Motorcycle renders

I've spent pretty much my entire spare time this month rendering the motorcycle that I've been working on. It took a lot of time to try out different materials, lights etc. But it has all been worth it up to this point because I really dig the results so far. Lots of grunge, dirt and attitude.

What I did was I exported the Maya file as an stl and then refined the setup a bit in Blender. Having done that Blender Cycles was used to render all the images. Some images needed higher sampling so I allowed them to render overnight for up to eight or ten hours per frame.

There's still some work to do until I think I'm done with this project. Oh, and I've now edited 55 hours of time-lapse footage down to just two hours. The video only needs to be put together at this point!

I have some more cool angles on my hard-drive but here's some of the finished pieces that I can share.

Haven't decided yet which of the images go to my online portfolio.

I'll post the time-lapse video once I get it done.

I also uploaded the model to Sketchfab. Check out the interactive preview below!

Motorcycle project update

I've been working for the past two weeks on my latest personal project, the Harley WLA 42 motorcycle model. Building up on where I left last time I posted about this piece two weeks ago.

As for the 3D modeling part using Maya I think it's now pretty much all done. The modeling phase took me over an entire month: I started on 30th October and finished today. It's the longest time I've spent working on one single 3D model. I might have went a little overboard with some of the details but oh well.. There's so many little details that just had to be included in the model. I had fun making the parts and at this point I think it looks very satisfying:

It's crazy to think how long time it actually takes to produce quality models.

I tried to work something like two to three hours a day on this project. Some days even longer than that and some days not at all.

I've been pretty busy with other stuff so sometimes things get dragged.

I have now over 50 hours of screen recordings on my hard drive. It covers the whole process of creating the geometry, fixing topology, redoing stuff, searching for reference images and even changing tracks on Spotify.

I'll edit the time-lapse video once I get this whole thing done.

I'm very satisfied with the motorcycle. It looks very accurate while being relatively light 3D model to adjust when necessary. The topology is pretty much all quads with just a few ngons. Overall I think my hardsurface modeling skills have improved a lot. During the last year or so the quality of my work has become pretty solid I think.

Here's more screenshots from different angles:

Next up: shading, lighting and rendering!

Old School Motorcycle WIP

I've been working on a new portfolio piece for the last few weeks.

Since I made the Chevy Impala vintage car last spring I decided to make something in line with that while still totally new and interesting for me:

A high poly version of a Harley WLA 42! A classic motorcycle from WW2 era.

I'm going to make it a truly high poly model with pretty much all the visible details that I see fit.

For example the wheels alone took me something like 6 hours to make. And they're not even perfect duplicates so I had to tweak them individually.

Close-up of the tire detail

The whole thing is still very much a work in progress.

It has been a lot of fun (but frustrating at times) to search for good reference images. And there's always different variations of the same vehicle type so I have to kinda judge what I think looks best.

Still have to find better angles and close-ups of some of the parts like for example the engine. My version of it is still something that I roughly blocked out at the early stages.

I'm using Maya 2014 Student Version for the project. Maya's modeling tools are kinda pain to use but so far I'm fine with it..

Quad view inside Maya

If all goes well there'll be a time-lapse video about the entire process sometime soon.

Purebox visualizations

I promised to post more results from our latest industrial design project and here they are:

Poster design in A1 format, it's huge

As I mentioned in the previous post, the entire object was modeled by me so it was natural for me to make the visualizations as well.
However, I didn't do any of the actual layout, texts, logos, image placement; the graphic design part so to say. CG is my thing.

It's a very graphic and simple poster design and I like it personally a lot. Striking focal point that grabs attention and then some additional information below. It instantly communicates unlike basic studio renders.
My friends didn't have a clue that this sort of thing is even possible to do so at least they were pretty amazed by the result. The splash effect itself was based on an old Blender tutorial that I then modified further. In the end I think this type of imagery suited our concept design very well.

The first thing after importing our model from Creo was to create a simple proxy object to guide the simulation. The proxy object was essentially nothing more than just a cube with rounded corners..
I parented our geometry into the proxy and then keyframed the simplified proxy object. I had made a simple rectangular volume to act as our fluid and adjusted some settings to make the water as high res as possible.
Simulating one second (24 frames) of fluid motion took for a while but was totally worth it.

