More texture work on the E

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:13:00 EST

Got more uv/texture work done on the Enterprise. Stuff like the various registry decals on the nacelles, saucer, saucer rim, hull got applied. Various bits of clean up in the mesh got done. Most of the core textures now applied.

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Details, lighting, and some texturing work on the E

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:06:00 EDT

Got some more work done. A first stab at UVs and textures:

More details

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:06:00 EDT

Got further cleanup and detail work done this past weekend.

Global Illumination with the Enterprise

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:56:00 EDT

I stumbled on how to get GI working in Modo last night, as well as fixing bits of geometry and adding the rear shuttle bay panels and shuttle bay doors.

Some further detail work

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:36:00 EDT

Got the forward sensors done last night. I discovered they are officially referred to as "Forward Particle Field Attractor Sensors". Who knew.

Finally, the Enterprise hull

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:12:00 EDT

Finally got the hull worked out. Previous attempts had pretty much blown monkey chunks, but thanks to suggestions by other modelers from the luxology and 3D

More work on the Enterprise nacelles

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:18:00 EDT

Fixed the shape of the grilling. I had assumed they simply followed the same aurve as the forward grill piece. Nope, they actually curve inwards:

Hard surface articles for ZBrush

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:38:00 EDT

A very large thanks to Kerwin for some realy interesting article on hard surface sculpting in ZBrush:

Part 1
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More nacelle work

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:29:00 EDT

Finally got over the "hump" with these damn things. Got the side grilling "cover" (or whatever they are called, if someone knows what they are, feel free to leave a note) done and the the outer grilling as well. All that's left now is the inner grilling

Enterprise engine nacelles

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 10:45:00 EDT

Modeling these has proved to be very difficult. However I found a great tutorial by Roland Baron (at SciFi Meshes ) that briefly explains how he tackled it, and gives some great advice and ideas in how to

Enterprise engine nacelles

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:27:00 EDT

Finally got the engine nacelle to a point were I can move on. Actually I just got annoyed enough to not bother screwing around with anymore. Not a very artistic decision, but sometimes Pragmatism wins out over Artistry.

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Lunch time sketchs with ZB3,5

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:00:00 EDT

Some fooling around with ZBrush during lunch. Both models were built with ZSpheres 2.

Further Entrprise work

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:21:00 EDT

Here's some more shots, the impulse engine, bottom of the saucer, and dorsal "neck".

New project started

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:10:00 EDT

Started a new project, the Enterprise NCC 1701-A from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I've always thought this was the coolest version of the ship out of all the various incarnations. I'll be using Modo for this.

Here's some stabs at the main

More Dropship work

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 10:35:00 EDT

And it looks like this is now basically complete! More details below. Now I need to texture it.

More work on the Dropship

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 10:55:00 EDT

Some more shots, with more detailing. This is a really fun thing to model.

Another 3D Palace tutorial

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 19:07:00 EDT

I'm about halfway through another 3D palace tutorial - the Badger Dropship. Really awesome stuff they have over there!

Modo!

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:28:00 EDT

Last week I got my greedy little hands on Modo - awesome software! While it's very nice, I do now appreciate the price tag on Houdini a little better. Modo has some great tools, but the breadth and depth of Houdini is astonishing. But modeling with Modo

A Grav Tank, based on a 3D-Palace tutorial

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:14:00 EDT

I found 3D Palace last week, and since I had time off from work, found it a lot of fun to follow along with their tutorials. Here's the first result:

Zbrush to Houdini - Displacement Map Workflow

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 21:27:00 EDT

This is a quick walk through explaining how to get your ZBrush 3.x detailed model to render properly in Houdini 9/10 using ZBrush produced displacement maps. I found a number of links about this, but some were a little confusing as they talked about how

Further refinements to the head

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:14:00 EDT

More refinements to the alien head, added eyes, and played with adjusting materials

I'll be back

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:22:00 EDT

I think we all know where this is going to be leading...

Another head sculpt

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 16:17:00 EDT

Some more ZBrush sculpting:

Another ZB sculpt

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:26:00 EDT

I got inspired by this image:
Balrog-lord-of-the-rings-4801000-1920-1200.jpg

and made a stab at a head sculpt in Zbrush:
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More Mandy work

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:26:00 EDT

Here's some more shots of the Mandy model, add hands, feet, and adjustments to the face. Still got a ways to go...

Zbrush to Houdini - Texture and Normal Map Workflow

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:42:00 EDT

This is a quick set of notes/instructions explaining, for complete Houdini/ZBrush newbies (that would be me), how to move a model from ZBrush to Houdini, and to ensure that textures and normals make it along the way. This will include the creation of a

Finished Felix

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:09:00 EDT

The Death Droid (or Felix the Chicken, as my wife likes to call him) is now done, for now at least.

Some shots:

More work on the arms

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:49:00 EDT

Our little droid now has arms, with rigging in place.

The Death Droid!

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:27:00 EDT

Got some work done on the robotic form I'm tentatively calling the "Death Droid". Yeah, that's original!

ZBrush

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:29:00 EDT

Woot! I finally broke down and bought my first 3D app (Houdini HD is next in line): ZBrush!

Here's some first stabs at things:

A 4 fingered quasi-alien hand:

ZSphere phase:

Mandy the Model!

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:06:00 EDT

I've been viewing a number of the Maya Advanced Modeling videos at 3D Buzz, and one the latest has been a model of a human female. Since I didn't have the actual profile shots that Zac was using, I decided to base it (roughly) off of the comic character

Latest Houdini work

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 09:52:00 EDT

I had an image in mind for a sort of mysterious Terminator like robot. However instead of a humanoid face, it would be blank, expressionless. Built as a kind of assassin for the military until it went AWOL, it clothes itself in some sort of robe with a

More work on the spider, model mostly complete

Wed, 27 May 2009 09:00:00 EDT

For now at least...

