Hair guide curves

Managed to place all the hair guides manually without going completely insane. Win!

First hair test

First hair test! Has to be a lot scruffier than this though. One last pass on the diffuse and that should be done as well.

Some more textures

Quick update on Theodore – diffuse/zdisp only. Still loads of maps to be painted, zdisps to be sculpted and hair guides to be placed! Feel like I need to scale down the head a bit as well.

First skin tests

First skin tests for the group project. Just the diffuse at the moment, no spec, zdisp or sss maps yet. Rendered with Arnold.

First test for group project

Threw the main character of our group project into a lookdev environment to see how the shapes and forms hold up. Still loads to refine and a few bits and pieces to add.

Testing the composition with the dragon

Testing out the composition with the dragon. It’s incredibly hard to get a nice pose for it with the fisheye distortion. The head appears to be massive because of it – I’ll have to find a workaround for this. When I find something I like I can continue to model props, get the actual character in and go on from there. I should be doing a early lighting test soon as well.

Animatic for upcoming group project

More about this soon. For now let’s just hope that I get chosen to direct this.

https://vimeo.com/108374183

Blocking out some buildings

crunching crunching

Little update on this brave kiddo – spot the inside cg joke!

Character concepting for university short / group project

Sculpting the hair was so much fun! 🙂

Some colour blocking

Yes, red hair! Like he’s on fire!

Wip wip wip

Laid out some flow

Friend in need

Did a sculptover this evening for a friend. Fun times.

Dragon wip

Playing around with shapes for the dragon / lizard design. So hard to get something that’s pleasing to the eye.

Evening doodle for the project

Some concept sketching

Did some concept sketching for the image I’ve got in my head. A brave little kid facing a kiddo creature. Needs some more brainstorming but I’m getting closer and closer … I feel.

Custom Zbrush Interface

I’ve been using a custom user interface for a while now, but took it a step further today. Still some things to fix (subtool menu), then I’ll release it!

Change Zbrush start-up material

I love the developers over at Pixologic, but I strongly disagree with their taste for start-up matcaps. So I’ve been looking for a way to change the startup material to a custom matcap.

Add this little piece of code to your ‘ZScripts/DefaultZScript.txt’ document in your Zbrush folder.

[code][If,1,
[IPress,Material: YOUR_MATERIAL]
][/code]

For example, I love Jesse Sandifer’s matcaps, so I set my default one to ‘z7’

[code][If,1,
[IPress,Material: z7]
][/code]

Moved my workstation into the university labs today. I feel like such a happy little kid working on this!

Select all objects in group (Maya)

Got pretty annoyed about not finding a way to select all objects inside of a group in Maya, so wrote a little code snippet that does it for me.

[python]import maya.cmds as cmds
cmds.select(cmds.listRelatives(cmds.ls(selection=True), children=True))
[/python]

Fractal generator assignment (Maya/Python)

For my programming assignment here at the NCCA in Bournemouth), I chose to make a fractal generator.

You can generate various fractals through and L-System, and the Pythagorean tree through a turtle library I wrote.

I can’t upload the source code, since other students next year might run away with it. Sorry guys! :-). Feel free to contact me for some advice though. Always happy to help.

Click on the read more tag to.. well.. read (quite a bit) more.

First WIPs

Small village, big hero

Blocked out a small village for a new project this evening. Needs some major changes though.

Photoshop in a 3D Pipeline

Photoshop Advanced Magazine interviewed me for their article about Photoshop in a 3D pipeline. Pretty cool to be featured alongside one of my lecturers, Jahirul Amin.

Little bit of sculpting

The exams are approaching and sometimes I need to find some time to relax, sit down and sculpt. This is what I’ve come up with yesterday evening. No details, just base forms.

And a timelapse for the people that would be interested:

https://vimeo.com/95501945

Leaving the project behind

Sometimes a project hasn’t been planned thoroughly enough, and you lose interest. Well, that’s what happened to this one. I know that it’s heading in the right direction, but can’t figure out what exactly it’s missing. It’s something crucial.

