Pete Mc Nally's Blog

Mech or Break…

•August 27, 2013 • Leave a Comment

Trying to start back into blogging after what has been a difficult few weeks. I’ve been working on and off on a mech of sorts for the past while, with no plan and little reference so the going has been extremely slow. It was started as a post for the Irish Sketch Society but I didn’t get it finished that week and it just sort of dragging on now. I am enjoying modelling techy shapes with no particular plan or purpose so I’ll keep it going on the back burner. Here is an image showing a block out of the legs, so far the mech will be bipedal.

This is another indistinct image of some further detail work on the legs/hips, I’ll update the blog when I get a bit further.

Posted in Personal Work
Tags: armored, armoured, hard, in, legs, machine, mech, mobile, progress, robot, surface, tank, tech, walking, work

Kaiju thunder!

•July 29, 2013 • Leave a Comment

I worked on this Pacific Rim inspired Kaiju for last week’s theme on the Irish Sketch Society Facebook page. Top one is a composite of a bunch of Mudbox viewport screengrabs before I added teeth and refined the shape and the bottom image is rendered in VRay. Good fun! I had hoped to get another one sculpted by last weekend but I took a few days off and didn’t go near a PC, it will likely end up here when I get back to it.

Posted in Personal Work
Tags: 3dsmax, colossus, creature, Irish, kaiju, max, monster, Mudbox, pacific, rim, sculpt, sketch, society, v-ray, vray

Death of the Gravedigger…

•July 3, 2013 • Leave a Comment

Messed about over lunch this week with this guy, you may recognise him as the Leprechaun from my Paddy’s Day post .I was doing some work on his hat, which I was never happy with, but got carried away with this view, he reminded me of an undertaker from the Wild West days so I rendered it up. There is something unsettling about his closed eyes I think, like they could spring open at any second…

Posted in Personal Work
Tags: 3dsmax, camera, closed, dead, digger, dirty, dusty, eyes, grave, head, lense, leprechaun, model, Mudbox, photoshop, sculpt, shut, speed

Zod’s law…

•June 27, 2013 • 2 Comments

From the limited reference available here’s my take on Zod’s suit from the now showing Man of Steel. The longest part of this was sourcing some reference and the hard surfacing around the breathing mask in 3DSMax, the collar and helmet were lashed out pretty quickly as I was running out of time for the ISS weekly topic. All elements were captured at 2x screen size from the realtime Mudbox viewport, with compositing and post in Photoshop.

Posted in Personal Work
Tags: 3dsmax, helmet, Irish, krypton, man, mask, Mudbox, of, photoshop, sketch, society, steel, suit, super, superman, villain, zod

The Stones of Destiny….

•June 20, 2013 • Leave a Comment

I did this a while ago but didn’t post it up here. I was reminded of it by a friend who posted a photo of the Stone of Destiny ( an Lia Fáil ) at the Hill of Tara in Meath, just a few days before the Summer Solstice. Legend has it that the Stone of Destiny was a coronation point for the crowning of ancient Irish kings and when a true king stood atop the stone a deafening roar would emanate from it. This image was created in 3DSMax in about 2 hours, Hair and Fur modifier for grass and rendered with Mental Ray with grading in Photoshop.

Posted in Personal Work
Tags: 3dsmax, ancient, astronomical, calender, clock, dawn, destiny, dusk, fail, gathering, heritage, high, hill, ireland, Irish, kings, lia, megalithic, mental, monlith, mystic, ogham, place, ray, sacred, solstice, standing, stone, summer, sunset, tara

Steely Man…

•June 12, 2013 • Leave a Comment

Some Superman related fan art this time, taking the man of steel thing a bit more literally. An hour in the Mudbox for the sculpt and paint job and another hour in Photoshop for post. All passes were screen grabbed from Mudbox at 2x screen size.

This one is rendered in 3DSMax with post in Photoshop

Posted in Personal Work
Tags: 3dsmax, art, deco, kal-el, man, Mudbox, of, photoshop, sculpt, sketc, speed, steel, superman, vray

Art Decking 2…

•May 27, 2013 • 2 Comments

This is the full image for the Art Deco theme mentioned in my previous post

This is a work in progress version I submitted earlier in the week

This one is a material ID pass from VRay, I was using it to make easy selections in Photoshop to add slightly different hues to the metal parts, but the boldness of colour and silhouette in the image itself sort of struck me so I’m including it here. It reminded me of a movie poster I saw somewhere, maybe for Salem’s Lot or The Wicker Man.

Posted in Personal Work
Tags: 3dsmax, art, buildings, city, deco, futuristic, greeble, Irish, lot, man, movie, Mudbox, photoshop, poster, retro, salem's, sketch, society, statue, v-ray, vray, wicker

Art Decking…

•May 24, 2013 • 2 Comments

It’s Art Deco week on the Irish Sketch Society so I knocked together a few images. The statue is inspired by the production design of Anton Furst’s Gotham in Tim Burton’s Batman, a huge metal entity that could support an elevated road or railway. The image below is based off the usual screengabs from Mudbox’s tasty viewport at 2x screen size after sculpting and a quick texture projection, then composited and resized in Photoshop. The viewport background was also replaced with those clouds and the searchlight beam added to the foreground.

The next image is a shot of the hooded cloak covering the statue from the image above. I ran some cloth sim in Max to drape some garments over the body but it was eating up too much time trying to get it right, so I optimised the mesh and added some greeble for fast detail. You can’t see the cloth in this image but I’ll post the full render soon. Rendered in VRay with a daylight system (no GI) and composited in Photoshop. I really like Art Deco so working on this one was nothing but fun!

Posted in Personal Work
Tags: 3dsmax, art, atlas, deco, figure, gotham, greeble, Mudbox, photoshop, statue

Turtle Power…

•May 14, 2013 • 1 Comment

I used to watch this cartoon as a kid and I’m pretty sure I saw the live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie at the cinema, but I was never a huge fan. The character Casey Jones caught my attention for a while, with his lo-fi vigilante skills and sports equipment arsenal but i was never particularly attached to any of the main characters. That said, after an annoying crash last night left me with only a phone picture of my efforts, I sketched up my take on Leonardo in Mudbox, going back to Max to improve the basemesh then returning to Mud for displacement and sculpt work. The image is the result of screen capping the realtime viewport in Mudbox at 2x screen size capturing Z Depth, AO and the raw lit model and compositing in Photoshop. More to come later this week.

Posted in Personal Work
Tags: 3dsmax, hero, leonardo, Mudbox, mutant, ninja, photoshop, sculpt, speed, teenage, TMNT, turtles

Rest in peace, Ray…

•May 8, 2013 • Leave a Comment

I couldn’t let the day go by without mentioning the passing of a hero of mine yesterday, legendary VFX creator Ray Harryhausen. I vividly remember sitting on my dad’s knee as a kid in the early 80s and watching Clash of the Titans for the first time. I was mesmerised and inspired as my Dad explained that the fantastical creatures were made from a kind of plasticine, which couldn’t have been true, right? I mean there they were, on the screen, 40 feet high, trying to flatten Perseus! Undoubtedly, Harryhausen’s creations inspired my imagination, a love of movies and behind the scenes documentaries and eventually my career choice, and he has left an enduring mark on cinema, animation and VFX.

RIP Ray Harryhausen, June 29, 1920 – May 7, 2013

Posted in News
Tags: harryhausen, ray