Here’s a colour preview using just shader materials.  I’ve started the UV mapping though, so it’ll be nice to brush some texture into her hair.

I finished the head, added hands and feet.  I noticed that when I duplicated the half-model to complete the missing left side, her head looked a bit wide.  I’ll be fixing that then moving onto UV mapping.  This is fun! Thanks José.

Seen here with temporary simple shader materials …

And with the wireframe overlaid …

I have been chomping at the bit to start this project, titled “GG1″.

[View with PicLens]

The last image is viewed using Maya’s polygon smooth preview feature (as of Maya 2008 – just press 1,2 & 3 on the keyboard), so the model isn’t as high-res as it appears, but it does help to highlight whether or not you’re on the right track.

Also, GG1’s UV’s aren’t set up yet, I just assigned materials to the appropriate faces, just for fun.  A proper UV map will come later.

Thanks to José Pou for the use of his character.

Here’s a quickly modeled squirrel idea I got while eating eating my breakfast yesterday.  Real simple, but the potential for mischief is there, no?  Maybe I will come back and finish him after I am done with Mr. Happinstance’s UV map and textures.

Well, it’s been an hour here and an hour there but this model is ready for UV mapping.  All-in-all, taking into consideration having to start and stop as each opportunity presented itself to work on the project, this took about 16 hours.  That’s a rough estimate, but since it’s unfortunately not a full-time project and I usually had to steal the time away from other actvivities like sleep and recouperating from a long day taking care of the kids, 16 hours is a pretty good guess.

Ultimately, I would love to cut that time in half, and include time for UV mapping.  Since the model only topped out at just over 4,000 tris, that’s not unreasonable I think.  We’ll see.

I had so much fun, I might do another character next.  I have approached an animator/storyboard artist friend of mine, José Pou to model one of his female characters, which you can find at his blog, MUGGEFUG!

Just when I got settled back into the on-going “Pilot/Heavy Fighter” modeling project that started with the modeling of the “Pilot Helmet”, I get word that a local company is looking for character modelers.  I enjoy working on my 3D projects and I certainly enjoy working with Maya, but a job is a job and I want a job again working in 3D.

So, that means the “Pilot/Heavy Fighter” modeling project gets moved to the back-burner once again in favor of potential employment.

The Modeling of  “Mr. Happinstance”
(A working title)

The good news is, this project has already been started and needs a quick turn-around.  Below is a screen capture of my perspective view in Maya of the half-model so far.  The design is of a character that artist,  Ryan Reid drew that he and myself had came up with for an independent film that got unfortunately shelved (but who knows, that may all change after this project).  This partially cleaned up drawing, shown above, is the only image I kept.

There are some modeling corrections to be made for sure and I have been getting some very helpful critiques from Alistair Murphy, a seasoned 2D/3D illustrator currently working at Fuel Industries.  I’ve known Alistair since our early days of working at PIP Animation, years before they expanded into full animation production.

With any luck, I will have modeling finished on Mr. Hap this weekend, which is a long weekend here in Canada, and be ready to begin setting up the UVs next week.

Starting work on the cockpit.  It’s a two seater, with the pilot in back and the weapons operator up front. I am leaving the canopy as is for now.

Next step is to build the seats and refine the instrument panels a bit further.

When work began modeling the Pilot’s Helmet, this heavy fighter was intended to accompany it.  After the fighter I will be modeling the hangar deck environment.

Much of the heavy fighter details will be painted on in the textures.  Some more work in the cockpit and a few armor plates are still to come.

Modeling Lego can be tricky.  Not only are there all those raised bumps (called “Studs”, I think), for a photo-realistic render, you want to reveal all of those minute seams between each brick.  Add to that the glossy, and somewhat, reflective surfaces and it’s already sounding like a pretty big hill to climb.

Now if you love Lego as much as I do, you might consider embarking on such as crazy journey, but if you’re smart (and I know you are , then you are probably asking yourself, “Hasn’t somebody already done this?”.  Of course, the answer is “Yes”.  Better still, someone has even built a CAD-style program to build everything with and a community supported library of Lego pieces.

A while ago, I stumbled on a few such programs.  I eventually  settled on the one I liked the most and have used it to rebuild all of my long-lost childhood Lego kits and more.

Here’s a couple models I put together using one such freeware program called MLCAD v3.20.

The designs are from existing LEGO kits and are not my own.  Although you can probably still get the instructions to build the X-Wing Fighter from www.lego.com, the blue space cruiser is from the 70’s and was my first lego kit I got when I was just a wee lad. The X-Wing model is missing a few pieces on the far/top engine as well as R2D2 (you can see the space behind the cockpit where he is supposed to go).

To get the instructions, I went to www.hccamsterdam.nl/brickfactory where you can find instruction booklets for almost every LEGO kit ever made.

Both were rendered with a freeware renderer called POV-Ray for Windows
version 3.5

http://www.povray.org/

In a later post I will detail how I converted the space cruiser LDR model file as an OBJ file and brought it into Maya to setup and animate the ship coming in for a landing.

Like I said, fun!