Snail on Baguette

This is one of the interior shots of a snail climbing over a baguette. I finally found a texture that more closely resembles the inside slice, and I'm going to replace it. There are other wierd little doo-dads to fix like the plate buckling (soften normals perhaps?) Overall I like the lighting here. Mental ray all the way, baby.

Mansion Exterior

This is going to be one of the opening scenes for my game trailer. I've learned a bit about water and fog dynamics among tons of other things (it's all learning in Maya--oh yes ;).

I'm constantly reworking this scene but I did actually post an animation of the opening sequence in youtube with my favorite Chopin piece (it was initially going to be a DVD intro in case you're wondering about the long pause at the end):

Occult Project

Since my last 'den' project, my computer has been reformatted, stolen, and then destroyed along with my backup. Ahhhh! And so I started again with this brand new project.

This is my new interior scene for my current project: "Occult"

mental ray, fire dynamics were used, along with a lot of bump-maps

Latest Den + composites

With the crash of my last save, this project has officially become a monster. Arg!

I'll need to revert back to an earlier version then do some serious compositing.

My, Oh Maya: The Den

And finally...

I spent the past few days trying to get a decent bear-skin rug, but couldn't negotiate around an ugly masking job. I don't know if anyone else has any luck, but I'm here to say that mental ray and even ray-tracing will--in one way or another--force maya to crash an already taxed processor when trying to merge fur.

That said, I'm saving my pennies for a Mac, since my days of futzing with pc hardware (and even knowing about it) need to be over. What kind of professional needs futz??

No Mental Ray (Software Render)

I finally did a software render using Raytracing alone... (sigh)

I've concluded that mental ray is really a daylight rendering engine, and doesn't lend itself to any sort of 'dramatic' or warm set lighting... thought??

look of shock

Ugh--I think that I might have to bag the mental ray on this particular scene. There's way too much bleed and aliasing going on here. But I'm liking the worried unicorn better...