Alchemist Textures and Gruffs Grinder

So it's been a couple of weeks since the last post but we now have a pretty well completely textured Alchemist. The reason he is both clothed and unclothed is that he spends a bit of time prancing about in his underwear. Unfortunately there were a few issues that escaped my attention, the eyes on the unclothed Al aren't blue, and there is a few instances of the body poking through the clothing.

Alchemist Textures v2 from Matthew Scott Graham on Vimeo.

So that makes now two characters textured (Al and Squidly) once character mostly textured (Gruff) and 5 characters to go (Meat, Spud, Pidgy, Laurence and Grimm). Though at least three of them are yet to be modelled. Also here is a prop that will be used by Gruff for sharpening an axe. The bottom of it will be off screen, so there's no pedals or anything.

grinderAnim from Matthew Scott Graham on Vimeo.

There will be more props to come over the coming days.

Gruff texturing WIP

Here is the current texturing/shading progress on the barkeep Gruff. As you can see there is a couple of issues with texture seams, particularly around the arms/shoulders. Should be fixed very soon. Still to add, spec/reflection maps for the skin, scars, tattoos and maybe some stitching and other small details.

The main concern right now is whether to keep the texturing on the characters fairly simple in order to help pull them off the background, or use other tricks to achieve the same affect whilst not having too much difference between characters and sets.

Textured in 3D-Coat and Photoshop, rendered in Renderman with a simple 3 point light setup. A lot of the shaders are using procedural bump maps which I quite like the look of too.

Map of the Kingdom of Overhang

What we have here, is a Map of the Kingdom of Overhang. I followed fairly closely to the original concept, the main differences being that it is flipped horizontally due to preference and flow into another shot and the colour grade is quite a bit different.

map concept art

The map is a matte painting which has been projected onto 3D geometry (the 3rd pic is the geometry). It is not quite finished as of yet, but is getting pretty close. In the pic to the left, the gray stuff is the land/water, the green squares are trees that have an alpha channel in the texture and the red is the labels and sun rays.

You may notice that everything is on a heavy slant, that is to help fake the 2D effect in 3D.

3d geometry for the map

Forgot the Other Side.

And the pic I forgot to upload yesterday is the other side of the room. As you may or may not be able to see, the laboratory equipment made of glass is not very visible. A mistake, but this is still a WIP so you'll just have to forgive us for that.

Al's room and Squidly

Here are a couple of new renders. Well actually the work is not new, but the renders havn't been posted before. The first image is of Al's room / laboratory. Is still a work in progress, with not fantastic lighting, and some textures/shaders still to be done. Rendered in Renderman.

The next is a render of Squidly. He is basically Al's lab rat. He may be a baby Krakken, no-one is quite sure. If he is, what do you call a baby Krakken, a Krackling? Shaders and textures not finished yet.

Renders, Lighting, Clothing and the City of Gruffleglenn

Here's some recent images and also some that I've only just gotten around to posting.

Trying Out Different Renderers

So, progress has been a little slow lately but there is sure some exciting things that we will be sharing over the next couple of days. We have been playing around with different renderers (because as soon as you chuck displacement at Mental Ray, it shits it's pants. Also, everything has displacement.), and have finally settled on Renderman.

Below are two images, the first from Renderman, the second from Vray. Keep in mind that this is still a work in progress though.

Alcoholemist Squidly Animation Test 4: swimming in a bottle

An animation test featuring squidly swimming around in a bottle, before being scared by the hand of the alchemist.

all the animation was done using early calimari rigs
time taken to animate: aprox 1.5 days

we also used this test to help understand how we are to deal with the refraction of the glass, to look realistic, yet still be able to clearly make out squidly within the liquid.

As well as how we are to impliment the candle flames in a scene. we attempted to film a real candle flame, but this did not give a very clear and usable result, so instead we rendered out a single candle flame as a fluid effect in maya, put it on a card and placed it within the 3d space in nuke.           

Gruffleglenn WIP 02

More work on the matte painting for Gruffleglenn.

 

Gruffleglenn WIP 01

A quick and dirty test showing the progress on the matte painting for the exterior of the Alcoholemist. There is copious amounts of texture stretching, geometry not lining up and general dodginess. In other words NOT FINAL.

Alcoholemist Animation Test 4: WalkCycle

An animation test, featuring the alchemist walking with a jar of fireflies at dusk.

Animation/Render test 3

the latest animation test, in the same room turn arund as before. this should give a good sense of his scale in the world, and and how he and his room tie together.

Texturing Progress and Gruffleglenn

Here are some texturing WIPs for the Alchemists room courtesy of Brian and his first concept for the town of Gruffleglenn.