Samir's Creative Ideas & Online Enterprise Blog - Page 34 of 40

Logologoloco

I seem to be going through a “let’s do a logo for this community project” phase. Just an observation, and not a complaint, because I’m a staunch supporter of the the “Open” movement and am glad that this is one way for me to do my bit. My latest cause is the Open Clip Art Library.

Those who aren’t familiar with this project should have a look at it. It is truly a worthy challenge to try to put together a free collection of “open source” vector clip art. With the increasing viability of software like OpenOffice.org and Inkscape, a good collection of clip art is essential to complement these packages. I recently visited the site and saw a call for logos for the project. I sketched out a couple of ideas and executed them in Inkscape. The logos submitted so far are viewable here. At the moment I’m writing this my logos have not been put up on the page, but they will probably show up once the administrators has had a look at them.

I wish this project continues a healthy growth, because it is an essential part of the open source alternative. Those who don’t subscribe to that “idealism” can go there purely to get some cool, FREE clip art. 🙂

Samir

Header up

I have used Blender for professional work before, so I though it was only right to use Blender when illegal_ops put out an open call for a logo for a new Blender community site, BlenderCG.com.

The logo is now up on the site as the header/masthead. It’s a new site built to provide many Blenderheads out there a place to host their images and yet other place to hangout and hone their craft. Can’t argue with that sentiment. I wish them the best of luck and all the success in this worthy cause.

More the merrier.

Samir

Waveform

It goes without saying, that I have once again been away from this blog for a long time. This armaturing and posing was done a couple of weeks ago, but sheer procrastination has kept me from posting it here. I really must try to post more regularly. Anyway, better late than never, and at least this has not ended up as one more Blender project stuck in limbo. I finally managed to armature the figure, and started playing arond with posing it. I also assigned the loin cloth mesh to the same armature and after a bit of tweaking, it seems to distort in an acceptable manner unless the leg is bent to its extreme positions. At the moment I’m happy with it, but this is definitely still a work in progress. For animation I might have to rethink some of the geometry to be more anatomically correct for better deformation – such as the flow if the faceloops along the arms. Some weight painting might also help smoothen out the rough corners at the joints.

Recently there was a call for splash screen ideas for the latest release of Blender (2.34), and I thought that was as good an excuse as any to put my character through some more deformation tests. This mockup was the result of the exercise. It didn’t win of course, because it is by no means is a stunning example of what Blender is really capable of, but it was worth the effort just to get to know this model better. Here I rendered the character with smooth surfaces as a test, and also because I didn’t expect my rough look to be comprehended by most of the viewers as a legitimate choice. However, the solid shaded polygonal look will continue in my further uses of this character. I like that look for the world I am trying to create.

More to come.

Samir

It’s cooler in the shader

The materials and shader settings are now done, barring any unforseen tweaks and adjustments required as this project progresses. The hair has been made a little translucent, and specularity and translucency are set to vary between the fringes of the object and it’s central surfaces, using a gradient/blend texture to provide the template for the gradual transition.

The texture for the loin cloth was one of my main completion goals for the day and I am glad it is done and has turned out well. For this texture I decided to use UV mapping because that is the most reliable way to ensure appropriate texture movement when the object deforms in various poses and animation. Other than the faces that make up the knot at the waist, the entire object was un-wrapped using simple cylindrical projection. The knot was captured with a flat projection from the window. The 1’s and 0’s animal print was created in Inkscape and imported into Blender as a PNG.

Last but not least, it was essential to have a reasonably believable skin-like shading for the body and head, to further emphasise the pixelly un-reality of the character. Using a few built-in procedural textures and some toon shading tricks, the end result is quite convincing. As of now, this character looks much better than I had hoped.

Samir

Follicular foible

With this hair, I thee complete … well, modelling at least. I’m pretty happy with the result. The hair is wild and wanton enough while maintaining the comic stylisation of the character. The very apparent surface polygons I have left in on purpose, because I think it adds a good deal of techiness to the character; this will make more sense once the character is placed into appropriate environments.

Come to think of it, this is really not that complete yet. The materials still need to be finalised. Then there is some texturing to be done for the cloth. Armatures. Posing. Some environments. Some great renders, and then finally animation!

With this hair, I thee begin.

Samir

Cover up

Hair today? Unfortunately not. I thought it would be much more useful to model the loin cloth first as it gives a better idea of the final look of the character’s body. Now it will be much easier to model the hair to the correct size and proportions to go with the rest of the character.

As of now, I plan on assigning the cloth model to the main character armature. I expect that with some clever assigning of vertices, the cloth should deform in keeping with the rotation of the limbs – at least in an acceptably comic way. Now there is really no modelling left to complete other than the hair. So, perhaps I can safely say, on with the hair?

Samir

Your own two feet

The feet are complete. I’ve tried to keep the mesh as light as possible, but some areas are bound to be heavier simply because there is more form to describe. The feet are on the dense side, but I have tried to compensate by keeping the toes as simple cuboid shapes. Since animated deformation of the toes is not likely to be an everyday affair, I assume this is OK.

The legs are exactly the kind of comic, skinny musculature I imagined. It remains to be seen whether the light mesh holds up well to armature movements. Next in line is the hair, and I expect that to need an independent armature object for it’s movement. Although, the new softbody dynamics features that have found their way into the Blender trial builds might be a better solution, if they are controllable enough. On to the hair!

Samir