patrick_j_clarke

I am currently working on a pin-up for a Heavy Metal style magzine in the UK called "Event Horizon" from Mamtor Press. It's got great work from Liam Sharpe, Glen Fabry, Steve Niles, Brian Holguin, Ash Wood, and many others. I am working on a female android called Gail from one of the prose stories in the book. She's a sex android that gains awareness and uses her "talents" as a spy and a thief. Definately not one for the kiddies. Here is a WIP of the progress so far. I am tweaking the clothes and next up is a totally different hairstlye and more texture mapping (more seams like in her legs, and android things so she's not so human) Based on the Lambrina model with heavy tweaking, v11.1 on my Powerbook G4 and Radiosity rendered. So, let me know what you think. - pjc

More than soft reflections, Fresnel, Reflection Blend and Reflection Filter make the v11 version well worth the upgrade price! Thanks for the comments. It will be hard to go back to regular raytracing after getting results like this!! - pjc

Thanks Rodney! I posted the image over there, hopefully JB sees it. I'd love to sit down and talk (instead of email and forum messages) with JB about 3D and comics sometime. I think it would be very interesting! - pjc

wow. Brian kicks butt! As always very impressive. bentothemax: get that movie finished and let's see some more! - pjc

The lights are based on Yves tutorial for a Cornell box. They are Kliegs in an array and have their spread set to 180. Check out Yves Cornell tutorial in the Radiosity section for all his great knowledge of Radiosity. YVES!!! He's the man! - pjc

Seven hours isn't uncommon for Radiosity... I think you've got a good thing started. The shadow in the foreground is a little distracting to my eye, and I'd love to see a red brick, or richer color for the ground to bounce up the walls...just a thought. What BPrince image were you talking about, BTW? - pjc

Really? I'll have to check out the gallery. I've seen some pretty good TF models out there (mostly MAX) just wondered if anyone tried it over here Rodney I didn't think JB liked people posting their images on Byrnerobotics.com. Is it cool to do it now? - pjc

Thanks! Now I hear IDW (the publisher of POPBOT) has just aquired the rights to Transformers! OOOoooooooh! I love robots! Has anyone done TF in Hash? - pjc

Oh yeah, I am the AM pimp-master when it comes to that! You should hear my conversations with John Byrne on the subject! I WILL CONVERT HIM!!!! - pjc

Just to let everyone know, I got an email from the EIC of IDW today, and they are going to use my image in August releases of IDW comic books as a pin-up! I don't know how many books it will be in, but I'll let you guys know when I do! - pjc

Great start! Can't wait to see more. Nice details in the model. Are you gonna toon render it? What's the plan? - pjc

The floor only has Blended Relfections at 5%. Not really enough to tame the cat down, but the bright reflection on the floor doesn't bother me too much, but yeah, it's definately bright. No Illustrator work, just modeled in A:M by hand. Here's some scene wires: About 17,700 patches in the scene. Most of them are in the Popbot model. Any other wires anyone wants to see? - pjc

A mixture of both. I turned down the color maps that came with the file pretty low, and used them for diffuse as well, and mixed that with my metal material. I love the new reflection tools in AM v11! - pjc

Detail of the Gun. Modified version of the .44 Magnum model from Hash. Constrained to Popbots hand for easy posing!! I will try to get some wires up soon. - pjc

I've done a quick walk cycle (not in the room) and am still working on the bone setup for his guts. I want them to sway a little with his movement, but not intersect the rest of the body. I haven't thought of doing a NTSC version with Photon Mapping. Hmmm, I should see what render times that would be. Here's a look at his guts close up. I'm very pleased with the look of the metal material on this area. Might even post it up for everyone if I think about it. Take a look: - pjc

Whew! You had me worried there Zaryin!! I try to remember that if I would have rendered this on a 3.6GHz machine or a fast Athlon 64 FX it would've only taken 80 or 90 hours Also, 2200 X 3000 pixels has a lot to do with it. I don't recall the exact dimensions and time, but I think a 500 X 700 ish render took about 7 hours on my 1.6Ghz G5 iMac. Still, not the fastest render in the world for sure, but it seemed like it exponentially grew the render time by increasing the size. Oh how I wish A:M took advantage of dual CPU's HEYVERN: Here's a 100% shot of the cat. It was supposed to have fur on it, heck I even have two nice fur hair systems that were working pretty good...then I threw it in the scene...CHUG...even for a small region my test times went thru the roof! So, I took off the hair and found out something about low speculars and big spec sizes with Multipass. The more passes, the more it really softens the specular..to a point where it almost gave me a velour look. There is some Photoshop work on the cat. Since I didn't have fur, the outside edge was solid in the final render...so, in Photoshop I used the smudge tool very carefully to soften the edge. The rest is texture map and a really low really wide specular and 9 passes. And the model of the cat is a rework of the weird looking cat from the free model section of Hash's website. It was more cartoony and kinda looked like a Donkey more than a cat, but it had okay proportions and a skeleton already set up, so I figured what the heck! Next up, the guts of the robot and metal! - pjc

