Category Archives: Cinema 4D

Adding a lick of paint

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I’ve started to add some textures to the cockpit after a week of redoing the UV’s. I felt all smug with myself for using zbrush’s UVmaster to create the UV’s but it seems that they are a bit too slapdash for hard surface modeling. Serves me right for trying to cut a few corners. I’ve spent most of the week redoing the UV’s so I can finally get on with some texture work now.
This is where the fun really starts (well actually I like doing the modeling but it sounds better like that) Theres no AA set yet so it looks a bit jagged but theres also no GI going on and the lights have no shadows. Thats all baked AO for the shadow and a few quick textures started for the basecoat.

Good evening Dr Jones

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I’m in a bit of mental freefall at the moment. Its rather busy at work at the moment leading up to several events in Europe so I’ve been rather knackered lately meaning I’ve been unable to catch up with some of my personal projects. The Babylon 5 job is still ongoing with a new task in the pipeline but i’m currently sketching stuff out on paper before kicking that off. In the meantime I’ve been kicking around a little pet project I started a few weeks ago and have only spent a few hours on. I stumbled across the blog of Otis Frampton some time ago but can’t remember when or how. Its one of quite a few in my RSS and I alway enjoy adding new blogs to my feed to browse through in the evening or at lunch time. About a month ago he started posting some drawings based on an Indiana Jones story “The Commandos of Operation Plato” (got the right name this time) and when he posted a rather nice character turn I thought ‘why not’.
sadly it started to languish in WIP hell on my HD but fortunately I was spurred on by a recent post showing a custom figure the original turn was drawn for and by a sudden desire to push a few polys around.
Based on the drawing I’ve started to block out the basic form and so far have spent around three evenings building it up with most of tonight split between screaming at the hands/gloves and watching Hellboy 2 and the photos of the figure have helped me work out a few of the concepts which can’t be seen in the drawings as they are too low res to see.

At the moment its still in a symmetry object in c4d but, by a bizarre coincidence, theres a tutorial in the new issue of 3D World Mag which shows ways of adding shape to clothes in zbrush so I may give that a shot.

Just about done

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So, there is it. I should point out that the view out of the window is NOT what will be in the game. I’m not saying what the view will be but its not anything like that. I found a painting of Rama which kind of fits with the circular view of the B5 station but as this isn’t the station it doesn’t matter what i put out there. These are just sample renders with some quick GI settings but they look ok and I should repeat that the viewscreen is supposed to be untextured at this stage.

I’ve handed over the file as they stand and am now waiting for some feedback over any changes to be made. I’ve seen a screenshot of the scene as its loaded into an Ogre viewer. It’s not the in game engine but the kick out of seeing it running in something else is great.

I’ve picked up a hell of a lot of info over the last few months and really streamlined my workflow, I’ve also got a better understanding of UV’s, materials and how to handle them and on the whole i’m really pleased with the final texture work. Looking at the scene now it looks a little empty and could do with a new nicknacks around the place to dress the scene (Sinclair had some photos and Sheridan had a bucket load of papers scattered over his desk) but thats just extras.