A New Baluster....I Mean Post

          Baluster without gamma correction (so textures are washed out)








          Same as above, but with gamma correction node.








          With Gamma & With Contour





*Does not open in new window


          Final versioin, including minor tweaks in difusion and bump mapping - this is what's going to be used in the Altar i'm going to be working on, a revamped version of the one Aeris was killed in. Should have posts late tonight or late tomorrow night.

4 Out of 5 Hylian Dentists Recommend...

So this is basically the same thing as the Oprah's Book Club post below, i just grabbed an image of the "Hylian Crest" from my vast folder of reference images of...well, lets face it, random shit - and used it to make a 3D model of something. Still trying to work out the kinks in the contour rendering...i think if i upped the anti-aliasing it might look more smooth - but i'm really only using it to convey poly-counts and such.


So here is a list of all the things in this "scene":

1. Vertices: 5,060
2. Edges:10,014
3. Triangles:10,100
4. Faces:4,967

So there were quite a few faces in total for this model...despite it being something as simple as the Hylian Crest.

Oprah's Book Club

     So i was trying to think of something to model today, but couldn't for the life of me come up with anything that would be of use later...but i did figure out how to do "Contour Rendering" which allows you to render the lines that make up the polygons of the model so that people who know what they're looking at can get more out of it. So i decided to make a book...cuz it's an easy thing to model, but i also wanted to practice with deformers (what i used to give the paper that curve to it...cuz it was easier than trying to model it that way).


     So i got the basis of the book done (spine/cover and pages) and wanted to add some of those antique metalic corners and possibly a lock...but i couldn't really find any good reference, so i decided to use the Crown Symbol from Kingdom Hearts and use that...so that maybe the book can be used later for the FF/KH project me and DJ are going to be working on. And i didn't decide to add the page texture till i was almost done...so that's why only one image has it shown...just for visual aid.

It's Been Spiked

     So here is what DJ came up with as a preliminary sketch to see how Cloud's spikes would translate to a sonic character's head and such. Front, Side, and Top views for me to import into Maya to make modeling easier (as i can model while using these images as a kind of 'stencil'). and then a perspective one that i started to go over, planning out how each object would be oriented and how the edges and faces would appear (to also make texturing and painting easier). So the only thing left to do is go into Maya and start making a first attempt at modeling the head/spikes/eyes. Once i've done that, we'll see how it renders and if there's anything that should be modified (maybe some more spikes added or moved, or whatever).

Weekend Work

     So this is basically what i got accomplished Saturday. Not all day Saturday, but from start to what you see in the renders is maybe 3 hours (i spent a lot of time learning how to 'Sculpt' geometry and then wasted about half an hour trying to paint it...which never worked).
     So this little 'Island in the Sky' is called Rho (Greek letter for "R"). And i've been using it in my story forever, i just never got around to making a good enough model of it.


     There's a whole long reason why it's floating and why there's a 'shaft' coming from it, but i won't go into it now. But the bridge (if you couldn't tell that's what it was) was built because the people of my story's world believed Rho to be the Land of the Gods (similar to Olimpus; able to be located, but no mortal can ascend to the top). This whole scene is incomplete too. At the end of the bridge there's supposed to be a few mountains to which the bridge connects to.




     This is a rendering of the underside of Rho (if it was hard to tell from the render). When i finally finish an acceptable model (as this on is a bit too long and not right in it's overall hieght (when placed over the reference drawing i made a couple posts below, it didn't quite match up...) I'm going to paint it and apply some nice layered texturing (which i also learned friday). It's basically going to be grass on the top (along with more geography like mountains and maybe a small water source), and grass hanging over the side a little bit. Then dirt and soil for a bit, and then it'll transition into real hard rock and earth.
     I'm gonna try and make another model of it next weekend or something, now that i know quick ways to deform the geometry to how i want. Today i'm gonna go learn about Particle Effects:

*Next Up: A Rocket with Particle(smoke) Trail. I might even composite it into the rho scene as i will eventually be using rockets and such in it for good ol' fashioned destruction.

Cheating Mod Hack

*Note* Does not open new window....just directs you to image...

