Monday, October 10, 2011 at 3:12PM Again, I want to show off that I am a competent rigger, so here's another rig I've done. This rig is similar to a couple of rigs I did while at DD/Fox. Yep, it's a quadruped rig. It's only attached to a proxy mesh, but I think you get the idea.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011 at 11:36AM At the beginning of the year I decided to start learning VRay. I really wanted to play to it's strengths and start with an interior scene. I found a nice interior piece to use and started modeling. Of course, work gets in the way, so once again, I've only been putting in an hour here and there. I'm about half way done with it and wanted to start sharing some of the renders.
Here is the reference I found online. I believe it's a photo and not a render since it's from a cabinet maker. I doubt they would have the money to pay for a render like this when it would be easy enough to photograph it. If it is a render, Kudos to whomever made it.
Here's my initial render. I think I'm about half way there. So far, I'm pretty happy with it.
Here's my initial greyscale model with lighting.
Close up on the fruit. I'm not happy with the way the grapes are turning out. The SSS in VRay is different than other SSS shaders I've used in the past, so I'm getting different results than expected. I'm probably far enough along since they will only be 20 - 30 pixels tall on the final render.
Thursday, September 29, 2011 at 12:39PM 
I came home last Sunday, got on my computer and noticed my drobo was dead. For those of you who don't know what a drobo is, it's a DAS (Direct Attached Storage). For those of you who don't know what that is, think of a mini computer that's filled with hard drives that you keep all your data on. Anyways, it died and won't turn on. After a 20 minute talk with tech support, I find out they only have a 1 year warranty. That's CRAZY being these things are $500-$1000 and are a couple hundred more than their competitors. (Drobo, if you are reading this, make your warranty at least 3 years) The good news is I can just drop the old drives into a new unit and it will just work, or so their support said. I gave their sales guys a call and told them my dilema and they sold me a new one for half price!!! And you can extend the warranty for $100 bux a year. So my new unit is comming next Monday, so hopefully everything will just work and I'll be up and running again. It was very classy of the company to see my problem and help me out with a solution. I would still reccommend these to anyone who needs more than 2 TBs of space. It's great for Photographers and VFX artists who want to keep high quality versions of their work.
Brent
Blurb Thursday, September 29, 2011 at 12:31PM Here's a brief video showing the simple robot rig I built for "When Aliens Attack". I'm working on adding more rigs to my site. Want to make sure I'm showing off all my skills. I used Acid (The software, not the drug just to clarify) to create the music. Sadly, loops are VERY expensive, so I didn't have a large group of tracks to use, but I think it works.
Friday, September 16, 2011 at 1:00PM I think these are amazingly done. They aren't just famous people dressed up like Disney characters. There was a lot of thought and work that went into these. Compositionally, these are fantastic. The colors and richness is great. I'd love to do something like this.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 10:23AM Usually you don't hear an artist say "Finally, I'm unemployed!", and I plan on finding work as soon as I can. However it is nice to sit down at my home computer, sort through my lastest work and take a day or two off. It's been almost 3 years since the last time I had a gap in work and I'm looking forward to adding more posts to my site. At the same time, if anyone is looking for a solid Maya artist, I'm currently available!
Saturday, July 2, 2011 at 9:03PM Here's a poster I was able freelance on. I worked on all the 3d elements (Characters provided). Rendering at print resolutions for something this large was a big challenge. With the tight amount of time provided, I'm happy with the results. Seeing your own work this large in person is really cool. The game looks like a good premise, and I hope it does well when it comes out.
XCOM Sunday, June 26, 2011 at 9:57AM Here's some of the alien ship and vehicle designs we came up with for When Aliens Attack. All the models and designs were mine with some designs for the collector and robot by John McConnell.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 10:26AM Here's a trailer of "When Aliens Attack", the 2 hour special I worked on at Flight 33. I supervised all the 3D aspects of the show and personally modeled, textured, and developed lighting for all the shots in the trailer. I also animated a handful of these shots as well. Enjoy!
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/when-aliens-attack-5357/Overview#tab-Videos/10062_00
Friday, February 18, 2011 at 6:03PM After being sad about the Mari competition (I can't even look at the posts anymore), I've decided to be constructive again. I've been wanting to start a new ZBrush sculpt. I haven't done a character sculpt since school almost 4 years ago. I've definitely got cars, spaceships, and hard surface models down. I've been wanting to expand my skills to include realistic characters. I've been a fan of Scott Spencer's zbrush work since I saw him give a demo at Siggraph a few years back. I picked up his newest book, "Digital Sculpting Human Anatomy". After thumbing through it, I decided that I wanted to start a new male character. I'm planning on doing a male figure muscle study, and then perhaps using that same mesh to create a stylized character.
After following my new book step by step, I feel that his method is a little advanced for someone who doesn't look through anatomy books all day. It's been a few years since I took my nude drawing classes, and I sometimes forget which muscles flow together. He uses muscle groups as reference for the scale of others, and after my initial rough sculpt, I took a look and could see huge flaws in my proportions. I had to bring my mesh into Maya (I love goZ), re-proportion my character to image planes and other male models I've done in the past. After getting that done, the muscle groups I sculpted in fit the model pretty well. Step two will be to ZBrush out a scull, then into a face (not sure why people start with a scull, we don't start sculpting individual ribs or a spinal collumn when you start a character), but I will stick with the book. Here's my WIP.
