Sunday, October 30, 2005
It's all in my head...
Here's a screenshot of my latest 3D model. It's still very much a work in progress.
Currently this fellow has no hair, eyebrows or teeth. Also, the texture I'm currently using to represent his skin tone is not final either, it's just a quick sub-surface scattering shader that literally takes 5 minutes to apply inside of 3DS MAX 8.
The whole thing was rendered using Mental Ray.
This is actually a refined version of the base male figure I posted a few weeks ago. You can find that image further down the page in my blog and in the WIP section of the site.
This model's been a hell of a lot of work. I sometimes find myself wondering why I put myself through the torment of trying to model human forms.
I've got an M4A3 Sherman Tank model kit sitting here just waiting to be reproduced in 3D and I've got that Loader all rigged up and ready to be textured as well.
It's child's play for me to model those kinds of mechanical structures and attain a very competent level of accuracy. And yet...
It's just not the same as the feeling I get when I really nail the shape of a finger joint or an eye socket. But my God what a pain in the butt it is to get those stubborn little vertices to line up just right.
My wife really deserves some sort of a medal for tolerating me when I'm in the middle of one of my human modeling binges.
When things go badly I'll sometimes wander around the house for hours brooding over my inability to sculpt a convincing cheek bone. Then, when she presses me on the source of my ennui I'll launch into a passionate description of my mental block while showing her jpeg after jpeg of other artists work or pointing madly at one of my anatomy models.
"See?" I'll exclaim, "The levator labii is right there. And I put the vertex right over it! And here's where the zygomaticus muscles angle in towards the orbicularis oris... But for some reason it still looks wrong..."
To her credit, she always listens intently and never once rolls her eyes.
Occaisonally she'll offer up some simple observation about my work that will inspire me to make some minor change and BAM! the problem is solved.
Usually my biggest problem ends up being that I've simply stared at the model for too long and I desperately need to do something else for about 12 hours.
I'm lucky I have her here to remind me of that.
I'll post more progress as I make it.
Don't forget to set your clocks back.
Goodnight!
