Hud

Found a cool tutorial for making futuristic hud and console effects. Using mental ray you can create glow effects within maya and not worrying about doing it in post. This is fantastic for my purposes because I have this idea for a glowing console with symbols that would activate and out would pop a display of various models I've been working on. So I needed to be able to create a glow effect that I could animate in maya with interaction from other animated objects in maya. So excited to get this to work. Here's a taste of the direction I'm heading in. Next step is to work on animating the console and figure out how I want the models to appear. I was thinking of some particle work to have glowing dust assemble out of the console into the air and revealing the model for display.

Here's the image I made today:

And here's a link to the tutorial I found http://vimeo.com/19419930

Rainy Day Modeling

Finally had some time off work and its pouring buckets outside so I sat down this morning and opened Maya to work on my modeling reel. Specifically this model I've been working on of the Starship Prometheus from Star Trek Voyager. After an hour of tweaking, I started to do some real detailing on some of the pieces on the hull. Still got some more work to do on her but I'm loving where she's going.

Here's the reference:

Followed by the model itself and wireframe screenshots from maya:

Feels good to reflex this muscle again. I must do it more often!

Christmas Card 2012

My christmas card for the season, painted in photoshop.

Amelia Earhart's Electra

Other model I am working on for my new demo is Amelia Earhart's plane the Electra. Here is blockin from Maya and a reference.

Perusing my sketchbook after my vacation

I was in Kelowna last weekend for a family reunion. Took the time to do some 3D work and draw in my sketch book. This first image I drew of the lake when a sail boat came by:

Somewhat rusty for some reason. But it felt good to flex the pencil muscle. Also flipping through my sketch book I came across some old pieces.

As for the 3D work I did on vacation, I've been working on this character. Kind of like an Indiana Jones but a girl. My friend Jill actually, so I call her Indiana Jill. I started playing around with Maya hair to get her curls. Having some success, at least at a starting point. (Yes I know the hair is crashing through the hat, one problem at a time :))

The Reference

Photoshop fun

Yesterday I was having a little fun while hallucinating from cold medication. Attempting to create a logo for this company. They wanted something to convey luxury and prestige. Images like Aztec feathers and coins were examples they gave. So I found a fantastic image of a woman wearing Aztec feathers and I played around with some filters in photoshop to get it imprinted on a coin. The final result being in the bottom right of the following image. The coin image on the top right I used to attach the figure image to and for the rim impressions.

The final logo I created was something like this

Wish me luck in the contest!

Bluenose Blockin

Had a huge week this week with the new job and other life matters. Forgot to put my blockin up on my blog. So here it is so far. I'm working on doing a blockin of the boat interior too, which will come later.

More to come!