Lets add some texture to this

So, the ears aren't totally done (i need to find some side shots of him...). I started adding some texture to the model. I added surface noise to give his skin some overall texture for the render, but its not really on there, his limps are looking lumpy because of it.

Eureka! I found it!

I hate passwords there are far too many passwords in this world. It's like hey, your trying out our crappy insignificant website and/or piece of software and now we require you to enter a password for it... Any who my password protected virus checker/spyware thingy decided to delete my cookies and next thing you know I can post blogs because I have zillions of passwords that I use from email to crossing the street....


So adding the fine details still, working on the forehead vertical wrinkles. The model is looking kind of lumpy in some places and I still haven't worked on the ears :).

More detail, more head shaping

Little more detail on the cheek, and rounded out the back of his head better and brought it in. Moved the ears to the right spot, and sized them, but they're still not shaped yet :).

New View

Still haven't touched the ears, they just move around a lot and get smoothed by accident so I like to do ehm at the end. I reshaped the temple area quite a bit, and curved out the head. I'm starting to put in some fine detail, I haven't worked on the acne scars yet, just starting on the forehead wrinkles still really soft and doughy.

Time to get serious

Okay, all the resumes/workshops/mixers/job fairs are done, and it's time to start focusing on the portfolio.


So an Orthographic view provides a very flat camera viewing angle, Perspective View I think simulates a 35mm camera lens and matches the type of lens used in the picture I provided below. I changed a lot of the head structure, starting to add details around the eyes and cheeks, adjusted the area around the mouth but it's not done yet.

NBA Live Cheerleaders

The NBA Live Cheerleaders heads I had modeled and textured the complete heads using reference from real NBA cheerleaders that had come up to the studio from Seattle. The hair styles I created from a variety of other sources.

NBA Live 10 Tracksuit

The NBA Tracksuit was character body that I had modeled from scratch. I did the complete mesh creation, modeling, UV layout, and the diffuse/specular/ambient occlusion/normal maps. The tracksuit was tailored to allow a mix and match with the players shorts and jersey.

The tracksuit model is used in Non Interactive Sequences (NIS) during breaks in game play and for players on the bench. Bellow is a sample of how the characters appeared on the bench.

NBA Live 10 Tattoos

During the production of NBA Live 10, one my my responsibilities was reviewing, finishing and integrating tattoos into the game. I changed the way on how the tattoo art is created which resulted in less distortion and more complex tattoos.

The gateway to the soul

So did a lot of work on the eyes, and adjusted some of the overall shape of the head. The temple region still isn't feeling right to me, I raked in some texture where the eyebrows are just to help figure out where they were going to be. Tomorrow I'm going to work a little further on the eye area, then go a level deeper so I can start getting some fine detail in around that area, like adding the inner tear duct area and what not. Also bring up his scaring on the face and the start adding the old man wrinkles.

His nose needs some serious attention, and may as well give him proper ears, and the forehead needs shaping.

Grooving till 3am

It's easy working late into the night while a Steve Martin movie is playing in the background, a fun and cheesey flick like only he can do.

Starting to add some details, looks like he's got a little more age to him. Have to add some fat build ups still, top of forehead needs work. And what the heck is going on with that adams apple. The side profile cheeks and inner eye are/nose needs some work also, I'm not vibing on that read atm.


Oh, I added a hair cap to help shape the head. I'm not exactly to sure what I'm going to do with the hair on this model, maybe a mesh and just add a few cards. Or go for broke and try some hair simulation or something new and fun.

Workshops don't help the reel but help the resume

Was gone all day today, but started on him tonight, changed the right cheek.

Okay, got an hour in.

Cleaned the head up, getting rid of the lumpies, even tho they do sort of age the head, I think it looks sloppy. Adjusted some facials features, started to define the cheeks, which will require a lot more work as I have to get all the planes on the interior of the face pointing in the right direction.

Well bed time, apparently there is a 6:45 am in the morning now, who would have thought someone would go invent something like that?

Is it just me or does it look like the side profile of the head is getting uncomfortably close? Personal bubble violation!

Seminars and resumes oh boy!

So not a lot of progress on the head for the last couple of days, I've been in seminars and updating/polishing my resume, and tomorrow yet another Seminar.

I know, I know the life of an unemployed artist sure sounds exciting. Now I just need that supermodel girlfriend...

Plugging along in my own little world

Still just building up the fat, getting finer in detail as I'm going along. I'm still using a mirrored brush which of course gives the model too much symmetry, this can really be seen in is forehead area right now. I will start adding some asymmetry soon.

