Mrbrownjd 3d Blog

Long Time No Post

2012-01-20T10:36:00.000-08:00

seeing as I haven't posted in about a year I thought I would fill you in on what I've been up to.

For the past year I've been working at Obsidian Entertainment working on the Fallout: New Vegas DLC's and other various projects. On the side I've been working more on sculpting and building up some new portfolio pieces for fun. Here is some of that...

Amber Heard: character sculpt

arrior: WIP game character

Black Widow: Character sculpt based off of J Scott Campbell's design

Spiderwoman

2010-12-22T01:36:00.001-08:00

GLB Continued

2010-06-09T01:06:00.001-07:00

More progress. I have to optimize the mesh and touch up the normal map a bit. I was also gonna add just a tiny bit of graffiti.

GLB

2010-06-07T18:42:00.000-07:00

Glorified light bulb

Might have be a bit less generous with the grunge but the materials were what I was going for. There are still some missing pieces as well.

GRADUATE!!

2010-04-30T16:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had my graduation. BA in Digital Animation. Now I get some free time to really hone in my work. I'll be working on fixing the Attero Characters and then on to some new projects! Here is what I have on the goblin but I have still only put few hours. Let me know what you think :)

New/old stuff

2010-04-25T21:01:00.000-07:00

Last semester I worked on a project called Fall Out. It was a short short Sci-Fi Film. One thing I got to do was model the drop ship that would appear in the film. It's texture has just been completed by Andrew Pfiffer and I've posted the renders of it on my portfolio. See more here

Working Hard Continued

2010-04-23T02:10:00.001-07:00

Some more progress. Not much but I'm having fun. It's amazing how little it takes for a light bulb to go off.

Making Improvement

2010-04-22T19:09:00.000-07:00

I've continued to work on my painting skills and try to get more critique and input. I Finished up the sword for now and am feeling a bit more comfortable with painting. I started reworking the Shaman textures but I still have a long way to go. It still surprises me how little I did with it and how I'm glad I'm going back to make HUGE improvements to it.

Progress thread is here

More Sword

2010-03-30T18:29:00.001-07:00

I continued working on the sword. Again, trying to demand more of myself.

Changes:

strategically adding and reducing detail (trying not to get too noisy)
Color and contrast
Subtle hue variation
Making the eye movable
making the lighting more uniform

I'm planning on putting in a lot more work into the hilt and even changing up the silhouette to create balance. I'm trying to be flexible and change things to making it better. Still needs more work but I'm having fun.

2010-03-28T22:38:00.000-07:00

During and after GDC I received some really great feedback on my texture skills. Needless to say I need to spend a lot more time and give more attention to them. To do so, I began working on a sword. I was having fun working on it but after having another one of my pieces painted over by a professional artist, I realized that I need to push myself much harder and demand more detail and subtle nuances to sell my work. Thanks to everyone who gave me critique and pushed me to work harder. I'll have more updates to come but I was excited to show what I have improved on so far.

JD

Getting exciting :D

2010-03-04T16:42:00.001-08:00

Hi everyone,

I haven't posted in a about a month cause I've been hammering out a bunch of work for Attero.

After competing against several other very qualified game teams our team Attero got the GDC Sponsorship. 15 students my self included, will be flown to GDC, with expo passes, hotel and travel covered. We are also be beautified by the school with fliers, shirts, and copies of the game all decked out by marketing. Hopefully everyone will enjoy the trip.

As for new work the latest thing I've completed is the Evoker character for Attero. She was supposed to be a sexy character with lost of ornate clothing and lots of skin. Andy Arias helped with the concept and I did all the modeling and texture work from the palettes he provided in the concept. Overall I was really happy with how quickly I completed her and was pleased with how good she looks in game.

Official Website

2009-12-25T19:45:00.001-08:00

I got my official website up today, Christmas of all days :)

My Official Website

Feel free to visit the site and give feed back.

Thanks

JD

2009-12-21T00:02:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone!

I've had the Shaman done for quite some time but I was waiting for the Rig, by Steven Tomei who has done an amazing job, to be finished. I'll be posting some animations of our characters soon and maybe some gameplay footage but it will be a couple weeks. We're all pushing to get a lot of milestones completed before we present the project for GDC Sponsorship by UAT.

