Zap - WIP - 006

Zap - WIP - 006, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

This is for a digital tutors contest where we have to create a game prop/weapon (from a pre-excising game or made up) with a max poly quad count of 1000 and 1 texture (thing 512 not sure)

I decided to make my own gun instead of doing one from an excising game as there more creative freedom and its fun to come up with your own ideas.

So i decided to make a sort of retro futuristic tesla gun. This screen show shows the current modeling and rigging complete (just under 1000 polys).

Now its onto the texturing stage but im still unsure which will look best, either retro sci-fi like bright block shiny metal or a steampunk style. At the moment if thinking the more retro as steam punk seems to be everywhere at the moment in films and game.

Stuff to come

Hi,

Not been many posts on my blog far a while due to starting my masters at Bradford but now this means there should be some interesting masters work and hopefully some more tutorials that might help :).

For my masters i will be focusing on  rigging and animation for games which will include areas such as keyframe and motion capture animation as well as looking into rigging techniques and how to rig unusual creatures. Then finally this should lead towards bringing everything together in UDK.

Also ill be making some Motion capture tutorials soon which will cover things like the methods of capturing, rigging in Maya 2012 using the new human IK and how to import that rig into Motion builder and add the mo-cap data.

Music City - WIP - 005

Music City - WIP - 005, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

For this project im making a small city based around music so im making the city on a DJ deck and the building based around different instruments. I might add some animation later on if i have time but for now im concentrating on the main bulk of the modelling. Here im just blocking out the buildings as cubes to get a general scale of the buildings and layout of the streets.

Skull test

Skull test, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

Just a test to see what it looks like with a full skull, the two Maxilla bones (top jaw) are the scanned bones im working on that have been damaged by leprosy, the rest of the skull is a bought model.

Graduation

YEEEEEEEEEEAAAaaaaaaaAaa!!!

Maya Rigging - Cartoon character rigging - 001

Hi, in these tutorials we will start from scratch working through the whole process of rigging a cartoon character. We will cover things like stretchy limbs and facial rigging. If you have any questions please leave a comment and ill do my best to help out.

Texturing Workflow - UV's Maya and texturing in Mudbox

Hi, in this tutorial ill go through setting up some UV's in Maya and texturing in Mudbox. I will be using a high resolution scanned model (A Meta Tarsal bone that shows the effects of leprosy) provided by the University of Bradford's archaeology department. I don't go into depth about all the tools around UV's and Mudbox but just the ones iv used in this pipeline and tips iv learnt along the way.

Please post any comments or questions and ill try help as soon as possible :)

Forever alone bone

Forever alone bone, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

This is the left Capitate after the effects of leprosy, or the Forever alone bone XD

Just been working on more bones but when i turned it to this angle i couldn't help myself XD

James Thompson - 3D generalist Showreel [1416] | Demo Reels

James Thompson - 3D generalist Showreel [1416] | Demo Reels

Hi, FINAL day to submit your work into CG Coach student awards. I've now submitted my showreel and a few supporting images and I hight recommend you do the same if you haven't already :).

The link above is for my submissions so please have a look and vote if you like :D

Showreel

Animation in UDK test

Animation in UDK test, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

Hi, ive been using UDK for a bit but now that university is over i have some more time to leant UDK.

In this video iv rigged and animated a simple joint chain and used the actorx plugin to export the skeletal mesh and animation to UDK. The inside UDK ive imported the mesh and animation and played it through a matinee sequence.

This might look a little lame at the moment but this was just a test, its the same principle if this was a complex character rig.

The reason im testing this is im planning on taking a Masters degree and my main focus will be animation for games and mainly UDK.

www.jdtanimation.blogspot.com

Thanks to André Wahlgren UDK tutorials.
(http://whalebranch.blogspot.com/2011/02/boxis-guide-to-animated-objects-in-udk.html)

Bone - WIP - 02

Bone - WIP - 02, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

For this we have to accurately fix some scanned leprosy bones and texture as full hi-res meshes.