Thank you all for the nice comments. This is definately one of those pieces that made me go "wow, don't screw this one up!" when I was building it. NYAHKITTY: Yeah, Popbot is the bodyguard to this rockstar cat named Kitty. Very weird, but very cool. I did want a painterly look to it. But at the same time I wanted the "real" to show thru. This was discoverd by accident when, like Yves pointed out, I didn't use "jittering". It was definately one of those "ooooh" moments. I really wanted to tell a story with this image, not just to do a Radiosity render. I also had a goal in mind with sort of a "V" composition. One of the things that I like best is that really the focal point of the image is the cat. All this detail around the cat, all those 168 hours of pixels all around this tiny area. I told myself, "Don't worry about render time" on this one. Do painters worry about how long a painting will take? Well, if it's a paying gig, I'm sure they do, but I just let the image that I wanted to be, well, be. No shortcuts. That doesn't mean when I saw 18 hours per pass I didn't cringe I will get a grab of the cat and post that section at 100% soon, and show you how I built him and what I learned about Multipass and big, low specular values... - pjc

Yeah, the room is based on Yves super fine Cornell tutorial and excellent Excel document for setting up photons. I used Yves' spotlight rig to do the lighting and stuck it on the "ceiling". Actually, this image owes a lot to Yves and his Radiosity section on this forum. THANKS YVES!!! Oh, and I rendered it with Multi-Pass (set to 9 passes). Each pass took a little over 18 hours. Since I don't have a UPS hooked up to my computer, my biggest fear was having the power go out! Here's a actual size clip of the final image:

Well, 168 hours later (yes, 168), and this pops up on my screen. Radiosity Rendered in v11 on my P4 1.8 Ghz @ 2200 x 3000. The characters are from an IDW comic book called Popbot by Ashley Wood. All modeled in v10.5 and 11 on my G4 Powerbook, with some modeling (the cat, door in the back, the pipes) done on my old PIII 500mhz laptop. The Jpeg seems kinda washed out as I've already converted to CMYK for print, so the colors aren't as vibrant as what's on my mac, but it serves. I'll be back with some wires and some more explanation of the Radiosity setup if anyone is interested. Larger Version of the image - pjc

Thank ya much! I have had good response from this style, but for some reason, I still think 3D scares the comic companies, they seem hesitant... Props to Steve Niles (author of FUSED, 30 Days of Night, etc.) for running my pin-ups in his books. - pjc

My original plan was to render some pin-ups for the comic book, but there has been some interest in animating him, so.... As far as the final style, I render out a raytraced version, and then render out a black and white toon line version, add some hand inking and call it done. Much like this: - pjc

I must love robots. Well, yeah, I do, I do love robots. and comics... so, now I'm working on bringing Ashley Wood's Popbot to 3D life. Popbot is a character from the IDW comic by the same name. Still working on the IK and materials (hmm, the OSX version doesn't do weathering right) but it's to a point I'd like to share: my version: Ashleys version: Let me know what you think so far! - patrick j. clarke

Thanks for all the comments! Yes, not a totally accurate model, but the baddies that built it to mess with Shellhead altered it, not me It's all geometry, no bump maps used. And I'm a generous guy, so after the comic contest, I'll give it to animation pit stop or some place for everyone to use. Will post a wireframe soon too. Now back to my Iron Man sequential page...boy that missile is getting close! - pjc

Hey all... Whipped this up on Sunday as part of my idea for an Iron Man sequential. Based on a real Tomahawk missile, but I added the camera portion to conform to my idea. About 2 hours work. - pjc

AgggH! someone else put the moon up there, it wasn't me!! Thanks for the correction. The moon seems a bit outlandish, but I guess I was compesating for the logo of "DARK DAYS" to be obscuring it a bit...should put that together and see how it knocks the moon back a bit. - pjc