Near-me amazon Warrior WIP, update

Most time consuming this time was the sort of knot on the sandals. Modelled and uvmapped the sandals in Silo2, textured in Zbrush 3.1, rendered in Poser7.

beach esplanade delight, WIP

Modelled in Shade, uvmapped in Silo2, rendered in Shade.

I should have put some more weathering effects all around, but it is a work in progress. The conical thatched roof, I need to get rid of that visible seam. Still, I think it conveys the general idea...

Near-me amazon Warrior WIP update

I did this the other day but did not upload it. New are the shoulder guards as well as the gauntlets. Used Silo2 and Zbrush for the modelling and texturing, rendered in Poser7

Bar and TV, as of this morning

I'm leaving the render on the background while I'm doing stuff (though I do turn it off to render other stuff), and this is how it looks as of this morning. I turned on the light panels for this image, but leaved the floor lights turned off.

Small shopping centre in Martinez de la Torre, Veracruz

A "maquette" view of a proposal of a shopping centre (or to be exact, a row of shops) in Martinez de la Torre, Veracruz. Since the design still is in very early stages, I opted for an all white image, the volumetry of the project giving it "life"

Traced and extruded in Lightwave9.3, detailed in Silo2, uvmapped in unwrap3d, rendered in Shade. I know, lots of programs involved, but this being a relatively simple project, I was experimenting using alternate workflows.

Bar and TV, rendering so far

Modelled in Shade, rendering in Maxwell. This is how the render looks so far. Behind the frosted glass panels are some light panels, as well as below the floor (which also is frosted glass). But I like this option a lot, reminds me of some film noir.

Entrance to a housing complex

Modeled and rendred entirely in Shade. The main "watch tower" however I exported to Silo to uvmap so the seams could match the design. The cars and the tree are from the Shade Collection series.

Near_me is an amazon warrior! W.I.P.

So struggling between real life, doing some more charros, and my japanese outfit for Koji G2, now I add an amazon warrior set for Near_me, a cute manga doll released recently by e-frontier.

As of now, I made her a body morph in Zbrush 3.1, which I then tweaked in Silo2, and the body armour, done in Silo2 and detailed and textured in Zbrush. I found it easier than I thought to incorporate the displacement maps and normal maps into Poser, I'll have to use this more often...

Charro suits for G2 Poser figures, now available!

Finally, some extra time well spent.

The shirts, pants, hats and skirt were modelled initially in Shade using curved surfaces, then tweaked and uvmapped in Silo. The buttons on the shirt were also done in Silo. The ribbon in Shade.

The shoes were completely done in Silo.

The texturing colouring was done in Zbrush. The occlusion from the bucles was baked in Lightwave.

Finally, image postwork was done in the Gimp.

You can find a link to the product page here.

Doodling with Silo, Shade, Zbrush, Lightwave, the Gimp and Poser

A closeup on some clothing items I did recently. I did use a lot of programs on this one!

The shirt was originally done in Shade with curved surfaces, exported as a polygon mesh to Silo, where I inserted the buttons, tweaked the mesh, and made some understandable uv maps. Same with the pants, in Silo I made the belt and the basic bucle.

The bucle I exported to Zbrush, where I did the floral thingies. I exported the displacement stuff to Lightwave, where I baked the occlusion information, and saved as a texture.

The bump texture of the shirt I did in the Gimp.

The flower thingies in the pants I also did them on Zbrush. I also did the occlusion thing on the pants via Lightwave.

I think I could have also made a bump map for the pants, but it did add nothing to the image.

And all this I rendered in Poser7.

I could have done an occlusion pass in Poser, but baking the occlusion makes for a faster render when you need multiple views.

Koji G2 formal kimono WIP, almost done!

I think it is now just a texture thing, making some textures with some kamo on the haori and stuff, but the hard work is mostly done.

CFE station for Atlixco, Puebla

Keeping in the overall mexican contemporary style, this is part of several alternatives for the Atlixco, Puebla branch of the CFE (or Federal Comission for Electricity).
Modeled and rendered in Shade, using some Vue palmtrees, and some Shade content.

Haori Hakama and Tabi for Koji G2, W.I.P

This is something I'm working on in my spare time. As you can see, the main issue seems to be the bump texture. Still working on it, and I know I'll get it right in the end ;)

Modeled in Shade and Silo, rendered in Poser7, no postwork.

The figure is G2 Koji, by e-frontier, btw...

