Van Gogh's Bedroom in 3D

Every semester I teach an Intro to Modeling and Rendering (in Maya) course.  I always give the students an assignment to create a room based upon the style of a traditional or classical artist (sometimes there might be more contemporary ones on the list). To keep it fun, I make the students draw the names out of a bag. I do this because most of them have never heard of the artists, and it forces them into exploring something they didn't know before.

Anyway, I had the idea that I wanted to do a room based on Vincent Van Gogh's piece Bedroom, so I did. It only took me a few hours to model and a few hours to paint it all, but it took me even more hours to get the rendering correct (lighting is the bane of my existence lol).

A 3d version of Vincent Van Gogh's Bedroom

I think it turned out nicely. All of the textures were done with the 3d Paint Tool and an 'oil' brush, which is really useful. The scene occasionally chugged a bit when I was using it, since my computer is a little older, but not badly. I'd like to do more work with painting directly on the objects. It makes for interesting textures. 

Fire Power

Did I mention that I'm terrible at blogging regularly? That's because I'm actually working all the time at something, either art or writing, but not blogging. Here's the latest thing I've modeled, a .38 Special revolver, and it's for sale at Turbosquid. I also have other firearms for sale there, including a .380 semi-auto, a .243 deer rifle and a .32 Iver Johnson:

.38 Special Revolver, rendered in MentalRay

I'll try to post updates more regularly, but don't hold your breath.

Time goes faster than a 1962 Mercedes Benz

Wow! Time flies. I haven't updated this blog in a while. I've been working on lots of things, teaching, doing freelance animation, technical editing my former professor's book (which you should totally pre-order!), and also modeling random things and writing in my spare time. I'm currently working on modeling a 1962 Mercedes Benz (in Maya using NURBS only), so I'll try to post that when it's finished. I'd really like to have one come to think of it, and I do, as one of my students said, in the 'imagination land' that is Maya. LOL

What the hey, I'll share with you the work-in-progress: here's a test render I did earlier today. It's not finished and I see things that need to be fixed, and I haven't done all of the interior yet. As you can see I've been playing with HDRI maps (the lighting still needs more work) ;)

Human Model - Female

If you know me, you know I'm primarily an animator and rigger, but I decided that I like modeling too and would like to improve. That is why I started modeling things for TurboSquid. I think my modeling has improved immensely since I began doing that and so the other day I decided to model a human. I've started it and when I have the preliminary geometry done, which I'm hoping will be later today or tomorrow, I'll post a render.

Mechanical Rigging: A Patio Umbrella

I decided that rigging an umbrella would be interesting, and so I've done a patio umbrella, it's available at turbosquid.

The hardest part was figuring out how to make the umbrella's arms work. I tried various constraints without hitting on anything that worked the way I wanted it to, so I put the model aside for a day and then it hit me at some point that using IK would work. So that's what I did. It works like a charm too.