WIP - Ornamental Ball - 05

WIP - Ornamental Ball - 05, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

What am i - WIP - 48

What am i - WIP - 48, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

I decided to merge the whole thing as it makes it look more realistic. From doing this I had to correct the topology but now I'm happy as it looks quite nice and clean and ill be able to use it in other projects.

as the heart is going to be removed from a character i dint want to make it too complicated to al the different vain and arteries all converge to a main port.

I have a few designs for what holds the hears, mainly a fluid filled sack but at the moment im still not sure

What am i - WIP - 47

What am i - WIP - 47, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

Starting on one of the main props, the robot/human heart.

I was tempted to use a free model for the heart but i decided to give it a go and make it myself. I thought it would be harder than it actually was so hopefully ill have it finished soon. The idea is that its a human heart hooked up to some mechanical and electrical systems. It will be used when the robot realises it wasn't original his and decides to remove it and give it to another robot, sacrificing himself.

At first i was going to have some sort of glowing iron man fully mechanical heart but as the story has changed slightly i decided to make it a real hear, also i think this will strengthen the emotions as a real hear seems more of a symbolical sacrifice than a fake one.

What am i - WIP - 46

What am i - WIP - 46, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

Ah, dynamics can save a lot of time. For some props iv used dynamics in order to get a quicker and more realistic result. One example of this is where the wire's dangle from the ceiling, instead of modelling each wire or using curves, i simply used maya hair, added gravity and set it to collide with the floor and other props, then used the hair curves to loft along.

In the example above, this prop isn't the main focus so i didn't want to spent too much time making it, its just to hint there's a body underneath. So i made a simple human figure, made a plane the size of the cloth and used the nCloth dynamics for the cloth to collide resulting in a quick and easy cloth prop. After this I can still add some more details with the sculpt geometry tool but ill then delete the history and past it into the main file so its just a polygon mesh object with no ncloth.

What am i - WIP - 45

What am i - WIP - 45, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

This is a render of the new props to see if they need any changes. Some look a bit bland as they don't have any textures yet.

Im quite happy with the lighting so far but i still might dim it down a little, the medical light doesn't have any lights yes,its just a surface shader glow, so i might dim that area down so most of the light is emitted from the medical light. I might also try adding -light, using programs like unreal engine 3 when you add a light with an negative intensity it removes light from that area, not sure if it works in Maya though.

Another method I might try out is light linking. This is a way of setting what the light can actually illuminate (by default its set to everything), so for example i could have some lights on the floor that only illuminate the ceiling, this way the walls stay the same and the lights don't effect a character walking over them but they can help illuminate the roof and fake a large amount of secondary illumination that you would get with using final gather.

What am i - WIP - 44

What am i - WIP - 44, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

Just a wire frame shot of the new layout and props. I will be adding more props in the area and some more details soon.

The little black dots scattered around the scene is the map vis of the global illumination . These dots tell me where the GI photons are going and areas they might be too many or too little.

What am i - WIP - 43

What am i - WIP - 43, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

As the story has changed, so has the atmosphere of the room.

I've made a few more key props and will be texturing them soon. So far there are only 7 lights, 5 for the ceiling and 2 from the window and hole in the wall. I've set up the lights with global illumination as it reduces the render time considerably. This render only uses global illumination and no final gather.

I've now got more time and a better idea of what happening in this animation so hopefully ill be able to get a lot more done :)

Oliver rig - WIP - 07

Oliver rig - WIP - 07, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

Hi, this is a wip of a rig I'm creating for Ilze Kolosovska, the character is 100% her's I'm just doing the rigging :)

I've started with the arms and legs and setting up an IK FK switch for them both. Also ill be making them stretchy limbs and spine :D.

Hopefully ill be able to include this and some other rigs I'm working on in my individual project.

Ilze's work : www.flickr.com/photos/sniegasunc

Sneaky Russian dogs - Facial animation

This is the final version of my facial animation :D