07:04 PM 22/07/2008
oh hey talk about long time no updates huh? let's do a quick run-down of the important things that have happened since my last post then:
-finished and handed in all my assignments on time, hurray
-had my VIVA which went generally well
-got a new computer for my birthday, new keyboard = typos galore
-drew some chibis and sketchy crap that nobody will see ever because it's terrible. well, I'll upload the chibis when they're all done; they're quite cute.
-oh and I graduated university with a 2:1, that's kinda cool.
so where now for me? welp, I've been applying to a few places, probably not as many as I technically should but I just can't bring myself to apply to places that only do racing/sports games because I would catch fire. blizzard are taunting me with their 'WE'RE HIRING!' banners all over gameartisans.net but god damnit I'll get that required experience someday.
I've made some 'to do' lists populated entirely with ideas for models I could make, including(gasp) a trio of critters that some people may find strangely similar to those that went before, but of course entirely different because that would be stealing or something. also props, because props make the world go round.
there is some new artwork in my portfolio; I'm thinking of removing the 'gallery' here in favour of just pointing at the portfolio because really, most of the art on [floof] is depressingly old and shitty/unappealing to anyone but me and I like at least some of the stuff in my portfolio. the ratio of stuff I like:stuff I don't is going to change, I promise. in fact, I'm going to go do some stuff I like right now.
23:09 09/05/2008
ugh, did I ever mention I hate animating? let me qualify that, actually: I like loop animation, I had a lot of fun making pi's walk and run cycles last year. but cutscene animation can die in a fire, I can never seem to get it to all work out properly without something utterly retarded happening; I just spent half an hour fixing my AAG when an absent-minded movement of my character's central bone ended up putting her about half a foot too high for the rest of the animation, so I had to go back and fix EVERY SINGLE POSITION KEY for that bone. imagine my face melting with a combination of disgust and horror here when I realised what I'd done.
also, I love fighting with my distinctly 'meh' custom rig I made for this assignment. I'd ever worked with anything but biped before and while I'm glad the IK chains in the arms and legs work out pretty nicely, I wish I could go back in time and stop myself from trying to make a bunch of bollocks control icons for her ands and feet and oh god the main character control shape was such a terrible idea. I only realised this about halfway through my animation, of course, and when I tried to remove it EVERYTHING sadfaced at me. pressing a button and seeing your character model/rig suddenly warp out of all recognition is a soul-chilling moment.
but anyway, I've gotten the basic animation for AAG down now, tomorrow I'll tweak the myriad errors I will no doubt find when it's done test-rendering(changing my working camera resolution at this late stage was probably a bad idea, for instace), set up for lipsynch, do that, turn on effects systems(I predict cloth exploding in a particularly spectacular fashion when it finds out what I've done to the scene scale, whoops), close my eyes and press 'render', then piss off to somewhere else and write up my report while it sits there happily rendering for a few days until exploding and deleting everything just hours before handin. I mean, everything will be fine. I'm going to go back it all up now for no particular reason(oh god oh god oh god)...
04:30 25/04/2008
right so uh it's been a month since my last update here. FYP and EFG have been handed in now, my FYP VIVA is on monday afternoon, GDV assignment is due on the 6th of may and AAG is due on the 14th. I will probably post pictures of those when it's all over but since AAG has a dedicated blog on my course website I'm not saying much about that here.
less-uni-wise, I turned 21 on the 6th of april. :o
12:35 am 24/03/2008 long time no update
so one week til handin and things are looking mostly finished, except for my report which still needs about 3000 more words and some dressing.
in other news, concept art:
and the next person to cry at me about her proportions can die in a fire; I don't draw realism and I don't pretend to. also I am so sick of looking at lukah now.
2:20 pm 25/02/2008
bipedded :3 that's the 'ash' element outfit she's wearing.
my copy of UT3 shipped today so I should have it by friday. in the meantime, I'm collecting up basic tutorials for nubs like myself and, of course, plowing on with the textures. I have all but two of the second-tier dresses presentable now(in case you were wondering, 'presentable' means the diffuse is finished, whereas 'finished' means the final alpha, specular and gloss maps are also done). I tested the 'huge textures' idea and it works, but it occurred to me that that method only works ideally for whole-ensemble outfits, when you only have all of the 'earth' or whatever items on. otherwise, it's inefficient because you're loading multiple whole 1024^2 textures even if all you're using is a glove from that outfit. so that goes in the report, but not in the finished product.
