Tuesday, April 30, 2013

New Product -- Massive Spaceship

Finally finished with it, it took forever to make but I think it's finally time to call it done, can't stand working on it anymore XD.

So, I guess I left the red mainly there, added some black to it which breaks up the red a bit, has plenty of detail.

Here's a link to it in my shop with more render angles:
Space Carrier

Friday, April 26, 2013

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Virus

Here's a wire-frame virus scene, another attempt at making a more art-like image, enjoy!

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

WWII Airplane


Here's a recent project, a WWII fighter plane, probably not entirely historically accurate with the paint scheme and other details but close enough, XD.


Monday, April 22, 2013

Tutorial: Creating a Stylized Ship Sprite




In this tutorial I am going to show you the basic steps to create a stylized spaceship sprite similar to what I have posted before. This is not going to be a step-by-step tutorial oriented to one or two particular programs but instead I will describe the basic processes to achieve a similar result, no matter what programs you are using.



Step one: Create a basic spaceship in 3D.


Model a really simple spaceship using basic colors and textures, create a dim light directly above the spaceship with soft shadows.  Place the camera directly above the spaceship. Make sure the specular is not very bright, and render it. It may be best to have the camera set to an orthographic lens setting (not perspective).
Here is similar to what you should have:
Note: I used a subdivision smoothing modifier on this one (Turbosmooth in 3ds max, but I use Blender, so Subdivision Surface).

Step two: Draw an outline.

Using your favorite image editing software, open your spaceship image, create a new transparent layer, on the left half of the new layer (or the right, doesn't matter), trace the outline of your ship with a one pixel wide, sharp edged brush or line drawing tool with a solid black color. Also trace any prominent details of your spaceship (engines, hull sections, etc).

You also may want to add a few lines where plates and sections connect.

Next duplicate the layer and flip it, so  both halves of the spaceship are decorated with the black lines. next, merge it down so that you have two layers, one with your spaceship, one with your black lines.


You should now have two layers and your spaceship should look like this:

Step three: Creating windows.

Now create another transparent layer.

Next with a solid, one pixel wide white brush or tool, draw simple two-three pixel wide windows on one half of the spaceship (right or left half).

Duplicate the window layer and mirror it and merge it down with the other half of the windows.

You should now have three layers and your spaceship look similar to this:





Now duplicate the windows layer, and colorize it to a color of your choosing, but of a high saturation, I chose blue.


Now blur the new colored windows layer 2-3 pixels.

Now move the new, burred, colored windows layer below the white windows layer and duplicate it repeatedly until the glow becomes visible enough, your spaceship should look similar to this:




You should now be done, I hope this tutorial was useful to you, thanks for reading!

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Airplanes

Here's something I made up today, fake airplanes ( not based off a real design ), with fake reflections. The fake reflections were accomplished by using two "blend" procedural textures, one spherical blend on the Z normal to provide the fresnel effect, and a vertical blend mapped to reflection coordinates with custom colors to look like land and sky.


Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Photo Editing Fun

  Today I figured out how to use Gimps quick mask feature, that is something I probably should have learned how to use a long time ago as it seems quite useful. The quick mask feature allows you to select complex shapes easily by allowing you to modify or create a selection using paint tools, if you don't already know how to use it and you use Gimp, I would definitely read up online about it.

  Anyways, here are some images I have been playing with, left side is only basic modifications (flipping, maybe a slight crop), right side is after the image has been modified to improve its appearance.
 

Monday, April 15, 2013

Spaceship -- Progress

Here's the progress of the spaceship project I posted earlier:


Why's it red? Cause I like red! I don't plan on leaving it like that though, at least not 100% red anyways.

Still plenty to do, I could probably call it finished but there's still plenty of blank spaces that need detail.

Friday, April 12, 2013

Glow Butterfly

Here's something I made for a weekend contest, trying to use the 3D program more like an art program.


Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Huge Starship WIP


Been working on a bit of a project recently, I hope to upload the original 3D model for sale eventually, but this looks like it's going to take a bit of time to complete. I wanted to make an ubercomplex spaceship, I'm not generally very good at completing large projects, but hopefully I can get this one done.



Friday, April 5, 2013

Atom


This time I tried to focus on making something look good more than just trying to pile loads of detail onto it, here's an atom made for a challenge/contest (with no prize) on  a forums with the theme of  "science".
Atoms are scientific, right?

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Game Avatar

I made this for my avatar in a game I play, I had it in red light, but it looked way too cylon. Tangent shading is the trick to that metal appearance.


Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Arrival

Here's something I made to replace the laser cannons entry in the contest, a large sci-fi colonization ship arriving at its destination.