Tree Project

For the foliage project i choose a simple tree which was just down the road from my class. It was sort of unique as it had orange leaves and had a spring feel to it, we were targeted to do 2 so i took that one and a total opposite which was just branches. I think i achieved it very well and stayed under budget on both textures and tri count.

I even imported in UDK and made a little forest. Very proud to accomplish this.

Architecture project

For my architecture project i made a old banks pub which was i go past everyday on my way home and thought of doing it as a project, it was very exciting making a building which i never did before; i also followed the brief as it said it has to be old and interesting. Which it definitely was and i was very happy for that. Moving on from it was my first time making tillable textures and after many attempts on trying to make it flawlessly tillable i actually did; it obviously had errors there and there however i did my best to get it just right and represent the exact building in real life.

following all the necessary precautions such as the tri count and the texture limit i think i did a good job and it looked very alike the actual building; im very proud of the my project, learning lots new and great techniques.

Van

 To start, this project was very interesting as in actually get to make a vehicle for a game. Having played several racing games I wanted to see the work put to making virtual cars. The brief indicated to get individual reference for a ford transit, being a very dull car to model I was still very thrilled. The reference is mainly used for the textures because the vehicle has specified dimension that you can’t model from pictures because of perspective and distortion. We were allowed to get the dimensions / orthographic from the internet.

However I encountered issues as all the images I got couldn't line up for the vehicle I was doing, I didn't want to change it because I had a lot of photos taken of the specific van I wanted to model which was the ford transit short wheel base 2012.

(The reference image)

Despite it looking perfect, I tried all I can to make it line up so I can model it easily however it was not possible due the guy that actually made it resized different proportions from the front.

However the pictures for textures I got was pleasing and indeed very helpful – (found in the reference images folder). Looking at them you can see that the majority of the photos are not the vehicle I’m doing however in terms of texture and parts its identical to the vehicle I want to do. So the compromise is ok.

Moving on to the first stages of modelling the reference image did line up; barely but it did. I assured myself and continued to model. Getting the box model done and blocking the main shape and not focusing on the detail was my main priority because detail can be added later by either adding more polygons or through normal maps. However I choose to do it through geometry which was a big mistake.

Doing that my typology got ruined however as there was other projects that needed to be done time drew nearer and I keep forgetting where the problem was and continued to model. Finishing the modelling stage the UV’s told me where all the problems were, so in my opinion I was fixing more than actually progressing my work. Eventually I finished it but still had a few problems with it that didn't fix.

Some triangles and some other parts that couldn't be linked because Max didn't want to. Another way I checked for mesh errors is using mud box, it tells me what errors there are and where they are on my model. Very convenient for last point check-up’s.

I use mud box when I finish modelling and go into UV’s because then I have a chance for making my UV phase fast and easier without worrying about typology, if I use mud box after UV-ing I have to recreate the UV for part of the mesh which was incorrect. A very bad approach.

This is telling me what the problem is with a description; for a newbie like me this is very knowledgeable information. If my mesh is 100% correct which 90% chance of it not being. It will go straight through without error messages.

The red dots indicate where the errors are, so I can look and go back and check them. I use this technique in my workflow every time.

UV’s being done I go into texturing which is I believe harder than modelling because achieving realism is hard without proper textures, my pictures for textures had a lot of lighting problems and as for being a vehicle it was obvious. I wanted to at least get the base texture of the van right. After many tries fiddling with colors around pure white I choose a white bluish tone for my base color because I think it matched it perfectly.

After that the texturing was fairly straight forward and I was able to do them without any pressure using marmoset tool bag as a live renderer as it updates every time I re-save over my old texture I can visually see what I’m doing right and what needs to be done. Again very useful tool.

Overall I think I didn't get time for this project because of the two week projects I had between them plus other projects from visual design, time keeping in nearly impossible due to the amount of work from different areas. However I will try to do my best and give as much time as I can to the next 3D project. Focusing on mainly time keeping.