The 3D view inside Blender

I made sure that the proxy is not rendered, it only guides the motion so to say.
The shaders were relatively simple: different plastics with a glossy component and the water was just a refractive transparent material with the correct IOR of water. I had a wide mesh light acting as an area lamp just outside the frame to provide the main source of light.
Rendering was made using the Cycles path tracer that comes bundled with Blender. Full global illumination with real caustics was used to achieve best image quality possible. (Some visible caustics can be seen on the surface of the object.)
Since we needed a big image for the print it took "a while" to render our image. About 10 hours or so.

The Blender compositor: Sun Beams node highlighted

I had to use the Reduce Noise feature in PS to clear some artifacts, do some sharpening, adjust contrast etc. I used a new feature in Blender called Sun Beams to create the diagonal streak of light coming from above as post processing effect.
This was one of the most complex things I've done in a while. Learned a lot about fluid sims and animating which is always nice.

100% CG imagery

Oh, and I even made a short teaser trailer about our product and uploaded it to Youtube. Even though it is never required to make such videos I think it's fun to show how things work for real.
Besides, I like making videos and stuff.

PureBox - fresh from the 3D printer

Here's a quick update about our portable water purifier project I'm currently working on.

We actually received our 3D printed prototype something like a week ago. I just didn't have the time to write about it yet. But now I do!

Ok, so we do have a name for the concept device: PureBox.

And judging by the look of the final product it's exactly what the name implies: a pure box with rounded edges. However, it's the inner beauty (or complexity) that matters in this one.

Many things have changed from the early versions. The solar panel for example is no more visible on the exterior shell and the light of the UV lamp now shines through a small triangular hole. Overall everything is now a lot more refined than previously.

some of our gorgeous plastic parts

As I mentioned earlier we used Creo to model everything. It's pretty much like any other CAD application, only a bit more advanced than the rest. I guess the main real difference is the fact that every part is inside its own individual file and everything is assembled into one main file in the end.

It's not a surprise that I took further responsibility as the main 3D modeler/visualist in the project. Even though all the decisions were made as a team it was me who created all the extrusions, revolves, cuts and features of each and every part of our model.

Behind the scenes look at our desperate workstations

We had to model all the interior details and decide how we wanted to approach making them. One thing we had to keep in mind was to make it as easy as possible to mould and manufacture even though we're only making a 3D printed plastic prototype. Technically we could print almost anything but it would not be very reasonable in the real world..

It certainly was pretty difficult to come up with all the things for the nuts and bolts while making sure that everything fits where they belong. Luckily it was pretty easy to alter the dimensions when we suddenly wanted to change things. It's very different to work with such high precision rather than eyeballing the designs when making visualizations. We went as far as arguing about the proper dimensions down to one tenths of a millimeter just to get everything right. The thing is that there's no one solution or a true value for any given thing. It's all about what we think might work and then we try it out and see what comes out of it.

I have to say that this assignment has improved my overall CAD/hard surface modeling skills a lot.

Now it seems almost too easy to just create the outer surfaces of objects when doing 3D models for illustrations, games etc.

Here's a few screenshots I took of our part files:

Exploded view of our prototype

But yeah, we managed to get everything ready for printing and delivered the triangulated STL files for printing. I was very happy with the quality of the prints and everything went surprisingly smoothly. I even tried to assemble all the components one night at home just to see how everything fits inside. And they do fit.

Testing the assembly

It's insane to think that it was less than three weeks ago when we had only early drafts for the project and now we're pretty much done with the prototype. I'll post more about our final renders and presentation sometime very soon.

Low poly modeling

Here's a collection of low poly medieval assets. Could be used for games and so on. Was fun making them.

Here are couple of interactive previews embedded directly from my own Sketchfab page:

Final symphony concert

I went to another games music concert two days ago titled Final Symphony - Music from Final Fantasy VI, VII and X. And boy did I love it! Final Symphony is a series of concerts played in different countries by different orchestras but with the same conductor. These kinda events are not held very often especially here in Finland so it was wonderful to see this one become true. And it didn't matter at all that I had to travel back home from Tampere by train at midnight..

