More work on the spider, model mostly complete

For now at least...

This was fun to work on :) I'm not very happy with the materials that I have on it, however that's a whole new can of worms to deal with. This version shows use of sculpt nodes and several different subdivision SOPs that refine the initial subdivisions even more to use for sculpting with the Sculpt SOP.

From Learning 3D

I kind of like the way this shot came out:

From Learning 3D

Sadly I made a mistake in how the abdomen joins the thorax, and this results in an ugly crease or warp in the mesh that is really annoying. Fixing it would be possible but then the new primitives would screw up some of the later groups, or other nodes that refer to specific points/primitives, so I left it alone.

However I was able to repeatedly go "back in time" and alter bits of geometry, and or even make some drastic changes. From what I have seen watching videos with Maya on 3DBuzz, this would simply not be possible. For example, I'm able to keep my low level polygon mesh, tweak that, and then go back down the node graph to the high res subdivision mesh and make changes there as well with out ever having to discard either. Houdini rocks!

From Learning 3D

The Itsy, Bitsy, Spider...

Working from a set of lessons at 3D Buzz, I was able to duplicate the spider geometry below using Houdini. The lessons themselves were done with Maya, so hopefully I didn't lose to much in guesstimating the equivalent tools to use in Houdini. It's not quite finished, but I was pleasantly pleased with how far I got (only 2 more legs to go!):

From Learning 3D

From Learning 3D

From Learning 3D

Krypton's last days

Playing with some shaders, using Houdini's built in Lava, Ice, and Glow shaders:

From Learning 3D

From Learning 3D

From Learning 3D

Playing with the camera

This is a test of animating the camera along a path, and then animating the path itself. Also played with animating an L System tree by animating various properties based on the current frame value.