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| Milestone: |
Final Image |
| Date Submitted: |
Monday, 12 May 2008 |
| Title: |
Uplift |
| Notes: |
Here's my final entry for the Uplift Universe CGSociety contest. While not necessarily depicting any specific event from David Brin's novel, I think the image is consistent with the spirit of the book. With the placement of the two hands, I tried to create a sense that the human being was helping to raise up the alien. I also wanted to depict an optimistic vision of human-alien interactions. While the alien hand is, well, alien, it is not hideous or monstrous, and there is no implication of malevolence.
Technical information: I used Apophysis 2.07 for the background, Wings3D for initial modelling, ZBrush 3.1 for sculpting and texturing, Maya 7.0 for the hairs on the human hand, Softimage XSI 6.5 for final image composition, mental ray for rendering, and Adobe Photoshop CS for compositing and retouching. As it turned out, the combination of hair, subsurface scattering shaders, ray-traced area lights, and 32-bit displacement maps was too much for the renderer. I ended up having to use shadow mapping for the lights and bump maps instead of displacement maps. Next time, I'll go back to trusty old Aqsis :) . |
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| Milestone: |
Work In Progress |
| Date Submitted: |
Monday, 12 May 2008 |
| Title: |
Modelling and posing -- done! |
| Notes: |
I've finished all the modelling and posing, now. I tried to get the human hand into the right pose in ZBrush, but ended up tweaking it a bit with Softimage XSI. The alien hand was posed in Softimage, but only with bend modifiers and lattice deforms (I couldn't be bothered to rig it with a full skeleton). The hair isn't right, right now. It's too mossy. |
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| Milestone: |
Work In Progress |
| Date Submitted: |
Saturday, 10 May 2008 |
| Title: |
Human hand -- textures done |
| Notes: |
I've finished the textures on the hand, now. |
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| Milestone: |
Work In Progress |
| Date Submitted: |
Friday, 09 May 2008 |
| Title: |
The human hand -- modelling done, and texturing partway finished |
| Notes: |
I've not posted in a while, but I'm certainly not out of the contest! Here's the finished human hand model, with the textures partway done. I'm lifting textures from the photos I took of my hand. |
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| Milestone: |
Work In Progress |
| Date Submitted: |
Saturday, 03 May 2008 |
| Title: |
Alien fur |
| Notes: |
I'm playing with the alien fur, now. It's still not quite the way I want it, but it's getting there. |
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| Milestone: |
Concept / pre-visualization |
| Date Submitted: |
Friday, 18 April 2008 |
| Title: |
Reference photos -- my hand |
| Notes: |
I've taken some reference photos of my hand. I'll base my hand model on these, and I might lift some textures from them as well -- though I'll have to paint out the hairs, since I plan to do those with Maya paint effect geometry.
(Thanks to my good friend Patrick Goodale for helping with the photography. It would have taken me a lot longer if I had to be both in front of and behind the camera.) |
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| Milestone: |
Work In Progress |
| Date Submitted: |
Thursday, 17 April 2008 |
| Title: |
Alien hand -- done |
| Notes: |
Here's the finished alien hand, rendered with the contest version of XSI. I might still add some fur... |
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| Milestone: |
Work In Progress |
| Date Submitted: |
Tuesday, 15 April 2008 |
| Title: |
Alien hand texture map finished |
| Notes: |
I've finished sculpting and texturing the alien hand, now. The original texture and displacement maps are 4096x4096. The displacement map is a 32-bit TIFF. I'll post a rendering of the finished hand soon, once I set up the subsurface scattering material in Softimage XSI. |
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| Milestone: |
Work In Progress |
| Date Submitted: |
Saturday, 05 April 2008 |
| Title: |
Textures for alien hand |
| Notes: |
Well, I could keep sculpting indefinitely. In the interest of moving on, I've started texturing the alien hand now. |
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| Milestone: |
Work In Progress |
| Date Submitted: |
Thursday, 03 April 2008 |
| Title: |
More details on the alien hand |
| Notes: |
I'm still sculpting the alien hand. I've added detail to some of the suction cup fingers, now. |
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