p3D

I've been experimenting with as lovely new site called p3D , who let you upload .obj files and have them viewable in-browser. It's pretty cool.

I've experimented with low-poly models so far to test it out, but from what I've seen it can handle fairly high-poly meshes, though I suppose that depends on the computer the model is being viewed on.
The first guinea pig was my low-poly, low-texture shield. Works smoothly enough.


The second, and much more recent attempt was a voxel interpretation of a Platehead, an alien grazer.

The 'wow' image for Fentil: Another Life shows 5 Plateheads grazing on Tile Tops, feeding through their tails.

For this voxel Platehead I used a similar process to my voxel shark:



Begin with a profile of voxels

Add layers and 'chisel' voxels untila shape is achieved

Flip the voxel model

 Add texture. Complete.

In other news, I've been working a lot more on DoodleDemmy.co.uk lately, and now it is complete with a gallery, xenobiology, and modelling section. Give it a look please. I'm also slowly moving my blog over to it, too, so posts may get thinner on this feed.

Modelling a monster

In some spare time, I've been working on a model of a creature from one of my dreams about a year ago.
The scavenging Skewer:

"Me and some others were looking into a large mountain lake on a blue rock dam. The sky was a soft lilac and the rocks of the mountains were a greyish blue. We looked over the rail into the dam lake to see a manatee with ribbony extensions that rippled with the water as it swam towards us. It stopped at the wall of the dam and looked up at us through the water, rolling playfully.
I say to the person next to me that it's a manatee. They disagree because "it doesn't have hoof caps, so it can't be a manatee". There was a dark shape appearing below the manatee in the water. As the mass got closer, the 'manatee' sensed its presence and swam off. And not a moment too soon. From the deep indigo water erupted an enormous, shaggy beast. When the water had settled from the air, the beast was showed to be a massive brown bear holding an equally scaled fish-like creature, about ten stories tall from the water, and that was just from the waist. It gave a deafening roar, took a bite from the already butchered fish-thing and discarded it. It landed with a fleshy thud on the dam.
I would have inspected the corpse, with its fleshy exterior and protruding bones, but the bear seemed angry and took swipes at the now gathering crowd. High in the air a burning whirring sound got closer. Two 'skewers' were flying up overhead.
They had leathery black skin, striated down the body for aerodynamics. Near the back were two angled bony struts, one on each side of the body, and each with a large organic jet engine at the end, each with small fleshy fins to assist stability and giving out a burning roar as the power the creature's flight. A smaller engine whirred below them further down the struts, taking the total engine pod number to 4. Halfway along the body are the creature's eyes. Grey/brown/green irises and constantly looking around independently, they are set upon 2 flat skull panels that project rigidly from the main body. The eyes are set facing upwards. Below the skull on the bottom side of the body is a micro-serrated feeding blade, with lots of liquid-absorbing holes.
Terminating the strong, flexible neck the front of the creature is the sonar head/intake grill. The skin of this organ is a shiny, leathery texture, with the front end of it a jaundiced yellow and fading to the black of the rest of the body at the tip of the neck. The sonar was just audible, and was a constant, grating sound. Sort of like the sound of unzipping a zip, increasing the frequency and putting it through overdrive filter.
One skewer turned its sonar head towards the corpse, briefly inspecting with its sonar (and possibly smelling the carrion with the intake grill) and banked down and descended. The other followed. By the time they approached the giant fish carcass, most of the crowd had cleared. Only when they slowed and landed gently on the corpse, was their true size visible. They were about the length of a train carriage. At the sight of these creatures, the bear gurgled and retreated back into the water.
Once on the corpse, they both shuffled to work their feeding blade into the flesh. Despite their enormous size, they both only just covered the fish body."

The dream - 24th June 2010
Here is doodles and description of the rest of the dream.

Here's my progress so far:

The orthographic diagram

The 'barrel' technique I adopted from a video about a chicken.

This basic planar UV projection worked okay, but I'm in the progress of smoothing the mesh and unrwapping it properly. I've had a tinker with RoadKill, an auto-unwrap tool, but I've had no luck with it yet. Once it's unwrapped I'll bring it into mudbox for detailed sculting and painting.

