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 =)