Experimental Week!

For this week I decided to experiment While I was working on lighting Saedren, I looked at the "landing platform and realized "That's way too small". So I began looking for designs on Google and, of course, found a bunch of Star Wars concept art, like these.

However, I wanted to something a little more "rough" or jagged. I then foumd this image and I thought it was pretty close to what I wanted to make.

So after making a landing platform, I then decided to change the stance that Saedren so that it looked like he was entering a drop ship of some sort. Here's an image. Sorry about  the lighting; it was just a test render to see how it would turn out.

While I do like the idea behind the image, I think that it takes the focus away from the character and puts more emphasis on the enviroment. I will continue to think of different stances for Saedren to be in, but I will keep a copy of this file in case I want to go back and change something.

On a side note, I'm sorry but I did not get a chance to work on the DeLorean this week. However, by next Sunday I should have UVs done and some textures on it.

Large Sunday Update!

First off, here is an update on the DeLorean. I finally finished UVing the whole exterior of the car, including all of the tubes, wires, and excessories. The tires need a little fine tuning, but other than that the rest is done. Here is all of the UVs on one tile.

Keep in mind this is not the final layout of these UVs. Once I UV the interior of the car, I will then decide the how many UV shells and how much room each UV will get. This will depend on how big that object is or how visible it is. I plan on using 3 to 4 UV shells so I can get a lot of detail onto the car, but I'm hoping to only need 3 (one for the outside, one for the inside, and one for all of the tubes and accessories).

Second, here is more work on Saedren. I'm still working on getting the lighting right, but I just can't find something that I like. It's either too dark or too light, the shadows aren't casting right, or something along those lines. Here are several images of examples of the lighting.

I like this image because of the shadows that are casted from the lights. The glow also adds a nice touch to show the form of him, but I feel like the runway lights are too bright and distract you from the rest of the image.

For this image I tried to brighten it up so you can see more detail, but I just feel like it's too bright and looks very fake. 

For this image I moved the direction of the main light(s) and darkened the shadows, creating more contrast from light to dark. However, this makes things very dark and hard to see any detail. What I would like to do is combine the lights used in both images 1 and 3 to find a happy medium.

I am hoping that by next Sunday I will have the car completely UVd with some textures on it and have the lighting figured out for Saedren as well.

Quick Update!

I will now be updating this blog (and hopefully my other blog) every Sunday, starting May 31. Since Sunday is the end of the week for me, I feel like I should post updates at the end of every week instead of a few days before the end of the week. So expect to see new stuff up this Sunday for both blogs (I finally have my printer set up so I can scan my sketches and upload them). Hope you guys continue to stop by to see what I'm working on!

Back to Saedren

Here's more work on Saedren. I added more detail to him, made his cape "flowing", and changed the lighting and background a little. Before I start redoing the textures, there are several things that still need tweaking (i.e. the lighting, more background detail, etc). Once those things are done I will start retexturing everything. Here's my progress.

I am also still working on the UVs for my DeLorean, so expect an update on that next Friday.

Quick Update - UVing

Right now I'm in the process of UVing the car. Here is a sample of what I'm working on.

Don't worry I won't give a whole UV shell to the door. I just wanted to blow it up to show you how the UVs look. Hopefully I'll be done UVing by the end of this week, but I still have to complete some work for my internship. So we'll see.

Week 16 - Almost Done! (with modeling)

As the title suggests, I am almost done with all of the modeling. The tri-count is a little higher than I want it to be, so I'm going to see how many edge loops I can delete from the tubes without effecting the shape of them. Here is what I have so far.

Once I lower the tri-count as much as possible, I will then UV and texture it.

Week 15 - Tubes!

For this week I tweaked some edges, messed with some normals, and made some tubes. They're pretty low poly right now and don't show a lot of information. I'll later add some more high poly ones to add some variety. Here is what I have. 

Week 14 - More DeLorean Stuff

Here's an update on the DeLorean. I added some more props to the back of the car, such as an engine and exhaust pipes. I also went around to fix more problems with the mesh, including some edge loop issues, n-gons, and other errors. Here's what I have thus far.

The next thing I want to do is to fix up the car door a little more and add some tail lights. After that I will add some tubes and wires that will run throughout the car.

Week 13 - Internship Work and the DeLorean

So this week I focused most of my time working on some assets for my internship at Theia Interactive. Here is the latest asset I am currently working on.

From left to right I have a low poly version of the stool (which will function as a low LOD), a high poly version of the stool, and a very high poly seat cushion. I plan on baking a normal map from the high poly seat cushion and then applying it to the low poly seat cushion, which will make the low poly seat cushion look like the high poly one without all of the extra geometry. Both the high poly and low poly stools have a texture map and light map and will be put into the Unreal Engine once I am finished baking the normal map.

I also got a little bit of time to work on my DeLorean some more, but not much. Here is my progress on that.

Next on my agenda is to finish modeling the interior of the car so I can move on to the back of it.

Week 12 - Taking On Another Project

I know I shouldn't take on another project, but I just couldn't resist. After texturing a well in Substance Painter, I had a very strong urge to go back and retexture this guy. I also decided to remodel him a little and fix the normals. And after trying to add Zdepth layer to the image I realized that the background image would only get darker instead of blurry. So I just decided to get rid of the background image and actually model it. Here is my progress so far.

