100 Years of Yellowstone National Park

Some photography of mine from Yellowstone.  Thank you for looking, it is one of my favorite trips.  Equipment: Canon 7D MkII.  

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Naval Dentistry

Decided it was time to see a dentist, since it had been, ummm, since I got out of the Navy. Haha, they said my mouth was in remarkable shape, scraped some stains away and sent me home without incident. It almost never works out that way, so I don't recommend delaying your appointments. I, like many people, dread the dentist. When I was seventeen, this old Navy dentist ripped the wisdom teeth out of my skull using just local anesthetic (Novocaine shots in the roof of my mouth). Anyway, I never forgot it.

Plane Crazy

I don't do a lot of modeling, so when the budget couldn't pay for an airplane, I had to dig deep into my bag of tricks. This is a Cessna 180. The base mesh without the smooth is 1024 polygons. It's on smooth division 1 for this render. The texture is a headache- it's an mr layered shader with stuff on alpha channels and clamps on bump maps and all kinds of things. It's got a full interior with gauges. I rigged this model to fly in an aerial sequence. Specifically, I'm using Craft Animation Director Tools for Maya to animate this plane. I'm putting the rig on Creative Crash, the textures maybe not. Gotta work for something. It needs some UV/light linking modifications. The hard part is done; we'll see how it flies.

Animation Time

Still ironing out problems with the butter fly rig. The MEL script for the wing flutter is giving me headaches. The lizard rig is WIP as well. I'm working out some teeth and tongue issues, and the blendshapes are non-existent. I atleast want some basic emotion to work with. Right now the jaw opens and shuts... and that is about it. The body is okay. Thinking seriously about gutting this rig and starting over. The butterfly is so small, a few issues won't really matter (which is why it lacks a normal map and some of the other things 3d models normally have). But the lizard, my main squeeze for this sequence, needs some personality. I'm already planning my shots for this animation, and I'll likely post some of my planning.