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Okay, so you wanted to know what I get up to, see my work etc??? Well here it is then, such as it is! Most of this is quite old work, I have sort of forgotten this site a bit lately, but I'm now planning on a major upgrade and improvements in the near future (sometime in 1999!)
After persistent nagging by my friends I finally succumbed to the pressure, sat down, quit banging around umming and aaahhing about it and put together some (crude!)examples of my rendering and animation work. For good measure I also added some examples of my pixel twisting as well, or as I like to call it 'pixel majic' I usually retouch scans of photographs or video captures etc to remove blemishes, red-eye or other irregularities. Occasionally, like in the following example, I also do a little 'Virtual Cosmetic Surgery' along the way!
I did this little piece of 'Virtual Cosmetic Surgery' for a friend of mine DL, a lovely lady who I made (I think anyway) even lovelier. She liked it too
These are the pictures, stereo-typical before and after shot here, sorry.
In case you can't pick the difference,
BEFORE is on the left, AFTER is on the right!
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So how was it done?? Photoshop?? No, this bit of pixel majic was done with a Shareware program (a Windows 3.11 program too!) called PictureMan, it can be found on the net as PMAN155.ZIP. An excellent program once you master it, a little quirky to use maybe, but does some things that professional paintbox programs do and is nearly free.
HOW did I do it?? Well I am trying to teach someone that too, over the net!! Interesting project that one, don't know how it will end up. Trying to pass on technique and 'visual' skills across the net poses some interesting challenges. If it works out, then maybe I'll post the how-to guide right here.
Rendering and Animation
Here are a few small rendered images, the models are all created by me, (credit given to the original creator if they are not) The software is Animation Master from Hash Inc, I wouldn't use anything else.
I DON'T DO POLYGONS!! Spline patches forever! That is why these images are more 'fluid', 'organic' whatever word you prefer to use to describe them, there are no polygon facets here, if there are, they are intentional!!
I rendered these at reduced resolutions (both pixel and colour depth) to avoid eating disk space and making for huge download times on this page, believe me the software is capable of MUCH bigger and better.
This one is a test render of part of a project I was working on for a website (Hi Sandi!), this is just a lighting test to see if I got the spotlights looking right, nearly did too!
(The background was a few shades too light though.)
And none of the buildings have all their final decals or texture maps applied.
This next one is a VERY rough render of an old long term project I have on the back-burner halfway started/finished (I'm taking a break from it to recharge!)
No antialiasing, no attention paid to good lighting, basically it is how I see the model while I am sculpting it, single light source 'miners lamp' style fullon in the face hence the unflattering shadows. It does show up the modelling irregularities rather well though
It's from a short animated piece I have storyboarded waiting to go, but I still need to get the model perfect, I want to be able to use her over and over again in later projects. I really want to get the head right, I am not at all happy with it right now (it's basically the original with some slight mods by me) and is now out of proportion with the rest of the model. I'm going to trash it and recreate a brand new one by rotoscoping pictures of a friend of mine.
The original model I got from Darryl Fogal's excellent Animation Master Hobbyist Web Site and was created by Richard Clifton but then heavily modified by me, I completely reshaped and resized her.
She is now much taller, slimmer and longer legged than the original. I have added 'accessories' like clothes, shoes and all the colouring/features etc as well as defining some motion cycles and an IK chain.
This render was done 2 years and 3 program versions ago, I'm now working with new models and 'props' created using Poser 3 from Metacreations and rendering in Animation Master 99, 3D Studio Max+Character Studio, Lightwave and Blender. I hope to have some more up-to-date examples and renders on here soon.
I have almost finished a very sexy walk cycle for my female characters in Character Studio. I'm planning on a short test render soon, I may post it here as an MPEG file if I can get it to be small enough.
Lately I have discovered Metacreations Poser 3 as a great way to make both characters for animation projects and also to quickly produce very high quality storyboards. I can use either the actual characters or a simple mannekin figure to lay out my work and even print out the traditional storyboard if I want to.
I might even make a Poser 3 page with some renders and mesh downloads.
Watch this space for online storyboards for a couple of projects I have kicking around in my head.....
This page was last fiddled with by The Graphoid on Wednesday, 25 January 1999