Sunday, March 29, 2009

the final shape of my main character


Ok. Only the shape is real. I mean... not real, but 3D. I drew the eyes, the brows, the tiny musical note and all the circles in his head and arms. I was just so anxious to see how he would look in the end that I couldn't wait to model and texture everything.
^^ Isn't he cute?
Sooo Holly! hahahahahhh

...more mograph...


Circles & squares from Andrea Senise on Vimeo.

The tree that I saw in my dream


It was very similar to this one. There were a lot of them, and everything else was white! There were some leaves in the colors of the watercolor splash+white. but not much. And also some swirls going out of the branches!

Saturday, March 21, 2009

discovering mograph!

Ok ok... I know... it's not Maya..... but please! If anyone knows how to do it in Maya, please, let me know how!!!!
Anyway, I've been having soooo much fun with this! It's going to be beautiful composed with my tree environment ;)



Wednesday, March 18, 2009

...thinking....

is it possible to make paint effects w/ some of the leaves? Than I could apply to some specific areas in the close up renders.....
...er..... is it a stupid idea??
let's research! =D

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

... some more modeling and rendering




Concepts for Val's Class.... _"well, I could model them instead of drawing" - I thought - and here they are. The mushroom flute (still some issues on the texture... I'll fix it later) and the dice ladybug. And an extra render for my cube char in the 1st phase (he has several different models... about 6 I think!!! O_o -----> imagine 6 rigs + 6 paint weights!!!! O_O) 
Later on I come back to the tree. I'll still loose a looooooot of time working on it. And I still couldn't figure out why the animated texture does not work! Issues w/ the MR? Need to research more about it.....

Abstract rendering =D


Yeyyy!!! The 1st one I've done ever! Ok, I'm cheating... I know I was supposed to use Maya and to keep UVing the tree, but I was just having some fun w/ C4D .... just a warm up.....
Isn't it cool?
I think it would be really interesting to have elements like this growing up and passing by the moving branches of my giant tree. Is it too much? It's kinda easy to do in C4D, I could compose everythg in AE later....
well, here it is! ^^

Monday, March 16, 2009

Fixing the UVs...


I was trying to snap most of the branches in similar shells of UVs...... I thik it's working somehow! Than I can make the trunk UV sets bigger and have a better resolution.

Monday, March 9, 2009

An inspiration for the tree

http://www.mainframe.co.uk/movies.php?id=37

not exactly what I want to do, but there's a lot of similar ideas

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Milions of tests with the tree

Ok. I was doing OK with the trunk in Zbrush. Then I tried to go to Maya or to Photoshop to continue editing the texture and guess what? I didn't work! I think maybe Zbrush flipped my texture, I'm not sure of what happened.... but OK. And also, I was not able to do the muscle texture in zbrush... so I went to photoshop to make the texture. After I need to export from Zbrush the dips maps.. I still don't know how... but I will discover. Here is the tree in photoshop--->
Isn't it cool? I loved these muscles!! But I noticed some parts that would stay forever with a little fold, and I don't understand why is this....
... but OK... I went to Maya even with these strange things going on. Ah detail! I started from scratch because I didn't know if I will use the zbrush file, nor how I can do it... so I thought.. OK, I think about it later. Then I started making the twigs with all the leaves I had cutted another day. here it is! =D
It almost looks like a small tree! And then I did some watercolor leaves and I've done another twig only with watercolor leaves. And I like this one much more than the real leaves one. But I'll put them together in the tree
Then I went back to Maya to put everything together. Ah! I also forgot to tell about the nankin branch! I did a watercolor drawing of some branches and animated it growing up in after effects. Then I exported all the sequence in tiff and also in mov, I've done another branch, I've UVed this branch and dropped the texture on it. In  Maya, it says it recognizes the texture, but I cannot render it! Why is this? When I try w/ MR, it says MR cannot find the source file, when I try w/ maya soft, it renders only the preview image, without changing as frames pass by and without calculate the transparency. It only works when I use only one tiff of the drawing =/
And here are all my other tests with leaves, trunk from photoshop and everything else. The trunk got weird things going on w/ the texture... I also don't know why.... But I'm really tired of working on this tree, so I'll come back to it again when I know where to start again heheehh









Thursday, March 5, 2009

ok ok newbie mistakes again.....



... er.... I had forgotten to turn off the mrgb... for materials... hheheheh... that's why my texture was that mess!
Now I have another one, started from scratch once again! But now it is working! I swear!!!! =D

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

more texture on the tree.....




yes, I started texturing from scratch! Because I thought it was getting too dark! And then I noticed that as I go further it seems to me that the texture gets more and more dark...... I really need to take care with it!
And also I really wanted to give the roots a human muscle effects, but unfortunately I didn't find any muscle picture on the web.... so I think I will have to draw it... or imagine it.... =/ but I am thinking about adding them later on photoshop. Also I probably will have to correct a looot of seams on photoshop.... actually, I was tired of working on photoshop because this tree is a little heavy, so he is slooooooowwwww.....
well, I'll keep going with my clearer tree =D 

Escher Droste AE plugin





New discovery! Isn't it lovely?!?!?!!?!?
I'm going crazy w/ some of these last discoveries! 

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

starting to texture the tree....



.... in zbruush. I hope that's how I should do it ;)
still a loooooot to be done, but now I know I've already remembered enough to keep going... I hope heheh 

Monday, March 2, 2009

UVs... finally!




Wowww!!! I cannot believe I finally could finish UVing this tree! I've been fighting with these UVs during the hole day!!!! Now I need to know how to fix the problem on zbrush...... actually, when I was unwrapping these UVs, I noticed some weird geometry in 2 specific places.... just as if I would have extruded the branch 10 times before moving it..... I don't know why this happened while I was modeling... I thought that maybe I could  have added too much CVs in the beginning of the curve that I used to extrude this branch.... anyway, the UVs were not working in this area.... I think maybe it's because I had a looooot of geometry overlapping, I don't know.... so I had to move this vertices. Will it make it impossible for me to get the map I've done in Zbrush? Probably! well.... 2 or 3 hours of zbrushing are less than 1 day UVing heheeh 
I wanted to try to do the rag flower and after this weekend, I decided I want to make some extra branches going up the tree, but with a watercolor texture, very transparent.... I thought I would have time to do all this on sunday, but the UVing was already too much for me. If I can find some more time during the week, that's what I want to try!! ^_^ Ah! and also some rag leaves and watercolor leaves!and metal leaves! heheheh
I wish I had 80 hour long days heheheh