Some issues that need to be worked on are in the temple region, the eyebrows, eyelids, the back of the jaw, the brow line, the nose, the side profile from the eyebrows to the bottom of the chin (need to find a good side profile reference image)... Well lots of work actually, I think my total time up to this point is about 5 - 6 hours.



I guess some people would actually like to see what I'm aiming for, so here's a reference picture.

10 Seconds to Ultra Violet protection

Well a little more then 10 seconds :).

Lets see here I started to build up his facial features, gave him a nose, started forming the ears, played a little with the lips, and roughed in the eye shapes. I'm not planning to do anything in particular with this head, just use it for a still, if I was going to animate it I would have modeled him with his eyes closed.

Uh Negative, I am a Meat Popsicle

Facial Muscles have been added, next is to give him a nose and add some fat build ups.

Edward James Skullmos

Alrighty, my first project is going to be a head of Edward James Olmos. Besides being in Blade Runner (one of my top 5 movies of all time, with a top 5 scenes of all time), he has a face that just smacks of character and is quite a challenge.

Below is the start of his head, a rough sculpt of his skull. Next I will start adding the muscle groups in the face. Why model it this way? 2 reasons;

1. Its fun, and it's like a study of anatomy.
2. I know that the underlying structure is in the face, the muscles and bones are there, which I feel adds to the overall model.

An Talented modeler I worked with at EA got me into this technique, I don't do it for every head but I will for this one. I know he has ears (part of the base mesh I made), and a neck and what not, or much detail on the back of the head (He's gonna have hair). But this is how I start :p.





And if I blow expect to see all these posts deleted haha

My Desktop is not a tablet PC thanks for not asking Win7

Okay, so I upgraded to Windows 7 64 bit, and it's required me to reinstall all my software, drivers etc. I'm cool with that, a nice clean installations makes it feel like you have a new PC.

So I have all my programs resintalled and I'm good to start working on some portfolio pieces. I reinstall all the hardware drivers I have (sound card, mother board, etc) and then finally I install the drivers for my Wacom Intuos3 (a tablet/drawing pad). And then I actually connected my tablet (Intuos3) and that's where hours were wasted...

So once you actually connect your tablet to your computer, Windows decides that your computer is in fact a tablet PC and believes that it's absolutely imperative that you can do everything via this tablet. Every text input box gets an annoying little box under it so you can click and hand write whatever you need to in that box, so you end up inadvertently clicking this box constantly (this brings up a big popup box that you can hand write in). It then decides that all the settings you made with your tablet driver are irrelevant and that it will provide you new settings, reassigning all your buttons to who knows what... After it does all this, it then acts like everything is normal and if you don't like it, well it doesn't really matter does it? You now have a tablet PC!

I can deal with changed buttons, and the stupid floating expanding textbox, I mean it's annoying but I can cope. However what I could not cope with is the Tablet Pen lag you experience when you start to draw/sculpt. Basically you start to draw a line and this stupid little target animation pops up to tell you that the pen has touched the tablet surface at this exact point, like the fact that the mouse pointer is there isn't a clue enough for me... So anyways it does this stupid little animation, but your hand is moving away from the point because your sketching out a line, the result is your line won't start where you wanted it to, or you'll get a dead straight line between the point you started and where your pen is at, this is insanely frustrating if you like to use feint quick lines when sketching.

So how do you turn this crap off? Well don't go to Windows 7 help it's useless :p. Some features people may like, so I'll go into the things I turned off.

To turn off the target animation which causes pen lag

1. Go into the control panel and select "Hardware and Sound"
2. Select "Pen and Touch"
3. In the first Tab, Pen Opitons highlight "Press and Hold" and then click the Settings button.
4. Deselect the "Enable press and hold for right clicking" this should grey everything out.
5. Hit "Okay".
6. Hit "Okay" again.
   

To get rid of the floating text box

1. Go into the control panel and select "Hardware and Sound"
2. Select "Tablet PC settings"
3. Select the 2nd tab "Other"
   
4. Select the the bottom hyper link "Go to Input Panel Settings"
   
5. Select the tab "Opening"
6. Deselect the option half way down the dialog box, "For Tablet pen inpute, show the icon next to the text box".
7. Deselect the "Use the Input Panel tab"
8. Hit "Okay"

I found a blog post from another tablet user that is a little more advanced that turns off all the pen animation it's found here.

Sorry for the non art post, but this took a lot of time to figure out, and in the post I placed several keywords that I had searched on, as it wasn't apparent at first what was causing the Intuos Pen lag (the first search term :)).

The Internet allows geeks to tell millions of other geeks what they think of Star Trek

It Sucks...