Modern Forestry

I finally have something to show for my current shading project, although I only have the modeling done.  I actually started the project over twice because I couldn't come up with what I wanted to do, and I kept hating everything I ended up with.

The assignment is to do an interior scene, and my initial plan was to do a classroom with a shot into a messy student's desk. So I modeled the whole scene and realized I had to do most of the shaders procedurely so it would be a lot more difficult to get the result I wanted. I'm still not used to procedural texturing/shading, especially now that we're building our shaders procedurely too and not using the default blinn, lambert, phong, etc. So while I really liked my idea I decided the scope would end up being way more than I could handle.

The problem was that I then had no idea what I wanted to do. I originally didn't want to do a modern interior design, because everyone does that. But I really love design and seeing as I was running out of time I gave in and decided to take the easy route this time and just go modern. I usually like to challenge myself to be more creative/push the limits of what I can do, but with two weeks down the drain it just wasn't an option any more.

So I spent a reasonable amount of time modeling today and got the majority of the scene done (I still need to add a few small decorative elements so it doesn't feel so empty).


Please keep in mind that the lighting and textures in the image are not final and are simply to give a basic idea of what I am going for.

Today one of my professors approached me and asked me if I would be willing to make him an illustration of a forest to be used in a play for elementary schoolers where they will be using 3D and projections to create the backdrops. Basically they are going to project a 3D forest ontop of the background to give it depth and in all likely hood not much of the background will be visible. He showed me some examples and told me he would need it to be very stylized and illustrative and I could just paint it really fast. Since it wasn't a complex request and I like helping out when I can I told him I'd do it.

I spent about an hour on it today and here's what I have so far.

I'm going to show it to him tomorrow to see where he wants me to take it. I'm thinking the tree trunks might need to be blurred a little more since their outline is pretty crisp, but that will be easy to do so I am not too worried at this point. He wasn't entirely sure how it should be stylized so I want to wait before doing too much else with it.

R-R-R-Robot!

Sorry I'm late with the update!

I kept trying to wait until I had something cool to show as it has been a rather slow week.

I almost thought I wasn't going to come up with anything, but I ended up revisiting my steam punk robot oracle peice from earlier. For those of you who don't remember or don't know, I was working on this piece over the winter break but kept having trouble with it so I decided to put it down and wait a while before trying to finish it.

I'm still not 100% satisfied with it, but it I'm at a point where I am at least comfortable with it.

My biggest issue was try to get it so the textures weren't competing with each other, and so that they weren't distracting from the overall composition. I wanted certain parts to be shiny, but at times they felt like they were just overwhelmingly shiny.  I also fixed her armpit for the most part, which I know was something that almost everyone I showed it to had an issue with. 

I think my favorite angle is the close up one. I really like how the composition leads up the face as a focal point.

The King and I

All hail the king!

Finally! I finally have a turn table for King! It has been a long process, both good and bad. I made mistakes, faced new problems, and learned to overcome frustrations. And it was all worth it!


King: Hoodlum Five from Madeleine Rabil on Vimeo.

You can click the following links to go back and read my different posts where I talk about developing King (the links are in order from earliest to latest):

The King of Hoodlums
Return of the King
Making Mistakes and Moving Forward
Finals Fiasco
Tea Time with the Hoodlums
Holidays with the Hoodlums

Everything All the Time

I wanted to wait until I got the turn table for King done before I made another post, but due to various circumstances I just haven't had a chance to get it done yet. The good news is I'm ahead in my classwork for school at the moment so hopefully now I have some time to work on it. I do have a bunch of new things to share however! I've been kind of all over the place in terms of what I am working on and trying to get done.

First of all I got a preliminary turn-table for the piano done. I need to redo it it though and make it so that's it's entirely loopable.

Low Poly Piano Turntable from Madeleine Rabil on Vimeo.

I also finally got to render out a video of the development process for my playground project that I did last year in my 3D environmental design class. 

Playground Developement Process from Madeleine Rabil on Vimeo.

Something new I'm hopefully going to be working on this year is a painting of an drawing I did about 2 years ago. I've had 2 canvases lying around all year and I finally decided it was time I did something with them. Fine art painting and drawing is something that I really miss when I am at college and I try to make an effort to do as much of it as I can on the side. I've taken a few courses as a part of my major, but they've been more focused on the foundations of fine arts. Don't get me wrong, training in the foundations and core concepts of art is extremely important and practice never hurt anyone. But with the deadlines and all the other school work I have, I never feel like I really get to finish the work I produce for those classes. So I really prefer to work on my own time when I can because I can on a painting for as long as I want and as much as I need to.

Usually I paint something pretty simple and straight forward for my side projects, but I've decided I'm going to paint this drawing instead.

If you're familiar with the work of Alphonse Mucha, then hopefully you see some sort of resemblance to his style. I am somewhat of a die-hard fan of his work and I decided that I wanted to try out the method of cross hatching and shading he uses. I've already re-drawn it on the canvas, and I added in more of a background as well. I put some big curtains behind her and a few pillows and a seat cushion. I haven't gotten to paint anything yet though because I forgot to bring my paint palette to school. I'll be getting one soon though, hopefully.



The last thing I have is a quick drawing I did on the Cintiq tablets we have in the computer lab I work at. Spent a little under 2 hours on it. I worked over hours straight today so I decided it was high time I take a break and just relax. I decided this right when my shift started, so I couldn't go home and work on my painting and ended up just getting on the cintiq instead.

Pianos Are Productive!

I have a couple of updates!

1.) The Piano is complete! Hooray!!! I finally got around to finishing the textures, all that's left is to finish rendering out the turn table and composit it together, and re-render the stills. I've pretty much come down to the final push with all the work I wanted to get done over my Holiday break. Unfortunately it looks like things will be spilling over into the school quarter when I get back as rendering has slowed me down quite a bit. I'm not as familiar with rendering as I am with modeling and texturing so I've made a couple of mistakes that have set me back. Anyways, enough about all that!
Here's a look at the finished piano! I just grabbed a few of the images from its turn table for now. I'll put up the real stills when I get to them.

(I'm really happy with the way the peddles turned out. Even at an angle it's hard to tell that the section where they go into the back of the piano is just a flat texture)

2.) I'm still in the process of getting King's Turn Table done. I had the whole thing rendered out when I realize I forgot to adjust the curves in the curve editor so they weren't linear. I'll try to get it up here as soon as I can.

3.) I DO have one turn table to share. I made the same mistake and forever to make the curves linear so it's not perfect, but right now getting my other stuff done is a priority so it'll have to do.


Classical Figure Turntable and Wireframe from Madeleine Rabil on Vimeo.

That's all for now. I wish I could talk some more about the stuff I've been working on but I'm down to the wire and have so much to do! I'll have lots more to share next time hopefully since I've gotten a lot of things at their final stages, I just haven't had a chance to assemble everything yet.

EDIT: I forgot I wanted to thank Skybase for his comment on my earlier post. He pointed out that the piano looked like it was floating, which I was able to fix in time for all my rendering.