Last Bit of Modelling

Well that's it all done.  Every set modelled, and finally Jonny's 'leaving home' rucksack finished and weight painted.  Click to enlarge to see the topology.  Just animation, rendering and compositing left to go.  After nearly 3 hours of careful weighting, I'm going for a run.  Then I'm going to tidy up the rig, make a quick low poly version, then get back to animating the last twenty or so shots... two weeks to go!

Spin me Right Round, Like a Record

Not 100% there with the look so far but it will probably do for the national gallery version.  I should have just animated the whole film like this with their feet sliding along the floor like this and everyone in their default T pose.  It would have saved time on the rigging and the animation would probably be just as good as it is now!

Jonny's Fixie

Yes, I wish it was real too. Freestyle render in Blender 2.5. Not rigged yet.

Dog Topology

Here's how 'Blake' the border collie sheepdog is looking in wire form so far - 2100 faces, all quads, nice clean mesh topology with maybe just a few too many poles.  Struggled a lot with the head.  Wish I'd had access to a real dog to help with the modelling of this.  I've only given him front teeth as he rarely opens his mouth in the 'Crows' short.

Making good progress on the rigs.  The biped one is ready for re-targetting - a hybrid of my 'eskimo' and 'bally' rigs - using iTaSC for damped IK - no more popping!  The quadruped rig just needs layer organising and testing.  Jonny is pretty much ready to bind, just finishing off the Farmer's haircut, hat, glasses and coat.

Fake Plastic T-Pose

Jonny's nearly done, just some more work on the hair and cloth collision meshes before texturing, shape building and rigging.

T is for Topology

...with which I'm wrestling....

Jonny's hands, arms, t-shirt, jeans and pumps meshes all work-in-progress, the most complete of my models so far, with some subtle asymmetry.  The head meshes and the farmer and dog are also pretty far down the line but still messy shape-wise.  Its awesome to have access to the tube project's character meshes as a topology reference, one of the perks of being an intern on the project!  Working in blender-2.57-freestyle - hopefully will have some python shader code going soon!

Works In Progress: Ice Cream Van and Facial Expressions

Here's an ice cream van I've been modelling and hand texturing for next week's lip-sync exercise which will involve Big Buck Bunny and Sintel in an unsavoury situation... finally a chance to air my views on Buck's character design!  I'll probably be rendering shadeless with some custom 'shaders' (or more accurately post/comp) coded in python, if I manage to implement my algorithms in time (or if my paperware even works).  I messed around animating straight ahead drawn and sculpted (in blender) faces popping from expression to expression.

Fish Modelling

Hunter S Thompson Herring

4 hours modelling

Great White Shark

3 hours modelling

(incl 1 hour of teeth vertex pushing!)

2 hours texture painting

(incl 1 hour of messing around with Photoshop 3D)

2 hours rigging and weighting

Some half cooked models I built in a rush for this weeks anim exercise (fishes with character).  The shark's got a nice spline IK rig (a spline for the back and for each of the big flippers), but thanks to blender's outgrown deps graph, it has more than twice the number of bones it would need in maya.  At least the modelling and texture painting in blender kicks the socks off maya.