Dinosaurs, Directing and D-ayne Darlowe...?

So apparently there's a new dinosaur CG series out there. It comes from Discovery Channel in the US, and I'm sure this one will be different than all of their other action-oriented, over the top CG documentaries on animals...

_Sarcasm

_{This makes no sense.}

The skull-faced Tyrannosaur says it all,really. This isn't even slightly aimed to educate. It's just for the action. The bizarrely directed, convoluted action.

So, Dinosaur Revolution is essentially Discovery Channel's answer to Planet Dinosaur.
Watching clips of Dinosaur Revolution has put Another Life into some perspective in terms of animation quality and performance, and has almost guaranteed that Another Life will be cut down, to ensure that the footage we make doesn't look like this - their animations are too cartoony and/or weighless and/or bad, and the dinosaurs act more like characters than creatures. This is an issue that will need to be kept in check with Another Life. Also it has taught me a lesson in shooting - Dinosaur Revolution is quite cinematic in its choice of camera angles - and falls flat as a documentary because of it. I have learned. Although, the models and compositing look lovely.
The problem with cutting the film down to a manageable length is difficult - as the current narrative is already compressed enough. I may have to re-write the storyboard, removing the original story arc of "Poor Plateahead, that bright-eye is evil. Oh wait, no it isn't, it's just feeding its baby" and replace it with something more shallow, focusing more on the action. Perhaps beginning with the slow establishing landscape shots, and cutting right to the chase. (No pun intended, but you can laugh if you like).
I have a newer idea for a shorter intro.

_{Fentil orbiting slowly in front of Olympus, Slow zoom into the mediterranean continent.}

_{Cut - A closer, satellite-esque shot of the continent as the Fentil rolls slowly underneath. Slow zoom.}

_{Cut - A high, helicopter-like shot flying towards the Tile Top plain.}

_{Cut - Closer shot of Tile Top plain showing grazing Plateheads.}

Doing these long, slow shots can save animation time while filling screen time. I was told in the production meeting earlier this week that these filler shots can be a life saver. As I said earlier, I may have to re-write the entire storyboard.

Speaking of Plateheads, I have received feedback from CG coach on their design.
This is the newest reference sheet I'm working on for the Platehead.

_{I always get caught up in making it look pretty.}

Apparently model needs more definition of muscles and skeletal system visible through the skin, which is a fair criticism. I'm grateful for the feedback, but I'm worried that I might get too caught up in their suggestions and alter the original designs.

_{The visual feedback}

One of the comments seemed to be that the proportions weren't T-rex enough - which is most likely because they probably aren't as educated on TailFeeder anatomy as I am (how could they be) so I will probably be spending a decent portion of my feedback discussions explaining how they work. It feels silly, but I think I'd rather they know that I chose to make certain parts a certain way, and not that I just don't understand anatomy.
I also don't think that sentence makes too much sense.
Alas.

Finally, on the topic of aliens, I recently discovered that Wayne Barlowe (very good artist) has a Wordpress website. I'm pretty sure this is new, but people on the internet tell me otherwise. Not only does he have great, strange designs, but the way he renders them with pencil is just beautiful and tangible.

Anyway, so this website has some of his best work, including some of the concept art for AVATAR (Which I had no idea was actually in capitals)

As well as some concepts for Dante's Inferno

And also some useful drawings of some of his Expedition Aliens.

_{THIS one in particular would have been useful about a year ago when I modeled this Arrowtongue, using a reference sheet I made by studying various other drawings from the book}

_{Shameless plug}

Now then, back to writing a narrator script.
Oh yeah, I'm definitely having a narrator now. It'll help convey what's going while also saving time.

Fleshed out. Delicious flesh.

I have been doing more modeling on the Platehead. I had also forgotten to take a screenshot of my making of the head - which I had to make twice.







I still need to add the spiracles (nostrils) along the back, but this rough model is mostly complete, ready to be scupted in Mudbox to add lovely details and wrinkles etc. Then to Mari to texture the horrid thing.