Week5 - So much modeling, so little sleep...

Wow this week was tough! I just about managed to hit all the homework outcomes I wanted but it wasn't easy.  It was mostly Hard Surface 1 that got me, I spent almost 3 full days on just this weeks homework but I really needed to.  I did have a lot of fun with VFX and Texture 2 though.

For texturing and shading we were mostly getting our models into and back from Substance Painter.  This workflow checks for bad topology, stretched UV's etc an in the process creates a really useful path between the Substance and Maya files.  Bottom line is all I have to do now is save my substance progress and it should update my Maya textures instantaneously!  The above pic is a grab from substance with a smart material preset applied to prove the UV's are OK.

I got some solid advice on how to improve my composition from last week.  I tweaked the lighting a bit too and I think its starting to really come together.  I expect it to change a little when I have real textures in with reflections etc but it probably wont change drastically from the above composition.

Substance painter is so much fun! You can go from nothing to about 80% textured in about 10 minutes!! the other 20% takes a lot of work though but its fun to get to a solid workable level that fast!

The other part of this weeks assignment was to texture something in Substance using the projection brush and then render it in Maya.  I textured the environment my final will be placed in and I think it looks OK but with the lighting as it is you probably will only see the environment in reflections :p but it had to be done at some point.

Animation homework was doing a jump cycle for our characters from last week. You can check it, and my VFX piece here.

That brings me to my VFX assignment for this week.  We covered cluster and sculpture deformers.  I used some clusters to build a rig for my giant carnivorous worm, who then began rampaging through a futuristic space station... like you do...

And here it is the block in for my Hard Surface final!  This is the reason I got like no sleep this week but I am really happy with the outcome.  The geometry is pretty trash but hopefully I will be replacing a piece of this mech every week from now till week 10. e.g next week I will be working on the arms.  I am sticking pretty close to the game model for the block in but for the high rez detailing I plan to be a little looser with the concept.

OK time to grab some sleep before I make a start on next week's assignments bye!

Week4 - Doughnuts and Bolters

Gearing up for Midterm, which doesn't mean a whole lot this term I guess.  For Hard Surface and Texturing and Shading it means that we are starting on the final but for most of the other classes we are just continuing on like normal.

For VFX this week we are working with constraints.  They are quite handy and the basis for a lot of rigging which we will get to in the distant future.  I am actually looking forward to really learning rigging, I know a little from past projects but I hope to learn a lot more.  I had a bit of fun with this project and designed an automated doughnut factory. You can check out the full animation here

 

Texturing and Shading was a two parter this week.  We opened Substance Painter for the first time and played around a little, which was fun.  The assignment however was just to finish off our final models.  That means UV's, optimization, composition, lighting, the works!  It was tough but i managed to get everything done.  I am working on the composition with a little help from one of my past teachers Devon.  I hope to really nail it down over the next week or so to make sure I get the most out of the whole piece.

 

There wasn't a whole lot of animation in this weeks animation assignment.  We had to design a character instead, one which we will be animating over the next few weeks.  That means keeping the design and accessories to a bare minimum since I will be drawing this character probably a few hundred times :p.  Here she is Zahra; once the eldest daughter of a famous Egyptian family she was shamed and banished after her younger sister outwitted her with an elaborate scheme. Having been forced to survive among the dangerous nomadic clans roaming the wilderness Zahra has risen through the ranks and now marches against the city of her birth with one malicious intent, revenge.  Aaaand next weeks assignment is to figure out how she jumps........ my initial reaction is she would probably get someone else to jump for her, but I guess if she actually had to jump it would be in an elegant way. Which I will, of course, be acting out myself to see what that looks like :p hope I don't bother the downstairs neighbors.

 For Texturing and Shading we had to pitch our final models.  I was initially going to go with a quad-copter drone but the more I thought about it the more dull it sounded.  So I decided to go with the Viking unit from Starcraft 2!! I want to essentially uprez this in game model into a cinematic quality model.  It has been done before though but I will be trying to put my own spin on how it would be detailed out at a high resolution.  The piece itself has a lot of parts and can switch between walker and flight mode.  I will be focusing on nailing the walker mode and if I have time (big if) I might try to rig it and make it transform between the two modes but I'm pretty sure the walker mode will be taking up the majority of my time.

I also wanted to start preparing for some of the later games classes I will be taking in the future.  Since Riot is up there on my dream job list I figured I should find some time to use my digital painting knowledge and really work on getting better at Riot's style of character texturing.  I don't think its something Gnomon focuses on or teaches specifically but I am getting some great help and advice on how to improve from past teachers and new friends.  My first step was to try a master copy, just in value this time before I get a grip on color.  I chose Zed from League of Legends because he doesn't show any skin and is mostly hard surface so a little bit easier than Ahri or Gnar etc.  I really got a lot out of this exercise but finding time with our workload is really tough so I hope I can keep finding time to working on stuff like this!

Week3 - Modeling Crazy!

Things are heating up again, Hard Surface modeling is getting a little more interesting and we are nearly ready to play in Substance Painter woop!

This weeks Hard Surface modeling assignment was to model a toaster.  The hardest part was cutting the grooves into a curved surface.  Up until now this class has pretty much been going over stuff I already knew but I really learned a lot from this week! I am looking forward to the next few assignments to further improve my modeling techniques.  I wound up modeling a second slightly more complicated toaster just to try out some of the techniques on a more complicated surface.

For Animation and VFX we used animation paths to both model and animate a roller coaster.  It sounds pretty simple but its one of those techniques that unless you get all the stages perfect the model or animation will wind up broken.  You can check out the animation here.

For texturing and shading we moved onto metal in our last stage of procedural nodes in Vray.  Next week we will be moving into Substance Painter to try out generating these effects outside of Maya.

I wound up making a procedural texture that implements, edge, ambient occlusion, projection and normal masking.  Each of which is assigned a different color in the above image.  I used this base in all the metals for this week. It took a little while to create but it sped up my workflow lots when it came to generating the metal textures.

Lastly I am finishing off the modeling portion of my texturing and shading final.  I have one more week to model 2 more props and then UV everything and frame it all in a nice composition.  I should be OK since this weeks assignment is just to work on the model for the final!  Working on this has been so much fun! I hope I can turn it into a really cool final piece!

Gesture is getting there.  I'm a little nervous since we move onto rendering next week.... I do struggle a little with that but maybe with my improved lay in rendering will be a little easier.  We will see.

Ugh I finally bit off waaaaay more than I could chew with this one! With all the other assignments this week and me getting a cold :( I wound up with very little sleep and a 58 second animation.  I think I achieved a good block in but honestly I totally over scoped this project and wasn't able to take any of the animation to a polished level.  Lesson learned!