It was such an awesome experience because I'm a huge fan of Final Fantasy series. After all one of my first games ever was Final Fantasy VIII. I've played through all the FF games from 1 up to 12 with my good old PS1 and PS2 and love every single one of them. What makes the games so great for me is not the storyline or drama, heck I couldn't even read in English when I was a kid. It was always about making progress in the games and experiencing new locations, fighting monsters and leveling up the characters. All accompanied with great music and great visuals.

If I compare it to the Finnish games music concert held last month, this one beat it on an emotional level by a mile! Until next time.

3D printing yet again

So I received my last and latest order for this summer from Shapeways some time ago.

I had ordered a keychain and a pendant of sorts out of stainless steel. Both top-notch quality and perfect for my intentions.

Compared to the badge I made earlier these ones have a circular extrusion that allows them to be attached to a keyring for example. The pendant is like the usual ambigram logo design but wrapped around a circle twice. Looks pretty "twisted" and cool to me, hah.

I went to the same craft supply store as before and bought some brown mocha leather necklace string for the pendant. I also bought a small piece of jewellery that is often attached between the cord and the pendant. Here's a peek at the process from the unattached parts to the final piece shot against a white backdrop:

My own necklace waiting to be assembled

This is how it turned out

Looks pretty decent, don't you think?

My venture into the world of 3D printing has been a very exciting personal project to work on. Now I just need to come up with some new ideas to make.

I've also been working on my showreel or a video collection of recent works and animations. I've only included stuff from the past year, nothing older than that. It's going to be about a minute long and a sort of like a personal introduction video about me and my 3D skills. I'm trying to get it online in the coming weeks but we'll see..

On a side note but still absolutely relevant to mention: I went to a concert at the Helsinki Music Centre titled "Pelin henki - Pelimusiikkia orkesterille" today evening.

Today's concert ticket (notice the book and the Death Star)

The concert was a montage of fully orchestrated versions of the tunes and main themes from popular Finnish video games: Angry Birds, Tiny Thief, Clash of Clans and Alan Wake.

Even some of the original composers were present at the event and people seemed to genuinely like the music.

A pretty cool event and I liked it a lot.

I'm trying to get back into character animation later this year and obviously make some general progress as a 3D artist.

My second year at Aalto Arts is starting next month so it's going to be busy times ahead.

Entire month of SWSCA

I decided to subscribe for a full month at Stan Winston School of Character Arts. It's an online educational site that has a wide collection of movie makeup, VFX and practical effects education. Pretty damn interesting to say the least!

Stan Winston was one of the special effects gurus of the American film industry who was responsible for many of the iconic movie characters we know today. The workshop founded by him has made creations for films such as Predator, The Terminator, Aliens, Jurassic Park, Avatar etc.

I'm a huge fan of majority of their work, and you can even spot my Predator figure standing on my desk.

I already activated the courses on digital storyboarding and prosthetic makeup effects.

So far things have been worth every penny.

The storyboarding course for example taught how to use Maya in the creative process of planning camera angles, finding the right perspective lines for the drawings etc. Playing around with the exact focal lengths and everything inside a 3D program makes it easier to test different compositions and provides physically accurate results.

I already have knowledge of Maya so it was pretty easy to keep up with the tutorial.

Then I watched how pros make their masks out of pro materials. Apparently there's a tool for everything..

I have made latex masks myself and am a huge fan of cool masks and costumes so this was kind of a fan moment for me.

Here's a couple of pictures from my sessions taking notes and everything..

Oh, and here are the links to the actual courses.

How to Storyboard a Monster Movie

How to Sculpt a Character Makeup

Obviously the full courses are only available for paid subscribers, but they offer free previews for everyone.

All in all, I recommend SWSCA for everyone interested in visual and special effects!

The Ambigram printed in 3D

I received yet another order from Shapeways! This time I had decided to prepare two different 3D printable versions of my own signature logo of sorts: the Ambigram.

The actual symbol is a design that I made for myself already back in 2009. It's a stylized version of my first name with lots of sharp edges. The catch with these so-called ambigrams is that they look exactly the same when viewed from a different angle i.e. rotated upside down..

I also wanted to try out two different materials: the smaller one is made out of stainless steel and the other out of polished white plastic. I have to say that especially the metal one looks very cool!

