The Animation is Complete! (Version 1.2)

The Sponge Animation has been reworked.

If you're wondering in advance why you should watch it again, well... I can't say, but there is depth of field now! That's something!

If you're interested in checking out the progress blog (a bit sparse I must say), go HERE.

If you'd like to learn Chinese, go HERE.

Ok, so here are the fruits of my labor thus far... don't they look tasty? I'm going to be rigging thse guys starting... well... now, but first I've got some research to do on mesh deformers and the chinchilla rig, which can be downloaded HERE. Read up on the basics HERE.

Well, that's step one for now... I should have just made robots, that've been easier ;P

Finished Work

I'm glad to be finishing this thing at 2am... no more cables/grape vines/whatever. I hope you enjoy, there was a lot more I wanted to further incorporate, but I had to find the stopping point for time's sake. I'm pretty satisfied with most of it, but the lighting never quite became what I had envisioned... :(

There's always next time. This is called 'Grape Seed'

HOLY FORK!

Fork from class today, it's weird trying to get the hdri to work in 2.5... I'm sure learning blender all over again will get easier some day.

Question: (John, if you have any ideas) does anyone have any idea why the hdri hot spots have dark halo artifacts around them? Wait, never mind. When using hdri images, the actual high res image should only be used for lighting and not reflections. Reflections should be be taken from a lower bit image (standard png, jpg, etc) that will give good lighting and good reflections. GOOD TIMES!!!

Also, good to be rendering in blender again, too much 3ds max for me lately.

More catfish-water-dragon-fish-embryo fun!

I wrapped this one up 5 minutes ago. Time to celebrate with some modeling! I'll put a couple of hours into it and finish during class tomorrow, I think.

Oh, and an update on the bird's nest 3D print. There will be no such print at this time due to a clog in the print head. Hopefully John's got some acetone/ate to soak it in... but in the mean time I'm going to get a more conventional model set up to have printed on the godly 3d printer in Portland! I hope I don't squander the opportunity ;P

Enjoi!

Oh, baby! It's a dragon-fish-horse! I got a bit of modeling done in class today. I did waste the last 2 hours trying to trouble shoot a normal mapping problem, though. :/

NEVER rotate your UV islands separate from one another if you are going to be importing a normal map and not baking directly onto the mesh. Lesson learned.

Also, due to ongoing difficulties with the 3D printer, there is no birds nest as of yet, maybe tomorrow, though.

Ok! The test was an absolute success. I haven't taken a picture of the result, but the form of the object was held very well. My next attempt at modeling/printing a complex solid object will most likely use this method.
But...
For now, my next idea is to abuse the manor in which the printer lays down the material. I thought I would either like to do a bowl of spaghetti or something like a bird's nest. Which do you think I decided on? Essentially, the 'twig' objects are floating above each other and will compress/roll/fall and look fairly natural (I hope). The eggs will serve to contrast with the loose construction of the nest. I might be taking video of this thing at work... so cross your fingers ;)

Wow, It's that time of year again, school is back in swing and the blenderheads are gonna lose out on some sleep for a while. ;P I'm testing out support structures for the 3D printer, and am realizing that the going is a lot slower and resource intensive this way :/

Here's the basic idea: The sphere is testing the ability of the buttresses to support its initial wide angled flair. Ideally, those supports should break away from the sphere (test object) and leave it looking superior to a non supported model. If successful, more intricate prints should be possible. If not... huh... well, that would suck. I hope I'm right! I'll see the results shortly.

weekend work

Enjoi the Zoso from Derek Watts on Vimeo.

sorry for the compression... had to put encode the video in blender at home, evidently I'm not very good at it. ha!

Growing/Pulsing Vine and Tracking Glass

Growing/Pulsing Vine from Derek Watts on Vimeo.

Just doing some RnD for the 1st project. It looks pretty promissing so far. The materials need work, but that wasn't the focus here.

Track that Glass! from Derek Watts on Vimeo.

Mancandy: Jump Cycle from Derek Watts on Vimeo.

Mancandy Jump Cycle:
It's overlapping motion/follow through and arc... not fully satisfied, but there will be more to come.

Array from Derek Watts on Vimeo.

Class array animation, enjoi!

I'm going to just keep the original embed settings this time:

Collision from Derek Watts on Vimeo.

Colab. Sequence from Derek Watts on Vimeo.