Blue Tit

This semester I had a go at another idle animation, this time a blue tit. Blue tits are very fast moving birds and I wanted to show that in the idle but not over-do it. I made quick but small movements so that it wouldn't look too strange when played on loop. 

Not modelled by me, rig by Bradley Bradley Clarke

Statue

This is a work in progress model of a statue for Goblin Story which I am currently sculpting in Mudbox. At first I found it challenging to model this statue as it is quite different and unique but I quickly got the hang of it and am enjoying sculpting him.

Mirror mirror

This is a mirror I modeled for Goblin Story which is going to be used in the temple room. As this design is unique it was hard to model from, but I managed to do a pretty good job, however I may need to sculpt it to add more detail.

Gems

Another project I've been working on is Goblin Story. For this I was given the task of modelling the gem which is one of the main assets in the film. I created one model and then made a few more through retopologising the mesh of the original one to keep the size and style similar. I then used a shader that Luke made for the original gem, however it didn't seem to work on the other models the same way. We haven't figured out what the problem was but I am currently in the process of sculpting an entirely new gem. 

Animating animals

I also did some animating for the Pocket Pals app last semester. The top video shows an idle animation I made for the pine marten, however as it is an idle I needed to decrease the amount of movement otherwise watching the idle on a loop would look strange. Although pine martens are curious little creatures and move quite quickly I couldn't overdo the movement as it was an idle animation. I began with the animal taking a step forwards in the idle but it looked strange so I re-animated it, took the step out and decreased the overall movement of it. 

I think it could look good if it looked like the animals were just breathing and moving very slightly with an occasional blink - I might try this on another idle.

Rigged by Bradley Clarke

Animal models

These are two animal models I modeled for Pocket Pals last semester. I learnt how to UV unwrap them and had a go at texturing the squirrel. I am currently modelling one of the main human characters for this project and am hoping to sculpt, retopologize, UV unwrap, texture and rig this boy character. 

UV unwrapping

Last semester I learned how to UV unwrap models so that they can be textured. These animals were modeled and UV unwrapped by me. This project, Pocket Pals, has a low poly design style which made it easier to UV unwrap as I didn't have to worry too much about how the seams affected the texture as they were mostly block colours.

Although it was suggested that I make the layout make sense for the animal to make it look as though the body had been unfolded to help the texture artists understand where the body parts were, I think I should make better use of space in future UV unwrapping. I should also make sure I increase the size of the UV shells that need the most detail. This will help texture artists to have a clearer view of all the UV shells when painting them.

3D environment

A project I was helping out on last semester, Pirate Code, needed a 3D environment model of a swimming pool. I drew the swimming pool from birds-eye-view and then created a simple model using Maya as you can see in the screenshots and quick test renders below.

   

Although this model was only to be used for backgrounds I could have improved it by adding details to the benches, doors, pool ladders and such. It was good practice and I have learnt quite a bit about modelling an environment for backgrounds through this.