4:08 pm 23/02/2008 *headdesk*
I need to start writing my report :/ I tried opening the example game art report(estee's, interestingly) and abiword crashed. guess I'll just have to try again tomorrow when the athena building is open real hours. I mean, why the hell does it close at 5 on a SATURDAY of all days?
anyway. aside from the report, I'm beginning to feel distinctly uneasy about all this. doesn't look like UE3 is going to be working in the labs for a long while now, so I have three options: a) buy it myself, install it on a portable harddrive and hope that setup works when I take it to the labs, b) find an alternative engine I can use on my laptop with support for multilayered materials(fat chance) or c)... give a boring prerendered viva in which I click through a list of images and go 'hey it'd look great in realtime honest'
you can tell I really really don't want to go for option c :/ UT3 is £18 on play.com. portable harddrive would probably cost a pretty penny but to be fair it would be handy to have anyway. I'll go to maplin tomorrow/monday and start the grand experiment that may or may not actually work. yay!
also I realised yesterday that my textures are horribly inefficient. I had always thought that lots of small textures > one HUGE texture, so every piece of clothing is seperate. yesterday I read a couple things to the effect that I had it completely backwards and in fact single huge textures are the way forward. I should, instead of having a bunch of tiny textures, have each element's items on one texture sheet and load them like that. I... could stitch everything together, I think, but it might end up being a lot of trouble. maybe I'll just mention it in my report, ie. 'if I were to do this project again(and please god I won't) I would have done the textures like this, because I am a pleb and didn't realise my way was worse'. I'll try it tomorrow when I'm in a lab and don't have to worry about my laptop running out of memory trying to handle a single psd with ALL OF MY TEXTURES SO FAR sitting in it :s
1:50 pm 22/02/2008 all quiet on the northeastern front
still going, albeit slowly. must start on my report soon... :s
that's the swamp dress, not quite finished yet(needs detail on the bodice and a pair of matching boots). mostly there though, and looking quite sharp.
5:46 pm 10/02/2008 so...
more thought on presentation: max is basically a last-ditch option hopefully. now that the uni's recovering after animex, the lab PCs should have been reimaged, and part of the reimage should(according to my course leader, the head of all games courses at teesside) include unrealed 3 and wacom drivers. if this is so, and mole should be checking that for me right now, then alls I have to do is move into a happy little lab for the rest of ever and learn unreal. which according to florian is not terribly hard. I certainly hope 'not hard' is measured at normal human levels though, because what florian finds hard generally would be filed under 'brain-meltingly complex' for the rest of us :p
anyway. back to painting textures and listening to viva piñata music :3
11:40 pm 28/01/2008 getting faster
getting faster. that's the four basic dresses(earth air fire water, of course) in a presentable state at least. need to fix where sleeve meets arm, and the fire+water dresses need leg slot items. plus I think the air dress is getting a collar, or possibly water will. water needs a bit of cleanup and shading work. very impressed with air thus far though, it's worked out much nicer than the original concept art imo. drawing all those little swirlies is a pain but so worth it.
drew all the icons, too, and did some hairstyle sketches earlier. I think I deserve a little break now. excuse me while I go play something :3
8:19 pm 25/01/2008 progress
texturing is going pretty well if rather slowly. still working on the earth dress and accessories. at the same time, I've been looking into my options regarding the way I'm going to present this thing. wrote up some notes for my report after a startling thing occurred to me: this whole thing is an attempt to emulate how WoW clothing models work, right? well... what if they don't use composite materials? I've been working on the assumption that that was how this worked and they had their own little material-editor style interface for it, but what if it's simply a matter of the engine taking the two textures and flattening them down on top of each other, creating a 'temporary' combined texture that's applied to the model? after all, it can't be terribly hard to lay one 128^ texture on top of another. that's probably how composite materials work in max, even.
unfortunately that kinda leaves me a bit buggered on presenting my system. I like using the composite maps; I figured out how it all works and I was pretty proud of myself for that. I always figured if I couldn't get composites to work in whatever engine I went for, I could do it this way(that is, create all my textures just as 'clothing over skin' rather than layered using composite maps), but it just feels like admitting defeat somehow :(
if I go for the precomposited method, at least I'm pretty sure it'll work in unreal - which if I can get my head around sufficiently, I'll be using for presenting the model in the end. lots of people here use unreal, the tools are installed on all the vista computers, mole and matty know things about unrealscript. as for source - I looked at source and source growled back. not a friendly engine at all, imo :/
also:
if I'm not mistaken, the earth dress is... basically finished. no specular fancymaps yet, those are for when I've finished all of the dresses. deviates slightly from the concept but concepts are concepts, not set in stone. which is good because I haven't finished all of them yet.
1:12 am 21/01/2008
a screenshot of the viewport. for some insane reason turning up the self-illumination on some of the standard materials makes then turn turquoise o_o;; also note the nifty little slider I rigged up so I could turn self-illumination on and off for all the textures without having to go in and change every single material. this is also evidence why presenting in max is a bad idea - I mean, just look at the state of it :/
and that's the earth dress in progress. horrible blurry alpha, ew :/
6:23 pm 20/01/2008
texturing progress. never mind the weird floating lines, those are placeholders.