Just a little something for DJ to show her the awesome cheating power of Maya's Paint effects Brushes. Each stroke (like a tree or feather, grass or basic building shape) can be further refined and tweaked to suit your needs. Like if you wanted to create a small city without actually making each building by hand (say you were taking an arial view or something from far away) you can set the number of buildings to appear in between each "step" (like in Photoshop some selection tools are made to put a marker after being dragged for so many pixels), you can set the variations in height (so if you wanted them all to be the same, then both numbers - max and min - would be the same). You can edit the texture so they all look like victorian houses or something. You can even set how many sides, roof details, things like that. Then just click and drag.

Image above contains red down feathers, 1 type of tree, 1 type of grass, a stone path, and some houses. I could have done more, but i just wanted to illustrate a point - so to speak

I'm Gonna Comp Me Some...

     So this is my first attempt at compositing something i made a 3D model of into a real-life photo i took. More to come....and hopefully better.

And so you can see what i was holding on to, or whatnot, here are the two layers i used to make the composited shot above. Basically, in order to make the keyblade render in the correct pose, i took the original photo (of me) and imported it into Maya so that when i look through the Perspective camera, it fits the image to the film gate (so no matter which way the camera moves....the picture stays with it). So just just moved the keyblade/camera around till it looked like they two of them would work together, and then i rendered the keyblade with an alpha channel so it would composite easily.

Key To My Start

     So these are just some perspective renders of the untextured model of the keyblade i made last weekend. There's still some minor things i need to add onto it before i texture it, but for the most part it's done and ready for use.

Iron Mad...

Just a joke for DJ from one of her pictures of Tony Stark....the darker side anyway.

Testing, Testing...

     So i was playing around in Maya last weekend trying to learn some new things, and these are the test renders for the few things i learned and will retain without needing reference in the future. The first pic is of the Maya physicalSun and physicalSky settings for rendering. It's basically an extremely accurate recreation of the lighting effects of the sun and blur/shaprness of the horizon and sky. The 'Sun' is a 'Directional Light' (so it can physically be manipulated lilke any other light in Maya) and based on the rotation (so the Aim of the light) it will adjust the color of the light being emitted from the sun (so early morning blue light = 0-20° or something. Sunset reds = 150-180°.

     So the first picture is me messing around with that and Final Gather, which simulates the way real light bounces off surfaces and provides reflected light.

     The secong image is me messing around with a Maya brush (cityMesh) and combining it with Sun/Sky and Final Gather. For some reason, when you use Mental Ray (a renderer for Maya) it's default texture has high reflectivity - so that's why you can't easily distinguish all the buildings and edges. I didn't feel like changing it because it was just a test for the brush stroke.

Summer Projects: Avatar Rebirth

     So the summer is starting, and it's time to shake the cobwebs off and start getting into the swing of modeling again since i'll have a pretty intense Maya course during the upcoming fall semester. So during the summer i'm going to be doing two things in Maya to freshen my overall skills:

--> FFS: The Final Fantasy/Sonic crossover me and my friend DJ are working on...details in a few posts below.

--> Avatar Rebirth: I'll be trying to model some of the big-scale things from the video game i'm working on.


          So for both projects, i'll be the only one doing the 3D modeling and pushing my skills in as many areas as i can:
Texturing (including 3D paint and UV mapping);
Lighting
Environment Modeling (terrain, trees, grass, clouds, things like that);
Character Animation (which includes modeling, rigging, Inverse Kinematics...*shudder*, and animating);
Rendering (using multiple passes to achieve desired rendering)
Special Effects (like particle effects and such).

     So for right now, since the above drawing is the only thing i have to work with that's detailed enough for me to work with in Maya, i'm going to be working on this over the weekend and should have some WIP renders soon.

     As soon as i've got some good sketches for the FFS project, i'll start posting stuff for that on here as well.

Shadow of the Colossus

     So like my friend DJ did in her last post "A Gray Day" (btw....she mis-spelled grey - or rather spelled it the acceptable way while still being wrong), I took those greyscale art markers and went over some images (this is only one of them...others include the crystal in my blog's header) to further define the shapes and form of the subject so the eye has a bit more to look at then an extreme 2D image with no value. Maybe more later...

Fix Or Repair Daily

     So Friday night, when i was at He Brews for the Karaoke night since it was the last day of school (here anyway), I somehow managed to lose my keys (and not just one....cuz otherwise i would have said "i lost my house key, or i lost my mailbox key). So i looked all over the place; under the only chair i ever sat in, in all my 10+ pockets, all throughout my car, on the ground leading from my seat to my car....everywhere.

