Navigator Finals

Will be going away next week with new awesome work commitments so decided to tie this guy up before I go, then move onto some architectural pieces over the next couple of months ( been talking about it for ages to people and they seem very intrigued by what I have planned, so more Concrete x Tadao Ando x Tron spaces to be made. ), done some more different takes on grades/scenes etc.
Many thanks again to Ben Mauro for the inspiration on the inside working of his head, which in itself has inspired more ideas for the future, and calls also go out to all the peeps who created such an inspiring world full of stunning artwork for Halo 4, one of the USNC helmet designs inspired me to do this!
Oh ye, in other news, I now work for myself, Crytek were kind enough to approach me and ask me to work on a fantastic project they are putting together and give me the opportunity to start to establish myself on my own two feet, scary but I'm hoping it will lead to other things and life adventures in the future, I can't wait to get going with a lot of my close friends and colleagues again ( all be it from home ).Hope you like the Finals, 1080p links below each image.

High Res here

 High Res here

 High Res here

 ECU/Brain workings:

 High Res here

 High Res here

 High Res here

Thanks

Navigators, cont....

This week with the little time I've had, I've mainly focused on getting the facial parts of the head in place with shaders and so on.
New eyeball models were put together with slight changes to proportions of the iris etc to a level I felt looks slightly better than earlier versions I'd done. I've gone through in excess of 5 lighting rig set-ups to check shaders work correctly in both light and dark situations, they were fairly close but didn't pop as much in daylight, so a happy medium has been found, so they can also work well in less contrasty environments as seen here.
Put this render and post together today, was kinda happy with the look so thought I'd share. Some subtle overlays, dust on lens etc....
More ( hopefully finished bust ) next week...

Navigators

Something I'm working up for the Navigators ( pilots ) of the craft.

Navigators although reminiscent of humans are not. The sport in its early stages went through seasons of purely functional robotic pilots but it was found that audiences couldn't relate to this setup, the governing bodies of the sport made a descicion to insert synthetic humans as navigators for onlookers to relate to in an easier fashion. In doing so the rules changed, craft were no longer rigged with thousands of sensors and piloting software to tune, instead this is now all installed into the navigators ( the link between craft and engineers ).
Rules also stipulate that each navigator must have dual 'Black Boxes' installed, aiding in investigation of several catastrophic incidents.
As technology was ripped away from the craft themselves, hardware and software in navigators surpassed everyones expectations, once again the 'pilots' were the stars, although not human, some becoming household names and flagships for sponsors and advertsing.

All work in progress....

Challenger

I generally haven't modelled a car for a few years now and felt it was about time, I wanted a classic and decided that this would throw some new challenges my way in wanting to add some modern day twists to the car whilst trying not to mess with the originals great lines. Mid way into making this I had already decided on  various shots that involved low down snaps being taken, resulting in a lot of stuff being put together under the car for these to hold up, always working from reference of the actual model, subtle styling changes here and there.

Viewport / Wires

Tadao Ando Church of Light

Again attacking a quick turn around project here, and wanted to get to grips with solid interior lighting and GI. Tadao's architectural wok although not every ones cup of tea I believe will stand the test of time for years to come. Simple, Bold and Powerful! Learnt a lot doing this, making better use of using render elements out of VRAY and comping these passes together tweaking light and reflection where needed, using VRAY comp text for walls and playing with the VRAY dirt shader or different effects on AO passes.

Here is a little image I put together to display the various passes, Giving an look into my ( by no means the 100 percent correct  ) way of working.

M451 Firestorm E

I like guns, who wouldn't right? I also am a big Mass Effect fan, I stumbled across a concept for a flamethrower type piece online via Brian Sum . I wanted to put my own take on it as an electrical gun of sorts and to focus on small pieces of work that I could turn around quicker rather than getting sucked into things that take alot of time to get to standards required.

This was an early shot of what I had in mind.

I wasn't happy with the yukky background and after some solid feedback from colleagues regarding the pelican case a few things changed. Firstly very rough background geometry bashed together to add further depth and exit to image, at this stage I also am playing with different grades and image effects in Photoshop. Modular piece bashed together after work.

I wanted to have some macro shots in the final presentation so commenced playing around with the camera in max to highlight various parts of the gun that I felt could work, also positioning lights to compliment the few curved surfaces on the gun.

Then onto renders, post and presentation of the gun taking some inspiration from my 'Art of District 9' book flown all the way over from New Zealand as Amazon had run out . High Res Here

Getting back to VRAY.

I'm a bit of a VRAY whore to be honest, and have a tendency to kick of some renders mid way into a personal project, I'd put together a sl1200 that was suppose to be used in another piece and at the time the main focus of these renders was to get to grips with the camera, DOF, exposure and motion blur settings to see trade of between doing in the app or post.

At the time, the dude (T-800) using this equipment was to be playing with the turntables and naturally being the DJ wearing some cans, I knocked these together with open elements to them, similar the parts of the endoskeleton generally having lots of windows / cavities of detail.