Finals... for real this time!

OK term 9 is done! wow that was by far the hardest term at Gnomon to date! but we all survived good job everyone! :D

I wound up baking my creature final onto a rough low poly cage so I could do my previs in Marmoset instead of relying on Keyshot.  Hopefully I can run through a few Keyshot tutorials in the near future since it is a very useful program I just didn't leave enough time for this final.  Also now that I have seen what the other tracks are able to pull off in Nuke with their post processing etc I feel a little amateur doing mine in Photoshop :p

You can see more pictures and the Marmoset scene on my Artstation page.

For the Animation for Games final I finished up my Attack combo and added a rough death animation.  I have had a lot of fun in animation this term I feel like the lessons I learned last term combined with some of the new tricks in this class has caused animation to really starting clicking.  There is still a long way to go but I can totally see myself as a games animator if that every happens in the future.

If you want to see the full animation loops check out the files in my term 9 Google Drive folder

Here's the big one! Environment for Games! wow this class was huge.  I learned so much in this class and in the supporting classes like Texturing and Shading for Games and Game Creation 1.  I wound up finishing my Marmoset scene on Sunday night and the assignment was due Monday 7:00pm  So I thought I would try and get the whole thing into Unreal! It seemed like it wouldn't be too tough but wow there were a lot of steps!!  I had to add a 2nd UV channel to everything in my scene to hold the light map bake which in itself wasn't hard but there were just so many pieces in the scene that I had to repeat the same process so many times.  I think I might be able to write a quick script that could do that in the future though... we will see.
But that was only the first step after that I had to build and assign every material in the scene including some of the more complex ones like the glass and wax shaders, then do all the post (in camera) effects.  Looking back at it I'm not entirely sure how I managed to pull it off but somehow it all came together just in time!  Still there are a lot of little problems that cropped up, most likely from me having to rush it.  Still I did want to take this scene further in Unreal and make a small cinematic so I guess its pretty good to have it in Unreal so I can start chasing down those errors.

But now time for some well earned rest! C you all next term!

Finals!!... Kinda

Phew haven't updated in a week or so but I have been crazy busy!! Also had a little dental trouble... which was annoying and lost me a few hours so I guess I will be doing a little catch up over break :*(

I have a couple of makeups in week 11 so there will be 1 more update for my final final stuff...

Gonna do a little bit more with this project after the final TnS class.  I want to do a bit more with the Podracer Texturing.  Mostly some tweaks but I also want to paint some permanent decals and damage.  The assignment was to use Unreal for that stuff and it was a really cool learning experience but I really like how it turned out and I think with a few more hours of love the textures could go a lot further!!  I built some functionality, UI and animations for this piece too which I will screen capture for the final post of this term :)

Animation is getting there.  I need another pass at this attack animation to really push it and I got some great notes in class of how to make this feel more energetic! check out this attack loop in my Google Drive Folder

Going back to rendering.... hmm I never really got all that good in Keyshot but I shot myself in the foot a little here by assuming it would work with multiple emissive objects, custom lights and SSS skin :P I wasn't able to get the character fully rendered in time but I got some OK (debatable) screen grabs out.   

 I am pretty happy with the way this character developed.  I pushed the secondary forms a lot more from week 4 and I did a lot more with the cloth too. Still I have a long way to go before I would consider myself comfortable with costuming.  I am hoping to do a Victorian, Bloodborne inspired character next term which will involve a lot more costuming than this character... So I guess by the end of next term I should be a lot better with costume!

One thing Keyshot is quite good at though is making renders that look like 3D prints!!! I really like this effect! 

Just in case my workload wasn't quite heavy enough already I opted into an extra rigging project for a friend at school.  I have learned so much in Cameron Ward's class this term! really great teacher. I am pretty confident that I can rig up this stylised character, by Rico, with stretchy IK and a few other cartoony tweaks too before the start of next term.  If I can get it all to work well enough Sofiane Bnk will be using it for his animation graduation reel! which would be awesome!

I spent most of this week building a few extra props for set dressing my scene to bring a little more narrative intrigue to the shot.  Now that I am more familiar with the games pipeline getting these props all modeled and textured really doesn't take that long.  Especially considering they aren't "hero props." Still they bring a lot more to the main shot and some close up shots I have planned.

I am pretty happy with my first pass at lighting this scene :) but I do want to make a lot of corrections and tweaks before I hand this in next week!  There are still a few more props to texture but I am pretty confident that I can get it all done in time :D

Man this term has been tough!!  And I even had a couple of easier classes like Game Creation 1, Animation and Rigging each of which only took up a few hours a week to stay on top of... It makes me a little worried for next term especially since I switched out a couple of easier classes for 2 pretty tough ones, Advanced Rigging and Advanced Digital Sculpting.  Those classes combined with Character for Games, Game Creation 2 and VFX for games is gonna make next term even tougher :*( better get some rest over break!! Still one week left of this term better not slow down too much yet!