of a tea set. Using a nice wood texture I found online, Cycles multiple shader feature to create the ceramic martial, and lots and lots of polygons, I came to this result. The final render took about 30 minutes and I plan to add fluid dynamics and a smoke particle system to make actual tea in the cups and perhaps lemonade in the pitcher. 

Drop the Base

This week, I made this little cartoon chemist playing off the pun of drop the base. I mainly used the pen tool to create all the layers that make up his body while also using some shapes. Lastly, I finished the piece off with Livememe in order to add the white stroked text. One aspect I want to improve personally is the drops of chemical releasing from the beaker. They are too elongated and should be more tear drop shaped.

MY BRAND

Here, I tried to go for a "comically crude" approach. We were told to make a piece which had a "punny" aspect to them playing off of witty wordplay and elements of the sort. I did the main part of this piece in photoshop using some simple layer styles. Lastly, I finished it off in Quickmeme for the "MY BRAND!" caption.

Vexel Image

This week, we followed a tutorial using a quasi-vector method of image creation. Using the Shapes Tool and the Pen Tool, I traced over a photo of an elephant. through this project, I learned that the Pen Tool actually doubles almost a "custom shape" tool (not like the real Custom Shape tool) which can make vector derived (paths) bitmap shapes. Lastly, I added some gradient shading and a background. I really enjoyed the final product and the stylized look.