Final Project Update

So I am a bit delayed on when I said I would be re-posting, but I guess its better late than never! After spending lots of time in the past few days, I went into the lab on Wednesday with my project currently looking like this:


Starting to really come together but not whole yet. I felt that the desk was still looking a bit bare and came up with the great idea to add in overturned picture frames, subtle but definitely sends a distinct message (especially since they are CAREFULLY overturned). I also re-analyzed my scene and found the scissors to lack a purpose so I decided to also add in a cut up picture of a couple. I also was meeting John to discuss a dust particle system later on Wednesday so my project looked like this when I went to see him:



After I met with John, I decided to play around with the camera angle I was using and also give the particle system a try to create dust since we weren't fully able to figure it out and let me say, particle systems are TOUGH! I had so much trouble getting my dust to stick and not go through the various items on the desk, even after I had made them all collisions on the surface. And then it just suddenly decided to switch up on me and start going through the desk and sticking to the objects on the desk like the picture frame. And then a weird box-like shadow appeared on my desk out of nowhere so I finally decided that the particle system was more trouble than it was worth and if I couldn't even do it properly it would probably end up being a distraction in my scene anyway, so I just axed the idea overall. Sad because I thought it would be cool, but just too stressul and it started to take my project backwards! Furthermore, I was stupid and was working in single screen and was lucky enough to LOSE MY SCENE in the awesome Blender glitch that everyone seems to come across time to time. THANKFULLY, Andy had saved a copy file of my project when we were playing with the camera angle and so I was able to work off of that and not have to move too far back in progress (if any). So basically a narrow escape because I didn't have any ideas of how to fix that problem, and neither did anyone else around me!

Likewise, Megan was able to help me find and get rid of the weird shadow plane that happened to be hidden within my desk while also bringing my rendering time down significantly by simplifying a lot of my mesh (THANKS SO MUCH MEGAN!) And that is when I decided that everything left to do was a photoshop job, so I decided to pull my big render, which looked something like this:




Next....I will blog about the photoshop finishing touches and the finishes product! yay!

Unfinished Narrative Progress

So I promise you I have been working on this for A LOT longer than when I am getting around to posting on my blog. Even now I will probably end up doing another blog post a little later with my updates. I got a lot of constructive criticism at the critique last Thursday and I have been trying to take every comment into consideration as well as think of my own new ideas. I think that the scene's set up looks pretty good now as well as the lighting, so for now that is something I am not messing with anymore and am now focusing on making the items on my desk interesting and into an overall cohesive scene. Here is where I was at before the start of today:



I will give you a better update later tonight! Hopefully you should be thinking it is a vast improvement! :)

Project 1- In with the Old, Out with the New

This project was about taking an old advertisement for one of the latest Kodak cameras in 1917 and modernizing it with a twist. I wanted the ad to have the same specifications from the old one but written in a much more current way, with the look of how ads are today. I also wanted to do this in a humorous way, trying to say that old is better and you should get rid of the new. So the ad has elements of both present and past, which hopefully in a way works.

The biggest problems I faced was creating appropriate lighting, making sure the model looked correct from all angles, and creating surface details (which eventually some had to be forgone). All in all I think that I learned a lot from the experience in creating from scratch and maintaining my cool and even more importantly, working my way out of a corner (which seems to happen a lot).

Here are my renders that I used if you would like a closer look (took forever to get!):





And here is the old ad to kind of get the feel what I was working off of:

Finished Mantis Yay!

Whew, I am finally done with this thing! I don't even know if we are being graded on it but I wanted to be able to say I finished it for myself and I actually think it doesn't look terrible, especially after all the trials and tribulations I went through to get here. I would definitely say I learned a lot (patience included) not limited to changing the color specularity, highlighting and working with multiple edge loops and most importantly, being able to work my way out of a mistake (that can't be fixed by going to the history palette). Even though it took me an eternity and then some to finish this, I feel proud and triumphant. However there are some creative choices I made because I felt like the narrator was a little OCD with his and I wasn't going to lose my mind over the "fine tuning" (his choice key phrase). Hopefully you like it too! Now I can sleep :)

Mantis Update- yes, still going.

Unfortunately, I am STILL not done with my Mantis, and with projects being requiring my attention in all of my classes currently, this has made finishing this thing extremely difficult!! The GOOD news is is that Andy came to my rescue and gave me some brilliant insight into fixing some of the mistakes with my mantis so now my neck and front of face have been fixed to look like normal again YAY! I learned what happened was my points from my mirror mod had somehow crossed all over each other not only getting tangled, but also getting stuck together (damn that do clipping button!) I am glad that I figured that out and managed to fix it without have to deal with it looking funny or even worse, starting a part over, and I will definitely be more aware/avoid it from here on out. However, I DO have an a progress check image. And actually since I took this rendered image, I have also finished its back and the wings. Now I just need to go back and do the mouth/tendrils and color it so hopefully I will have this knocked out by the end of this school week! Whew!

Praying Mantis HW

So unfortunately I am still trying to tackle the praying mantis assignment. I have encountered several big hurdles through this project including unknowingly screwing up my centers for rotation, grabbing and scaling (with the dumb period key), losing a good part of my jaw, and now with my newest screw up, not noticing I got my neck stuck together. Right about now I just wanna finish it and pull a render and put it up because I am starting to screw this up too much, and I would like to be able salvage what I have before that isn't possible.....hopefully this will get posted sometime tonight and pass for a praying mantis! gr!

Compositing.....Sorry it took so long to post!

So this is the compositing practice I did during class the day we learned about compositing. Unfortunately, I didn't save a rendered image when I was done, and then deleted my background image, so I had to find another background and redo the lighting and placement and such, hence why it has taken me a little bit of time to actually post it! The shape is just a random shape I made when we were practicing the mirror modifier...almost looks like a cross between a strange toy and a lawnmower.....