My UDK game :)

just in case anyone didn't see it. I'm proud of it.

Wheelie Bin Project

My wheelie bin project was a great success and i learnt a great deal from it. The modelling stage up to the texturing stage was very tempting to get it perfect however im not so happy with my UV's. I didn't utilize the UV space properly. The model itself topology is under the poly count and perfectly correct, in my opinion.

Dalek finished now a wheelie bin! Real assignment!

Finished the Dalek according to the specification and on the spot of 1500 triangles.

However i needed more corrections and in class changed a few things by deleting the bulbs as they wernt important according to the year 3 student so now it looks like this:

PICTURE DUE!!

I also imported it into UDK to see how it looks like, and i think it looks good for a mobile game if properly textured. (some normals and back-facing polygons problem might need to be addressed).

Moving on to about today's learning; it was majorly focused on texture creation and UV mapping in max. So i learnt UV mapping:

Also as an additional exercise learnt UV creation - i was familiar but not in 3ds Max however i picked up fast and finished the phone-box additional exercise and the 'dice' creation:

Finishing this our real 1st assignment was given and i was to create a wheelie bin under 600 triangles and fully UV'd and textured. This task to me is a very good starting task and am very excited to do it.

Life drawing and Perspective drawing!

Life drawing class was very useful and thought me a lot. I'm weak at drawing and initially in 2D. So i want to strengthen that to equal with my 3D so i can fuse both of the techniques to create work. The main focus for today was to get started with drawing and understand the anatomy. Also using new techniques to draw like line drawing, drawing without looking at the paper, rough drawing and technical drawing all within 5 mins up to 15 mins.

The next lesson was a lot more technical and we learnt perspective drawing at the canals across the building. Mainly 1 point perspective. I knew about it as i did graphics in GCSE at school but now it all came back to me. Really useful indeed.

Game Production; A church and a Dalek!

Today the start of game production class was surprisingly fast and a lot of information to be consumed. Being thought by a third year on the fundamentals of 3DS max it was ok, however i was already familiar so i began t do a little of my own work as he was teaching the others:

Moving from that our initial task was to make a church from what we learnt in tutorial so i started with no worries however i am not a end-professional 3ds max master. I just know the basics because i did games production in college and we used Maya instead of max but i learnt it over the summer holidays. The church was fairly simple:

Taking no longer than a 15 minutes i created it according to the guide it came with then i had time to give my own input and use my creativity. So i came up with a rendered piece. In my opinion is very bad however i fulfilled the requirements and accomplished the task with my own extra work. 

Finishing off i was given homework to model a Dalek. Within the boundaries of 1500 triangles and other specification. 

 

Morning train

Its actually hard to get up at 6 go town by 7 then on the train. Every Monday. On the train now to Leicester.

Bought a new bag!

The A3 sketchbook i bought wouldn't fit in my old bag so again i had to invest in another bag, its the cheapest you can get at Amazon at the moment so i guess you guys should look into it.

Reeves Carry Case (A3 Size) 

University Begins!

University began on Monday prior to this post because I created this blog late. Anyway i am attending De Montfort University studying Game Art - Hard as it sounds, it actually is, the introduction I got was surprising and I kind of expected to be that hard because I did Games Design at James Watt Campus and it was hard. Not for me but for the general public.

So I was told to attend on Monday at 9:00 in the brief on Monday 23rd. Oh, did I mention I don't have a timetable yet because well our course surprisingly got a new building so the timetable is still being made. Got a new info that it will be available on 'mydmu' on Sunday.

The first year consists of alot of drawing, traditional drawing. I just got equipment for that from Amazon which is probably the best place to buy stuff as we all know. The items are on a new page, just click 'My Amazon Items' on the top tool-bar; or if you're lazy click below:

Derwant Academy Pencil

Pink Pig Aubergine A3 sketchbook 150gsm acid free white paper 70 pages (35 leaves)