9:26 pm 16/01/2008 well
looking goodish :3 that's a vague stab at her 'default' dress, which she wears when you don't tell her to wear anything else. evidently lukah's people don't believe in letting young girls run around in their underwear, no matter WHAT the disembodied voices in their head say :p
I'm not a design student, so luckily I don't have to go too in-depth for the actual game/story design, but I thought it would be neat if lukah actually addressed the player. and while she'll do most things you tell her to, you can't throw her off cliffs or off the edge of the world because you don't control her, you're just... giving suggestions. in fact I can see the animation system one of the guys in my FYP group is working on being quite useful there - the character can take their own actions while you're not explicitly instructing them, which makes them seem more real and more like an actual person rather than your ingame avatar.
anyway, this screenshot is proof the composite maps are working :3
8:53 pm 16/01/2008 FYP = brain implosion
so I'm working on my FYP today and after a brief moment of panic when I thought I was going mad(must remember to sync my ipod/laptop more often) things are going okay. well. mostly. working with composite maps seems to be a recipe for madness, but I think I've got it sorted now(maybe).
aand I realised last night that really, presenting something in a 3ds max viewport is not a great idea because a) it hates alpha maps, b) it doesn't do real speculars and c) it just generally looks like shit. I should by rights be using something like source or unreal, but do I really have time to learn how to use either of those in the(scary moment here) 3 or so months I have left til handin day? :s
:/
maybe I'll just have to present a stupid prerendered video after all that mucking about with composite maps and maxscript - and for the record, my maxscript proof-of-concept even works now(thank you matty) -_-;;
1:36 am 09/01/2008
oh hey look at that
not in the gallery, whatever.
10:47 pm 07/01/2008 tum te tum
took a break from uni work over the holiday and it did me some good :3 unfortunately now I am being guilt-tripped on all sides by people who spent every waking moment of the break working on their projects or feeling bad about not working on their projects. fuck that! I have been there, and the 'work work work gotta work only work' attitude is bad news. one gots to chillax every so often.
now that I'm back at uni though, I've been back to work on my FYP. this is what I've got so far:
look at all those ugly placeholder materials, eew.
hopefully my unwrapping will turn out as good as I think it's gone so far. then I really should start painting some textures and testing my hypothetical costume-swapping maxscript interface. I know already that the code is going to be HORRIBLY inefficient, BUT it should work. and that's the important thing.
8:46 pm 26/11/2007 captain bland's monotonous adventure
GDV work. not much done yet on my part; moe did the model and I'm just texturing it.
2:47 am 18/11/2007 huh
being the eejit that I am, I managed to overlook the 'hide selected' button in editable poly mode. durr, go me. now that I've found it, I've been using the MAXScript listener to see what the hide function looks like and how it works. a good thing: what you're hiding doesn't have to be a seperate element, so I don't need to worry about slicing up the model and having the shading go all weird as a result. bad thing: I am going to have to keep a list of the selection sets, because hiding polys requires an array of every poly number/sequence you're hiding. still, that's not too hard.
also I'm looking at composite mapping for the clothing, so the material setup would be a multi/sub object material with a submaterial for each of the body, arms, skirt, sleeves and legs. each of those submaterials would be a composite map(doable, I just checked) with the naked skin texture as the base material(except for the skirt/sleeves bits, which will have an empty/placeholder base as they won't be shown unless needed). each of the outfits would then be a texture on top of that with its own alpha map so you see the skin underneath. I'm pretty sure this is how WoW works only with a lot more subobjects :3
from there it's just a matter of switching composite materials on/off(a single line of MAXScript does that) and hiding/unhiding the requisite polys(also a single line, but unhiding is all or nothing so I'll have to rehide everything every time I change something).
I was fiddling with the visual MAXScript editor the other day so I thiiink making the UI won't bee too difficult. guess I just need to start modelling now!
10:46 pm 17/11/2007 final year project
this is the last year of my degree, so I have to do a 'final year project' worth 60 credits(equivalent of 3 normal modules). it's a big fat ton of totally self-directed work and I am meant to be well into it by now. I'm... not really, yet, but I have a start made at least. I'm going to keep a record of my progress here.
first off is my project specification, or 'what am I making'. I have a fairly wordy draft specification but it boils down to a 3D dress-up doll of sorts. I'll be modelling lukah and about 12 different dresses for her. using maxscript I'll make a little interface so you can switch her outfits and hairstyle and all that. doesn't sound complicated but I have next to no maxscript experience so it's a bit daunting.
anyway. I have some concepts, although most of them need tweaking and each set needs shoes and gloves/arm decorations of some kind or another. once concepts are done I need to start modelling with switching things in mind which is going to be... difficult. I've already identified one or two problems with my concepts that will make switching a pain. need to fix that.