I'm still not quite done with the background models yet, but they should be done relatively soon. Even though this week has been focused on this project, I will go back to the other projects once I feel I made decent progress on this current one.

My Sister Blog Is Up!

I know this is completely unrelated to this blog, but I finally got my 2D art blog up and running! So if you guys want to check out some sketches I've been doing in my spare time, you can find them here:

http://jeff2dart.blogspot.com/

There isn't much there right now, but I'm hopeing to update it every Saturday night, even if I don't have something to show.

Week 11 - Back to the Car

As the title suggests, I'm going back to modeling the DMC-12. I haven't given up on the gas station scene just yet, but I am going to focus more on the car for now. I know it seems like I'm very indecisive about what project I want to focus on right now, but the truth is I really want to complete both of these projects by the beginning of May. I'm not sure if I'll be able to complete both on time, but I will try nevertheless. Anyway here is my current progress on the car.

Again, it may not look like much progress has been made, but I had to rework a lot of the edge loops, fix geometry problems, and other small things that are not obviously seen at first glance. Hopefully by next week I'll have more stuff to show for the car and possibly the gas station as well. 

Week 10 - Gas Station (Modeling)

Might not look like it much right now, but I went in and remodeled a lot of my assets in this scene. While it may not exactly be modular yet, most of the walls, doors, fences, and other objects are separate meshes and can be pieced together. This weekend I'll be using SpeedTree to add some higher resolution trees to my scene, as well as adding more props. Here is what I have so far.

Week 9 - Spring Break

After a nice break away from school, I have a new project in mind that I will have done in the following weeks. Right now I want to focus on creating a small environment and seeing what it looks like in the Unreal Engine. Here is a base image of what I have so far.

Keep in mind this is just a render in Maya and not actually in the Unreal Engine yet. What I really want to work on are the textures. As of right now all of the textures werer made in photoshop and look pretty bland and uninteresting. I plan to send these models into Substance and make really dirty and detailed textures. I also plan on adding grass, rocks, and other props to the ground because it looks a little flat to me.

Week 7 - GDC

This week I attended GDC in San Francisco and had a bit of an information overload. There were so many great booths, demonstrations, and talks that it took me a little time to digest all of the information at once. I also got critiques on my portfolio from professionals in the field, ranging from indie companies to AAA game studios. For instance, while waiting in line to have my portfolio reviewed by High Voltage, I had the pleasure of talking to Jim Rivers, who is the hiring manager at Obsidian entertainment. He gave me very valuable critiques and feedback on my portfolio and really motivated me to enhance it by implementing new techniques and tips. For the next few weeks I hope to complete my DeLorean so I can begin working on a new project. Here is some work that I showed this week at GDC:

Week 6 - New Plan!

So I feel like I'm close to being done modeling the base of the car; all I need to do is model all of the extra features: pedals, emergency brake, tubes, exhausts, etc. Here is what I have so far.

However, I don't think I'll be working on this any more this weekend because I'm really interested in this other project I have been working on for some time now. Here is my progress on it.

I have modeled, UVd and rigged this character and I'm now planning to sculp and texture him. For the next four days I plan to work on this guy until GDC, or until I finsih him.

Week 5 - More Modeling

So I devoted most of last Saturday to model more of the interior, but ended up fixing a lot of mesh issues instead (i.e. double extrusions, unnessessary edge loops, unconnected vertices, etc). Today I finished fixing the rest of the problems and started adding detail to the interior, like the seats, emergency brake, and dashboard. Unfortunately my computer froze up and I lost most of that work (about 4 hours worth). That in mind, I'll be working a lot more this weekend to get caught up. At this point, I think it's safe to say that I will not have this completely done in one week, but I hopefully will have the car at least fully modeled by the time I go to GDC.

Week 4 - Still Modeling

Once again, I'm a little behind on my modeling due to some setbacks last weekend. However, due to the fact that GDC is coming up really soon, I'll start kicking it into gear and getting a lot of work done. Here is what I have so far.


















Right now I'm modeling the interior and getting everything blocked out. This weekend I will make sure I sit down and work at least 8 hours this weekend to get caught up.

Week 3 - Blocking Out Cont.

Unfortunately this week I hardly worked on my mesh, so there's not too much progress for today. However, to compensate for my lack of progress this week, I plan to work diligently this weekend to get caught up. Here is what I have so far:

Week 2 - Blocking Out

After a week of work, here is what I have so far. While I'm not exactly where I want to be with the model, I feel that I made some good progress given all of the problems I was having with it. At this point in time, I am breaking the car into parts and editing the edge flow throughout the model. Hopefully after this weekend I'll be done with the overall shape of the car and I can start modeling the extras, like the tubes, wires, and engines. I would like to be done with all modeling by next Friday, but I probably won't be done until the end of next weekend.

Week 1 - I'm Back!

After a long leave of absence, I'm back with some new ideas (the projects I had up before are being put on hold for now). For the next several weeks I'll be working on the Delorean DMC-12 from the movie Back to the Future.

My plan is to make a high-res model, bake normal maps onto a low-res model, texture it, and make a turntable animation in 5 weeks. Each week I will update my progress on the Delorean and show you how far I got. With any luck I will have this done by the time I go to GDC.