Week Twelve Project Update

Well I’m almost there, just a little tweaking with the textures and lighting I think I’m going to call it for this model. And as you can see in the render there is a base along with the building that I made. This was the other half of the project that I just forgot to mention, not that it was a big deal because in my opinion it was fairly easy to make.





Week Eleven and into The Last Week

Well, heres last weeks final product.  It was a little more challenging then I had originally thought but I guess thats the way that most of the projects have been this year now that I think about it..

 

As for this week, the last project of the block, we have to make an enviorment.  There are something like fourteen of them that were assigned out to the class.  I'll actually post a picture with all of them so you can see the variety.  Im already done modeling and on to texturing so now im already ahead of schedual!

 

And heres the model and reference..

 

 



Week Eleven

The last project we had wasn't as difficult as I was expecting it to be which was nice, giving me some time to catch up on sleep, and it only made it better when I saw what we were modeling for this week. We will be modeling this little robot that apparently is very popular and I should know who it is... but to tell you the truth I have never seen it before. There has to be at least 100 reference pictures of this little thing. Anyways, I’m looking forward to working on this model... Now we can build this however we want using whatever software we want but I’m going to stick with Maya and model it in SubD. I don’t remember talking about SubD. But essentially what it is, is a real-time sub-divion effect on polygons. It’s kind of hard to explain but there will be pictures that I can use to explain it with later. Oh and I’ve already gotten pretty far, it’s probably because it's my favorite type of modeling though!

  

Week 10 Finished!

Well the two week project that I had last week was finally critiqued on Monday and I’m happy to say that my instructor liked it. Now it is my first ever game model and wouldn’t really call myself a sculptor, but that being said I am very happy with how it came out! The images that I turned in are at the bottom of the page.

Now Along with the assignment there was some extra credit and that was to make a "base" for your character. A base is just something for the character/model to stand on, like a mini stage. Now because my character was from a fighting game I thought it only appropriate to make a punching bag.
One thing you may notice, especially in the chains on the last picture is something called "faceting". Now because this is a game model we had a strict number of polygons we could make our characters out of. The limit being 8,000 quads for the character and 2,000 for the base. This made the project a little bit harder as we had to pay attention to the limit and make sure there was enough detail in important places like the face and hands.
And that brings us to the end of week 10.



Two Week Project

 

And here I am, only a few weeks from the end of the block. I can’t believe how fast this has gone by and all that I have learned so far! But it's not over yet.

Last Tuesday we were assigned a project and instead of having one week we got two. Now this is because it is a full character model worth 600 points. I haven’t really touched upon the point system but to put it in perspective a quiz is usually 100 points and a project 200, maybe 300. So this is a big deal. Everyone in class is doing a different character that they got to pick from a list. Now, it worked out that the person with the highest grade got to pick first and the one with the lowest last, but that didn’t concern me much as I am one of the top three in my class ;) I got the character that I wanted and have been working ever since.

There isn’t much to say about the where I am in the process, but if I had to give it a percent I would say about 45% done as of last night. Well, here it is. My reference and how far I’ve come so far. 



Flying By

So this week has literally flown by. All of a sudden it’s Saturday and actually todays is almost over... I’ve been working hard on this head project and I have to say that I am starting to like Z-Brush more and more. It has a lot of cool features that I wish I could explain but it would be very technical and a lot to write ha-ha. So... you can just take my word on this one again when I say that this is a very cool piece of software. I’m not done with the project yet, I could be but I have some questions that I have to ask an instructor so I'll ask tomorrow. Gives me time to work on my own project which is coming along and I can’t wait to share with you guys!

Anyways here’s a little update on my model in Z-Brush, ohh and by the way, I made all this from a sphere... yup all from a little ball!

 

ZBrush and Week Eight Project

So I decided that there wasn't much else to add to the last post so I'm moving on to this week. Today we stated a new software package called Z-Brush and along with that a new instructor for the next three weeks while we learn it. Z-Brush is a program used to sculpt geometry using upwards of millions of polygons. Now to put this in perspective my past models have had maybe a maximum of 10,000 polys. Z-Brush does some crazy math to let it work with large amount of polygons to give a very smooth and fluid effect. I'll post some pictures of the different levels of smoothing along with the polygon count. Hopefully you were able to follow that and it wasn't too confusing.

Now you may not be able to notice a big differenc between the bottom two, but when the detail really starts to get heavy then all that geometry is needed to get the full smooth effect.  Another thing, each polygons is a square.. imagine 9+million squares.. quiet a bit haha

Anyways, I am very excited to start working with Z-Brush despite the new hotkeys we have to learn and the fact that the User Interface is completely different (menus and different tools in different places).

This is also the project we were assigned, to pick one of the three and sculpt it. I picked the middle.

 

Week Seven Project Done!

