Elisabeth Warfield - Venture in Sahara

Hi everybody ! First, I want to say a big thank you to all people involved in the management of this website ! I am so happy to find it alive again ! I have learnt a lot thank to this place and its great community !

Well, do you remember my “Flying Circus” project and Elisabeth Warfield ? Recently, I gave a boost to this project for an Octane rendering competition. Everything in the images on the link below is modelled, rigged, posed and UVmapped in Blender, and rendered with Octane. I worked one month full time to make these images, starting from only the unfinished car model I modelled last year and a previous version of elisabeth with an other head (looking a bit older).

The whole story and 38 images here :

http://3d-synthesis.com/46-LostInSahara.html

EliZabeth??

My character has name EliSabeth !o)

I’m a bit surprised : I would have expected comments about the images, not about the name of my character !o(

beautiful lighting on these images! i think if you stuck the same amount of effort into the character/figure you would do the whole body of work infinitely more justice.

Characters have always been my weakest point. I have done few characters so far, and I’m trying to improve that part. Elisabeth is my first attempt of a realistic character (I mean not a cartoon character). My main difficulties are currently the elbows and shoulder joints. I’d also want to create a better texture for the face, and a higher resolution texture for the hair too. The next step is an interview of Elisabeth to check the facial animation.

The current facial rig allows some expressions for still pictures, but I am not sure that it will enough flexible for lipsynch. I have hired a comedian for half a day next week, to record an english female voice for the interview of Elisabeth.

I hope that I will be able to get something usable and that Elisabeth will come to life in a not too far future !

Very, very nice Roubal. I really like the modeling in particular. Your attention to detail is very good here.

Of course, I’ve always been one of your fans. I like how you have always pushed the limits of Blender and animation and I’ve learned a lot from you.

I would LOVE to see this whole short animated. I think you would have an excellent short. Detail, textures and lighting are exceptional.

Anim

Thanks Animwannab ! I have had a deceptive information today. The comedian I had hire will not be able to come. Its a shame, her voice was good…

I have to look for someone else, and around here finding a comedian of almost the good age, speaking english with the right voice is not so easy !

I really can’t wait to start the facial animation and lipsynch tests !

I have to aggree with zeffii great job with the lighting. I think your posing could use some work, but it already lookes like you plan on working on it. but besides that I’m really impressed, Good work. especailly the Biplane and Jeep Models you did a really good job on those.
btw how long have you been using blender?

I love the SUV. The sand doesn’t look like sand to me it looks more like mud. But the truck looks real and so does the plane. Keep up the great work.

Really nice pictures. I really loved tha truck, it was so nice!

With some little edits you could make this scene perfect. Truck wheels cant make that kind visible tracks in the hot sand. I think that it was why Greg0 said it looks mud.

Also I think that the air does not look like so warm. I ve heard from someone that in sahara the sand is so hot that you can actually roast eggs with it.

http://www.sequential-one.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/burninggrass1.jpg

@GregO and ArMan : I agree that tires tracks are too detailed for hot sand. In fact, I have created a new system to create tires tracks automatically after the wheels, with real displacement, and I wanted to use it. Maybe it was not a good idea in that scene !

You may remember my “Tracks Creator”, generating an animated texture usable for displacement mapping. The new system is very accurate and get’s rid of the animated texture, and makes tracks in one pass, directly during the animation. The back side is that this system requires several shrinkwrap modifiers and animated masks and is very difficult to use for rear wheels in curves and when they crush the tracks of the front wheels. So, parctically, even if the system works well in curves, it is actually usable mainly in straight line. Added to that, very detailed prints require a highly subdivided ground mesh (I subdivided only a narrow lane for tracks) and eats much computer ressources !

@pefertig : I use Blender since 2004. I discovered it by chance when looking for a solution to make a 3D technical demo for the prototype of an electronic device I invented. The first week has been a bit hard as I had zero knowledge in 3D, but I became addicted to Blender in few weeks !

@GregO : I have just seen your impressive works about trains : Great modelling, congratulations ! I have the urge for a long time of making a scene with an old steam locomotive getting out of a tunnel, with smoke and a landscape around. I hope I’ll have some time to make it one day !