Texturing 1st pass and Scenery shot wip

Hey all,

I am backtracking with my wip a little bit to show you how its turning out. Images are about a week old however I'll post the new ones asap. Lots of lighting changes, texture enhancements etc have been done since. Also I am not using GI anymore as its practically not feasible for night time shots due to the noise threshold required to sample low light... basically takes too long to render. Also I merged the textures together so some pieces are using less texture space or more than what is shown here on the blog (for progress only demo).

More soon.

ciao

Texturing Update

Ok finally the tedious things are finished. Unwrap was pretty straight forward. 

Moving onto dirt/texturing/ animation and volumetrics... Its going to be a busy weekend.

ciao.

Animation update

Sorry for the delay. I have been working on the rigging in my spare time between work/flu/girl.

Basically I updated the capsules to open... and the wheels fold out correctly.

Texturing update

Sorry for the quiet. Work has been hectic and I had a lot to do on the weekend.

I have started to do the texturing and so far I have unwrapped the important parts (very rough job at the moment).

I still have to do some weathering, but time is running out so I'm hitting the environment now.

I just hope I hit that render button early enough :)

Next week there will hopefully be some rain simulations and some more pfx + lighting.

A few issues with the current model. Due to rushing the front part I'm now having to do some big fixes to the wheel compartment area. Basically I want it to fit together neatly so I'm going to dedicated a whole day to just fixing the mesh. Im looking everywhere for more reference on the interior of the front capsules as folding the wheels in is trickier than I thought. I want to be happy with my model from an engineering point of view and there is simple very little room to put any sort of folding mechanism inside. I'll see what I can come up with. This isnt exactly necessary for the competition, but I'm interested :)

ciao for now.

Btw I forgot to set the wheel shader up properly.. so that grey blob under the car is meant to be the wheel.

Modelling 95% done

Worked on it some more and I'm really happy that Im just about done.

Lots of little tweaks.. with just a few more left. Im currently on time to do the texturing this week.

Added vents, bottom is 70% done... no lights yet. There is a side skirt which needs to be finished. Oval window is done, tower is done... doors are done.

Pretty much fixed what I needed to.

Anyway getting some sleep now.

ciao

Rendering/modelling update

Updated the spinner over the past few days.

Key updates:

• Fixed door mesh
• Topo of backside fixed
• Added light strips on side
• Lots of shader work (still working on it)
• Basic lighting
• Fixed side oval window
• added front middle lights

Spinner modelling update

More stuff done this weeked. 

I highlighted the key areas. Basically I wasnt happy about the front capsule balls and I retop'd them so that they are now perfectly smooth and dont have those annoying poles. Its just the discipline kicking in. Basically some modellers cheat and hide bad topology, but Im trying to show some quality stuff here ;)

the underside and vents are now showing up. Only small amount done here. Rest will be finished tomorrow I think. Also did some fixups on the wheels and added the bolts etc. havent done treads yet.

The back of the spinner has also had a major cosmetic change, as the first one was sloppy due to the inconsistent reference I had.

Lastly I touched up the conning tower thing.. but still need to get that nice rudder feeling to it. Tail lights are also going to appear in the next version.

Good news is that this weekend I should be done with modelling of the spinner. Its currently rainy weather and I might be able to do the HDR shots tonight... I wont have a globe until monday but I figured I would rather be safe than sorry.

Also I'm still planning the rigging.

hit me up with comment... it motivates me :)

Spinner update

A few updates. Firstly I fixed the windows so its looking a lot better. Still a bit of work on the side windows needed.. some vert pushing, but other than that its close. Also I added wheels... fixed the top conning tower thing (whatever its called) and I am now working on the main body pieces. Might work on the underside during lunch.

The Wheels are really simple as I'll just use textures and maybe model some treads later. I want to get this model ready to test some shaders this weekend.

Door update...

Another lunch hour... another minor update. 

I had to fix the door and the side window as it was incorrect. now its starting to look ok. I will add the air vents later tonight (for the door) and it should be cool.

Texturing is going to make the biggest difference here.

