Most people around here do not have to go to work tomorrow so left on camping trips etc.. Me, I stayed home and created my own lake to look at in blender with the help of The Nature Academy.
Here is the lake I spent the day at on the Fourth of July 🙂
When CGCookie announce the upgrade to their site and added a new ‘lifetime’ membership I was definitely going to purchasse this and make it my Birthday present and then Andrew Price announced his new product “The Architecture Academy”. What to do now? I still have about 6 months on my current subscription for CGCookie so should I do The Architecture Academy and wait to upgrade my subscription or do I do both? I’m sure you are well aware of CGCookie but Andrew’s new product you may not have heard about yet. If you have not check out his “Complete Introduction to Architecture” video here:
http://www.thearchitectureacademy.com/fe/51372-introduction-to-architecture
I am actually leaning toward Andrew’s product and wait a couple months for a CGCookie upgrade, maybe a Christmas present. 🙂
I had very little time to play with the new tools I learned watching the new course offered at CGCookie. I had to watch closely to see how he was adjusting the strength and radius of the tool and finally figured that one out plus the other tools he was using. Inflate/Deflate rather than clay strips and smooth, Inflate and smooth does a really nice job of smoothing the mesh. Time and practice is what this is going to take as you can see in this new photo. I now have a little old man pilot 🙂 I’ll take care of the mouth when I get home.
After a nice weekend of rest I have started the sculpting process. I am quite sure this will take some time because I keep forgetting where exactly I am at during this process and which keys to press at what time. I have started over multiple times but the process is started. I found out quickly before you start the sculpting process and ‘before’ you apply all the modifiers you better make sure there are no holes in your mesh. Specifically make sure you do not have extra verts along the center-line of the model. If you do you will instantly create a hole in your mesh when you touch this area with dynamic topology enabled. Because I had to start over a couple times it is embedded in my brain now 🙂
The title says it all. 5 is the number of hours sleep I have had in the last 43 hours and I am tired. Time to take a break today as I can’t look at the computer screen for any length of time right now. See ya tomorrow.
I left my USB at work again, dang it. Instead of kicking it tonight I figured I’ll just do what I did this morning over again and maybe do it better. Well, it worked I think this effort turned out better than this morning. I will blame work on this one though. I was actually working my butt off right up until I walked out the door 5 minutes late. On second thought, I can’t blame work because I was the one who said I would put my USB in my pocket when I am finished working in Blender in the morning. Anyway I am ready for the detailing, one thing I am completely unfamiliar with.
Without Subsurface
With Subsurface
Complete ‘almost’ because I forgot the cuffs but other than that it is ready for the detailing. Here are a couple shots, one with a sub-surf and smooth shading and the other with out the modifier. Yes I was playing around before bed.
Without Subsurf
With Sub-surf and Smooth Shading
Looks like these pictures came out on the small side when rendered at 50%. I’ll start boosting the render percent so I can get a reasonable size so the detail can be seen more clearly.
I have all the pieces separate now and the only way you can really tell is if I assign some materials (temp of course) and having done that you can actually tell there is some sort of character under there.
Ever worked with an individual that reminded you of Eeyore from Winnie the Poo? Everything is doom and gloom, nothing will ever go correctly. A friend of mind, we will call him Jeff is just such a person and he is starting to get on my nerves. Yes Jeff I know the schedule has been accelerated. Yes Jeff I know we only have three days once our programs go live before we start testing the next three legacy programs, get over it, deal with it and move on.
Enough of my complaining. Back to Blender creating my little Pilot.
P.S. *** S U M M E R T I M E ***
Not a lot of time to do anything yesterday morning but by the end of the day I did in fact remember to bring my USB home. Spent the evening organizing my files, videos etc. and finishing separating all the pieces of clothing for the pilot. Now that all those things I should have finished at the very beginning are complete I can start the modeling portion again. I’m pretty sure I was getting ahead of myself and really starting to get frustrated. Slow down Mike, organize your thoughts and then continue forward. Exactly the same thing I do at work and then don’t practice in my personal endeavors, lesson learned.