Shit happens when you start to care about others

I am planning to do night lab (overnight work in college) from next week so that I believe I can put some real time to my project. The problem is that the college authorities won't give up a class for night lab for just one guy. So I posted in out batch's facebook page whether anyone wish to joining. The replies weren't that encouraging. By 'replies' I mean several replies from one guy who think he'll start night lab when he thinks its time for texturing. I said I'm ready to start texturing as I have my one character unwrapped. In reply he kind of mocked me, well I know he was joking. So now the situation is that I cannot do my night lab without any of my other batch mates. But at the same time I asked myself 'Why the fuck should I  care about others?' So what I'm going to do on Monday is that I'll ask the faculties if they will give me a lab. If they ask me to bring on more members I'll say I'll sit with any other batch. After all my batch isn't the only one in college!!!

Unwrapping- Baby Vulture

I have been working on unwrapping my first project character in Maya. I thought I would use any 3rd party plugin for it since its a lot easier than UV texture editor in Maya, but I didn't. The unwrapping took some time because I was also modelling my second character and watching lot of movies (playing Trine 2 also).  Now the unwrapping of the character body is done and the leg is remaining, which I could finish soon.
I did the unwrapping on one side of the character since it's going to be mirrored later. I used Planar projection for the wings and Cylindrical for body and leg. The beak I used Planar again and the rest of the face upto neck I used Automatic projection.

The UV's are in weird shapes since the symmetry is not yet applied

There are some stretches here and there which needs to be rectified. On the other hand I am modeling my second character ( Mother Vulture) and its not coming out that great. Anyway I'm still working on that and I intend to start the rigging in this week.

Playing Trine 2

Last day I was surfing through IGN to check out the game of year award winners. I was hoping Assassins Creed: Revelations would get something but it didn't. I was pretty sure that Skyrim would own but in overall Portal 2 scalped most awards. Then I looked for top rated games and the name Trine 2 struck me which is having a rate of 9 (http://pc.ign.com/objects/076/076949.html). I read the review and I realized that it's kind of a small puzzle game, something like Limbo and decided to give a try.
Even though its a sidescrolling game the levels are awesome with variety of colors and puzzles. I really liked the idea of switching between the characters( The Wizard, Thief, Knight) in order to get across each level. As the abilities and powers of each characters are different, there are many ways to reach each checkpoints. I look forward to finish it soon, because I'm buried deep under my project and it smells real bad.

The Knight in Trine 2

One down, 2 to go...!!!

Yesterday I completed the digital model of my project character that I've been working on for the last few days. Today I had some more detailing to be done such as modeling the inside of the mouth. My plan was to Unwrap the character so that I will be able to start rigging from next week. So I combined the head and the body both of which I did separately and the model looked just like the character I was looking for. Still I guess there's something to be done with the tail of the baby vulture. The tail isn't that appealing so I guess I have to spend some time to that. Anyway I'll have to finish the unwrapped model by tomorrow evening. Besides today I did the blueprint of my another character's head and I hope to start modeling by tomorrow evening after I complete my first character's unwrapping. So it's all busy time ahead and I have my own deadlines to follow, which I think is great idea. So today's target is to finish detailing my first model and start unwrapping.
P.S. I'm having a terrible headache right now :(

Texturing and Rendering - Warrior Helmet

I have been doing texturing on the finished warrior helmet model since evening. I kind of wanted like a ruined effect with lots of scratches and tear and wears.So I took some metal scratch textures from Internet and tweaked in Photoshop. It was fun doing though right now I'm stuck with presentation. I have a theme in mind according to which I plan to do the render. But I have some more modeling to be done for that. I have been try to do the lighting for some time and the mood is not turning up in the render. It sucks. So I thought before I go to bed I would blog on it. Here is the screenshot. Its not a render but a high quality view in Maya.

A Warrior Helmet - Inspired by Spartacus

I was watching Spartacus - Blood and Sand last weekend and I really liked its concept. This is the most explicit picturisation that we can expect from a television series. I was really inspired by all those Roman picturisation and gladiator stuff and the stylized blood effects kind of give a graphic art style. The blood effects reminded me of the movie 300 by Zach Snyder.
I liked this series and so I did a digital model of a Gladiator Helmet. It was fun modeling even if I was buried deep under my project. Here is the screen shot.

Body Modeling - Vulture

Last day I started modelling the character body. I did the basic blocking and here again the mesh flow is my villain. I want it to be prefect and so before doing further detail I have to make sure it’s coming in the right way. So I’m heading to college to get some directions from tutors. I still have some confusion regarding the type of wings for the character (Baby Vulture). But for Mother Vulture I have made the decision on the style of wings. I can use the same type but logically it won’t be correct (there are differences between the wings of two).  The advantage of using the same kind of wings is that I can simply copy the rig of one model to another when it comes to rigging thereby, saving me some time. Else if I use different type I’ll have to do two different rigs and that’s the boring part. Well, I’ll have to make a decision today.

Here is the screen shot of the model I've been working on. I'm doing head separately.