HairBall - CPS Week 2

By Nick Flanders-Farmer

My initial inspiration from this week's theme of tinkering came from height and displacement maps; image files used to modify a 3D object's geometry, dictating surface placement relative to the actual mesh through white and black zones (examples in pictures 5 and 6). This process is used in the game Cities: Skylines to generate custom terrain, through the use of height maps made from real world satellite data. Using zBrush I attempted to apply a height map of the Grand Canyon to a default Male Bust asset, and later to a model of a dog. I was unsuccessful both times, and changed course.

Turning to Blender, I attempted to design a hairy object reminiscent of Calamity from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (picture 7), the bore demon from the beginning of Studio Ghibli's Princess Mononoke known as Nago (picture 8), or some of the beasts from FromSoftware's Bloodborne (picture 9). Before today I had never used Blender before, and coming from a Maya background I had a lot to learn.

At first I simply played around with the scultping tools, but after finding quick and easy tools to implement hair I dove in head-first.

Dynamics and 3D simulations have been incorporated into many artist's works, including Refik Anadol's Quantum Memories, a centrepiece for the NGV's current triennial exhibition (picture 10).

You can see my entire process, as well as the final renders, here: https://youtu.be/hJ6bFl9iARI

You can also view just the renders here: https://youtu.be/s0uOBpap7L4