Weekend trip to Tehuacan

Tehuacán, or Tehuacán de las granadas (Tehuacan of the pomegranates), lies some two hours south of Puebla city, and is famous as a centre of denim manufacture, chicken egg production, and of course, its fabled mineral water.
Until quite recently is looked more like a sleepy town, this being specially true due to the fact that is is almost year round a very hot and dry climate. Who wants to work with that heat?
So anyway, a friend of mine that works in the tomato greenhouse industry near Tehuacan invited me and a cousing of her to visit, and so we did. Arriving early, I took the chance to buy myself a beautiful Sahuayo hat, and walk around downtown, with its enchanting central square (or Zócalo), admire it's colonial architecture, and so on.
While part of the state of Puebla, it retains it's own charm and personality.
Later we met my friend, had some nice chit chat, and went over to her place to get ready for a night of partying.
Curiously enough, the disco, located to the left of the city hall, once was a house of the famous ex-dictator Porfirio Diaz. Music was a bit for teenagers, though nothing extreme, no mosh pits or slam contests. Everybody was quite nice. Very hospitable people.
Of course the next day we basically slept the whole day, we danced THAT much. And there is no nightspot curfew, so we danced till quite late.

On the way back, I allowed myself a bit of night chill in order to watch the stars in the heavens above. The sky being so unpolluted and clear, with hardly a cloud in sight, it was just the perfect opportunity for stargazing.

Fashion Dress for Terai Yuki 2

A beautiful trendy dress, if you ask me ;)

Available here

A simple love story

This is the video with which I won the antics3d focus competition.
Let me tell you a bit about antics3d.

In case it doesn't show up in the flash thingy, here is the direct link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=7FAmNp8zsz0

Antics3d is a pre-visualization program, used extensively in the tv and movie industries as a tool to help explain everybody involved in the making of scenes just how the scenes are intended to look like. It is a wonderful alternative to sketch storyboarding, and has many very useful tools to set up cameras, lighting, virtual sets, and so on.

However, me being a 3dcg archviz illustrator, what do I have to do with antics3d?

Well, antics3d has more than meets the eye. The drag and drop way that one can create complete scenes can also be applied as a previz architectural tool. It even has a 3dsmax plugin which enables 3dsmax people to add to the huge library of premade content to quickly and effortlessly populate scenes, with people, cars, streetlights, doors that open and close, etc etc etc. Really great stuff. And fun.

So anyway, I was doing a bit of previz work for a friend, when I decided it would be more fun to do the work with a simple story. It would help showcase the intended work better, and would keep the potential client a bit more engrossed on what was being presented (as most clients are not too deep on architecture).

Well, here is the video. I should have done some cleaning and stuff, hidden the camera paths and so on, but it shows just what can be done in some 3 hours with the software.

Gaby Valero sings to a packed audience in the Zocalo!

Gaby Valero, a good friend of mine, and singer extraordinaire, sang to a packed audience in the Zócalo de Puebla (main square in downtown Puebla), Mexico. She sang as part of the repertoire showcasing the cultural season this year.
Accompaining her were three extremely talented musicians, one of which I have the luck of knowing personally, and let me say, he is a really virtuoso on the violin.
Shown here is the backstage bootlegged video ( :P just kidding).
What really happened is that when she got to the stage, there was nowhere to put her stuff, and I volunteered to help her out, so I became her "logistical manager" for the event.

I just won the best video of Antics3d Focus Group!

I checked my mail, and this is what I got:

(from Antics Focus Group, email address suppressed)

Dear All,

The quality of the feedback provided and the videos submitted were of a very high standard, however, there can only be two winners and they are:

Winner of the Best Feedback Competition: Colin Le Roux

Winner of the Best Video Competition: Juan Manuel Bautista Hoepfner

Both winners will take home $500.

Once again, thank-you to everyone and please feel free to email me, at anytime, any additional feedback, user requirements, or project updates you may have. We will also keep you posted about other opportunities to contribute to the development of this product.

Best Regards

David Harragin

David Harragin
Antics Technologies Ltd

Linen Hall
3rd Floor
162-168 Regent Street
London
W1B 5TD

Tel: +44 (0) 207 038 3900
Fax: +44 (0) 207 038 3901
Web: www.antics3d.com

So congratulations, Colin! And congratulations to me too! :D
I'll upload the video soon, after I finish some pressing assignments

Content Paradise winning image

This is the image that won.

I won the Content Paradise image contest!

For the benefit of those not registered as Passport users in Content Paradise, I attach a screenshot of the all-important announcement that I won :D