The scanned model had some small holes so I started inside maya by filling and adding some edges to the new faces to fit in with the rest of the mesh, this took longer than usual and maya runs slower due to the poly-count. The did a cylindrical map and unfolded the UV's, it wasn't possible to manually stitch the uv as again with the high poly-count but the unfolded version was good.

I then imported the bone as a Obj into mud-box where i loaded the reference photos as projections and painted the bone. The textures had to be accurate as the detail in the image matches the detail on the poly surface.

After creating the texture I rendered back in maya with mental-ray.

DFI - WIP 07

DFI - WIP 07, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

Via Flickr:
Brains!

This is the rig for the Haworth cat owner's hands. As you only see the hands there's no point in doing the rest of the character, this relates to other cat cartoons like tom and jerry where you only see peoples legs.

No major changed to the way I rig except ive used the weigh blended skinning method, this way the volume around the wrist is kept when twisting instead of folding up like a candy wrapper :)

This is part of the design for industry group project, the model was made by Pauls Kalnenieks and I did the rigging.

DFI - WIP 06

DFI - WIP 06, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

Via Flickr:
Note: Skinning not completed yet :)

Rigging done :). This is part of a group project at Bradford University making an advert for the Haworth cat rescue. One of my jobs is the rigging so the 1st one ive done it the main cat.

This rig was adapted from a previous one i made for a friend. From the way this project is going it looks like this is going to be an awesome animation :)

DD - WIP - 02

DD - WIP - 02, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

Via Flickr:
This was made for the "Dare to be digital" application which me and a few Friends at Bradford university are applying as a group to make the game "Magmentum". The design is just to show how the track might work so who ever reads the application will get a clear idea of what we want to make. The actual end design might be completely different as the whole game will depend on the art style decided later on. Hopefully we will get into this competition as im sure we can make something great with such talented team members.

The Smurfs - Official Movie Trailer

God dam it... I love 3D animations and films, but some things should be kept original. Ill try keep and open mind as I haven't actually seen the entire film yet but it looks like its going down the line of the new Garfield films, which in my opinion are a bad example or a 2D to 3D cartoon conversion. However we have seen some good conversions as in Looney toon animations but it brings up the question of why then made it a live action film, it could have kept some quality by making it entirely CG and original to the cartoons but it seems that opting for a live action Smurfs will be cheaper and easier to make money from. Overall i love seeing great animation and its good when they can keep things alive like Looney toons but thay have to keep the quality up.

James Thompson - 3D generalist Showreel

Hi, as part of my individual project we had to make a showreel (which i would have made anyway :) ). So here it is, my 3D generalist showreel of the best work ive does over the past few years for my course at Bradford University.

What am i - WIP - 60

What am i - WIP - 60, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

38 min render down to 3 min, now where getting somewhere :D

The previous render i had that took 38 min was HD but had the lowest setting, now, the same setting give me the same render but only at 3 min :D.

The frame above is the same 3min render with an added FG and Anti-alias which brings it to 17min so final gather is adding quite a bit on there; might give some GI a try instead :P

What am i - WIP - 59

What am i - WIP - 59, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

A little less quality in the render. This is just 640x480 with no FG, GI or anti-aliasing and it took 2:25 min to render so i might be able to hand in something like this with still HD shots of each scene :)

What am i - WIP - 58

What am i - WIP - 58, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

So far so good, apart from rendering :S.

This shot took 38 min to render :S so I don't think ill be rendering it like this. Ill try cut the render time down in a few days after the animation is done as id rather have some good animation at a lower render quality.

I think for the deadline (4 days) i will have the animation done and a medium render put together and a few more high quality still to show what its actually like. Then after ill render it out in 1080HD, hopefully before the presentation :)

It seems a bit silly to me that this and the showreel have the same deadline as everyone is worrying about there animation with the showreel on to, also there are other projects still on going which cannot get included in the showreel as there not finished yet so it would make more sense to have the showreel at the end of university so you don't have to re-make it.