9:32 pm 20/10/2007 long time, no siege
back at uni and I have lots and lots of work to do, so I'll probably be posting more WIP shots here. maybe even some more finished artwork eventually :p
currently working on a character model for my advanced animation for games(AAG) module. so glad I get to model that drawing I posted last time :3
11:04 pm 07/08/2007 oh hay
look a raw scan
I'ma colour that now~
3:24 pm 14/07/2007
I'll get around to doing real finished work at some point. for now, here is a giant steam-powered robot coming to beat you to death.
5:23 pm 08/07/2007 wii
diego is alldone. I was kinda worried he looked a bit washed-out but a quick overlay trick(best anything ever) fixed that sharpish ;3 he's still got his crazy weird bounding box problem that I have no idea how to fix but I'm hoping it won't cause any problems other than the gizmos being all funky.
you may notice the gun on his hip is gone; turns out the one on the model sheet was inaccurate(>:/) so I'm modeling his grenade launcher seperately. this will take a little longer as I've never done weapon modelling before and it's all hard and stuff. especially guns. god, why do people love drawing/modelling/looking at/wanking over bloody guns? I really can't understand what's so fascinating about them, they bore the pants off me :/
still, this is what commissioning is all about - doing stuff you're not necessarily crazy about so you get the practise of it anyway. soon as diego and his grenade launcher are finished I intend to start on my summer project - modelling a norn, an ettin and a grendel and some environments for them to live in :3 mole suggested I try doing things in unreal to make a creatures mod type thing BUT don't expect anything amazing on that front any time soon as I have never used unreal before and haven't the foggiest idea how to do anything, much less write AI code, simulate biochemistry or work out genetics. we'll see.
3:39 pm 30/06/2007 updates schmupdates
yego has skin and stuff now. painting textures is part relaxing, part boring, mostly because I know I have two warmachine starter boxes in the spare room ready and waiting - nay, begging to be painted. still, I do my bit for diego now, paint later.
9:18 pm 28/06/2007
UVW unwrapping is SUCH a pain, but yay it is now done. now to arrange the bits on a sheet and paint up a texture :3
8:18 pm 21/06/2007
I hate modelling hands :/ I used to hate drawing them til I finally managed to figure out something that worked for me, now I have to re-learn all over again. in other news, diego has arms now. well. an arm. the mesh is going to be cloned+flipped over once I do his head, then I'll do hair and other non-symmetrical things like the machete scabbard stuff.
10:36 pm 20/06/2007 so uh
well, I have my first-ever commission :3
thanks ginger chris! let's see how good a job I can do of your diego.
I tend to work in short, concentrated bursts of activity. so this is the result of the first of those. um, I'm not sure how long this part took. basically I went to see the fantastic four movie(BLAAAARGHH) at 6:30, came straight home and got to work. now I am tired and need to WoW for a bit.
7:33 pm 18/06/2007 u giev glods?
it's that time of year...
...when every student you know starts jostling for your financial attention ;3
yep, I need money too. being one of those artistic types, I'm actually going to offer commissions for the first time... ever, I think :o I normally am not the type to demand money for my artistic endeavours, but equally I am never open for requests and the like. so this is a rare opportunity :D
now, if you know many artists you know that far and away the most popular subjects for commissions are people's characters. everyone likes to see their own creations reinterpreted by another artist; that's why art trades are so tremendously popular.
I am not going to draw your character...!
...instead, I am going to model him/her/it in glorious 3D! because digital modelling is what I do, and I always need more work :D
now before you start getting starry-eyed visions of shrek or pixar-quality characters, bear in mind my modelling work is for games, not movies. whereas shrek's model probably numbers in the billions of polygons, my models are considerably more modest, weighing in between 1000-5000 or so. to give you an idea of the level of detail... hmm. 3D models in DS games are very modest, generally between 100 and 1000 polygons, because the DS can only process up to 3000 polys on screen at once(my figures may be inaccurate!). I think this is about the resolution of the N64 also. 2000 polys is the base resolution of a character in World of Warcraft. a lot of modern games use around 5000 polys on their player character models. so the models I'm making could be for any of these platforms.
my basic price list goes something like this:
£5 will get you a 2000 polygon character, fully textured with either a 512^2 or 1024^2 diffuse map(depending on the complexity of the model) and as many extra shader maps as I feel necessary.
£8 will get you a 5000 polygon character, textured as above.
add £5 if you want me to rig it for animation(most likely using 3DSMax's default biped).
