Opaque3D | Blog

This is just a quick update on Mariana, the character for the ghost short film that I wrote (titled The Tormented). BTW, this was also written with Windows Live Writer. Very simple and nice app… but it sems that the video thing doesn’t work!

I changed the texture and skin shader a little bit, so even if she doesn’t look photoreal, she looks nice (to tell the truth she would look horrible if she were photoreal).

For the skin shader I am using 3 different maps, one for color, one for dermal SSS and a bump map. The next image shows a CU of the face.

As you may notice the body lools a little bit different as well, since I made her more “curvy”, in order to add some “sexyness” to her.

I am still missing the rig…

Below you can watch a video that I uploaded where you can take a “closer look”, although streaming video is not that great so in the end the images will play a better role

Sorry for the direct linking instead of embeding. I am still figuring out how to embed video here (from youtube, at least… I’ve done it from CGShare before), and the so-called “special tags” from Wordpress don’t work

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9BL88Nh948

Well, I am writing this from "Windows Live Writer", hehehe. This is the first time I use this thing so we’ll see how it goes. It drawed my attention the fact that I could use it to write posts to be uploaded directly to my blog (supposedly). We’ll see if it really works as expected…

Ok, the image is supposed to appear to the left. Anyway, just a little update. I got the Softimage|XSI demo the other day, and I installed it a couple of days ago. The navigation and all is pretty similar to that in Maya, but some stuff is just weird (for example, the materials editor). I know that since it’s a new program I have to get used to it, specially since I am too used to the way maya works and looks.

Anyway, I have the rest of the month to explore this software. In the meantime I am still dealing with work and the short film. BTW, I have a new update on the main character. She’s fully clothed now, and I will work on her hairstyle and texturing this weekend. More on that when I have something to show.

This is some sort of a rant against those who thing that animators and their software are some sort of mandrakes, always with a trick under their sleeves.

It always gets me when people are excessively ignorant. I read something on the newspaper the other day, and the columnist was talking about how wonderful computer animation was, because with the click of a button you could create an army of tens of thousands of warrior. Mind me… I’ve been using Maya for several years now, and I still haven’t found that button that creates the army.

That’s the reason for this blog’s entry title. People sometimes are so dumb they think we have some sort of infinite library of assets that allows us to pretty much drag-and-drop. Yeah, I know it’s easy to have the Gollum and Witchking primitive inside Maya. I am pretty sure they must have been some real big time savers for Peter Jackson. And let’s not forget about the Cloverfield monster and parasite primitives. I really have to thank Alias (and now Autodesk), Avid, SideFX, Newtek and such, for developing such amazing software that allows us to come up with the next blockbuster film in less than a freaking week.

It’s amazing to have all those “create terrain”, “create ocean”, “create human”, “create elephant”, “create lion”, “create hurricane”, and ”create army” buttons. It’s because of all those buttons that we can create such amazing work with one single mouseclick.

“Some guy” told me he wanted a fully featured animated 30 sec commercial by the end of the week, but that he needed at least a 4 second shot by next morning… Well, easy, all I have to do is load up that Environment from my extensive library of pre-made assets, then load up the characters and then plug the USB to my nose so the computer generates all the animation on the fly by reading my mind.
Idiot…

Ok… rant’s over.
I will only ask the next person that comes up with something that stupid to please show me where that “Create tens of thounsands soldiers” button is, but I can’t find it. He/she can even borrow my computer if he/she wants, as long as I am told where that freaking button is.