I've also been working on the Evoker this month. Before the 3d process began I decided that my concept art wouldn’t cut it and Andy Arias had to go in and revamp the character. I haven't had a lot of time to work on her since I've had school finals the past few weeks. I'll be finishing up her low poly on vacation between Christmas and the New Year. Hopefully all the free time will offer lots of progress.

I'm also working on my official website so it should be up and running before the next semester. Hope everyone enjoys the update. Feel free to comment :)

- JD

Working, all day every day, progress

2009-11-17T00:51:00.001-08:00

I've been working on the Shaman Character for about two weeks now off and on and I've made slower progress then I would have liked to due to classes and doing some environmental textures for the project. I'm about 80% done with the high poly and will be modeling and texturing him before we all leave for break. I've had a lot of fun with the character so far but he needs to be refined, more fun times ahead! We also have our new logo which I am featuring in the post! Feel free to comment.

3d Update

2009-10-25T16:28:00.001-07:00

Finished up the knight! Exciting stuff. I'm definitely pleased with it but it still needs a bit of cleanup and the rig isn't completely functional yet. When other pieces fall into place I should have more to show for him. BTW what is up with Maya shaders not being able to handle mirrored uvs? poop :(

2009-09-03T22:40:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

I've finally got to a point where I feel comfortable showing what I've been working on. I've got some old stuff that I finally got decent renders of and am currently working on a new character "the Knight" for my game project Attero. I'm the lead character artist, building all the characters and helping out with some of the concepts along with the help of my colleague Andy Arias. Andy worked on the concept for the knight and I'm making minor modifications. The next few months will probably be consumed by Attero but it has all the work so far has been oriented towards my portfolio, so expect to see more updates.

Andy Arias' Concept

My Concepts

2009-08-15T16:35:00.001-07:00

I've been doing a lot of 2d work lately, just cause it fit my schedule better. I've also been doing charcoal drawings for class as well so that has helped me keep the momentum. Yesterday though, I really got cooking and decided I would spend most of the day just drawing. My focus was just to explore cross hatching and the female form. Here is what came out of that.

Aztec Pillar

2009-07-24T18:18:00.001-07:00

Right now I'm on a game project in pre-production with a friend of mine. I've been doing some of the Character Concept work along with prototyping 3d elements and the look of the game. Here is what I've got so far. It's not finished yet but I felt like showing an update. I'm working on a bunch of stuff but because of school i'm having a hard time sitting down and finishing things during the week. YAY for weekends! Free time to work on PORTFOLIO!!!

Update

2009-07-20T15:49:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,

Haven't been able to update for a bit. Too many projects, too little hours in the day. Just uploaded my turntable from the Anatomy sculpt to youtube. There is nudity so I don't know how long it will be posted. Guess we'll find out. I also thought I would post one of the ships I worked on at Crunch Time Games. More updates to come.

Special Effects work

2009-06-15T15:52:00.000-07:00

Here is something a couple of friends and I put together in a week. We filmed it in our parking lot at school and threw sputnik into it. I modeled and textured the crater and did some material work with sputnik. It was an exercise we did you get used to camera match moving and building materials and objects to place in the scene.

JD

UPDATE!

2009-06-03T15:09:00.000-07:00

So the frequency of my post does not reflect the amount of work I've been doing lately so I thought I would fix that. I've started a couple projects and decided that I would leave them be for the moment and focus again on a project I can complete over a relatively short time. SOO... I've started this Fantasy Alien project. Always thought it was funny how we never view Aliens in the fantasy realm but what the heck, I'll give it a shot. I'm also trying out an interesting pipe line that I discovered in Richard Smith's tutorial Character Modeling for Next-Gen Games. It's very simple and it should have occurred to me but I guess that's how intuative it is. Check it out!

Here is the other stuff I've been working on and will get back to soon.

-JD

Anatomy!

2009-04-19T16:33:00.000-07:00

I've gone back and started spending more time focused on anatomy. I've got a basic understanding of it but I really want to start displaying it and improving upon it. So this is what I've done in the past week. I'll have more coming to ya but just thought I would update everyone.