£3 makes a 100-1000 polygon character with a 128^2 diffuse texture(DS resolution). this resolution is quite a challenge for any 3d artist but done well it can look really good. if you've got a chibi-style character design it can look utterly adorable :3
if you want a super-high resolution model(no maximum polycount), I will not guarantee it will be textured nor rigged, but I can model it. it'll be £10 though because high-poly modelling is a special torture. this means that if you want me to normal map your character, it will cost £10 on top of whatever else you're paying. and I may or may not hate you forever.
special spangly glowy effects will cost extra because I haven't done that before and I'll need to look into how it's done.
all models will be presented in a .max file - if you want it in another format ask and I'll see what I can do. you are free to experiment with, animate, edit, recolour, sex change, et cetera, your finished model SO LONG as you give me credit for making it in the first place. you can also use it in a game/mod with the above proviso.
now, your part of the deal is simple. to start, give me either a full front, back and side model sheet(coloured or B&W, I don't mind so long as you tell me what colour everything should be) of your character OR a damn good description. your model will look a million times closer to how you envision it if you draw up the model sheet, believe me. I CAN model 'a fat hairy guy' but if that's all the description you give me he could be three inches tall and green or five metres and scaly. more visual descriptiveness is better. if you want to accompany your sheet/description with references, photographic or otherwise, that's great.
I have no problem modelling naked characters or men with prehensile cocks if you like, but I reserve the right to snigger childishly at such a design.
I will keep you updated during the modelling and texturing process, and unless I am truly hellishly busy you can expect a finished model within two to three weeks.
payments may be made via paypal(my paypal account is floofyscorp@gmail.com) at any time before I deliver the finished model. if you make me work right up until the very last beauty render then decide you're not going to pay me, I will make sad puppy eyes and use it for my portfolio instead. remember; though the design remains your own, the model is mine. if you can't use paypal for whatever reason, don't be discouraged - mention this in your order and we can work something out.
I will be adding image references(for model resolutions, my past work, and such), later. think on it for now :3
if/when you decide to commission me, email me at floofyscorp@gmail.com with what you want, including your description/model sheet and some kind of imaginative title.
I paint wargames miniatures too, but I currently have more than enough of that lined up so I'm not advertising my services right now. still, if you gots some minis needing painting, drop me a line.
4:03 pm 29/05/2007 dum dum dada
so... second year is done :3 I guess I should show what I've been doing this year, eh?
I had... 5 modules altogether. since 4 of those modules were based more or less entirely on the computer, I have stuff to show for them. drawing and composition was all real-paper work but I've got copies of one or two pieces from it. you'll need the newest divx codec to view the video files.
first of all, animation for games had an ICA in three parts spread over the year. one in december, one in april, one toward the end of may. the first was biped animation, for which I produced 6 hilariously bad 15-second animations. unfortunately one got screwed up at encoding time(the best of the lot in my opinion) but here is the best remaining. and yep, that's hazel. makin' a tree grow :3
part 2 was looped animations, and skinning meshes using physique. I liked this one a LOT :3 result was 4 15-second animations, all of which loop on themselves. this is the 'taunt' animation which I had a lot of fun doing. also, pi! :D
the final part was lipsynch, which is deceptively hard ;_; still kinda fun though. learned a lot. this is the result. not my model! but the sound clip(from the incredibles) was my own choice.
environmental modelling was a huge challenge and a pain in the ass. even though I had 4 months to finish it, I procrastinated and ended up doing the majority of the work in three weeks. it was really tough. but I learned a TON about environmental and architectural modelling as well as working with HUEG meshes without max melting down. here is one of the final renders(texturing wasn't an important part of the assignment). I got an A for this assignment! :3
character modelling followed after environmental modelling and was my most anticipated assignment. it was a lot of fun and a lot of work! this is one of the final renders.
games level design suffered from the dreaded 'procrastinating til the last moment' because I was scared of drawing maps o_o;; I did a bit of a rush-job on it, I admit, so the presentation wasn't the best, but I had fun designing the levels and characters. all the mapwork was on A3 paper so I have no scans, but the character designs are digital so here are a few of my favourites.
...I KNOW I scanned the two big pieces from drawing and composition but I'm damned if I can find them right now. so, you'll have to wait for those.
5:42 pm 01/05/2007 more work?
I got some sexy new boots. they are filled with win if somewhat uncomfortable right now. wearing them in.
this was drawn on the 'page of feet' I did for my obligatory 12 pages of life studies, which is by the way killing me. fewkin' 'ate lifedrawing. I belatedly realised that a boot doesn't count as 'life studies' unless someone's wearing it so I may creatively edit the top to make it look like it was on someon'e leg. best thing I've drawn in days and in entirely the wrong place. ah well. sketching up presentation board/action scene now. have mirror, must do more life studies. blaaarg.
8:30 pm 24/04/2007 work work
got a scanner at last! now I can scan sketches at home, thankgod. on that subject:
the brass thief, a character from dan abnett's excellent 'ravenor returned'. the brass thief is an inculaba(as my note shows), which as far as I can tell is a daemon summoned by a psyker and given orders by them. very neat, and I loved mr abnett's description of the thing. got an image in my head of this little evil brass creature, smoking and shimmering in the air. might even model it sometime. the swords were only described in the book as 'rhyming swords' so I made up a design which I'm rather taken with. simple but elegant.
anyway, after scanning it I decided I absolutely HAD to paint over the sketch with my metallic paints :3 I mean, come on. the name begs for it. the result won't be scanned as metallics look awful scanned, but I assure you the result is quite nice. also shimmery... :3
oh hey talk about long time no updates huh? let's do a quick run-down of the important things that have happened since my last post then:
-finished and handed in all my assignments on time, hurray
-had my VIVA which went generally well
-got a new computer for my birthday, new keyboard = typos galore
-drew some chibis and sketchy crap that nobody will see ever because it's terrible. well, I'll upload the chibis when they're all done; they're quite cute.