Here's the page of the final product:

Ambigram model @ Shapeways

I have to note that it was not just a simple extrusion but a truly three-dimensional piece. The actual letters stick out a bit and they are slightly bevelled. I used Blender 3D for all the modeling work as usual. The objects had to be all made watertight and then scaled into appropriate versions. Once again it took me a few tries to make the models pass all the printing requirements..

I had already decided to use the steel one as badge so I went to a local craft supply store earlier today and bought a couple of these pieces that are attached into every badge:

Then I added a thin layer of black fabric to hide them.

Here's how the thing turned out:

Finally, I attached the badge to my leather bag. Looking good if I might say so!

On a final note, I wanted to see how easy it is to paint plastic prints with acrylic paints.

Turns out the paint sticks very well with no issues. After a few layers of paint white print turned out like this:

My plan is to start sculpting action figures or tiny busts/portraits someday and then possibly paint them by hand.

It seems that 3D printing is the way to go if I want to make multiple cost-efficient copies.

Now how about that!

Progress report - June

Here it is: the very first glimpse on my "secret" summer project.

It's just that I don't usually like to reveal too much about work that is incomplete.

However, I'm confident with this one.

Ok, so it's a music video.. but also a more cinematic story inspired by graphic novels, game cutscenes and such!

And yes, it's going to be all CG made with Blender.

But let's face it: almost 4 minutes in total this animation project is going to be nearly an entire half of a ten minute short film!

It's insane amount of work but I really want to see how far I'm able to push my skills: not working only on a still image or one shot but multiple scenes instead!

So far I've finished working on six individual shots or sequences of the story.

I've had to model all the assets and props, craft simple environments and animate the scene to be able to render final composite images.

There's also simulations to deal with such as leaves in the opening sequence and smoke in various scenes. Lots of things that require some further tweaking.

And I still have more environmental modeling left to do for the rest of the shots.

Here's some of the completed final frames in HD resolution.

Some of them may eventually change a bit...

The cover art design from my previous post!

Closeup of the wheels in motion

Wide view of the desolate landscape

This one seems spooky enough

Highway to Hell... sort of

One of the more climatic shots

And a behind the scenes screenshot of the mess I'm dealing with, ugh.

Wait for more to come!

Imaginary cover art for The Riff

Inspired by the visual style of graphic novels I decided to create a new non-photorealistic 3D illustration using Blender. This is also going to be featured in my summer project that I'm currently working on if all goes well. Here's the final result:

This imaginary cover art illustration is based on the lyrics of a heavy rock song called The Riff by my favorite band Lordi. I try not to do too much fanart nowadays but I felt that the lyrics alone gave me enough freedom to use my own ideas! The lyrics tell a vague story about a man that gets picked up by Mr. Death himself driving an old Chevy. The grim reaper takes the narrator on a dreamlike road trip that ends up in a car crash: The reaper bites the dust but the man survives.

To start off I've been modeling the Chevrolet Impala 1959 convertible car model from scratch for quite some time. It's one of those things that every 3D modeler has to go through at least once in their time. Not to mention the fact that Industrial Designers are usually car freaks.. even though I'm not that much. Creating the car replica was a project on its own that I've been working on and off in my spare time. Every detail is modeled by hand based on various reference photos that I found online.

I used MakeHuman to create a generic male character that fits the role of the narrator. However I had to tweak the weighting of the rig to make it work correctly inside Blender. The grim reaper was made using an existing skeleton 3D model from blendswap.com that I then customised further: I modeled the horns, the ragged robe and attached a pair of sunglasses that I had already created by myself.

To create the two-toned look of the rendered images I used a non-photorealistic shader. All that I have in the scenes is one sun lamp that provides even illumination from one uniform direction. The final shade of the surfaces is based on the illumination and is either black or white.

Here's a couple of viewport views inside Blender:

The final image compositing was quite tough to pull off and it involved lots of experimenting back and forth between Blender and Gimp that I use for image editing:

Foreground elements with no visible contact shadows

Shadow pass I used to create the inverted shadows

Rendered grim reaper element

In the final cover art image I added a black bar behind the grim reaper to fit the text inside. It was the same license plate font from dafont.com that I used in the car's plate. Overall this illustration was insanely fun to create and it shows that not every render has to be photorealistically created to have a strong impact.