Thinking

[Tedsuo]

Hello! I did this as an exercise in lighting and composition, using a character I created a while ago. Just some simple shaders and geometry. All work done in Maya:

http://tazmanianhamster.tripod.com/pics/Ted_Thinking.jpg



Can't see too much at this resolution, so here's a detail:

http://tazmanianhamster.tripod.com/pics/Ted_Thinking_Detail.jpg


And, since this IS ConceptArt, here's the original rough character concept:

http://tazmanianhamster.tripod.com/pics/RD_web.jpg


Any crits or advice would be greatly appreciated.

-T

[Sadclown]

I really like this overall. the pose is great, and the character is awesome, however (and this is just my humble opinion), I think it would be more dramatic with just one strong light coming down from above or behind. Just my opinion but I think it would give it some feeling.

[bfaubion]

sweeeeett. i love the lighting and texture. im a newbie at maya. i always love thiese pieces that look like they were sculpted and then photographed. once you build the model how do you get that realistic lighting and texture? if it's too long of an explanation... are there any tutorials for it that you know of?

[amphex]

Very cool work..
I love the pose and character design, very interesting =D
No crits/suggestions here..keep it up =)

[Tedsuo]

Thanks, guys!

Sadclown- Thanks. You're probably right. I was practicing the concept of bouncing light aroung the room, probably got carried away.

Bfaubion- Study film lighting, it's all the same rules. The main difference is you have no ambient/bounced lighting in 3d (barring some kind of hideously intensive Global Illumination rendering), so you have to fake it by placing lights where you would get reflected light. Can't think on any good books on film lighting at the moment, but they're out there. An excellent book on 3d lighting is "Digital Lighting and Rendering" by Jeremy Birn (He's working at Pixar now!). As for textures... look at stuff :). Try to break materials you're looking at into components: specular, diffuse, reflections, and recreate them in the computer. The shaders in this scene are very simple blinn shaders; no texute maps, just a bit of bump mapping and reflection.

Amphex: :D

[MessFX]

Very cool

I have found the base lighting tools in Maya to be somewhat frustrating. Have you had any experience with mental ray? I read that it will be packaged in future releases of Maya.

-Steve