-oh and I graduated university with a 2:1, that's kinda cool.
so where now for me? welp, I've been applying to a few places, probably not as many as I technically should but I just can't bring myself to apply to places that only do racing/sports games because I would catch fire. blizzard are taunting me with their 'WE'RE HIRING!' banners all over gameartisans.net but god damnit I'll get that required experience someday.
I've made some 'to do' lists populated entirely with ideas for models I could make, including(gasp) a trio of critters that some people may find strangely similar to those that went before, but of course entirely different because that would be stealing or something. also props, because props make the world go round.
there is some new artwork in my portfolio; I'm thinking of removing the 'gallery' here in favour of just pointing at the portfolio because really, most of the art on [floof] is depressingly old and shitty/unappealing to anyone but me and I like at least some of the stuff in my portfolio. the ratio of stuff I like:stuff I don't is going to change, I promise. in fact, I'm going to go do some stuff I like right now.
23:09 09/05/2008
ugh, did I ever mention I hate animating? let me qualify that, actually: I like loop animation, I had a lot of fun making pi's walk and run cycles last year. but cutscene animation can die in a fire, I can never seem to get it to all work out properly without something utterly retarded happening; I just spent half an hour fixing my AAG when an absent-minded movement of my character's central bone ended up putting her about half a foot too high for the rest of the animation, so I had to go back and fix EVERY SINGLE POSITION KEY for that bone. imagine my face melting with a combination of disgust and horror here when I realised what I'd done.
also, I love fighting with my distinctly 'meh' custom rig I made for this assignment. I'd ever worked with anything but biped before and while I'm glad the IK chains in the arms and legs work out pretty nicely, I wish I could go back in time and stop myself from trying to make a bunch of bollocks control icons for her ands and feet and oh god the main character control shape was such a terrible idea. I only realised this about halfway through my animation, of course, and when I tried to remove it EVERYTHING sadfaced at me. pressing a button and seeing your character model/rig suddenly warp out of all recognition is a soul-chilling moment.
but anyway, I've gotten the basic animation for AAG down now, tomorrow I'll tweak the myriad errors I will no doubt find when it's done test-rendering(changing my working camera resolution at this late stage was probably a bad idea, for instace), set up for lipsynch, do that, turn on effects systems(I predict cloth exploding in a particularly spectacular fashion when it finds out what I've done to the scene scale, whoops), close my eyes and press 'render', then piss off to somewhere else and write up my report while it sits there happily rendering for a few days until exploding and deleting everything just hours before handin. I mean, everything will be fine. I'm going to go back it all up now for no particular reason(oh god oh god oh god)...
04:30 25/04/2008
right so uh it's been a month since my last update here. FYP and EFG have been handed in now, my FYP VIVA is on monday afternoon, GDV assignment is due on the 6th of may and AAG is due on the 14th. I will probably post pictures of those when it's all over but since AAG has a dedicated blog on my course website I'm not saying much about that here.
less-uni-wise, I turned 21 on the 6th of april. :o
12:35 am 24/03/2008 long time no update
so one week til handin and things are looking mostly finished, except for my report which still needs about 3000 more words and some dressing.
in other news, concept art:
and the next person to cry at me about her proportions can die in a fire; I don't draw realism and I don't pretend to. also I am so sick of looking at lukah now.
2:20 pm 25/02/2008
bipedded :3 that's the 'ash' element outfit she's wearing.
my copy of UT3 shipped today so I should have it by friday. in the meantime, I'm collecting up basic tutorials for nubs like myself and, of course, plowing on with the textures. I have all but two of the second-tier dresses presentable now(in case you were wondering, 'presentable' means the diffuse is finished, whereas 'finished' means the final alpha, specular and gloss maps are also done). I tested the 'huge textures' idea and it works, but it occurred to me that that method only works ideally for whole-ensemble outfits, when you only have all of the 'earth' or whatever items on. otherwise, it's inefficient because you're loading multiple whole 1024^2 textures even if all you're using is a glove from that outfit. so that goes in the report, but not in the finished product.
