Da 3 hours of drawing

Today at mindnight, I decided to draw for few hours, using pictures as reference. Except I won’t exactly copy every detail, but similar poses.
Also, I decided to use common blue / black pen for my drawing, pushing myself from bad habit of rubbing lines out (pencils). And that helps me reserve time from sharpening pencils which I don’t really like.

Everything below is done by Black / blue pen and other ink pens, also note that I will never do guidelines to help me draw better because it RUINS my finish work.

Here’s the first picture:

The arm looks weird as the pen I have been used wasn’t functional properly.

This picture is referenced by:

The second picture:

It looks kind of weird…

Reference from:

The third picture:

This picture is definitely one of the hardest I could drawn because of the clothing; never sketched those sort of thing, but it turn out to be ok.

Then, I tried redraw it again:

Pretty much, I kind of give up for now and do it later on after I gain some experience of drawing that type of clothing.

Two pictures referenced from:

For the fifth & sixth picture, I decided to do a quick sketch inspired by the picture below:

I actually laughed after I drew a ‘it’ wearing a wig.

For the seventh picture, I wowed myself. I subconsciously start at different angle and it turned out great, I think I’ll start drawing the hair first before moving to the face (Like I always did, I usually start off on the eyes.)

Referenced from this:

Every picture above took me at least ten to twenty-five minutes to complete (except the one I gave up on.)

The last picture took me surprise, I threw everything I got and surprisingly; it only took me less than a hour (almost fifty-five minutes) to complete:

Reference from this:

Truth been told, it really doesn’t look like it took a hour to complete but I do realise I did improved a lot from last two years, one of my best work from two years ago, which took me about five hours to complete while experiencing different tone of pencils that I have brought to try out:

From this reference picture (which I still kept):

They are identical to each other (very identical), which I think I’ll draw it again for fun.

I’m most likely to draw the same pictures in the near future, to see how I improve.

Animation -FMP

Last Friday, I manage to finished making a short animation for my scene in college.

During Weekend, I tried to batch render my scene (It has 3070 frames, its a lot.), however, during overnight and during daytime, it kept interrupted and now I only manage to get to 124 frames done, nowhere close to complete.

Hopefully, by today, its done batch render at college.

Few pictures from Scene in mental ray

I thought that one single picture of mental ray from previous posts wasn’t enough, so I added in few more pictures. (Each pictures takes at least 5 – 7 minutes on small resolution)

Here is the first picture of tower case behind the chair; except it’s been shaded in shadow: (as well as keyboard)

Next is a picture of what my wall looks like:

Last picture is  a monitor screen with its monitor stand.

Slideshow ‘animation’

From last few posts before, I did mention doing short animation for my scene, however, it turn out to be time consuming as much as getting 30 screenshots from a scene.

My pc is not qualify to make such a crazy render, although, it is possible but its very time consuming, even for one decent picture at large scale. (If its for HD 1080 or better)

Instead, I think its better to joint the idea into slideshow with gaps of pictures showing its travels.

Like this example:

On this storyboard is my animation I thought of, instead of rendering every frame for either slideshow or animation, let’s take few parts for each step from each step then line it up, showing its journey.

As for now, here is my storyboard that I have thought of: (although, I can not render a animation or large picture as my pc can not handle it.)

Galaxy, error, encounter problems, final take.

Well, it is a nonsense title but with good reason:

Galaxy –
I have finally finished making galaxies alike, however, I didn’t took the screenshot during the time, but manage to take one after final attempt of encountering the problem.
This galaxy is somehow manage to make itself much brighter than it usually should for some reason, I do not know why, but it is related to few errors I have encounter during making. (This is in Maya Software)

As you can see, you can not see below due to the error and the problem I have encounter which I was forced to turn off galaxy away from my scene.

Error –
For strange reason, after I have created my galaxy alike, I had to convert it to either NURB or polygon to show it on mental ray as it does not show as paint effect source. After I have convert it, I encounter a error which asked me to save and exit the maya due to out of memory, I never guess it needs over 4GB RAM to render this.  (It may also explain why the galaxy is much brighter.)

Encounter problems-
Entering to Maya once more,  I found a problem that I can not fix; unable to see the galaxy in mental ray as well as adding lights to the scene, causes the maya software to fail rendering most parts.

Final take –
Because of errors keeps coming it; if I going to add more things. I’m forced to stop adding new things in and adjust the light to bright up the atmosphere… or more of darken the room.

Single Preview take: (Used area light for lightning)
 This is my current scene looks like at the moment, the problem is the tower case behind the chair; unable to see it clearly, also I have changed the floor texture; the previous floor texture looks out of place after I added the wall texture, so I changed it to match its appearance:

I used ‘G1’ shown on the picture for wall texturing.

And used this as floor texture.

It took me a good hour to edit floor and wall to make a decent texture.

Wall and Floor from The Sims’s mod:
Mod the Sims- Wall & Floor

Carpet Change

Feedback from my sisters, they like what they saw, the atmosphere going well with the scene, except one thing that looks out of place; Carpet.

