Angus the Animated

Meet Angus:

           

A good friend and recent housemate of mine is a particularly talented stop motion artist brimming with ideas; the lovely miss Adrienne Dowling. One of her creations was that of Angus, a simple fellow with an interesting job. However, his story is yet to be told and so I'll have to leave some mystery as to his origins as he may yet attempt to make it to the big screen. However, I liked him so much that I couldn't just leave him as a stop motion model, and asked if she wouldn't mind me turning him into a digital piece. So after getting her to send on a few photos of him, I set about trying to feed him into a digital world. I was quite happy with the result.

 

Lock em up!

Having had the joy of playing with 3d printers before, I couldn't help but jump at the chance to take part of an instructables challenge to make a tutorial on how to create something for a 3d print. Given free reign I decided to try and make something more than just a simple print, I wanted to make something functional, something you wouldn't be able to make by hand, and most of all, something different. The result: An ornate lock and key. While unfortunately I didn't have access to a 3d printer at the time of making it, a number of people have attempted printing it and the results are starting to appear. If anyone's curious as to how it was made then I suggest taking a quick look at the tutorial, below I'll just show you some of the more interesting breakdowns of it's mechanism and design.

Mortice Lock and Key from Matthew "Rick" Shaw on Vimeo.

Maya vs Max: A rapid change of program

Well this is embarrassing. After having defended 3Ds Max for years in arguments of it vs Maya I have finally sunk my teeth into my first Maya project... and must already admit defeat. Aside from the random crashes and bizarre glitches, Maya's interface has proved much more convenient for getting things done, and simply has an all round nicer feel. I would still argue that Max has a more powerful modelling system, and would certainly consider importing some more complicated .objs from it, but from then on, Maya certainly seems to hold dominance in creating beautiful renders. This being my first venture into a proper project, I turned to Digital Tutors for it's Introduction to Maya tutorial. A quick (13 hour) run through of it, and I was ready to tackle the work.

While I wanted to learn from good tutorials, I didn't want my work to be a replica of theirs, so I created my own designs for a more "victorian great inventions" feel, or as seems to be so popular today, Steampunk. Ridiculous for a hovercraft but, well, that's half the fun of being able to create absolutely anything you want. So, above you can see the basic model, made with a combination of NURBS and Polygons. While it took a bit of getting used to, and I had to find all the familiar tools all over again because they were of course all named differently, I was quite happy with the result. Certainly could do with improvement but satisfactory for a first attempt. Next up, texturing.

Spiffing. Forgive me the iron man colours, my ingenuity runs thin when it comes to colour design and I simply went with something I thought looked suitable only to realize how unoriginal I am once I'd finished. Not to worry, as long as it looks somewhat presentable. One of the biggest differences between Max and Maya I noticed was the way it handles bump and normal maps. Perhaps I just hadn't fine tuned my Max files correctly, but Maya seemed to offer great results at the touch of a button. I was very impressed.

With the basic model ready to roll I added some animation, including the use of custom attributes to govern the speed of the engines, which felt very fancy (as simple as it was. What can i say, I'm easily pleased). With it darting around I experimented a bit with some basic smoke particles and sent her flying. Simplistic and made in only 3 days, but I have to say I'm quite pleased with the results. Unfortunately, it's not up online by itself, but it's in my showreel at the 00:35 mark if anyone's curious enough to see it fly!

The Toominator: Beginnings.

So I ended up getting tired of job hunting for a bit and decided to take a break and get back to some good old fashioned modelling, but of course the task proposed the question; what to model? Well I figured human anatomy is always a strong basis to work from and hey, who doesn't love a nice character model? So, I grabbed the first hapless victim to walk past who just so happened to be my housemate and fellow digital artist, Pearse Toomey, and proceeded to take some makeshift reference photos. If there is one thing that I should really put more time into, it is definitely reference images. Good reference can make or break a model and in this case I should probably have opted for a stronger setup. Oh well, onto the modeling. Firstly, the beautiful man himself:

Maybe it's just me but I find it oddly reminiscent of a certain famous figure's request for donations. After my brief distracted wanderings into the depths of wikipedia, I loaded up the reference into max and started hacking out a model in good old fashioned poly modelling format. I wanted to pay particular attention to poly flow and to try and maintain an even spread of polys. Of course, the hair proved an annoying issue as it hides a lot of the jawline, but hopefully all issues there should rectified once the hair goes on in max. I quickly folded out the basic shape of the head and baked in the symmetry before jumping through orthographic views to tweak the model to match the references a little more precisely. Symmetry makes for a good starting point but certainly needs to be dropped once getting into finer detail.

