That's right. It's been a LONG time coming, but that day has finally arrived. I finally feel like I'm ready to start shooting out those resumes. Huzzah. I just pulled an all nighter on the bike, just to make sure it got done. And done it is. It turned out to be even better than I could have hoped for, which is very exciting. Very exciting indeed. A definite shout out of thanks to my greatest ally Joe D'amico for coming through with an awesome concept to work off of. Thanks to you sir. And if ya'll want, you can check out the website for higher res pics. It's fancy.
www.ryansanderson.com
Without further adieu, I give you The Blue Bomber:
Texturing went a lot faster than I thought it would. When you have the groundwork laid out from the normal maps, it's surprising how fast you can work out all the other details. I tried to keep the colors mainly neutral, with some accent colors thrown in. Having certain parts of the bike painted blue, yellow, and white allows a conceptual reason for this to happen. You'll see little dabs of red here and there, but it doesn't overpower by any means. I also was trying not to put too much detail into the maps, which is a problem I've had in the past. This project taught me that sometimes less is more. There doesn't seem to be any part that overshadows another. You honestly don't want to know the total amount of layers I used in Photoshop for this project. I'm guessing at least a couple hundred.The cardboard, toolbox, and wrench were thrown in last to help fill out the scene, and also to help with a little narration. I'm pretty proud of the lighting setup as well. It gives me some liberty to not worry about the background so much so that I can focus on showing off the bike. I didn't want to have a blank background for it to sit on, but I also didn't want to overcrowd the scene either.
You also might be able to tell that the normal mapping detail pops out more as opposed to before, with the overall lighting having better contrast. Messing with the shadows parameter in the postprocess editor helped to achieve this. However, you'll also notice that the shadows aren't as dark at the same time. With the amount of light that's hitting the bike, they were way too dark before. MUCH better now, I think.
Some wireframe pics thrown in for good measure to show that I model nice and clean. :)Overall, the polycount comes in at 10k. Considering that this would be onscreen constantly, almost as much as the main character, I think it's just about right. I must say that I'm impressed with the amount of polys I was able to cut out. It was HEAVY before.
Since my computer is a total fail when it comes to rendering a lot of polys onscreen at once, I had to export each part out of Zbrush individually to composite all together in Photoshop. With a little shadow tweaking, it turned out pretty well.
And finally, some of my best sculpts individually rendered. The engine turned out REALLY nice. Added in some sexy blue. Who doesn't like sexy blue?
And that's it. DONE. So happy. SO HAPPY. Now, I go into work and try not to pass out. Coffee don't fail me now.....
What's next? Cover letters, cold emails, resumes, looking for a job. All that good stuff. Be on the lookout for some possible progress pics of a robot looking thingy for my RPG Meetup group.
Also need to order new business cards. Also need to shave. And get a haircut. I've been very bear-like lately.