-JD

Finished

2009-04-09T16:47:00.000-07:00

Well I completed the Sea Creature. I've gotten to the point where I have taken it where I would like it to be. Added subsurface scattering and some reflection in the eye. I took a few days to ask people what they thought of my layout before I posted it on here but below is what I've come to. Overall I'm pretty happy with it. I loved how simple my pipeline was and how intuitive it was.

I'm planning on creating a tutorial on my textured process. Its similar to Laurent Pierlot's method in body paint but using zbrush poly paint. I'll keep you posted on that but for now I'm going to finish up some old projects that are begging for attention.

hope you like the final result (feel free to comment).

-JD

Day 5! Almost done

2009-04-05T20:21:00.000-07:00

So I got sub surface scattering in there. Around the cheek and the fins. Looking a bit better. the eye Isn't where I want it yet but the Gnomon free tutorial on eyes wouldn't work for me. I'll keep working on it but my next goal is to get the mount done.

enjoy!

-JD

Day 4 PROGRESS!

2009-04-05T04:15:00.001-07:00

Well, I reworked the texture of the skin. It was looking a little more like moss to me so my goal was to make it more... skin like. I played with the specularity and color and added a little bit more bump.

I'm still working on the mount, sub surface scattering, and the eyes. Tomorrow is my free day so hopefully I can get a good chunk of this done. My schedule has been forcing me to work till... 4:00 in the morning but I its definitely been worth the results. Hopefully next semester will leave more time for healthy hours to work.

Hope you enjoy the updates

-JD

Day 3!

2009-04-04T01:37:00.000-07:00

I ended up skipped a day due to a bad head ache. Lack of caffeine :(

I've got the texture in the direction that I wanted but I've got a little bit of clean up. I'm not happy with the eyes yet but I'm going to look into making it look more gel like.

The last piece will be to put his head on a pack and put him on a wall. I would have liked to be further along but because of my schedule I've been forced to work on it after 8:30 pm.

Feel free to comment/ critique

-JD

I

Day Two!

2009-04-02T02:52:00.001-07:00

So I had a little bit of time to work on texturing. Normal mapping in zbrush gave me a few errors but other then that things went fairly smooth.

I've got a big seam cause I tried to correct things in Photoshop but I'll be fixing that tomorrow. The more green areas with veins will be different. I'm just experimenting a little. Hopefully by tomorrow night I can call this done. I was thinking about putting his head on a plack but we'll see. At the moment if I leave the set up how it is he looks very unfinished. Enjoy!

-JD

2009-04-01T00:58:00.001-07:00

I've started a new project today. A little quick exercise to enhance my experience with the modeling texturing pipeline. I plan to finish it between now and Thursday night. This is what I have so far.

I started with a box and sculpted as much as I could before retopologizing. I am going to be rendering this in maya when I'm done so I'll be unwrapping the new topology tomorrow and begin texturing. I plan to be bouncing back between photoshop and zbrush for the painting so it should be a fun day. Hope you enjoy the progress.

-JD

Female Assassin Thread

2009-03-08T01:02:00.001-08:00

Check out my Female Assassin thread at CG Society. Female Assassin Thread

I've got several projects going on so don't be surprised if every update isn't the same character from before.

-JD

Human Anatomy

2009-03-05T16:44:00.000-08:00

So I've been working on this anatomy project. I'm creating an ecorche in zBrush and trying to get as much detail as possible. I realized the the hands i'm using for this model will have to be shaped quite a bit to be a true ecorche but I'll get to that when I come to it.

Feel free to comment.

- JD

Getting Started

2009-03-04T18:50:00.000-08:00

Hi! Since I'm currently developing my official website, I thought I would start my blog to get out there a little bit. So far I've kept my work in the dark and between peers. I'm to the point where I want to expand my network and get some more critique from the outside world. Please feel free to comment as I go as I plan to update and post as much as possible.

I've been at this 3D stuff for a little over a year and am currently going to school for a degree in Digital Animation. I'm all about 3D all day everyday (as much as my schedule will allow), and my fun/free time is spent on perfecting my craft.

Hope anyone who does enjoys following along and contributing.

- JD

here is some work from a while back to check out