Blunt Dissector

Not too long ago, I bought a book on surgical instruments, as a reference, and decided to create some 3D clips of surgical instruments utilizing this reference.  Here is an Endoscopic Blunt Dissector I modeled and have been using to research lighting, texture, and camera motion.

Here are a couple of stills I created, playing with background color.

Normally I would take these stills back into Photoshop and put some final changes on them, play with the color and contrast, but I want to get this post up today, so here you go.

I have been playing around with my logo in Cinema 4D and thought I would post some of my work.

Digital Sculpting

I have been doing a little digital sculpting.  Here is a start on the human figure.

Drawing,

I have been revisiting the way I place marks down on paper to represent the world around me.  My wife picked me up a sketchbook a few months ago and I thought I would put it to use and have been doing a little sketching every night before I go to bed.  Here are a few of the things I have put on paper.  Some are master copies from artists whom I admire while others are creations out of my head-drawings from memory, and others representations of images I have drawn with my own style.

This Heart drawing is a master copy-I copied several drawings by Bill Andrews-A tremendous medical illustrator.  He was also the director of the graduate program I completed at Georgia Regents University.  I am hoping to develop the simple yet descriptive way he puts pencil on paper.

These were drawn from photo reference.  I am trying to employ the mark making the Bill uses to represent these images I saw.

 The blood vessels on the lower half are made up from my imagination.  I wanted to do a little memory drawing.  See if I could create believable images with out looking at references.

These were also drawn from reference.

Got heart!

I've been pushing my 3D skills to the limit trying to expand on the basics I learned from school.  The objective for this particular project is to create an animation of a pumping heart.  I have always been fascinated by the heart and thought it would be a lot of fun.

I wanted something that looked organic and real not stiff and cubed.  To give me that organic quality I turned to Pixologic's Sculptris. It is a free software and very fluid and comfortable to sculpt in.  Although Sculptris was new to me and it took a little work, sculpting is not and I am happy with what I was able to create using anatomical references.

It was easy to get it into a 3D software program such as Cinema 4D or Blender, however the mesh was too dense.  This would be considered a high polygon model.  To create an animation I need to get a low poly count.  That process, creating a low poly count model from a high poly count object is called Retopologizing.  And that is what I had to learn to do.  I have mostly been working in blender although in school we learned to use Cinema 4D.   

 Retopologizing is not particularly difficult but it takes a little time.  After finishing, however, I realized in order to retain the fine detail in the high poly model I need to UV unwrap it and bake it into the low poly model.  This is where things have become very challenging.  The problem with UV unwrapping my Sculptris model is it's so dense it is difficult to create seams, where the model will break to unfold into a 2D flat image.  I think I need to bring in the heart in three different parts, the ventricles can come in as one piece, and the Aortas as separate pieces.  Then the two great vessels, the Aortic Arch and the Pulmonary Trunk, as separate parts as well.  

  So my great challenge is to go back and bring the parts in separately, UV unwrap each piece and then I'll be about ready to create my animation.

I have also been playing with lights and materials.  So I took a a picture of the heart in Blender.