     The only place i had visited after exitting my car was the Justice Court to fax some paperwork to my school for verification. So since i was leaving around 8:30 PM, naturally, they were closed for the weekend. So i had no way of getting my car home. No biggie, right - i'll just use my grandma's and get my keys back on monday. Turns out they weren't at the Justice Court....they weren't anywhere (Eddie even looked through the trash from the friday night to see if someone had thrown them away by accident; no luck).

     So there's this whole deal about figuring out what to do and having my car towed home. And then today - Tuesday - i get a spare...replica key made and almost have another incident. I go to Wal Mart to try and find a keychain or one of those things that go around your neck, and almost get locked out of my car. Turns out the key they made, for some weird reason, will start my car, and lock the doors from the outside...but it just won't unlock them. I'm just lucky i had that spare key that unlocks the car but doesn't start it...otherwise i would have been hard pressed......hehehehehehehe

     It's really dumb tho, cuz the key that unlocks my car was the one they used to make the copy of...so it should have made no difference whatsoever.

     Oh well

What A Fucking Sabbatical

I can't believe it's been 3 whole months since my last post. There's been a shit load of stuff that's happened since then. I got a girlfriend, finished the spring semester, and a bunch of other little things (like starting collaborations with DJ and her friends).

So i guess i'll start with my girlfriend, Crystal...Naw. I'll make that a whole seperate post once i've got some good pictures of us to include in it (and now that i don't have school i should be - and i know i've said this before - more regular with updates). But since i'm going to be working on a few things this summer - mostly Maya related - I hope i'm better at making regular posts so the people who need to know what i'm doing can see it at their leisure.

So the main thin i'm going to be working on this summer - mostly after the middle of june since i need to make up some art assignments to get a better grade in my Figure Drawing class and not have to retake it - is a collaboration with DJ that involves taking Final Fantasy 7 characters (just a few of them as the project isn't that big; it's just working on a kind of teaser trailer) and translating them into Sonic characters. DJ is going to be doing the conceptual drawings as well as character layouts (defining certain features in great detail so that i may create better models with ease) and storyboards once it comes time to render the trailer.

We haven't, as of yet, come up with a plot for the whole thing. We might just leave it as a trailer and never come back to it, or we might make little webisodes since we'll already have all the characters made. u we're probably going to have Sephiroth, Cloud, Aeris no way am i ever spelling it with a "th"), Reno & Rude for comic relief, and maybe a secret antagonist. Who knows, we might not even have Sephy in there at all...could be some new enemy - screw Jen, Seph, and their stupid Kaddy. One thing that'll translate over kind of effectively is the Materia into Chaos Emeralds. Materia can be a pretty common thing in the realm of FF7 - kind of like cubic zerconias in the real world - they're pretty but nothing special as everyone has them. But like the end of 7, there were the Huge Materia you needed to blast apart the meteor...and of course the Black Materia used to summon it.......which lead to the Holy Materia used to destroy it.

So if my memory serves me, there were 4 pieces of Huge Materia, 1 Black, and 1 White...which makes 6 extremely unique pieces of materia. In the Sonic Realm, there are always 7 Chaos Emeralds (and depending on the timeline or story, 1 Master emerald). So it'll be no problem to translate the materia into emeralds if i wanted to...so if i wanted to retell the events of FF7 as Sonic Characters and Emeralds....i totally could.

I think i'm going to eventually name them - the emeralds that is - because you're either always going to refer to them by the location they were found ("you know, the emerald found in the such-and-such stage") or by their color...which isn't a bad thing by any means....but it'd be nice if they had names - even if it were something like "The Emerald of Power" - of which Red is an Archetype for......why do you think Gannon's triforce piece was red?

DJ said she had started a collaboration with her friends using RPG Maker 2003 (a bit outdated, but still just as good as anything if you want to achieve that 'old school' feel) and asked me - if i remember our convo right - if i wanted to help out. So i said sure because i think it would be nice for me to get out of the directive position and be delegated to for once. I'm just surprised they didn't do this a long time ago because i had RPGM2003 a long time ago and tried messing with it myself, though it didn't get very far because my understanding of games and their inner-workings wasn't as good as it is now.

So i guess i'll leave this post where it is and go work on the Sonic Collaboration.....in which i'm about to disucss with DJ since she's calling me right now....Lates.

Let There Be Light

So my homework for FND 116: Perspective was to take the drawing we did from the first week and add value to it. So here's what i'm turning in for a grade. I'm probably going to go back (because this isn't the 'original' work) and add more detail - more cables...steps on the other staircase, metalic floor panels.

It's based off of an idea i'm going to put in my game, so now that i have a pretty good design for it, i'll probably make it into an actual model and animation during the summer before i have to go back to taking ANM classes for Maya.

I don't think i'm going to go back and revisit my below rending in Isometric perspective - with my work schedule being so hectic, i think i'm going to focus on what's for school and my violin practice.....ohhhhhh - speaking of which

*grabs violin and starts practicing*

Rho, Rho, Rho Your Boat...

Here's a wire-frame rendering of something i made in Blender that was from the story i'm developing to be turned into whatever medium it can be (cartoon series, VG, book, w/e). It's supposed to be a raised piece of earth, and obivously the thing on the bottom is the crater created from it.

The shaft running down the middle of both is a way for certain large items to be lifted to the top (as there's a small city and research-like base up there). So i'm deciding to revisit it, but rather than do it in 3D, i'm going to try doing it in the isometric style of perspective (like the drawing below this post).

So i'll be working on the rough tomorrow at my favorite cafe in town after work (i should have a few images tomorrow (assuming i remember to post them) of the basic outline...blocked out using simple cubes, pyramids, and basic shapes like that.

After which, once i get it to a level of detail i like, i'll practice shading it using the technique i learning for applying light/shadow to an isometric drawing. This might take a while, but i should hopefully post as i go alond.

Figure Drawing assignments next week.

...Of Life

It's The Gesture That Counts

Below: My Two Linear Gesture Drawings For My Excersizes This Week

















Below: My 3 Favorite Mass+Linear Gestures For This Weeks Excersize








We were supposed to do 5 Mass, 10 Linear, and 5 Mass+Linear, but these were the only ones i like enough to put up here. I'll let you know what they get once they're graded.

...Of The End

Classes started this week and i'm really liking what i've got this semester (of course i said that last semester and look what happened).

My classes are:

LA 255: College Math;

This class is basically like an algebra/geometry class. I took my first quiz and the hardest question was "what is the prime factorization of 400" (which of course is 2*2*2*2*5*5). I'm taking it because its a prereq for the math class that i want to take "Topics if Contemporary Mathmatics, which does all the kind of math i really like, the kind that stimulates your higher level thinking...the kind you can't get through with a calculator.

FND 112: Figure Drawing;

The next step in my art class; where the last one was focused on detail 'after the fact' (value and such), this class focuses on detail of the subject (proportions and acurate rendering). Our first assignments are different kidns of gestures, so those should be on here soon.

FND 116: Perspective;

This class has already proven to be fun, mostly because our subject matter can be our own choosing, so you don't have to sit there and stare at something you don't like for hours. Our first assignment is drawing something in an isometric perspective (which i'll explain when i post the assignment up here over the weekend), but i basically recreated a battle map from Final Fantasy Tactics...it's awesome.

And ANM 109: Non-Linear Computer Editing (with Avid);

It's basically a class that introduces you to how scenes are strung together in movies and how shots are edited to impose a certain atmosphere or theme. Our first assignment deals with Lord of the Rings footage, so i'll post some of that once it's done.



those are all of my classes. I'm expecting to have a lot of fun with my Perspective class because i'll be doing a lot of things from Final Fantasy and my game.

Around The Corner

Welp...school is about to start...in two days to be prcise, and i feel cheated. It seems like my school hasn't done one thing right since i've gone full time - the screwed up my financial aid account to where i was blocked for a week and that really fucked up my flow. Then they said they fixed it but didn't, which meant i had to wait longer than i wanted to to register for spring....which in turn meant i didn't get all my supplies in time...just - shit snowballs (if that makes sense to you).

But there is one upside:
One of my books for the class i'm NOT taking turned out to be more insightful than most college textbooks (or books required for college classes). I actually learned quite a few things just from the introduction that i felt i should have been taught from my CAPS (Computer Animation Production...don't ask me where the S comes into play....idk) class.


The whole book teaches you the fundementals of Maya while using examples and actual models from the movie Open Season Well...I haven't acutally popped in the DVD that comes with it, so i don't know if they give you the acutal models....but they give you textures and show you step-by-step how to create them.