They didn’t like the texture of the carpet and add opinions of what the carpet would be, be either reflective glass carpet or cremé fluffy carpet, or even add similar colour to the carpet.

I could see why she suggest that, it does look.. disturbing.

One of sisters suggested another idea related to her first choice; add a moon on the reflective carpet. I’m not sure if that’s a good idea or not, but adding a moon on reflective surface does show promising.

So I decided to do something with the carpet, create a moon on the carpet with stars shining; one of my other sister idea because she find it more amazing and it somewhat links to the atmosphere I am trying to make.
I think I should try making it reflective if it looks well to the scene, if not; non-reflective it is.

After changing the carpet, it looks.. epic.

Except the basic cylinder is ruining the mood, beside that, it looks awesome; taken in mental ray.

Here’s the link from this awesome moon picture:

Moon and Stars

Adding new things to my scene

I realise I do not have time to learn or use 3D Max to create new specific object I need to add to my scene, instead I’ll create them in maya in simple format; due to time.

I’m adding some galaxy paint effects towards my scene, however, it is in maya software; which won’t be shown on mental ray till I have convert pain effect to polygon.

Here a single picture of my current galaxy; the scene is still progressing: (taking in maya software, hide the Glass window to show the current galaxy)

As you can see, the objects on my scene is almost complete,. I need to complete decorating my square case below my chair and add more detail to my chair, if I find a way look bit more realistic.

 

I had a talk with my tutor from last week, discussing I should create thirty images or more from my scene and make it as slideshow, showing around my scenery (like a short story) and add some music as it plays along. Instead of slideshow showing less than fifteen images of my scene or create a animation showing around my scenery.

Last week, I thought of doing the slideshow for my scene, but I think it would be more time consuming than making short animation in maya as it is less time consume than doing slideshow.

Hopefully, I get my scene done as soon as possible.

Experience of using lights in Maya

I have been experiencing different use of lights in Maya like Ambient light, Spot light, Point light and directional light.

I have been messing around with options with lights with the help of the website telling me most important things about lights such as increasing light intensity, using shadow ray, use of anti alise option and much more.

Each picture use a plane in initial lambert and Cylinder shaded as royal blue blinn.

First picture is Ambient light in mental ray preview:

Next is Directional light, also in mental ray preview:

Third picture is Point light in maya software, although, I couldn’t get what the tutorial try to pull off but I got the general idea how it works:

Lastly, Spot Light picture; its quite interesting:

And here is the link of anyone is willing to try out as well:

Understanding Lights in Maya

My dearest Keyboard and some knowledge

My previous keyboard was force to rest in peace after the accident of coke spill; draining away its sensitivity.

I was force to buy another keyboard and thought to myself… I need is ANIME keyboard! My most favourite character of them all – Hatsune Miku! Of course, she’s actually a vocaloid and only appear in several animes as reference since she’s very famous in Japan-

Leave the details later and here is my awesomeness keyboard:

The keyboard layout is different from my previous one, but get used to it very soon. (Well, I’m used to it now. Have it for few weeks now.)

Surprisingly, its much smaller than the keyboard I had, but still comfy. Now that I look at it, isn’t the layout similar to USA keyboard? (Not sure about Chinese layout, but it does look similar)

Oh… The chinese layout keyboard is totally different story, check it out, crazy Kanji all tied up together:

Seems like that’s all the basic Kanji used in complex Kanji. (You can ignore that sentence, its confusing, just like we are looking at that layout.)

At least this one is not too confusing like the other one (Yes, its Japanese.)

A overlay Keyboard, it seems that it uses two different characters at least on letter key, or maybe its actually thee-four characters. (Upper & lowercase for english & two different Kanji), either way its still confusing unless you own this kind of keyboard.

You know those key on your keyboard and you been wondering “How do I use that character?” On bottom-right key layout.
You will never guess you actually need to hold the right Alt / Alt Gr and press the key to type it out, who will ever actually figure it out right away? O__o

A picture of our keyboard (UK) showing all characters:

I… never knew about euro symbol is laid on ‘4’, because I don’t own UK keyboard, only USA & customize keyboard.

Creating in Maya, encounter error.

Things are going well with modelling objects in scenery, however I encounter errors which I can not fixed.

From what I read on help forum (autodesk), it is to do with version error. Which I can not do anything about it, it seems the education version in college may be the cause of creating the error to my work.

Which I only have one option left, redo the ENTIRE work from scratch…

So I thought, restarted maya once more, but click on “Ignore version” and fixed the problem.

This thread save me big time solving the problem:

Render View Problem

I thank tristanb3d for the solution.

As for now, here is my work so far:

 

The layout looks exact position from the scene view I have drawn, what it really needs are texturing & lightning.

But I think what it really needs is tone lightning and I need to worry about what to do with glass attaching to the metal floor.

Next is in mental ray, I added glow intensity to see how it goes, so far, its going great.

I also added in a carpet, it going to be turned as a small fluffy carpet; the base colour is already shown on these two pictures.