Thought I would share a couple screenshots of old WIP projects I worked on.
Nice Hat!\
As you may have guessed its very much a Work in Progress.
It all started out as a joint venture for a CGTALK competition that I worked for months on with a guy that pleaded for weeks for me to help him out with this project. I was to do the character, and him the bike.
I would have chosen something set INDOORS with minimal set. My ‘collaborator’ chose an impossible outdoor scene.
Halfway through he pulled out of the whole project, emailing me what was basically 2 cubes that didn’t fit with any of the design sketches or storyboards. In the end I did everything you see here including the modeling, surfacing and rigging of the steampunk penny farthing.
I enjoyed working on the bike, and was pretty pleased with the results. Making the rig work on the other hand was HARD. Using positional IK, I actually got the steam powered wheels turning and piston rods lining up while they turned, but in the end what killed it for me was Lightwave’s (at the time) lack of instancing (which it now has) and the difficulty I had creating 3d trees, grass and landscape.
I always had it in mind to revisit this project. The majority of the legwork has been done and I liked the overall feel of the images. I liked the steampunk penny farthing idea, Lightwave now has instancing (and the raycast node), but still lacks a decent particle/volume solution (not going to pay $500 for the turbulence plugin when fumeFX is only $200 more).
I am drawn to the idea of using Nevron for some expressions on this guys face and the Marvelous Designer for clothes and a cloak. I think with the right camera angles and depth of field I might be able to get something pretty nice. Cloth, depth of field, motion blur and careful camera placement would cover a multitude of sins.
Well see if I ever get time to pick this up again…..
