3D Pumpkin Carving Contest

Landis · Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 6:37 am Post subject: 3D Pumpkin Carving Contest

Hello everyone and welcome to the festivities. I absolutely love halloween/carving pumpkins...and funny enough most artists I talk to do as well. I know how busy and stressed out we have all been lately so after a great night out on the town with a bunch of you I came up with the idea for this new tradition....I call it "Click or Treat". To be honest I wanted to kick this off sooner but I figure 21 days is enough time to model a pumpkin. Entries must be in by halloween night at midnight. Texturing/Rendering is optional although I am sure you will all light that baby up with a little candle for the turntable....I know I will! So, what are you waiting for...fire up google, find some reference, and start carveling (carving + modeling = carveling)!

Shannon · Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 71 Location: Wellington

Awesome idea...seriously, is this your original idea? I love it. I am nowever in-humanly busy so I'm not sure when I'll be able to start this. Thinking of ideas now though.

Carveling...love it.

Landis · Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 8:01 pm Post subject:

Yes! Its my idea...although I am sure it has been done before. If not then thats crazy! Anyways, yeah, I am totally stoked to hear that someone else out there appreciates it! I think its one of the best ideas ever! If ofcourse you like halloween and are addicted to 3D...otherwsie I am sure its just a bunch of nonsense. Hehehe. I was thinking of spreading the word to cgtalk, cgchannel, feeds, etc. I would love for it to be a tradition....people swing by my site during halloween and submit....pretty cool eh? I know everyone is busy but it doesnt take long at all. Dude you know you want to bust out some Zbrush/mudbox on a pumpkin. Mine is turning out pretty cool. I am having so much fun man I cant even tell ya! I was thinkig if people didnt want to model but wanted to participate I would provide a generic uncarved pumpkin for em'. Anyways, yeah man, I am glad to hear you like it as much as I do...I have been frantically checking the forum to see what others think of the idea. I feel like a kid at christmas...or a kid wearing my costume weks before halloween. LOL.

Shannon · Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 71 Location: Wellington

I kinda like the idea that it is on your site, I wouldn't post it around, kinda spoils it a little I think. I mean, its your call but I think that would make it less of a special event. Anyawys, yeah I'm still thinking of ideas and threw it your "Carvling Contest" idea around here at work and people really liked it.

Also I think that providing a generic base mesh would be a good idea, kinda gives people some motivation to get it off the ground. Low poly would be good too so we could just lattice and soft mod it.

Damn, now I just need to come up with a kickass idea.

speeQr · Joined: 24 Apr 2006 Posts: 28 Location: san francisco, CA

what do you mean there is no prize! you mean we should be happy with our pursuit of knowledge and artistic truth? Bah!

come on, you know you want to throw in some GKR swag. Or swipe a stapler with the logo on it from your desk at work. :)

griffinryan · Joined: 17 Apr 2006 Posts: 52

Awsome freaking idea Landis. I will do my best to get an entry in. My to do list is like a mile long. When they are all done we should comp together some kind of spooky Halloween scene. Maybe on a front porch or something.

Landis · Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 2:41 pm Post subject:

Shan,

Good point. I will keep it here on the site. I too told some people at work and they are jumping in on the festivities as well! I think its going to be a pretty cool turn out. I will work on cranking out a low res "uncarved" pumpkin tonight when I get home to offer to those that want to participate but would prefer to avoide modeling the pumpkin.

speeQr,

Ha! No prize (or soup) for you!

griff,

Yes! Too funny. Talked it over with a co-worker (hi Kat) today and she had an awesome idea...to set up a scene that looked like a porch but instead of pumpkins it had a bunch of monitors sitting on it with each of our entries playing them (pretty easy to do...model the porch, dup the monitors and export all entries as an image sequnce for the texture).

Shannon · Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 71 Location: Wellington

Where's our base mesh?

speeQr · Joined: 24 Apr 2006 Posts: 28 Location: san francisco, CA

poor shannon. Hey guys, please help shannon out. If he doesn't get a base mesh, he may never become a modeler. oh well. Shannon, i guess you can always find a job in retail...

Shannon · Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 71 Location: Wellington

LOL....sorry, in my mind, I see it as a better challenge when everyone starts with the same starting point. That's how we do things at Rhythm. Every model here starts as a pumpkin.

speeQr · Joined: 24 Apr 2006 Posts: 28 Location: san francisco, CA

woah... i get it. So the pumpkin is like a metaphor for every one of us. Maybe the pumpkin is that special place inside each one of us, a rough and ugly skin on the outside wrapped around our fleshy insecurities... and landis wants us to carve into our thick skin and reveal our inner soul! I see!

wait... there still aren't any prizes.

Landis · Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2006 12:37 pm Post subject:

LOL. Ok, I cranked out a template pumpkin for those of you who may want/need a lowres base to start from. Cut more loops, extrude and stretch as you see fit. This is a Maya ascii file. Ofcourse clicking on the link below will work in the forgiving internet explorer, in firefox it will most likely display the scene file as text within the browser window, so, to download the file in firefox just right click on the link below and choose 'save link as'.

maya

http://www.LandisFields.com/pumpkin_template_01_001.ma

You will find that the stem is in a neutral state (vertical), there are no materials, and the UV's have not been defined. Its a bare-bone, uncarved, cg pumpkin from the virtual pumpkin patch.

Enjoy,
Landis

Shannon · Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 71 Location: Wellington

LOL, awesome...Am starting mine officially tonight. Wua HAHA!

Landis · Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2006 6:26 pm Post subject:

Shweeeet!

niceanimation · Joined: 20 Oct 2006 Posts: 4 Location: San Francisco

Hi Everyone - I'm new here, but loved the idea of the pumpkin, I love short personal projects, and I found this very rewarding. Thanks for the idea! I can't wait to see all the ideas everyone comes up with! :D I went ahead and posted what I made beucase I know I probably won't have time to come back to it at all later, so here it is! Happy Halloween!!!

Small Size:
Image Link

Large Size:
Image Link

Occlution:
Image Link

Website with lots of fun Starwars Templates (Insert shameless plug for my company)
http://www.starwars.com/kids/activity/crafts/f20051027/index.html

How I worked:
I started with the template pumpkin, Google Imaged pumpkin, then did everything in Maya and comped it in Photoshop...