This is a rig I created as a test for the Two Rivers Partnership, a small animation and VFX studio in London I work for. They’ve kindly allowed me to release the rig to the blender community.
You can download the rig here.
Latest
“I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle.”
The models I made for the CGTalk “Icons of Sci-Fi” HMC. I didn’t actually get around to finishing them on time for the challenge, but they were fun to do. The Hitchhikers Guide has always been my favourite Sci-Fi series, and I’ve listened to the radio shows more times than I can comfortably comprehend. The movie was a really fun adaptation of the series too, and in particular I think they nailed the look of the characters and the world… er… galaxy.
Marvin was modelled mostly in blender, Arthur mostly in zbrush. Rendered in V-Ray and postwork in Blender/GIMP. I might find time to texture Arthur at a later date, but for now I’m leaving them as a clay render.
Mountain of Minutes
So some friends of mine from BlenderArtists.org and I decided to get together and make a little art-blog type thing. We post some WIP images, finished stuff, hopefully some timelapses in future too. Go check it out at MountainOf Minutes.Wordpress.com
- Old gentleman by Brandon Phoenix
I think you ought to know I’m feeling very depressed…
Just a little WIP render from my current CGTalk hardcore modelling challenge entry. I’m doing Marvin and Arthur from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (movie).
Hair in Blender
Hair used to be something I really hated having to do in CG, and to this day you’ll see more than a fair share of baldies amongst my works. However with more and more updates to blenders hair tools, it ‘s getting easier (and even fun!) to create characters and creatures with hair. This tutorial/guide covers working with hair particles in blender, including particle systems, combing/cutting/styling hair, and using the child particle settings.
Hair testing in Blender 2.56
The most recent release of blender has some really nice new tools and options for getting nice hair. I’ve been playing around with creating hair particle systems, particularly trying to get nice long hair.
Some of my favourite new features are:
- Child particles for long hair. This option seems to give much nicer results for long hair, with more of a layered look compared to the fuzzy, kinda random look with this option turned off.
- New parting controls. With the new settings it’s really quick to make a parting within a single particle system, Just turn up the parting setting and comb your hair system to give the parting. Instead of filling in the gap with fuzzy interpolated children, the child particles are forced to pick a side, maintaining the parting. In practice I think it’s still easier to use two separate particle systems for more control, but this is a great addition nonetheless.
- Re-arranged roughness controls. There’s no real difference in how they work, but the labelling makes much more sense now.
Edit: And because a couple of people asked, I did a quick dynamics test:
From Scratch
This was a fun little exercise in building a face/head from the ground up. Starting with the skull, then placing the muscles and cartilage, and finally to skin. I learned a lot from it actually, as doing things this way illuminates a lot of little subtlties in how the face is constructed and why certain parts look the way they do. I’ll have to do more of it in future.
Go Go Gadget
This was my entry for the current CGTalk Harcore Modelling Challenge: Comic Book Masters. The aim was to do a character in the style of a favourite comic book artist, and I decided on doing Inspector Gadget in the style of the fantastic Jamie Hewlett, of Gorillaz and Tank Girl fame. Anyway here it is, along with some WIP/making of stuff after the jump.
Sculpting Brushes for Blender 2.5
I’ve been trying to replicate some of the brushes I’ve been using a lot in zbrush in blender, in particular the rake brush, which I find very useful. Here are three brushes as well as some extra alphas to try with them (or whichever other sculpting app you use).
Included are:
- A rake brush, great for refining forms (see for examples).
- A rasp brush, basically a textured scrape brush that removes material and adds a fine texture to the surface.
- A slash brush that scrapes wrinkles/scratches into the surface. Use it softly to create a base for wrinkles, or scrape harder to Create rough, rocky surfaces.
You can download the brushes from Blendswap.com.
And here are some rake alphas I made:
