Blog of Oldřich Holý

Most recent reel

2012-02-09T12:13:00.001-08:00

Still updating...

2011-10-30T16:08:00.001-07:00

There are two new posts since last News update.

A Photoshop sketch in Sketches/Paintings section and a ZBrush sketch in 3D sculpt section.

I decided to pick up ZBrush since I keep hearing how ultimately awesome it is and since I am learning with every sculpt I do, I decided instead of scrapping them all to upload at least one every day, so that hopefully by Christmas break I can see some progress and be able to actually design some stuff for my showreel.

On the whole updating thing, I am still *cough* working *cough* on it.

Blog work in progress

2011-08-12T06:50:00.000-07:00

I've decided to come back to my blog and upgrade it a bit, so that it looks more professional. So excuse links not working and the page generally being in a mess in the next few days/weeks, I'm trying to remember how HTML formating works so that I can achieve a reasonable platform for presenting my work.

Project Q - week II - IV

2011-02-04T08:13:00.000-08:00

Modelling, sculpting and texturing.

Most of my time was spent on the mask. The markings on it and the two neck plates are actually separate models in ridges within the mask. I hated myself for deciding to do it that way, but it was a good practise at hard surface modelling. I really need to do more of that. In the end it worked out, even in the test renders it might have been just masked textures. It will be worth it when I do some closeups etc.

Anyway, here go two test renders taken out of a turnaround render. The creature is pretty long, thus I had to leave a lot of space on the sides. Anyway, I am not sure whether to go with the Flynn blue-white theme or the CLU orange theme yet. I'll think about it and then decide later based on the final environment. Maybe the CLU version with white-blue city background would work out the best, contrast wise. I'll post some more versions and topology screens/turnarounds in a few weeks when I get some more work done and when I can pose the character, so that I can get closer in with the camera.

Project Q - week I

2011-01-11T07:46:00.002-08:00

Aka Quadruped project.

A 7 week collaboration project between a CG artist and an Animator to create and animate a full 3D 4 legged creature and incorporate it in still background.

I am grouped up with Nicolai (blog) and we decided to create a creature that could exist within the TRON universe. I am quite excited about this project and I think it shows.

Our quadruped has no name as of yet, so for now it is a TRONimal. The purpose of this creature is quite possibly to hunt down rogue programs that were able to escape CLU's roundups for games and derez them if able.

We are done with the basic concept idea:

On top are the most successful sketches that we liked from our initial work from yesterday and today. On the bottom is the so far finished basic concept. The human for scale there is not really final, just playing with the idea of size, but I'm not convinced at this point that this would be the actual scale.

Detailed rendered version to follow, also a turnaround. Possibly a top view and a few cross-sections if I find the time.

Edit:
First, sorry to Nicolai for miss-spelling his name. Even though he didn't complain about it, I still feel stupid. Anyhoo, It's fixed now.

The turnaround is finished:

Aaand even though I thought I'd render a picture in PS to get a better idea for the final look, I decided not to do that and start modelling straight away. I want to get a model that is worth having on my reel and hope to get something really good done this year. So I am close to have the basic mesh done now. The hind legs are still missing, but they be added soon.

Anyway, here's a test render from the end of today's class.

I am trying to figure out exactly how to do the light markings on the body. Am a bit torn between a layered shader with the markings as texture, or modelling ridges into the body and mask thus having the markings as separate geometry. I think the second one would give it a bit more depth, especially if I play a bit with a glass/hologram type of shader for the markings. Any suggestions?

The Trailer Project

2011-01-11T07:46:00.001-08:00

reserved for future update

Light and Render with Oliver Kirchhoff

2010-05-04T07:13:00.000-07:00

A late upload of project prior to the Biped character creation. Three weeks project. First week we've got a premade scene with a room and outside city. We were to come up with a concept, pick a camera angle, furnish the room according to the concept and texture what needed to be textured.

My first idea was an abandoned natal ward room inhabited by a peculiar population control specialist - one who thinks that the over population of Earth can be solved by eating babies. Unfortunately about 90% of the class decided to come up with a dark and gritty concepts so I decided to scrap mine and go for a more normal room, japanese-ish bathroom.

In second week we were to create lighting setup for the room, simulating passing of the day from mid afternoon to night. Majority of the class used Physical Sun and Sky and so did I, mainly due to the convenience, since it was way faster to set up than a manual set of lights. Unfortunatelly this setup left me with a very nasty artifact in one part of the timelapse, but I had no time to rerender the scene.

Third week was compositing and re-rendering for majority of the class.

Anyway, enough chitchat, here goes the vid:

Light and render - Japanese Bathroom timelapse from Oldrich Holy on Vimeo.

Biped character design project

2010-04-16T06:58:00.000-07:00

So, it has been quite some time since last update, I'd better upload something new again. Among tons of other stuff, my class is now facing a biped character project. We have to develop a character from scratch. Character has to be humanoid biped, but should stay away from being human.

First we had a week of character design with Craig Kellman. First of all, I must say that having Craig as a teacher with Lawrence (one of our previous teachers) as a "student" made for the most hillarious class that we had the whole year, probably the funniest class I ever had. Apart from us working on our characters, there were a few challenges on the way. All of them fun, but I sure as hell didn't manage all of them to my satisfaction. Out of the week here is some of the stuff that I ended up with.

First a homework to design 3 characters within the same job. Of course I tried to cheat and I made them to be job- and even homeless:

And the somewhat finalised design of my character:

along with some quick draft poses:

After Craig Kellman's class we had a week to sculpt a clay maquette of our characters with Damon Bard (Bard Sculpture Studio). While I loved sculpting, the final sculpt was not totally to my satisfaction and quite honestly I don't have any pictures worth posting at this point. I might try to take some later on, but I doubt it.

Clay sculpting was followed by modelling with Adam Dewhirst (Intelligent Ape). What can I say, Adam is a great teacher and he showed us a lot of neat stuff. While I am still not completely done with my modelling and mudbox sculpting, here are a few snapshots to feed the beast until I am totally done.

Basic smoothed model of my character from Maya:

My preffered head sculpt turnaround:

Other head sculpt possibilities:

Leg sculpt turnaround (disregard the colors, they are there just to make it easier for me to see what I am doing):

Lighting, Texturing and Rendering with Anna Kubik - episode II

2009-12-10T05:09:00.000-08:00

..as you must have heard, Luke Skywalker destroyed Death Star, so go out and celebrate.

On other news, the last week of my project is soon over and I am quite certain, that I am done. So here goes the final version of Squid-girl Ellie on her stage after all the texturing and compositing. And yeah, I know, she has an octopus on her head, not a squid, but folks, it ain't my fault that the circus people don't know the difference between squid and octopus!

Lighting, Texturing and Rendering with Anna Kubik

2009-12-03T09:52:00.001-08:00

Two updates in a day! Must be christmas time..

Anyhoo.. this is what I do right now.. well, unless it is already tomorrow, then I am doing something else. Oh dear..

Plain and simple, take our sets and posed character and smash some lights in there, throw some fancy shaders and textures and bump maps and whatnot on it all and render the awesome stuff.. so here goes my progress from Monday until Thursday:

Day 1. or 2, I can't remember. First poke at light and stuff, as you can see, it is crap. But hey, it's all part of the process, right? One orange light, some shadows and that's it.

Day 4. That I can remember. Serious tweaking of lights after getting some critique from Anna and others in my class. More lights to simulate bounce, more textures, some bums.. or bumps, whatever you prefer. And some additional simple geometry to get the shadows and framing working a bit better. Aaaand some ambient occlusion, yum.

Aaaaand, because we all love the Ambient occlusion pass, here we go.

Modeling and UV mapping with André Bergs

2009-12-03T09:36:00.000-08:00

Update time!

Soo.. it's been a month since my last update.. so. We had 3 weeks of modelling class with André Bergs from Plastiek. The point of the class was to show us some more serious modelling and UV-ing... awesome stuff from the start to the end. Thanks André!

Anyhoo. It all started with a box.. but everybody knows what a box looks like, right? So here is a bit advanced blocked model for my character.

And here is a final low poly version of her:

You can see the smooth and somewhat textured version of Ellie in another post.

Anna Kubik's Class

2009-11-06T02:25:00.000-08:00

Another week is gone and this is the result. First picture shows scene design from last week's class, second is similar camera view on the actual scene in Maya, third is the final camera angle I will use for the final shot once the geometry is finished.

Oliver Kirchhoff's class - week II

2009-10-08T06:24:00.000-07:00

This week we are working on creating a humanoid character model and rigging it so that we can make a small animation with it. I chose to try to model Noodle from Gorillaz.. not a very smart choice to model a cartoony character, but I knew from the beginning that I will probably end up quite far from having a proper 3D version of Noodle. I hope I will find some time later on to try and do a better model that does Noodle more justice.

Here goes a WIP picture, might render it properly once I am done with it.

Carla Heinzel's class - week II

2009-09-24T15:36:00.001-07:00

So in the second week we had a group project going on. Modelling an environment and a character in pairs. I chose to create a character and it ended up being a pissed off tree with a cigarette. I spent way too much time modelling the bugger, but it was fun nevertheless.

It's a shame that we had Carla Heinzel as our teacher only for two weeks.. I can't imagine what a progress we would have made in Maya if she was our teacher for the whole month.

Carla Heinzel's class - week I

2009-09-19T01:26:00.000-07:00

Updated version of my 3d project Nurbs scene thingy, now with added photoshop background:

Our project for the first week with Maya was to create a full 3d environment by using NURBS only (for beginners like me) or polygons for the more advanced people. I used the NURBS, since I was completely new to Maya and I had quite a lot of fun modelling with them.

So anyway, this was done in about, hm, 3 days? I spent first two days modelling different versions of the same scene, but I didn't like them at all, so those went down the drain.. And even though I am saying so myself, I think it looks pretty darn good for a beginner modelling.

anyhoo, we love NURBS, don't we? Yes we doooo..

School stuff

2009-09-19T01:18:00.000-07:00

Just to figure out how this thing works. Here goes my second school project, maquette of a dead girl walking in the rain.