Might pick it back up later though!

Moving Picture Company Internship

I’m happy to announce that I will be joining MPC as their 2014 modeling summer intern. Exciting times ahead!!

More exploring!

Some more character experimenting for the BFX competition over the summer. Feel like the design is almost there.

Some new WIPs

Thought it would be a good time to post some new WIPs, the Elf girl being a character for a personal project, and the very stylised character a design for the BFX Competition I will compete at with the team of student’s we’ve put together.

Also..

I’ve bought XrayUnwrap today – a new 10 pound unfolding plugin for Maya. All I can say is that this is a lifesaver for me. No more exporting and importing anymore!

I had to unfold 90 meshes for this character, and did not run into a single problem while doing this. Only took me about an hour as well. Absolutely fantastic.

http://www.raylightgames.com/xrayunwrap_maya/index.html

2014 Student Showreel

https://vimeo.com/88736919

I’m proud to present you my 2014 student showreel. Check it out, drop it a like!

Water Drop Generator

I’ve been working on a procedurally generated water drop script as a python / maya university assignment. We could pick anything, so I decided to go for something that hasn’t been done yet – or is available for free.

Starting a new project – blocking out

Finished blocking out my new project. Any feedback composition wise? I personally think it works pretty well. Foreground will be blurred due to DOF.

Substance Designer Alpha Tester

Today I got an email from the lovely folks at Allegorithmic, apparently I’m one of the 50 lucky people that are in the closed beta of Substance Painter, a really innovative new piece of texturing software. Pretty stoked to start playing with it.. before everyone else!

First tutorial ever!

As the title suggests – my first tutorial ever. Sculpting workflow and Zbrush basics. Made for my fellow university students, but could possibly be helpful to someone else. Enjoy!

https://vimeo.com/84434803

Taking the sculpt a bit further

Re-sculpt I did for my upcoming Zbrush to Renderman tutorial series.

Zbrush to Renderman for Maya tutorial Sculpt

Render of a Zbrush to Renderman for Maya tutorial I’m making. All pretty basic, for fellow university students.

Yeti & Pixar’s Renderman

Finally got Yeti to work with Renderman, this is a first test. Pretty promising!

Quick character turntable

Rendered out a turntable of a character concept for a university assignment. Nothing fancy – quick keyshot render.

http://vimeo.com/83444294

And another traditional sculpt

Same chunk of plasticine, different form! About an hour. Really looking forward to working with smaller tools.

Traditional sculpt for a change

My hands got incredibly itchy while being sat at home in Belgium, without a computer. So, .. I tried to do a traditional sculpt! About 10cm high. My tools didn’t allow me to do smaller details than this though. Got to work bigger next time!

MAKING OF Gauthier the happy Chef

During the project, I tried to record my screen as much as possible, to keep me focused. I have a bad habit of always opening my browser without the need for it.

And so I ended up with a lot of footage – of which I decided to make a making of.

Hope you enjoy it!

Finished “Gauthier the happy Chef”

Gauthier is a happy man. He dreams about working in one of the most respected restaurants in Europe. However – he knows that everyone who wants to reach the top, has to start from the bottom. Because of this, he tries to do his current job – wrapping up happy meals – as perfect as possible.

Anatomy for the Artist compositing breakdown

Little compositing breakdown of my anatomy for the artist project.

Two hour Zbrush doodle

Today’s two hour Zbrush doodle. Practicing some stylised, but yet realistic forms.

Gave my chef some hair and did some other fixes and changes. Not sure about the workdesk. Too much red and not enough fancy things to look at.

3D World Interview

This month the lovely folks at 3DWorld Magazine decided to showcase my work along with a small interview. Extremely honoured to be featured in it. It feels like my first achievement in the big bad world of 3D art!

So far so good

So far so good. Let’s paint some more textures today and worry about the hair later on.