Militarized Police Cover Art
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I've used my Militarized Police model to make some cover art for a friend's new song of the same name.
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Militarized Police: Compositor Filter Experiment
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The goal of the Militarized Police project is to create a low detail model suitable for decimation for use in group and crowd scenes. Here I share an early experiment with non-photorealism effects in the compositor.
Read MoreProject Maiko: Maiko version 3 complete
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After much time spent experimenting, and many distractions, Maiko v3 is done. I settled on a scene that would be simple, but also allow for interesting lighting. The end result is an odd mix of toon and elements normally used when trying for photorealism, such as depth of field and reflections. But that's the whole point of using Cycles in the first place!
Read MoreProject Maiko: Maiko v3 modeling complete
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Modeling on the third version of Maiko has finished (save for a few details.) The first two versions had various issues that made them tedious to work with for making actual art, such as elements that only looked good from a few angles and limitations on their rigging. I've taken everything I learned from making the first two, and several months more experimentation, to create a final version.
Read MoreRoot Node Thumbnail Logo
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A few weeks back I made a logo for a friend's Soundcloud.com music project, Root Node.
We wanted something simple that would look good as a small thumbnail image. The concept was a more literal node tree than we see in Blender's node editor. My friend gave me a doodled sketch, and I re-created it with Blender and threw in some compositor effects. I recently shared it in the Blender NPR facebook group, and enough people were curious about how it was made that I will share the settings and file.
Read MoreProject Maiko: The Shader Group
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We've covered the basics of what Cycles shaders are doing, how to mix them, and how different lights will affect them. Now we can see it all on an actual model.
The Shader group I used for Maiko is simple. I wanted to follow the manga style of minimal detail, so rather than worry about texturing, I let Cycles provide most of the nuance of the image with nice gradients of light.
Read MoreProject Maiko: Understanding Cycles Toon Shaders
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The node setup I used for Maiko is not complex by Cycles standards, but I am going to start at the beginning for the benefit of those not familiar with Cycles shaders (specifically Diffuse, Glossy, and Toon versions of each). This first post will explain the nodes and lights I am working with so that those with minimal prior experience will be able to understand the full setup. The Maiko shader nodes will be covered in the second post.
Read MoreProject Maiko: Toon Shader Blending
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Experimenting with blending multiple toon shaders by introducing noise into their size and smooth sockets. The result is a painterly effect, like you would get if digital painting in Photoshop.
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