So... I may have slacked a little on the updating this week and I apologize. It's a bad habit to get into. Anyways we have a few updates! First off there was extra credit assigned this week! Along with unwrapping Kevin's Head we could texture a clown face onto it, which I did and think looks very cool even though it is.. a scary clown.

Now this is something different though. Last night I was volunteering at something called the Crystal Real Awards which is a short/full length film award ceremony for films made in Florida. The school had sent out emails asking the students if they would be willing to volunteer as it would be a great opportunity to meet people in the industry. I didn't really do anything special though, just showing the VIPs to their seats. There was some other setting up and things but that’s not worth talking about. So they held the awards and it was fun to see. I don’t know if you know of the movie Dolphin Tale but the cast and director were there and received awards. Then of course there were other independent films and shorts. They were the only big film in the awards. Now, even though they were the big guys at the show, The DAVE School received several awards for animation and visual effects in a film they made and had submitted with the school. And apparently they swept the competition and took almost every award last year! So overall it was a great night, I had fun, and met a lot of great people.

Well now that that is said and done here’s the projects. I’m at a loss for words unfortunately, it’s been a long day so I'll just post some pictures and maybe write some more tomorrow =)

SkyHawk

SpiderBait UV-Map

Extra Credit Texturing

Kevin's Head UV Map

 

 



Week Seven Project

This week we're continuing texturing.  Instead of working with proceduals though we are doing something called UV mapping.  UV mapping is the process of unwrapping the geomety into a flat surface which we can then bring over into another software (photoshop) and draw/paint on top of.  I have to say I really like the drawing and painting part but the unwrapping is a painnnnn!  We have to UV map the GI Joe helicopter, Kevin's head and the Spiderbait projects.  Only the GI Joe one has to be textured though.  The others only have to be unrapped.  Ill post an image of the unwrapped helicotper along with a quick look at the helicopter so far =)  By the way the rust and most of the materials are pictures that I am compositing together but the grafiti I made.

 

The unwrapped image is painted on and updated in 3D all at the same time so you can see the result in almost real time.

 



Week Six Projects Finished!

So... I may have slacked a little on posting for last weeks project/events.  I was working extra hard last week because I had a very special person come to visit me for the weekend, my girlfriend =)  I wanted to make sure that I could spend as much time as I could with her so I got the project done for Friday night.  Now along with the "Still Life" project that we had to do we were also given another model to texture and an extra credit assignment.  The other assignment was to texture a model called "SpiderBait" anyway that we wanted, which was nice because we could use our imagination.  It was actually the first project that we were able to use our creative skills and make something our own because for every previous project we had to follow a refrence image and try to recreate it as accurately as possible.  That was the case with the "Still Life" assignment as well.  We were told to find a picture and use it as refrence for our scene to recreate the mood.

Below I have the final render for the "Still Life" along with the reference I used (not my favorite project..) and the final render for the "SpiderBait" project along with some other rendered views to show of the textures.  

 

 

Finally, the extra credit.. The optional extra credit assignment was to create the flag below using only procedural textures.  I don't really know how to explain this without showing how to do it so you're just going to have to take my word for it that its a handful haha.  I got pretty far and almost finished but got stumped at the star.. Now that I think about it though I'll post a picture so you can see what a procedural textrual looks like in the making below =)

 



Week Six Project

In my opinion this is a pretty easy project.  We were given the scene with all the models and told to light and texture it.  This is just a quick render I did a few minutes into the project to show you what I have to work with.  It's good to relax and have some time for myself.  That being said I'm going to take advantage of this and work on my own project.. and that will be a surprise.  It's a big one I'll say that so it may take some time but I'll post it as soon as I'm done don't worry haha. 

 

Ohh and heres somthing worth saying.  The director of education stopped by to see what I was working on out of the blue and I ended up getting to talk with him and have him show me all these great techniques and resources for an hour and a half!!  He has been working with the software since version one and is a genius in my opinion so I am very excited that I got that oppertunity!

Week Five Project Finished!

Anddddd I'm done!  Here it is, Kevin's head or as we call it in the industry a "bust".

Total work time 37 hours.

This is the final render that I will be handing in.  Below are some other angles.



Here's a little chart of the time I spend in class vs. working on projects/strudying.  Thought it mite be a little interesting for you just to see how much time I actually spend working..

As of 10/27/2012
 

 

Week Five Update

10/27/2012 - 7:00pm
-----
I know its only half but thats the way Im modeling it becaues in the end I will just end up mirroring it over.

 

Week Five Project

So for those of you who have not met my instructor (which I'm assuming is the majority) this is him.  His name is Kevin and we will be modeling a photorealistic model of his head this week.  Kinda weird if ya think about it.. staring at his head from all different angles the whole week getting the littlest of details.  It was pretty funny to see everyone studying his face today haha.  Wish me luck!

And for those into modeling we are doing a build-out model instead of box-modeling.



Week Four Project Finished!

Well, here it is.  Week four's project with a total of 60.2 hours of work.