Shark progress

An updated version of my shark model, rendered with SSS.

Harpy (WIP)

A work in progress.  I modeled a fairly low poly character model and created a texture, a partial normal map, and an ambient occlusion map to help show color variations. The wing are still untextured, however hopefully I will be able to bring my experience with a similar project to bear on it. It isn’t complete by any means – I still need to finish up the normal map, as well as create a specularity map – but I do feel like I’ve pushed my boundaries.

As a mythological creature, a harpy doesn’t really make that much anatomical sense. Birds (excluding flightless birds) are basically blobs with wings, a head, and two stick like legs. The pectoral muscles on a bird are enormous in comparison to the rest of its body. Given this information, I decided to bulk up the the deltoid and pectoral muscles while maintaining an aesthetically acceptable form.

Sculptris

Now that I have a new computer, I've been able to really push the envelope with regard to polycounts. For the most part, I've focused on faces, but I've also experimented with designing cratures from scratch, as well as refurbishing some of my older, lowpoly models.

Ozymandias II

Several improvements on the previous version. A normal map and bump map have been added, the strand plants were replaced by splines, and the trees were adjusted.

Voyage to the Sky, 'Revised'

Ugh. This one was a real pain. Blenders' 2.59 render compositing system is broken. I tried a different approach, rendering three layers, then saving it as a high-quality jpeg. Next I added a world texture, using the jpeg as the bitmap. I then rendered the final layer.

The clouds... belch. That's what I get for using Blenders volumetric material.

Tripod

In 1898 the Martians visited Earth.

In 1968 we return the favor.

My interpretation of what a human-made fighting-machine would look like.

Waterfall, revamped

After a good deal of effort, I was finally able to revamp the Waterfall to my satisfaction. The new background was a major pain to get right, and the render node compost system decided to cease working. For the most part, at least hal of the thing was an exercise in frustration.

On the other hand, I did make use of a bunch of new techniques. Baking a shadow map for the ferns and creating an intensity map turned out rather well.