4:08 pm 23/02/2008 *headdesk*
I need to start writing my report :/ I tried opening the example game art report(estee's, interestingly) and abiword crashed. guess I'll just have to try again tomorrow when the athena building is open real hours. I mean, why the hell does it close at 5 on a SATURDAY of all days?
anyway. aside from the report, I'm beginning to feel distinctly uneasy about all this. doesn't look like UE3 is going to be working in the labs for a long while now, so I have three options: a) buy it myself, install it on a portable harddrive and hope that setup works when I take it to the labs, b) find an alternative engine I can use on my laptop with support for multilayered materials(fat chance) or c)... give a boring prerendered viva in which I click through a list of images and go 'hey it'd look great in realtime honest'
you can tell I really really don't want to go for option c :/ UT3 is £18 on play.com. portable harddrive would probably cost a pretty penny but to be fair it would be handy to have anyway. I'll go to maplin tomorrow/monday and start the grand experiment that may or may not actually work. yay!
also I realised yesterday that my textures are horribly inefficient. I had always thought that lots of small textures > one HUGE texture, so every piece of clothing is seperate. yesterday I read a couple things to the effect that I had it completely backwards and in fact single huge textures are the way forward. I should, instead of having a bunch of tiny textures, have each element's items on one texture sheet and load them like that. I... could stitch everything together, I think, but it might end up being a lot of trouble. maybe I'll just mention it in my report, ie. 'if I were to do this project again(and please god I won't) I would have done the textures like this, because I am a pleb and didn't realise my way was worse'. I'll try it tomorrow when I'm in a lab and don't have to worry about my laptop running out of memory trying to handle a single psd with ALL OF MY TEXTURES SO FAR sitting in it :s
1:50 pm 22/02/2008 all quiet on the northeastern front
still going, albeit slowly. must start on my report soon... :s
that's the swamp dress, not quite finished yet(needs detail on the bodice and a pair of matching boots). mostly there though, and looking quite sharp.
5:46 pm 10/02/2008 so...
more thought on presentation: max is basically a last-ditch option hopefully. now that the uni's recovering after animex, the lab PCs should have been reimaged, and part of the reimage should(according to my course leader, the head of all games courses at teesside) include unrealed 3 and wacom drivers. if this is so, and mole should be checking that for me right now, then alls I have to do is move into a happy little lab for the rest of ever and learn unreal. which according to florian is not terribly hard. I certainly hope 'not hard' is measured at normal human levels though, because what florian finds hard generally would be filed under 'brain-meltingly complex' for the rest of us :p
anyway. back to painting textures and listening to viva piñata music :3
11:40 pm 28/01/2008 getting faster
getting faster. that's the four basic dresses(earth air fire water, of course) in a presentable state at least. need to fix where sleeve meets arm, and the fire+water dresses need leg slot items. plus I think the air dress is getting a collar, or possibly water will. water needs a bit of cleanup and shading work. very impressed with air thus far though, it's worked out much nicer than the original concept art imo. drawing all those little swirlies is a pain but so worth it.
drew all the icons, too, and did some hairstyle sketches earlier. I think I deserve a little break now. excuse me while I go play something :3
8:19 pm 25/01/2008 progress
texturing is going pretty well if rather slowly. still working on the earth dress and accessories. at the same time, I've been looking into my options regarding the way I'm going to present this thing. wrote up some notes for my report after a startling thing occurred to me: this whole thing is an attempt to emulate how WoW clothing models work, right? well... what if they don't use composite materials? I've been working on the assumption that that was how this worked and they had their own little material-editor style interface for it, but what if it's simply a matter of the engine taking the two textures and flattening them down on top of each other, creating a 'temporary' combined texture that's applied to the model? after all, it can't be terribly hard to lay one 128^ texture on top of another. that's probably how composite materials work in max, even.
unfortunately that kinda leaves me a bit buggered on presenting my system. I like using the composite maps; I figured out how it all works and I was pretty proud of myself for that. I always figured if I couldn't get composites to work in whatever engine I went for, I could do it this way(that is, create all my textures just as 'clothing over skin' rather than layered using composite maps), but it just feels like admitting defeat somehow :(
if I go for the precomposited method, at least I'm pretty sure it'll work in unreal - which if I can get my head around sufficiently, I'll be using for presenting the model in the end. lots of people here use unreal, the tools are installed on all the vista computers, mole and matty know things about unrealscript. as for source - I looked at source and source growled back. not a friendly engine at all, imo :/
also:
if I'm not mistaken, the earth dress is... basically finished. no specular fancymaps yet, those are for when I've finished all of the dresses. deviates slightly from the concept but concepts are concepts, not set in stone. which is good because I haven't finished all of them yet.
1:12 am 21/01/2008
a screenshot of the viewport. for some insane reason turning up the self-illumination on some of the standard materials makes then turn turquoise o_o;; also note the nifty little slider I rigged up so I could turn self-illumination on and off for all the textures without having to go in and change every single material. this is also evidence why presenting in max is a bad idea - I mean, just look at the state of it :/
and that's the earth dress in progress. horrible blurry alpha, ew :/
6:23 pm 20/01/2008
texturing progress. never mind the weird floating lines, those are placeholders.
