Evaluating My Progress

I did enjoy this module to a certain extent, and am glad to have the experience of using 3d modelling software. This was one of the things I was keen to do at university.

I knew it was going to be hard, but I did not fully appreciate just how much work it is and how intricate 3d work can be. I really do give a lot of credit to those who can sit there for hours using this software and create such masterpieces, I'm not sure I have the patience to start anything now I know how long it takes!!!

I think my skills have grown greatly, but obviously I have only touched at the surface of what 3ds max can really do. Being used for so many things from animations for film to creating environments for computer games, it really is such a powerful program. I am glad to have had this experience.

Tiger Update 3

So here it is; my third and final stamp. I had it in my mind that this was going to be a dark image from the start. The idea to make the eyes glow was a last-minute thing with the aid of a tutorial for neon lights. It works well I think, but it took an age to render. Literally over 20 minutes for one render!!!

The progress of this stamp was a bit slow. It was the first stamp that I really worked on, and then I seemed to stop and do the other two. It may have been because it was the first time I played with the materials. Even with a UVW map I couldn't make it work. I had so many problems rendering; it was actually different in the preview window to the actual render, as I showed you in Update 2.

This problem stands with the final stamp, but I could hide it pretty well with all the shadows. The background image has been sourced from ___(to insert)____ and I think works quite well.

For the leaves I used the same technique as a post I made in October. I used an image of bark for the material of the tree I made and for the underside of the tiger I used the stripes of a zebra. Quite a mixture!

The 'feeling' behind this one was meant to be a sense of dominance or power. The tiger is quite a majestic animal, usually alone and a frightful predator. I have tried to 'exert this energy' through the eyes in particular, with a dark, dreary atmosphere.

Otter Stamp Update 2

Ok, the otter. Again a lot of time was spent playing with this with the fur, and I just cannot get to grips with it. The below image shows some of the problems I had.


Really it just got too confusing, and in the end I used this image from http://blog.oregonlive.com/travel_impact/2008/08/tr.bear.2.jpg below and brightened it up in photoshop with some colour saturation and colorized it with red and green to make it a brighter brown. I chose this image because the wet fur is quite similar to that of a swimming otter.


Having assigned the material (with much difficulty playing with UVW mapping) I started to play with lighting. Skylight seemed like a good idea at the time, but really didn't allow me to play with shadows at all. The image below was an attempt to give a blue atmosphere of the water, but along with that came a dull overlay. It hides how bad the uvw map turned out, but doesn't look very aestheticlly pleasing.

Nevertheless, after a lot of playing around with lighting, setting up a camera, and a few more tweaks, I have finally decided to stop wasting time trying to perfect it (I'm never happy!) and here is a final render for my otter stamp.

The feeling behind this was meant to be happiness, showing two otters having fun playing, but I think this is quite good for the 'companionship' feel too. Whereas the cat is more a sense of friendship between owner and pet, this could be more of a 'couple'. I have actually made the otter that's underneath smaller (see below for different camera angle) so it fits if the smaller one were to be female!

Cat Stamp Revamp

I decided to change the render of the cat for my final stamp, because I'm really not happy with the way the custom lighting works on the face/head. I think the one I have now chosen accentuates the shape of the muzzle (if that's what it is called!), the fur around the face especially looks a bit neater, and just looks that bit better.


**EDIT**

I forgot to mention that my 'feeling' or 'emotion' behind this was 'love' or the feeling of companionship. I tried to show this by including the hand, and would have liked to put a smile or something on the cat (obviously I can't generate the sound of purring!). I felt that it would make the stamo tacky (especially if I had written on PURR like a comic in bright bold letters.

I know they say a dog is a man's best friend so it may have been represented better with a dog, but I have always been more of a cat person myself (hence the tiger). That and the bodyshape woyld have been a bit too similar to my tiger, whereas this way round you still have a bit of variety.

Cat Update 3 - Final

I have played for hours and hours with 3ds max, trying to get my cat to look realistic. Little minor modifications to slightly change it, and to no avail. The render below is probably one of the best.



I have added a yellow tinge to the light I added to make it more realistic (lights in a home are slightly yellow). It affected the render above just a bit too much.


I like the glossiness on the coat of the image above. This is without the use of lights; the 'natural' lighting that 3ds has provided with no input from me. In some ways I think it is better than the renders I have produced, especially around the face, but have decided to persist with one of my later renders anyway. It is a bit excessive with all the shininess around the body.

I spent a while longer trying to perfect the fur, but the hair and fur tool I am finding incredibly hard to use. It may just be that I have a very complex shape to work with (I really should have practised beforehand). Below is my chosen render.

I have now produced my final stamp using the render above. The background image of the stamp is a primary source of my living room. The background image of a paper texture has been sourced from http://mayang.com/textures/Manmade/html/Paper/index.html.

Cat Update 2

Here is the 'simple' shape I started working with for my hand. This will be stroking my cat to emphasise the feeling of love.





My final object features detail on both sides.