I’ve been modeling a popular Papasan style chair and I must say that the cushion was a pretty difficult part. It’s definitely tutorial material and although I’m not sure I’ll find the time, it would be a great topic for a screencast. Either way, here’s an image of the chair in question. Read More
Category: 3D
During one of my 3D classes at Platt College, one of my instructors showed us the Making of Varga as a source of inspiration. Funnily enough, the most inspiring part of the process for me was not the modeling or texturing, but specifically the Normal Mapping techniques. Read More
Here are a few images of one of my latest models available on TurboSquid:
Feel free to check out the full listing and let me know what you think of it in the comments below. I’m always grateful of honest feedback.
The images that follow are some renders of one of my latest products on TurboSquid. I created these models as a texturing exercise, but I think they make good assets for sale as well; they are all UV mapped.
The Blade mSR is by far my favorite RC Helicopter. It’s fast, durable, fun & charges quickly. On a calm day you can fly it outside, but on windy days, I guess you can make a 3D model of it.
The detail distribution of this model is not great. Looking back on the Read More
There’s not much left to say, so here are some beauty shots of the KTM RC8 model I’ve been working on for the past 3 months. Read More
Here are some renders from my latest model, a 750cc V-Twin (water cooled) engine. Unlike the Harley Davidson engines you’re used to seeing in the V-Twin configuration, this engine, like many other SuperMoto engines, is water cooled; hence the lack of those distinctive cooling fins.
The Dorsoduro Supermoto was a bit of new ground for me. I’ve modeled a Supermoto before, but not like this, and not in Maya. The engine of the bike is largely exposed and that meant it had to look good, but I was also shooting for a reasonable polygon count.
A large number of key components are modeled using four sided polygons or “quads”, enabling them to be smoothed programmatically.
This is a simple 3D icon that I made for one of the PreCentral.net developers (drnull). His original icon was great, in fact it looked just like this one. While I thought it was a suitable icon and I liked the message the RSS-wearing headphones conveyed, I thought that it lacked depth, and it looked a bit flat and plain when placed next to the other first-party icons on the Palm Pre.
I grabbed the RSS icon from Wikipedia and used drnull’s color scheme and design, but rebuilt the icon from 3D objects. Since PrePod is open source, I even grabbed a copy of the code and packaged it with my new icon.
After posting the icon on the forum, drnull said he would package it with the next release of PrePod. All in all, I had fun making it and I’m glad that my effort gets to live on as an application icon for one of the most modern, slick mobile phone operating systems.
Here is a screen capture of the icon in the Palm Pre launcher.
Recently, I was given a Maya 6 book. I thought it might have a few useful tips and tricks that were useful back when version 6 was all the rage. I was pleasantly surprised when I started reading it and found that the book contained a few really cool techniques and explanations.
I now realize that all the newest features of software usually dominates the newer books, but if you have the time and or patience, it pays to go back to the beginnings.
In this little screen-cast, I will briefly show how two of these tools, Align and Snap Align are useful to me. Read More
Many challenges come upon 3D artists, but doing photo-realistic compositions is all too familiar to me. At my previous job (EyeScreamAnimation) I was often given the task of lining up photos of empty construction sites or hillsides with 3D models for compositions like this one. In those cases, the model being lined up was usually a 3D building. For this project in my Advanced Visual Effects class, I chose to use my latest motorcycle model, a Kawasaki ZX-6R Ninja as the subject, and the school parking lot as the background plate. While it’s refreshing to composite a scene that’s not a building, I still feel that the image isn’t quite satisfying. The more I look at this image, the more reasons I list of why it is technically correct. While on the other hand, I feel that I am my own worst critic. Read More