Lamp Guy
 

Hello there,

here's a quick render of a little character I've made, I'm not sure where I'm headed with him but at least it's a step out of the inspirational doldrums that I've been stuck in for the past couple of weeks.

Take it easy,

Mat.

i like him. . .he made me smile the very second i saw him/her/it!

i think you could really make somethin fun with this guy. maybe make a whole family or something.

as far as the model is concerned. . .he just needs a few more features to help bring him more to life. some eyebrows, maybe make the filament squiggly so it looks like his hair, and then some kind of a mouth.

i like his texture. . .not sure what you could do with that. maybe lighten it a bit. and the little thing at the bottom. . .i have seen those in different colors. so maybe give that a look as well.

happymat27 sure does have "Bright" ideas

welcome back mat ,

glad you have some inspiration . only crit i have is model kinda hard to see i guess needs more light in background and maybe that will bring out features of the model. But i love the idea .... and looks good as far as that


i love how the light bulb looks so real and clear ..would be neat to see some of the filiment lite

Hello all and cheers for your thoughts,

Anm8or, I've been having a dilemma about the mouth and I'm still not sure. The eyebrows on the other hand is exactly what he needs, they will definately be added for character.

13th_resident, it's the first one for a while, cheers!!!

mmoore, I agree about the render, it sucks!! I'll get another one sorted shortly. The filament is going to glow and shed light, it's all part of the rig that I've been putting together.

I've been pretty bogged under with university work recently (it's what you get for leaving it all till the last minute!!) but it's easing off now so progress on him should speed up a bit.

Cheers again,

Mat.

woohoo cant wait to see it ..i love the character so original...it is hard to find that sometimes ... originality .

wooho it will glow ..

good luck on school also. cant wait to see the progress

Hello again,

Here's a lighter render (still quick and nasty I'm afraid). I've added some eyebrows, Groucho Marx/Eugene Levy style!

I've pretty much finished rigging the bottom half of him now, I need to set up the set driven keys on the hands after which I'll deal with the filament, eyebrows and eyes.

Cheers,

Mat.

You should model him trying to crawl into a lightbulb socket...

kinda the same idea as this pic:
http://static.highend3d.com/galleryi...703/screen.jpg

hahha i love it ...i like the gracho glasses lol ...looks tons better ... cant wait to see more

Hello folks,

I've finally found time to finish rigging him, I've attached a picture of the skeleton 'cos I'm pretty damned proud of it! It's the first time I've designed and built a rig without following a guide, his arms and legs are IK FK switchable, he has no flip knees and elbows, his feet have a reverse foot set up, all the FK controls are limited, and his fingers are all set driven. I've attached a point light to the brightness controller along with glow and incandesence on the filament shader, phew!

I'll render out a couple of quick poses and post them shortly.

Cheers,

Mat.

wow sounds interesting ..i know you been working on getting things rigged and animated ..glad to see you still in the swing of things ... cant wait to see progress

Good work Mat - glad to see you are back in the game. I really like the eyebrows and his eyes. Personally I don't think this character needs a mouth - the screw kind of works as a mouth for me. Well done on setting up your first solo rig!

Looking forward to updates. :beer:

happymat really cool character :), how do you make that light controller? i wish i could rig like that :)

Thanks for your thoughts,

I'm pretty happy with him as he is (for now), so I think I'll be leaving him without a mouth.

The controllers are made from nurb primative squares and circles, the circles have limits put on them so that they can't be moved out of the square. Then you use set driven keys to control whatever attributes you need to control with the controller. I think I may have confused matters there, sorry!

Here's the render I promised, take it easy,

Mat

Nice little guy. To showcase his character you could try a clean studio render with a pure white background and nice soft shadows. That way the eye would focus on his details/character rather than the reflections from the HDRI. Try some large area lights with final gather. Just a suggestion. Looking good.