the agency

I've been working on a new eye model. This still needs work on the iris, but I've learned a lot from this little exercise. I've used a NURBS sphere for the eyeball, plus a deformation lattice to shape it. Using modifier objects is a technique I need to explore a lot more. My handling of materials is improving all the time too. This model has an Extended Material Node (woohoo) for the eyeball material, and of course a transparency map to create the cornea. Apart from that, only colour maps so far, not bump or spec. Still, looking pretty good I think.

Posted by christina at 08:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My current box cost me $500 about three years ago. Fine for most of what I do, but it struggles with 3D. So, with a significant payment for an extra job that I did at work, I decided to upgrade my hardware. My new Dell system is on the way - Core i7 processor, 6GB DDR3 RAM, 64 bit OS (Vista, but I'll survive that), 1TB harddrive etc. Basically, state of the art. I didn't pay an extra $1000 for the extreme CPU, but what I've got should be pretty good for both modelling and rendering. The four cores run eight threads, so rendering should be a blitz.

Meanwhile, I'm working on the eye. There's a free download tutorial (four movies) on modelling a realistic eye from the Gnomon Workshop. I've spent quite a bit there on tutorials in recent times, so it's nice to get a freebie for a change.

Posted by christina at 07:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been investigating node-based materials. I especially want to map out where subsurface scattering takes place on my model, rather than have it everywhere or nowhere. I used Tony Mullen's book Bounce, Tumble, and Splash as my main reference, because it has the best section on node-based materials in Blender I've yet found. However I did have one problem, and emailed Tony for some advice. He got back to me pretty quickly with an answer to my problem, and I now have a lot more sophisticated control over materials than I had before. I love the internet.

My primary reference for this project is Creative Essence: The Face by Ballistic Publishing. However the various authors of that book use Maya, Max, Mental Ray, etc, and it's a bit hard sometimes to work out how to do equivalents in Blender. I am getting there though. I hope to understand 3D enough one day that translating is relatively straightforward, but I ain't there yet.

Posted by christina at 05:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)