Week 7 - Wooo... wait... How much homework?!?

One week deeper into the monster that is term 5! this week was mostly UV'ing for me.  We had a few good lectures on how to approach it and how to combine groups for UV'ing etc so now I have both my Maya Midterm and my Texturing and Shading Final UV'd phew.  There wasn't a whole lot of time for much else :p

It doesn't look or really feel like a big leap forward but UV'ing can take a long time and really you only reap the benefits when you start texturing so hopefully I can get this scene finished in the next few days and then I can start on the Final! woop!

Same goes for the Defiant ship I tried to get the resolution equal over the entire model to ensure I didn't have any areas of high resolution texture next to low rez.  Now I can start having some fun coming up with a unique story for this guy that I can tell through its texture.

This is probably my finished version for 1/2 of my Digital Painting final.  For Compositing we learned how to use the puppet warp tool so I went ahead and animated this painting, league of legends style! It took a lot longer than I expected but I think it looks pretty cool... for my first attempt.

If you wanna see the animated version of the above painting check out this link!! Animated Splash Art :D

Nothing much to report from history of VFX we saw another couple of cool videos about the gaming industry this week and watched a very creepy interview with an AI... (shudder)  I picked my hero to do a report on, sounds like a junior school project :p But I am going with Neil Druckmann from Naughty Dog for my presentation for next week.

I haven't been too inspired to work on my character design project this week, we had another class where only 3-4 peoples work actually got looked at.  I know that it is supposed to be up to us to interpret advice on our own work from the in depth reviews of other peoples work but we all have such different styles and approaches sometimes it is really difficult to try and figure out how to fix something when you get 0 feedback.  I try to ask for advice after class but we usually run over 30 minutes so there isn't very much time for individual questions.  I will fix the few things I ran out of time to fix before the next class but I am really disappointed with the way this class has been taught this term :( OK rant over time to work on some thumbnails for my next digital painting piece.

Week6_First Review :O

This was a tough week, I think I picked up a bit of a bug :( but work still needs doing so time to soldier on.  We had our first Intro To Maya review this week, it was on a Friday to make up for the missed week earlier in the term.  The class was entirely review so it was a great chance to see everyone's work.  I was really impressed with how good some of the work was, a lot of people in this class are using Maya for the very first time and I guess I was comparing it to my early stuff, very impressive to say the least!

We are up to lighting for the Midterm, just UV'ing and texturing left, but only 1 week to do it then we are starting on our Finals eek!

For advanced character we are taking one of our characters to stage 2 before we polish it out next week.  I like the direction and simplified look of this character now but I think I lost a little something with her main shooting hand so I will probably re-do that soon.

For Advanced Digital painting I took my thumbnails up to basic lighting and color, this week I will be starting to render out this piece and also make a start on my thumbnails for the final piece.

For Compositing we are still working on the Little Red Riding hood live action composite.  It is fun to work with live action footage but its still more of an exercise so I won't be uploading the video this week.

In Texturing and Shading we are still working with BB8 but next week we will be starting on the finals.  I re-did the dirt and ware textures for this week with a slightly different approach, I like the look much better :D

I also picked my final model from Matt's archive, I thought it looked pretty cool but I didn't realise that it wasn't UV'd or named or grouped or anything XP so I spent a crazy hurried few hours UV'ing naming and grouping this guy.  Its a little rushed because the workload was nuts this week but I think its ready for me to start texturing next week.

For history of VFX we took a trip to a local modeling house called Anatamorphex.  It was a very cool studio packed with lots of awesome models.  The owner Robert gave us a really nice talk about his work in the industry and some cool stories from his past projects.

Week5_Grimey

Half way through the term :) hard to believe I am already half way done with Term 5! I am feeling it for sure but this time next term I will be committing to a track :D that's kinda exciting and scary at the same time.

For Digital Painting I started on the first of my 2 final pieces.  They are both from one of the Japanese origin myths involving Izanami and Izanagi.  My first piece is Izanagi's dangerous decent into Yomi to rescue Izanami my second piece will focus on Izanami's terrible reveal!  So far we are just up to thumb-nailing but by next week I have to have a decent thumbnail taken all the way to color and lighting XP.  I think I can handle it but I am trying to do a painting in the style of the Riot splash art pieces which is a lot harder than I thought.  Thankfully this is something my teacher is also interested in so I am getting a lot of great advice :) Hopefully I will be able to make an awesome piece... we will see.

Intro to compositing was a little boring this week.  We were all given the same clip to roto, a very valuable skill but not the most exciting thing to do.  I added a little flare by expanding on the story of the scene a little.  What we were asked to deliver was a live action cut of red riding hood walking across the frame and gaining some strange glowing orb power... I thought there was an important character missing from the scene, obviously the wolf so I found a Skyrim cut out wolf in my hasty image search and just ran with it :p

Intro to Maya is still chugging away I have my whole scene modeled out and I have started blocking out my final.  We are going over lighting in class so hopefully I will have a tasty render for next weeks post :)

Advanced Character was a lot of fun this week! We moved onto game characters, each of which had to involve some kind of shooting mechanic.  I like the central one myself but developing each characters look and story was a lot of fun.  Subsequently I started watching Steven Universe recently (now a big fan!) so maybe subconsciously there was a little influence from Garnet in my design...

For Texturing and Shading we are still working with BB8 but this time we actually got to play with painting the UV's and baking out AO maps in Vray.  It was a pretty fun assignment and getting that extra level of control is always fun! The more we progress with Vray the more creative avenues seem to open up! Next week we start on our finals :D Matt is giving us a bunch of models we can render I am thinking of going with this really cool looking spaceship if I get the all clear ill post a pic next week.

Week4_Revolvers and BB8 :D

This week was pretty tough for some reason, even though Maya was cancelled which gave me some extra time to model alllll the stuff in my scene :p there is a lot but I am nearly done with it.  

For Digital Painting we completed our last 'exercise' based homework, this time looking at fur.  I am hoping to refine the above painting if I can find time but as a base I kinda like it. I just started painting this cute little guy and decided to give him a drink to hold and the rest of the story just kept coming and he wound up as the Dogfather :p Also added an orange since in History of VFX class we covered the usage of oranges in the Godfather films, (they signify when something bad is about to happen)

For Advanced Character I was mostly doing tweaks, I thought the last hand in was the final for this assignment so I kinda brought this guy up to a pretty polished state last week.  I did try to fix his arm some but its really tricky with his proportions.  Next week I think we are moving onto game characters which should be a lot of fun! :D

I can't post the video of my Compositing homework since it got a little too big but here is a look at how I set it up anyway.  The assignment was to do a move in 3D inside of After Effects.... its a nice concept but I do not like AE's 3D one bit. Also I got a little steamed that you cant import 3D assets unless you fork up $200.00 for a plug in! That seems to be the status quo with after effects, its only a great program if you invest thousands in the right plug-ins.  So in defiance I integrated a 3D asset in my own way buy building it in Maya and rendering out some loops.

Here it is.  Only gave myself half a day to model and render this so its not that refined but it looked good enough in the animation :)

Texturing and shading was awesome this week! Matt gave us a fully UV'd BB8 model to texture.  We are just taking it to basic materials this week and then next week we will be painting on the textures to add some character.

Overall a tough but fun week :) In History of VFX a few of us got to present our researched topics I along with a few others will be presenting next class though so a little extra time to research.  I was looking into Virtual Art Direction, which is a technique developed for Avatar that basically allows directors and actors to visualize what the shot will look like after it has been digitally enhanced.  Pretty cool stuff.