Since the first day of 2012 I have become pretty strongly re-engaged into developing 3D mesh models and blowing the rust off my skills I once had from 2008 to august 2010 when I used to create SL Sculpty landscape shapes.

I have always loved working with 3D tools and expressing my creativiy by creating organic shapes digitally but my love for SL and RL potography & manipulation became a new addiction.

With SecondLife's recent introduction of MESH model suppor on their grid which is a fundamental progressive advancement in capabilities over Sculpties, I finally got inspired to learn all the added complexities in creating MESH models for import into SL's grid. The basics are easy - the actual creating of a shape, but all the mechanics and technicalities to get the shape into SL efficiently and with textures you painted outside SL has proved to be hurting my brain weeks later.

This work is the 3 recent 3D mesh model I created. It is called EMERGENCE.

Although it symbolizes countless similar situations to my personal experience, this work and its name represent my personal efforts to re-engage, relearn, and rebuild my skills and knowledge I used to have in 3D modeling for SL.

In the past 16 months since I last built a Sculpty landscape pack my knowledge and skills in the use of the 3D modeling tools I used has become extremely rusty. Additionally, the tools have moved forward and are barely familiar to me. Finally, MESH development for SL adds several new skills I must learn that was not needed with Sculpty building.

My EMERGENCE from the crusted shell of lost skills and missing knowledge that built up over these past 16 months has begun as I break through this crust with my initially rusted memory and skills.

Background of this artwork:
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What you see is a single 3D model / object that was initially hand sculpted in an amazing simple free tool called SCULPTRIS. The background is not part of the model - that was added as part my my photoshop work. I was attempting to create this sculpted shape, prepare it for SL import, texture/paint it, then actually bring it into SL.

Although I got this model into SL, it was disappointing lower quality then the level of detail I had in Sculptris. So I decided to make it a 2D photoart that you see here. To do that I had to move the model to a new 3D tool I have been working with called 3D COAT. I am still not too familiar with it but it has one huge advantage over Sculptris - you can take extremely high rez renders/photos of the model. After I painted it in 3D Coat and rendered it. I tool the image and brought it into Photoshop and began a process of transforming it into what you see here.

This work was 12 photoshop layers - most of them mine but 3 of texture layers from the amazing Texture Artist in Flickr - Pareeerica!

Here is a link of the raw 3D models used as it evolved to this artwork: http://toysoldierthor.deviantart.com/art/Hand-3D-Model-280457336

CREDITS:
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All inputs used in this work are mine with the exception of the following textures from Pareeerica:

Pareeerica - FIREWALK: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8078381@N03/3908535223/
Pareeerica - Green Grunge Cement: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8078381@N03/4953809120/
Pareeerica - Rust & Cement: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8078381@N03/2751927535/


Toysoldier Thor: http://ToyTalks.weebly.com