So by the end of the book you'll have a basic understanding of almost everything there is to do in Maya (skeletal creation, texture mapping, animation, particles....GOD i love particles, and even compositing of effects created outside of Maya.

It's too bad the CAPS class i took didn't focus on something like this...a lot of students could really have benefited from this book.

Violin lessons are coming along alright....i think. My posture and wrist placement are horrible - but i get the job done. I need to work on sight reading...and memorizing finger placement (i always get worried my fingers are going to fall on the wrong note, so i look at them and in turn lose my place on the sheet music.) I'm really good and quick at learning songs to the point of memorization...but even when i'm playing it from memory, just looking at the book sometimes makes me mess up.

right now, as i hope you would have guessed, i'm learning some HP music. There's only one two songs i want to learn and one is 'Hedwig's Theme' (the general HP theme that plays at the start of every movie) and the 'Double Trouble' song (...something wicked this way comes - you know the song).

Actually...now that i think about it, there was a pop song kind of like that from the first or second Power Ranger's Movie (god - don't ask me how i remember that or what it has to do with power rangers of HP - probably because it has the lyrics trouble, double, and bubble). Google says.............it was Trouble by Shampoo

When i get good enough at each song, i'll take my camera and record me and my teacher playing it and put it on here (possibly two or three more weeks)

Is That A Post...?

*Note to self; add Necromancy to resumé.

Well, a lot has been going on since last year - or last post.....whichever you think doesn't sound as long as its been. I've been keeping myself busy in my down time by working on my story - which i think has a pretty set and finalized plot to it...so the only things left to do are design characters, the world, etc.

I worked on finalizing my world map (below):


I worked on a couple of other stuff, but for right now i'm only gonna give oyu a bit so i don't wear you out on the first go 'round.








So here's my final for my ANM class that i FAILED!!! But that's all sorted.



Umm.....I'' post sometime next week with some more stuff....don't worry...it's written in my planner.

IDK

Man....I've really fallen out of the habbit of making somewhat-regular posts.....gotta break that.

Well there's been quite a bit going on since my last post (my last big post....the one below was just so my friend could see my torso rendering - i actually finished it.....so maybe i'll post that here too).

I went and had another outting with my friend McKay shooting his rifles (and i gotta say i'm developing a taste for it). There's a few videos of us shooting his cop killer an the german, trying to hit two frozen 2-liter bottles of water.







Um.......how about......Animation always has an appropriate place in my posts.


My current ANM project is dealing with character modeling (which includes modeling, riggind/binding to a skeleton, animating the skeleton, facial deformations - like make an "O" mouth - and creating a walk cycle).

First step was to pick a character and do a profile sketch in what's known as the 'Bind Pose'. The Bind Pose is the pose animators use to model characters before binding them to a skeleton (if you ever take a video game and make an 'image' of it on your computer and pull the 3D character models out of it, they'll ALL be in this pose by default).

So whether the character already existed or was one we created didn't matter, all that mattered was the pose and picture for reference.

So i chose Shadow the Hedgehog (basically the evil twin of Sonic).




So far, acording to my friend DJ, it's coming along nicely (and i agree despite how frustrating it is working with the type of 'geometry' we're using).

Here are some renders of what i've gotten done so far...the head won't need to be done until the middle of next week:








The Chaos Emeralds (glowing gems) i threw in there for fun because that's what all the games focus around and to give it a little something extra to make up for the fact that i think it's not as good as it could be (i might actually redo the model during the winter break).



Oh yeah - i was a Mormon Missionary for Halloween:

(which is funny because everyone...practically everyone, i work with is mormon and because everyone else i know knows where i work. (And the woman in the picture is one of the 'Ladies' at the justice court i help out at, Kimberley)

So here's me and McKay, both Mormon Missionaries (funnier still because he is Mormon):



My Grandma dressed up too, as a 50s cheerleader:

psst....don't tell her this is here....i don't think she'd like the fact that this is on the web when she's making that goofy face - i took the picture when she was saying 'shoe'.





I took the Arch of Constantine (the first Christian Emperor or Rome) and made a 3D model of something i want to put in my game (based off the design and concept of the Arch of Constatine:

Arch:



My Arch:



I guess that's it for now, i'll try and post something by friday, or on friday, to show you how everything else is coming along.

Late


Song of the Evening:
Monica - For You I Will