This was fun to work on :) I'm not very happy with the materials that I have on it, however that's a whole new can of worms to deal with. This version shows use of sculpt nodes and several different subdivision SOPs that

The Itsy, Bitsy, Spider...

Wed, 13 May 2009 10:40:00 EDT

Working from a set of lessons at 3D Buzz, I was able to duplicate the spider geometry below using Houdini. The lessons themselves were done with Maya, so hopefully I didn't lose to much in guesstimating the equivalent

Krypton's last days

Sun, 10 May 2009 00:58:00 EDT

Playing with some shaders, using Houdini's built in Lava, Ice, and Glow shaders:

Playing with the camera

Thu, 07 May 2009 13:15:00 EDT

This is a test of animating the camera along a path, and then animating the path itself. Also played with animating an L System tree by animating various properties based on the current frame value.

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More MIEF starship work

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:59:00 EDT

1st video in Houdini! Not horribly exciting, just a test to see the animated channels put to use:

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Bob Loves Houdini!

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 09:56:00 EDT

Without further ado, I'm proud to present the initial model of CodeProject's Bob, moved into Houdini and ready for rigging! Hopefully after going through the read more

Further work on the ship.

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 09:52:00 EDT

This isn't much, but I did re-org the network a bit, and since I've learned about the Object Merge node I realized I can have a subnet with a bunch of various details, things like

More Houdini work

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 20:01:00 EDT

Here's a revamp of the previous marine ship from before, only this time I'm really forcing myself to get to grips with modeling in Houdini:

More Camera work

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:47:00 EST

Finally got around to adding some textures and learning how to use Blenders UV editor. Not too hard to do, but I don't think I'm applying the actual texture image quite right. But not bad for a first start:

Canon Camera model

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:33:00 EST

Using this tutorial for modo (http://www.luxology.com/community/user_tutorials/modeling/camera/ ) I was able to roughly recreate something similar in Blender. Blender has some great tools, but it became pretty clear that modo has some fantastic modeling

Sorry for the inconvience, but we've moved...

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 00:22:00 EST

Earth, in it's new neighborhood

CAD style modeling in Blender

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:47:00 EST

I found this fantastic site here: Modeling a 608 Bearing that walks you through modeling a fairly complex set of shapes (at least for a newbie). It pretty detailed, and quite clear

Traveling at the speed of light in Blender

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 13:20:00 EST

Simple, silly, but looks quite cool!

Take a scene, set up a camera, go to the World buttons view, add a texture (with an image associated with it). Click on the Map To tab, and make sure that only the "Hori" button is toggled on. Instant

First model with Houdini!

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:11:00 EST

This is my first attempt at a real model with Houdini. No textures on the model yet, but it's a halfway decent first stab. Note to the Blender folks - lighting and camera positioning in Houdini sure seems ALOT easier than in Blender.

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Xul Huntership

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 23:06:00 EDT

This is the first model I attempted. The idea is pretty much what I wanted, but the stargate dimenions are too small and the asteroid material isn't scaled correctly.

First Shots of a XulBot

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:53:00 EDT

Probably the next series of stuff I'll be doing is inspired by the Ian Douglas stories from the Heritage, Legacy, and Inheritance trilogies. These shots are the first real

Hello

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:44:00 EDT

This is just a an experiment, a place to throw up progress as I learn to use 3D tools, with specific focus on using Blender and Houdini.

Components, and Creating a Custom Property Editor

Mon, 01 Nov 1999 00:00:00 EST

This column discusses property editors and how to implement one for Java -specifically, how to make one work for our CodeDocument class. When last we talked, we saw how to build a CodeDocument class, but it wasn't something we could work with in a visual designer like JBuilder, say, or Visual Cafe. In this column we'll build a special case of the JTextArea component and add some specialty properties and property editors to support the CodeDocument class we worked on before. The code listings at the end of the article are excerpted from the complete code, which you can download from www.JavaDevelopersJournal.com.

Latest News from Jim Crafton

More texture work on the E

Details, lighting, and some texturing work on the E

More details

Global Illumination with the Enterprise

Some further detail work

Finally, the Enterprise hull

More work on the Enterprise nacelles

Hard surface articles for ZBrush

More nacelle work

Enterprise engine nacelles

Enterprise engine nacelles

Lunch time sketchs with ZB3,5

Further Entrprise work

New project started

More Dropship work

More work on the Dropship

Another 3D Palace tutorial

Modo!

A Grav Tank, based on a 3D-Palace tutorial

Zbrush to Houdini - Displacement Map Workflow

Further refinements to the head

I'll be back

Another head sculpt

Another ZB sculpt

More Mandy work

Zbrush to Houdini - Texture and Normal Map Workflow

Finished Felix

More work on the arms

The Death Droid!

ZBrush

Mandy the Model!

Latest Houdini work

More work on the spider, model mostly complete

The Itsy, Bitsy, Spider...

Krypton's last days

Playing with the camera

More MIEF starship work

Bob Loves Houdini!

Further work on the ship.

More Houdini work

More Camera work

Canon Camera model

Sorry for the inconvience, but we've moved...

CAD style modeling in Blender

Traveling at the speed of light in Blender

First model with Houdini!

Xul Huntership

First Shots of a XulBot

Hello

Components, and Creating a Custom Property Editor