Progress

Here's the first screencap of my current project in Anim 130. I've finally got used to working with Autodesk Maya and making great progress as you can see. Most of the modelling is done, at least for the outside of the building.

Stoned: The End?

Oh man I hope this is good enough. This little square has been splitting my mind in two for the past two weeks!

Update tomorrow afternoon after critique.

Speed Modeling: Range Rover Classic

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The castled bonnet was a bit tricky to make, and the mesh isn't all that symmetrical. But the vehicle's basic shape was made rather quickly, being intended to be a low poly model. Unfortunately the lighting flattened the shape of the grille bars, which is in fact a modeled mesh rather than a normal map.

Shaping the rear tailgate presented it's own unique problems, but the flaws were easily covered once the taillamps were placed in. Note the Blender monkey placed as a badge in lieu of the traditional Land Rover logo.

All in all, not too bad for a two hour sit down. This was more an exercise in getting in line on working with vertices and faces, as a means of cutting back on polygons for smoother gaming. Though the roof may be a little too high, the exaggeration of it's shape with the lack of fine details, gives it an almost cartoony look while still making it recognizable as a Range Rover.

EDIT: Now that I look at it again, it looks like something you'd find in Katamari Damacy. Which I have to admit, plays off it's low graphic quality as good stylization.

Stone Wall: Update

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Just got into the animation lab, nabbed the last available computer station with a graphics tablet and added this little afterthought: if this temple has been sitting in a dense, humid jungle, wouldn't there be growth on the stone? So I dropped the file into Photoshop and added an extra layer under all the shading & highlights and put in some moss. The professor has yet to see this, so I might update this with the result of his critique and a possible updated version.

UPDATE: Prof's review.
Dimension: check.
Texture: check.
Natural looking: not so much. Some of the brushwork is too patterned and lost some of it's painterly look. Gonna have to look up some links, and go for another back-breaking evening at home adding more detail to this until it's perfected.

Glittering Prize

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You step inside the ancient temple. Looking around, the dimly lit foyer is festooned with fearsome masks of deities long forgotten by time. A silver shaft of moonlight pours in from the next room ahead of you, and as you step in, you find what you quested across the world for. A giant wood effigy sits cross-legged, his hands held out, with the box in his palms, offering it to you. You casually thank him, as you pick it up, and are eager to access it's contents; an amulet of great power. But your celebration is cut short, as the idol rises to his wooden feet, now wielding swords, and the statues in the corners step from the shadows. The doors out of the central room slam shut, as you realize that maybe there was a lesson to be learned from that Leroy Jenkins video on YouTube; stick with your guild, numnuts.

It's a bit ambitious to think I'll get this far this semester, but I've gotten into it, and starting to get deeper in developing this into something more than just some old stone building sitting in the middle of a jungle paradise.

STONED.

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Original design in Corel Painter


Redone with Corel & Photoshop

So I took my texture in to work with my professor, and he gave me lots of help with improving my texture and giving it MUCH more depth! I've been working on it all evening to get it done. Was it ever tedious! But I guess this is what you have to go through to make it in the industry. My back is bloody stiff, but the outcome of this justifies it quite well and I'm very satisfied with this.

Classwork: Textures

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Wood plank made in Photoshop

Stone wall made in Corel Painter

I've been working ahead and started to put together some textures for my class assignment and mapping to my Blender composite. I'm looking for a painted look in the way Blizzard does theirs. I've been working with my professor to try and flesh them out as they are far too flat.

Monday Vignette: The Nerve Centre

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If there's one thing I love, it's Sci-Fi stuff. Especially things like space battles. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. Watching C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. Okay, enough Blade Runner references, you get my point, almost every epic sci-fi movie/game has an awesome space battle scene. Or even cooler, a shipwreck drifting about. While this little scene isn't exactly wrecked, something definitely has happened to jostle monitors, knock off communication lines, bring up alerts, and pull down the lighting fixtures. The scene was heavily inspired by the GFS Valhalla level from Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, though not as heavily wrecked as the Galactic Federation's battleship. And definitely not swarming with those nasty Metroids.

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption © Retrostudios & Nintendo
Bad cellphone shot © me

I especially like the outcome of the scrambled screens. Photoshop's wave filter, set to square, and repeat. Adjust settings or hit randomize until satisfied. Add some noise and horizontal grain filters, play with layer modes and opacity... voila!

Ahhhhh... reminds me when the logic board took a crap on my Mac... bad times, bad times...

Currently Project: Environment in Unity

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10 minute sketch
Traced over and details added
Pullout of surrounding environment
Composite render in Blender

The project in my environment design class is officially underway, and I've gotten a handle on Autodesk Maya. It's coming along slowly, but surely. Hopefully I'll get it done in time to code into Unity for the iPhone. Though I am mostly working in Maya now, I'll still be doing side projects in Blender, including a regular posting of vignettes.