September 16th 2006, 8:18 pm -
These USB pen drives were modeled in Rhino and rendered in 3d Max (vray), I used my pen drive as reference, took some pictures, aligned them in photoshop and loaded as background reference in Rhino. It’s always good to work with a reference in order to keep the right proportions. The model was quite simple, basically a bunch of boxes, fillets and extruded lines.
Very simple materials were used, a medium gray with glossy reflections for the body, glossy reflections and refractions for the plastic cap and a subtle bump map for the sticker.
I’m amaze how pen drives became so popular among people that actually don’t really need them, I guess they make them feel more up-to-date and geeky. Honestly I like these little solid state memories, I have to admit that 128 MB is kinda small (now upgraded to a 4 GB 
), considering that I found it on the ground along a road with cars running all over it I can’t complain. They are strong too, I was surprised it worked without a hitch, it even end up a couple of time in the washer and came out nice and tidy, once dry I plugged in and all my data was still there, now is loaded with Damn Small Linux, this way I have a portable operating system, it comes handy whenever XP decides that it’s time to give up on life and you need to rescue your data before a new install, and let me tell ya, you’ll impress girls with it.
September 15th 2006, 9:05 pm -
I had this model laying around on my drive and after posting the super sclupey octopus I decided to recreate the look of the polymer in a CG enviroment, so I loaded up this geometry in Max with Final Render stage 1a nd this is what came out. The shader needs some more tweaking, the SSS is not quite right, I’m planning to model some more alien/monster’s heads and add them up to this post, hopefully I can find a good balance between quality and speed with the shader since it took about 3 hours to render this image, well I cranked up some settings just for the heck of it, my fault.
The base geometry of this model was done in 3ds Studio Max, exported as obj and furthermore detailed inside Zbrush, I didn’t push too much into detailing it cause at that time my machine could not handle the scene, I didn’t use any displacement map, so the whole head was over 2 millions polygons, importing it back in Max with only 512 MB of ram was already a big task, working with Zbrush and its amazing capacity to manage high poly geometries with ease makes you forget 3D Max has some limitation!
September 04th 2006, 12:54 am -
I’ve never really put my hands on sculpting, well I did a course in pottery wheel but that’s different, it was extremely fun, but beside that, I think the only time I play with clay and clay alikes was when I was a kid, sharks were my semi-daily subjects, I use to clump different colors of plasticine inside a big gray roll, shape the roll into a shark and with a knife cut it along the spinal cord and reveil the guts. I was probably influenced by some tv documentary, who knows, as long as it wasn’t on real creature I think it was ok, I guess.
September 03rd 2006, 6:49 pm -
I’n not quite satisfied with the concept of this image at the moment, it was mostly a quick and dirty render, anyhow I think it fits the illustrationfriday’s topic of the week…I think. I might revise this render, probably adding more contrast between the old mechanical lock and an extreme high tech fingerprint recognition interface.
On a website I saw a doorlock system using fingerprints as keys to secure you house, the all thing was quite expensive, from the pictures I saw the interface was extremely simple, reduced to the scan area where you press you thumb and the system recognize your unique fingerprint and let you in, it was so simple and minimalistic that a thought came to my mind, what if a “happy-go-round” fellow decide to have a little fan and smash the cover screen of the scanner…mmm, I hope they included some alternative method to unlock your door, otherwise your house wil not be only secure from intruders, but fro its own owner. I wouldn’t be surprise if they didn’t think about it, I see pretty stupid things everyday that I always think “why they didn’t think about it”.
