P.S.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=153&t=433624
For those who havent yet seen this, have a look. A couple of artists are recreating Davy in his entirety in Max as a real technical workout/learning experience. If anyone is interested in using my blend file as a starting point to do a similar thing once I post it, feel free to knock yourselves out. I’ve learnt heaps just modelling the head, but this here is dedication!
Ben.
It is finished! (9mb download, midway compromise I guess)
http://uploader.polorix.net//files/12/2davy%20only.mov
My demo reel of which he is a part is almost finished too.
Cheers,
Ben.
Well, since this is finished, and you have done a fantastic job btw, you should post it up in the Finished Works forum.
Deserves to be seen by all.
I have not looked through the whole thread here again, but would you mind sharing a blend file with the SSS shader on just a sphere or something? I would be very interested in looking at the settings for it.
BgDM
Cheers for the compliment, means a lot after spending so long on it. I’m planning to post probably a normal mapped version of the .blend because the mesh itself is so high poly with the shader(s) on it. It’s more or less a combination of a minnaert and the increasingly popular toon-shader-shadow-buffer trick. I’ll post the blend and the render and a bit of a ‘writeup’ in Finished Projects as well as this thread when they’re done.
Ben.
Wow, simply wonderful work, the crit would be the horrible, distracting bright background image you have opted for.
Wow, nice. That’s a really great job you’ve done there, fantastic modelling and texturing. iamthwee is right though, the psychedelic background is really distracting.
Thanks for the heads up on the background… I’ve used that sort of thing on the other models as well in my demo reel, which is heaps close to finished (editing to music, etc). In the overall context of the reel, I think it works, but I’ll post it as soon as I can for crits. Basically I wanted a black background as opposed to a white or coloured one, yet I needed a bit of ‘something’ so my models stood out a little, but something that didnt overshadow them, hence the coloured stripy blurs. Perhaps I could dull down the colours or something, but any suggestions on that would be welcome. I’ll probably start a thread for the overall reel in the next day or two.
Happy Australia Day to any fellow Aussies reading this humble post tomorrow!
Ben.
(P.S. Thanks to whoever voted this as a five star thread!t)
Well, here he is as promised.
http://uploader.polorix.net//files/12/BD_Davy_HIGH_POLY.rar
The file is packed with the textures, and compressed and stored in a .rar file, which unfortunately is still 39mb. Uncompressed from the rar and in blender he’ll come to a bit over 100mb. Half of his tentacles and his head and eyes are on layer 1, everything else is on layer two. I’ve done this because I can’t render in windows xp unless I separate them, yet linux is fine. Please note that this version is for machines with grunt, I had to spend money upgrading my RAM just to continue this project. (My comp = 3.2ghz and 2gig RAM windows/linux dual boot.) This is why I’m still working on a normal mapped version for other people to have a look at, also because its a final little challenge for me before I say goodbye to Davy and move on to other projects.
Incidentally, I had a look at the first render I posted here when I started this thread, and Davy’s texturing and lighting has changed a lot with the help of your collective thoughts, so once again thanks all! Also, if anyone wants to have a play with the lighting and post renders or whatever, knock yourselves out. I’m pretty proud of the sss settings I got in the end with the textures and the lighting. I found the light settings are actually just as important as the toon shader settings for tweaking the sss, but when I remember, I still plan to do a writeup of what I did and what could have been done better/more efficiently and I’ll explain that more there.
Cheers,
Ben.
(P.S. Please don’t study the uv unwrapping on the tentacles too closely, it could have been done much better had I unwrapped the ‘master’ tentacle first. :o )
pure inspiration, seriously that is one of the best reels i have seen; Davy jones is just pure awesome.
thanks for showing it, now ive got the feeling of getting my arse into gear and creating my own reel.
Could i just ask a few questions
how many years have you been doing 3D modeling?
have you been to any art schools?
good luck with the jobs man 
wow!
This is prob. the best work i have ever seen that is done with blender.
Truly amazing work.
You are an inspiration to all of us.
You should post this on CGTalk…Maybe you will get a front page.
Great stuff.
Daniel8488 - I started mucking about in 3D about 4 or 5 years ago, but really, really pushed myself last year, soaking up tutorials and other people’s work (a lot from this forum, but also from anywhere on the net). The first program I used was a free one called anim8tor. Here’s the first thing I ever made in 3D, a running fox!
http://uploader.polorix.net//files/12/Fox0002.avi
Then I gained access to 3dsmax and continued on my way, mainly experimenting rather than putting the effort into doing tutorials and such. Also it was my final year of high school, so I didn’t do as much as I would like in 3D. Somewhere in there I stumbled across Blender and had a crack, but the interface scared me and I let it go for a while. I enrolled at Uni in a visual arts degree, specialising in New Media, but unfortunately it was a heaps contemporary/experimental/abstract ideas sort of school, so it was hard to draw out much technical knowledge. I did come across a couple of subjects using Maya though, which is where the Mech came in.
During this time I was doing some volunteer and lightly paid graphics work and I wanted to work some 3d in. Discreet basically said I couldnt use the student version of Max even for non-for-profit work, which I guess is fair… but that brought me back to Blender, which had gone through many improvements since I last had a look, (about v2.35 or so.) I’ve been loving Blender ever since.
Hope that wasn’t too drawn out…
metalliandy - Cgtalk has a Davy remake, and it’s quite inspiring. Found it after I started though…
all - very flattering comments indeed.
Cheers,
Ben.
Ah, it’s too bad you’re done already, I just found the place where you could have gotten PERFECT reference shots… link Just click “head spin” at the top of the page, then take a screenshot of Davy at the perfect angles. Looking at this, your skin seems to have too much specularity.
just found? you need to read cgtalk more often, boy :mad: nah, j/k tho yeah it was linked there a few weeks back i belive 
Ring Junkie - Not really too late, I’m enjoying them now. Always fun to soak in world class stuff. I think some of the scenes where he’s just come out of water and so on he has a much higher spec level being wet and all. To be honest, I’m quite ready to move on to a project or two of my own invention and just get into some plain old jobseeking. Once I finish the normal mapped version I’ll move/make a new thread in ‘finished works’, maybe with a few still renders, varying light setups etc.
Cheers,
Ben
BenDansie,congratulation,you have done a really good work!
Oh. Wow. I have NEVER seen a mesh that amazing! I don’t think it need any more work.
Now… what about animating it? shudders at the thought
Pleeease don’t bump two month your old topics, especially in Focused Critique, when you have nothing to add.
speechless this is awesome. this is so great…
Do you have another link? This one seems to be down. Thanks!