Also you can see that the window vertex distribution is incorrect. I'll fix this too. (makes the highlight correct and curvature nicer). 

Note that Im trying to keep the low poly simple.

Below is the WIP thread on cgtalk just in case you missed the entry on the cgtalk challenge.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=139&t=681237

Spinner resizing + lots more reference

I  didnt get to model much, however I now have a lot more accurate reference... so I resized/repositioned a lot of stuff. I also took some time to figure out the mechanics of it (wheels unfolding etc). Might post the sketches soon.

Started to position the lights and a few misc pieces. Tail bumper is waaayy off as you can see, but thats because I whacked on a quick symmetry after rescale. 

More tonight hopefully.

ciao

Yay... Spinner is taking shape

Hey there...

Its 11pm and I got to sleep. After the symmetry mod, the spinner took shape. I spend a little more time on the front capsules as I found some more reference on it. The tricky part is going to be the door system and obviously the interior. I think I have reference to cover the rest.

I put some default shaders on it to make it feel like Im getting close to completing the model :P

Anyway, as you can see, the nice quad model below and the turbosmoothed version.

gnight for now.

Spinner Body Update (rear)

I have been working for the past 2 hours on the rear side of the spinner. this was a little tricky, but I eventually managed to make it with few pieces. Might work on this for another 30min until my girl finished her Gym session... speaking of which I need to maintain my own health :P

Sign in to post me some comments... it really motivates me when I know people are watching.

ciao

Spinner Body update

Over the weekend I didnt have much time to work on this thing. Went to a party on saturday night and then to an airshow on sunday (much coolness). Anyway I did happen to update the main windscreen and start on the body during my work lunch hour. A problem I have had is the inconsistencies between spinner images. There seem to be something like 5 different versions. All have subtle differences, however it really screws with proportions. Ok so here is an image showing my progress. 

I'll start working on shaders and background as soon as its a rainy day. Reason being I want to capture an interesting HDR Image in the middle of a city square. I'll have my Canon 450D and HV30 on the scene to gather the data.

1 month really isnt much time, but Im trying to push the envelope here ;)

Front wheel capsules are 50% done

So here are the front capsules that contain the wheels. The problem area at the moment is where the light is. I can barely see anything in my reference (arghh) but at least the general form is correct and proportions are very close.

So next step is probably the body. I get bored unless I start to see the shape coming together.

Might start that tomorrow though because its getting late.

ciao.

Started Modelling

Ok so My girlfriends sister isn't showing due to her flight being cancelled... so that leaves me some time to do some work as compared to having dinner and drinking socially (who needs a social life haha).

Now the key here is to have perfect subdivision surfaces. A friend I work with basically got me obsessed with keeping things clean.  The main idea is to have perfect highlights for the rendered shots... so surface flow and topology need to be top notch. 

Blueprint

Ok so basically lunch time today at work I decided to start this thing. 

I got some really low res blueprints and just whacked them together.

I will be using the following tools for this project:

3DS Max

Vray

Photoshop

Zbrush

Then for the composition I plan to use After Effects and/or Shake

Step 1... gather reference

Ok so I scoured the usual sources and there is very little to be found. I am tempted to buy a little spinner model, but they too are very scarce.

Here is a ref sheet I put together. I find having all the images on page very useful. Now I'm going to arrange the blueprints which are just really bad quality. If someone can find some high-res ones I would love to have a copy. 

....

CGtalk Flying Car Challenge

CGtalk have just started the mini vfx challenge involving flying cars and the added choice of re-creating a spinner sequence from Blade Runner.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=139&t=678319

I will be posting my WIP both here and on the CGtalk.org forums. I really hope to share this project and create something inspirational.

Link will be added asap for WIP location.

Welcome

Hi and welcome to my blog for the Blade Runner 3D project. This project is fan based and is fundamentally a test to reproduce high quality scenery from the Blade Runner universe.

While practically no computer generated imagery (CGI) was featured in the film I figured I would try and stay true to the look as much possible. 

I will do my best to update this page and use it as a container for all media elements.

Please feel free to browse and ask questions. I will do my best to reply as much as I can.