Foursy

Foursy was the fourth character I created for my practice via research project. I was very pleased with the rig itself however the movement proved to be a bit challenging. I decided to base the movements on a horse trotting with a limp, this proved very difficult as a reference to a limping horse was difficult to find and the ones I did find didn't even look as though they where limping, I still attempted to achieve this by creating a normal gallop by looking closely at Muybridge's photographs of a horse running, the results where quite good but looked a bit mechanical. The character did pose very well though.

Suggestion for final year show

I thought I would just put up a suggestion seeing as though there is only two so far... and I definately dont want bloody pop art as the theme for our final year show. It looks tacky and the man who invented it was a wierdo with whome I do not wish to be associated with in any way,shape or form - however it is very easy to do and thats why I think it might be a favourite so I want to stop it dead in it's tracks now before my picture gets turned into some wierd, puke looking coloured image only fit to be put on tins of 'second hand beans and pork bits'

The suggestion I will make will to be with a medieval theme, I dont think it will be that hard to do with pictures. We can have a templates of sets of armour and long dresses for the girls with holes in the faces for us to put ours in. A series of pictures (lets take the armour for instance) could be combined by each person to create his or her own custom armour, same with the dresses. This idea is not too hard to do at all and means we can have cool props like swords and axes lying around in the final year show. I'm also definately for the superhero suggestion.

Probably not the most creative idea ever but its a hell of site better than having ones image turned into something not worthy of being printed on a milk carton.

Missed lecture

Just a placeholder to remind myself dates of missing lectures.

20/01/2009 - 14:00 to 15:00 with David Downes in Bonnington 143 LT

Training over the holidays:


























Well I wish I could say that I did a lot over the holidays but that would be lying, I played computer games, visited places, made merry and watched TV for the first time in ages. However holidays are over now and it's time to get back to doing some serious work, about a month ago I picked up a copy of the intermediate rigging from CG academy which only cost £36.00 to purchase from the website (Which is - http://www.cg-academy.net/academy.net/) it will help me with my upcoming project that is based on rigging.







I have also been working on the stage\Obstacle course that my 6 characters will have to get to the end of.

They will start from the white cube on the right(the white cube is the size of the average human man - 1.8 meters) and they will limp to the flag with the medical cross on it, from there on a shall be healed (Hallelujah!) walk normally up the stairs and then have to jump across a pit of lava. From there on they have to walk down a flight of stairs and then come to a spike filled pit and balance across one or more planks (depending on amount of legs) they will then have to go down another flight of stairs and jump over a small wall, they will then come to a spinning disc and attempt to cross, rig and then happily walk to the finish line which is green. My first character will only have one leg -the poor bastard.

If anyone has any good ideas for improvements on the stage please let me know, hopefully the lectures will give me some good ideas tomorrow at the review.

Playing around with Sky and lighting:



I have been playing around with lighting quite a lot lately, with some very interesting results. The new lighting, materials and rendering systems in 3D Max 2009 make images that were created before even more beautiful... Well that's if you intended them to look that way.



I have also been experimenting with her voice recognition software provided with windows Vista, in fact I haven't typed any of this text you are reading now it is all being dictated to the computer. The image was also inserted without the use of keyboard or mouse. However it does take a lot of training before it works properly.

An experiment with lighting called Mr sun'

I picked this image from a previous projects which was titled 'germinator 2000' this craft was originally designed to fit in a futuristic toilet block as a nanofighter and come eliminate any germs when activated.

Inspiration is dwindling



Its pretty much what the title says, my enthusuasm for this course has just slumped another notch due to the fact that another lecturer didnt turn up to a lesson today which I'm pretty sure it was on because:


1: it was clearly stated in the timetable that it would be on.
2:No email was sent saying it was canceled
3: A hell of a lot of people turned up to be dissapointed yet again


Not even an appology-email for all us good peeps who wasted our time showing interest, I'm pretty much fed up of all this unorganized 'learning' and constantly complaining to the lecturers about it. For a lot of people that was £3 parking/bus fair and £2 fuel and in my case missing work that could have earned me some cha-ching - never mind, I think I will only go into uni now on a 'whatever' basis. what a waste of MY money and time.


However! on the bright side I managed to get back early and do some work, which means I have had time to do some texturing, building the rest of my goodies and almost finalizing my nano-fighter. I will provide only 2 renders of my current work so you can all see my progress, here you go.

'Remember to click on the images to get a nice big picture'























'A nice shiny Bog fit for the queen herself to take a dump in' - me thinks the stall walls need recolouring though and the loo is a bit small.





















'Ooooh thats sexy, Germs beware!' - the almost complete but untextured Nano-fighter.


I am very impressed with the lighting features in the new 3D's max 2009 - I am also very pleased about the rendering times of my images (bathroom took about 20 seconds and the nano-fighter took about 6) my progress is only slowed by my slow demoralising crawl through this course, if only they could make it more interesting... prehaps a nice field day out for the Animation students or maybe just some form of inspirational action (hint,hint, nudge,nudge, wink,wink,) hell knows we need it.

Good 'old' Vista



Just an update on my progress so far:



hmmm... so far (and currently as I write this) I am reinstalling all my applications for Windows Visa because I had to completely reinstall it due to an update that disalowed my entire machine to funtion for 15 minutes every time I restarted it (pretty annoying). I spent about 3 days with the technical support team who eventually said 'sorry the only way to fix it is to upgrade windows' oh and by the way (my mobile phone company said) 'Here's a £15 bill for ya on top of that, the toll free number you dialled was charged at your normal rate without even you first hehehe, gotcha! $chaching$'



Fortunately though I'm not that angry, after emailing Microsoft and telling them I wasnt forking out £300 for the upgrade from windows premium edition to ultimate edition, that they owed me for the phone bill and the fact they couldnt fix the problem they very generously just gave me an entire retail version of the Windows Vista Ultimate edition (32 and 64 bit dvd's!!!) with a brand new serial code to boot free of charge, woohoo!



This has however put me behind schedule a bit on my projects so it's not that great.

If anyone needs a fully liscenced version of windows vista home premium (32 and 64 bit dvd's) drop me a line as I'm selling my old one.



Lets hope all goes well with this version and that I run into no more problems .



Oh yeah, its a bit random but I've had time to play with the cloth modifier whilst all my goodies where re-installing - check this baby out.

Simulated client:

So far so good, I am doing quite well with this project regards to time is involved. Basically I have all the basic models set down that are ready to be refined. I will put a few images below just to show some of my progress.

'I am quite happy about the new lighting features in 3Ds Max 2009'

Of course the Nano-fighter is not complete yet and neither is the bathroom - both have yet to be made from roughs to fully developed models then texturized, I am now in the process of creating wings for the 'plane' and eventually spruce it up a bit more as it will be the main highlight of the project. there are some examples below of the 'wings in the making' 

Thats all the updates for now as I am quite anxious to continue updating the models.