The ear was my greatest source of annoyance as I insisted upon challenging myself to keep within using the existing number of edges I had left myself and also maintaining suitable poly flow. I was quite happy with the result, and managed to maintain an all quad process that is easily adaptable for most ear shapes.

With the head starting to look like the real deal it's now time to throw it into mudbox and see if we can't get it a bit more lifelike. 

What makes a man? Wireframes and Textures!

The stages of construction for my character summed up in a few images for a small exhibition book. Alas, the wonderful world of the internet let me down and the book never arrived in time for the exhibition (and still hasn't...), so I figured why let them go to waste. These about sum up the way in which the character was made. The initial wireframes were modelled in 3ds max, then sculpted in Mudbox with texturing done between Mudbox and PhotoShop. The only texture stage I would have anything to say on would be making the hair... Hair shaders in max are far and away the worst abomination to the digital world that I have ever encountered (Right up there with the paperclip from Microsoft Word), and in hindsight would be far better to do in Maya, or preferably have a bald character. Even with third party shaders (puppet hair, actually surprisingly a good set of shaders.) it took an awful amount of time and effort to achieve the results above, which aren't even anything all that special.

A Challenger Enters the Ring

As previously promised, an updated showreel! ...Alright, maybe it isn't jam packed with exciting new work, but I'd certainly call it an improvement.



Showreel 2012 from Matthew "Rick" Shaw on Vimeo.

Composition of Character

This was the final submission entered for my final year project. The character required a scene to demonstrate his capabilities and so this was just a little something to see what he could do. I in no way consider myself an animator or a compositor, relying on motion capture files and an overly useful friend proficient in after effects to give it the finishing touches, but the construction of the digital scene was something I found oddly enjoyable. Battling with physics and particles can certainly take it out of you but are skills I'm glad to have revived for this. Hopefully I won't let them fall by the wayside again, and will look to add them into my next project, whatever that may be.


Composition of Digital Model from Matthew "Rick" Shaw on Vimeo.

The scene was based off simple footage taken in my hometown of Kilkenny, Ireland from a locked shot camera. It was digitally remade to allow for more accurate lighting and physics, with a separate ground added to allow for it to break up in a suitably over the top explosion. The worm in the scene that you probably didn't even know was there til I said it was a bit of a last minute addition. While I had planned for the ground to explode up and swallow him I hadn't really given much thought as to how it would do such a thing. So, 3 hours later I had a worm in the scene, modelled, unwrapped, sculpted and rigged. I was a little proud of myself truth be told. Maybe some day I'll even give the little guy a proper makeover and see what he turns into.

GR-BL1P - Construction Robot

GR-BL1P

Construction Robot

The robot was an interesting challenge to model, and I found that the non organic form made it a lot quicker and easier to get through. I designed him for another college project, and specifically to be 3d printed (Which he then was, and in time I will hopefully have those pictures up too. He's currently a little camera shy as he's being prepped for an exhibition). While it didn't require proper poly flow for 3d print, I felt it was a good exercise to try and keep the model as concise as possible, and maintain an all quad mesh. And in case anyone was wondering, his name was a last minute addition thanks to my classmate who couldn't help but say "Grr, bleep!" everytime he saw him. That being said, I can't stop doing it now either.

Steampunk Gas Mask

With character designs in mind, I set out on a project to create a small steampunk styled dwarf, complete with big wrench and unusual gas mask. While the character himself was unfortunately put aside unfinished in favour of college work, the gas mask was fully modelled and gives a good indication of the character to follow. Hopefully now in the coming months I'll find the time to upload the designs and work in progress of the little guy's run to completion.

Diamonds are Forever

I decided to look a little deeper into the material editor in 3ds max one day and immediately regretted it. Discovering a swath of unknown and forbidding looking buttons, I realised how little I knew about it and immediately sought to correct this. What resulted was this collection of diamonds above. I followed a great tutorial that helped me comprehend the basics behind many of the texture elements required for the piece, and began to tweak them myself until I was able to make them gleam just the way I wanted them. While not the most engaging of pieces, they still have a certain charm to them.

Digital Toy Humvee

As one of our assignments a couple years back we were asked to make a 3d version of any toy of our choosing. As tempting as it was to make a rubber duck, I opted for something a little more challenging. Lo and behold, the Humvee came to be an extremely plastic looking digital model. As one of my first proper forays into the world of digital modelling I was quite happy with the results, enough that I'm still not overly embarrassed in showing it off.

Showreel of old

My old showreel from a year back. It's amazing how in so little time we can look back and be embarrassed by the work we've done. I'll hopefully have a newer updated one up shortly once I've wrapped up the last of my college assignments.