Started blocking out the Creature's walk cycle this morning (approx. 1 hour into it as of right now). My intentions are to have a really nice render of him wading through a corridor filled with water (in essentially an abandoned research facility). Lots of atmospheric lighting, water effects, caustics...you get the idea.

Lots of things to address still in terms of the motion/animation itself (timing needs work, popping needs fixing, the loop's not lining up 100%, refining the arcs & follow-through, adding more weight, etc.) but I just wanted to share my first pass since it's been a while since I've posted anything in regards to this little guy.

I was definitely set back with the progress, since 3ds MAX decided to eat the save in which his envelopes/skinning were finalized...bleh.

Hi all,

I am making some pretty good progress in terms of rigging the Creature. There are still quite a few things to do, but I find it helpful to make sure the mesh deforms correctly before finishing off the sculpt.

As of right now things are looking pretty good (but still basic). It was a pain to make sure that the Creature deformed nicely in both his land (walking) and water (swimming) postures. But the rig and mesh are very capable of doing both. So yay! :)

Stay tuned for more.

Hi guys,

I started compiling a basic SSS shader in 3ds MAX for my Creature model (which was inspired by the shark-man from the "Creature" Peter Benchley TV film). I am using Mental Ray and some basic (animated) photometric lighting.

So far the SSS material only consists of 3 really basic skin layer maps: subdermal (muscular tissue, veining, tendons and bones), epidermal (fatty tissue, fascia, more veining) and a very basic flesh tone diffuse map for the top layer of skin). The final maps will have more veining and subsurface detail, the top skin layer is all flesh-colored right now but will have far more variation. The top layer will be a cool combination of shiny and sand-papery shark skin mixed with humanoid (oily), light skin.

The middle render shows off really nicely how the light gets trapped in the middle layer of skin, almost making it turn darker before lightening up when the lights hit full strength.

Regardless, the material is responding really nicely to the light. This should look very cool when applied to the whole mesh :) Stay tuned for more!

Hi guys,

I started working on a Krite from the Critters film series. I used to love this furry little guys! Kind of going for the way they looked in the second installment.

This is a very simple viewport capture, so no fancy textures and rendering. The animation is uber-basic and rough. Right now I only have a few morph targets and a very basic bone rig. I am trying to keep things like the practical effects seen in the films, so I really want him to resemble a campy handpuppet. I am still experimenting with how he looks when he moves, and how the fur will work but it seems to be going in the right direction :)

Hope you guys like it!

Hi guys!

I started working on a Krite (from the Critters movie series) this week. Here are some progress pics! Having tons of fun working on this little guy.

Hi guys,

I wanted to give texture baking a shot after the staff of Sketchfab were kind enough to give me a 7 day Pro trial. Stuff like the fur and metal did not translate very nicely, and I am sure that my next model will end up better :)

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to mess around with the larger file size, Sketchfab! You guys are great!

Caution: Model is very high-res and has several textures, so it may take some time to load.

So I started working on a model that I've been meaning to create for quite some time now. Being a huge John Carpenter fan, it only seemed natural that I'd eventually model Snake Plissken from the "Escape from New York." I absolutely adore that movie! Snake's quite possibly one of cinema's most iconic characters.

The process behind capturing Kurt Russell's likeness was simple enough, finding a ton of reference. In practice, however, he definitely was definitely one of the more complex likenesses that I had to work with. Russell definitely has "one of those" faces, where he can look completely different depending on what angle you are looking at him from. Here are a few screenshots of what he looked like early on in the sculpting process:

Once basic sculpting was done, I decided to add some Polypaint to see whether or not my proportions were correct . I always find it a lot easier to gauge how far off I am with a bit of color added. I also decided that I did not want to stick with sculpted hair. So I started incorporating Fibermesh in Zbrush to get a more pleasing result.

Below is the current state of the mesh. I plan on adding his gear, refining his detail, and potentially rigging him for animation in the near future. Stay tuned!!!