Ouroboros (Completed)

The idea is same from the last blog but I added some ascetic improvements. The accent lighting is subtle but contrasting with specularities of deep blue and red. The eagle head did not come out quite how I wanted you, mainly because it isn't as sharp as I wanted. So to add a better degree of immersion, I added some feathers of varying depth. I may come back and improve the head and maybe add some subtle particle elements to create improved realism.

Ouroboros

This week I've been working on a piece using the concept of the Ouroboros. Due to my computer being unavailable today, I don't have image to present, but I've provided a reference of an Ouroboros above. I overheard someone in class talking about the cycle of nature so I conceived the idea to create a snake body in Blender and then add an Eagle's head where the snake's would be to represent a circle of nature.

Geometric Pattern

This week I experimented with vector shapes and texture repetition. All objects are vector, rendered in bitmap, and made with the shape tool. Three different circular parent objects were used to create this pattern each gaining more complexity the larger they are. Hopefully I'll be able to use this texture in a 3D scene.

Antelope Canyon Progress

This week, I've been continuing my work on Antelope Canyon. The rock face material has possibly been my most complicated material yet. Composed of over 15 nodes of different operation, the texture is almost entirely procedurally generated, that is, using no UV maps, specularity maps, displacement maps, etc. Unfortunately, due to the complexity of the scene and the number of light bounces used, the piece takes over 30 minutes to get a reasonable render. I'll take this piece home over the weekend and get a reliable and appealing render then.

Antelope Canyon (WOP)

I've been following a tutorial on rock modeling recently using displacement textures. I've done this wort of work before but because of the amount of parent and children meshes needed to get the sculpted effect, this tutorial has really helped with my organizational practices. Aside from organization, not much has been done in the way of color, texture, or additional development. The piece is composed along a center line with the curved rock walls protruding to a common ceiling out of camera.

Here is what Antelope Canyon actually looks like:

Ornamented Mask

Mask Progress

Due to computer troubles, I couldn't  get a render out this week to supplement this text but I'll try my best to describe it. I've been slowly starting to practice sculpting human form and I felt a nice practice would be to make a mash, which would be abstract, but still real enough to give good practice with face structure. I have the high poly model mainly done and I plan to retopologize it to smooth it out. If time allows, I want to practice with using multiple materials on the same mesh. This would mean coloring the intricacies with a gold material while keeping the base an oxidized bronze. Hopefully, this can all make sense once I get an image up on the blog.