Residing in Limbo (3 days late)

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, and I've been focused on a computer screen. My recent project is still nowhere near completion, as I'm lost in endless possibilities. What I need is input and direction from the intended client. However, I've been busy with work and family obligations, that we have not had the chance to meet up. Because of this I decided that I had to meet up with him. I reached out to my brother on Wednesday, and I finally showed him his new "Cybermonkey"

Because this blog is 3 days late, I'm going to take advantage of explaining the Cybermonkey's history and what I've been doing this past month.

Back in the late 90's early 00's, I was consistently drawing, and my younger brother was learning to become a network specialist. One day, I think we were watching Hackers, and we heard someone say this term Cyber-monkey. During that period, I had a lot of time available, so I decided to draw what I thought a Cyber-Monkey would look like. When I showed him, he really liked it, and ran with it. He even took the name as a moniker and used it online. Now going back to 4-5 months ago, I'm learning how to do Blender, and I though how awesome it would be to make this in Blender. Of course, I'm learning and my confidence is not that high, so I never told him my plan. I didn't want to get his hopes up, or get jaded with the constant I haven't started or I'm not done. Especially since, I still do not have a great work flow, and I'm always falling flat on the final outcome. Knowing that his birthday was was coming up in July, I decided that it would be a perfect goal to surprise him with it.

Skip ahead to before my Vacation, I had finished Dad's Blender Shoppe and started looking for reference pictures of a monkey. I tried looking for some scientific drawings of a Capuchin monkey. (It seemed like a fitting species for my brother, mischievous but people seem to like them) With no real front of side picture to help me begin, I decided to sculpt the monkey first, then apply a new mesh over it. I tried sculpting before, but I didn't have my pen and tablet before. It didn't take long to make the head, but I was constantly asking myself it looked right. But once I added the ears, the head looked great. The body was a different matter. When I started the body, I was thinking of a monkey sitting, and then transitioned into thinking it needed to be in a T-pose. This indecision caused the monkey to be leaning forward, and I believe the legs were too short compared to the body. The hands were another area I rushed through, and the fingers were misshaped;

Unsure of my sculpting skills, I rushed into creating the re-mesh. I thought the head and the face looked great, so I didn't see why I couldn't begin there. This was the one part of the model I felt comfortable with. Granted, I had to find a tutorial on how I can actually wrap a mesh around the sculpture. It did take a while to do the face, because I wanted to get it right. By the time we left for Thailand, I had just completed the ears and down the neck. I even went back to the sculpture and cleaned up the fingers a bit.

While in Thailand, I tried to continue applying re-mesh onto the sculpture. It took three weeks to complete it. There was a couple of reasons for the delay, and everyone of them was my own fault. 1) The sculpture was not very detailed, and extremely rough. That made it difficult the determine where the mesh loops flow, and distorted the mesh completely. 2) I tried to plot out every vertex before I extruded. This made every thing slow moving. 3) Finally, I had a difficult time working away from my personal computer tower, and it was hot. As you can see, I placed myself into a self destructive path.

Halfway through the re-mesh, I decided to work on his cybernetic eye. The eye started as a modified cylinder with a large lens. The original drawing looked like it was part of sunglasses on his eye, but that didn't feel right in this era. However, I know the eye needed to have some features; fish eye lens, laser scope, night vision, and an internal H.U.D. So, I had to look into how a fish-eye works and what is needed for night vision cameras. Then I added the traditional two rings so the eye can rotate left right and up down. Then I ran into a creative problem as to how will I attach this to the monkey. I had thought of creating a cranial replacement, but it seemed too much. I went with the idea of creating an artificial eye socket.

I continued working on the mesh, but needed to break away again or else I would go insane staring at squares. The original arm was an organic metal like that of Marvel's Cable. However, I thought the new arm needed to be more technical and realistic. Arms have certain range of motion, so needed to decide how and where the artificial arm will move. My research into cyber and artificial arms revealed that the joints can be simple, and the whole arm can be slender. Using cylinders, I figured the arm can swivel inside one another and extend if needed. For the forearm, I added two double barrel guns and a bayonet. None of them were textured or colored, and it still does not have a hand on the end of it.

By the end of vacation in Thailand, I had finally completed the re-mesh. I saved everything, and made copies of it, because I realized that I might need to go back to it soon. The mirror, subdivision surface, and shrink wrap modifiers were applied, and the final mesh scared me. It appears that the mesh took on some of the original sculpture, and the subdivision surface made the mesh jagged. To take my mind off of it, I opened a new file and got reacquainted with the hair particle. 2.8's hair was much easier to use with my laptop, so I simply placed it on the monkey. With the fur, the mesh and the sculpture didn't matter. I began removing the arm and the eye in the copied monkey mesh.

And now we are all caught up, here's how this week went:

While I don't want to sit around twittering my thumbs, I've realized that the old sayings are true. "You can't build great stuff off of crap." At least that's the way I heard it. My original sculpture looked good, but everything was off. It's body was tilted forward, the fingers looked like a dog chewed on them, and the legs were baby legs. All the work that went into the Cybermonkey to this point was fine, but if Chris gets this he might be showing off to co-workers and friends, and I don't want him looking like an idiot. (Or like that Dad who's showing off his kids finger painting.) So, I pulled out the pen and tablet and made a new copy of the most recent file. It felt like I spent another 2 hours on it, but I think this was the body the monkey needed to have.

Granted, my feet looks like they are in foam boots, I think it's awesome. Because of the new sculpted body, I had to redo the mesh. The original got all twisted up, because of the way the original body stood, so all the mesh was clinging onto his back.

All this was done within the week. Now, my wife don't seem to be happy with me, since I'm sitting at a computer and not helping around the house.

This has been the longest post I've done so far, and I don't want to again. I felt like I had to write a dissertation in 3D modeling. Finally, I had originally post these on Tuesday, but I'm switching it over to Wednesday. Wednesday is a day where I do Tae Kwon Do, and I can never get anything done on Blender. So, maybe I'll be able to free write a lot easier.

Good Night.