9:26 pm 16/01/2008 well
looking goodish :3 that's a vague stab at her 'default' dress, which she wears when you don't tell her to wear anything else. evidently lukah's people don't believe in letting young girls run around in their underwear, no matter WHAT the disembodied voices in their head say :p
I'm not a design student, so luckily I don't have to go too in-depth for the actual game/story design, but I thought it would be neat if lukah actually addressed the player. and while she'll do most things you tell her to, you can't throw her off cliffs or off the edge of the world because you don't control her, you're just... giving suggestions. in fact I can see the animation system one of the guys in my FYP group is working on being quite useful there - the character can take their own actions while you're not explicitly instructing them, which makes them seem more real and more like an actual person rather than your ingame avatar.
anyway, this screenshot is proof the composite maps are working :3
8:53 pm 16/01/2008 FYP = brain implosion
so I'm working on my FYP today and after a brief moment of panic when I thought I was going mad(must remember to sync my ipod/laptop more often) things are going okay. well. mostly. working with composite maps seems to be a recipe for madness, but I think I've got it sorted now(maybe).
aand I realised last night that really, presenting something in a 3ds max viewport is not a great idea because a) it hates alpha maps, b) it doesn't do real speculars and c) it just generally looks like shit. I should by rights be using something like source or unreal, but do I really have time to learn how to use either of those in the(scary moment here) 3 or so months I have left til handin day? :s
:/
maybe I'll just have to present a stupid prerendered video after all that mucking about with composite maps and maxscript - and for the record, my maxscript proof-of-concept even works now(thank you matty) -_-;;
1:36 am 09/01/2008
oh hey look at that
not in the gallery, whatever.
10:47 pm 07/01/2008 tum te tum
took a break from uni work over the holiday and it did me some good :3 unfortunately now I am being guilt-tripped on all sides by people who spent every waking moment of the break working on their projects or feeling bad about not working on their projects. fuck that! I have been there, and the 'work work work gotta work only work' attitude is bad news. one gots to chillax every so often.
now that I'm back at uni though, I've been back to work on my FYP. this is what I've got so far:
look at all those ugly placeholder materials, eew.
hopefully my unwrapping will turn out as good as I think it's gone so far. then I really should start painting some textures and testing my hypothetical costume-swapping maxscript interface. I know already that the code is going to be HORRIBLY inefficient, BUT it should work. and that's the important thing.
8:46 pm 26/11/2007 captain bland's monotonous adventure
GDV work. not much done yet on my part; moe did the model and I'm just texturing it.
2:47 am 18/11/2007 huh
being the eejit that I am, I managed to overlook the 'hide selected' button in editable poly mode. durr, go me. now that I've found it, I've been using the MAXScript listener to see what the hide function looks like and how it works. a good thing: what you're hiding doesn't have to be a seperate element, so I don't need to worry about slicing up the model and having the shading go all weird as a result. bad thing: I am going to have to keep a list of the selection sets, because hiding polys requires an array of every poly number/sequence you're hiding. still, that's not too hard.
also I'm looking at composite mapping for the clothing, so the material setup would be a multi/sub object material with a submaterial for each of the body, arms, skirt, sleeves and legs. each of those submaterials would be a composite map(doable, I just checked) with the naked skin texture as the base material(except for the skirt/sleeves bits, which will have an empty/placeholder base as they won't be shown unless needed). each of the outfits would then be a texture on top of that with its own alpha map so you see the skin underneath. I'm pretty sure this is how WoW works only with a lot more subobjects :3
from there it's just a matter of switching composite materials on/off(a single line of MAXScript does that) and hiding/unhiding the requisite polys(also a single line, but unhiding is all or nothing so I'll have to rehide everything every time I change something).
I was fiddling with the visual MAXScript editor the other day so I thiiink making the UI won't bee too difficult. guess I just need to start modelling now!
10:46 pm 17/11/2007 final year project
this is the last year of my degree, so I have to do a 'final year project' worth 60 credits(equivalent of 3 normal modules). it's a big fat ton of totally self-directed work and I am meant to be well into it by now. I'm... not really, yet, but I have a start made at least. I'm going to keep a record of my progress here.
first off is my project specification, or 'what am I making'. I have a fairly wordy draft specification but it boils down to a 3D dress-up doll of sorts. I'll be modelling lukah and about 12 different dresses for her. using maxscript I'll make a little interface so you can switch her outfits and hairstyle and all that. doesn't sound complicated but I have next to no maxscript experience so it's a bit daunting.
anyway. I have some concepts, although most of them need tweaking and each set needs shoes and gloves/arm decorations of some kind or another. once concepts are done I need to start modelling with switching things in mind which is going to be... difficult. I've already identified one or two problems with my concepts that will make switching a pain. need to fix that.
9:32 pm 20/10/2007 long time, no siege
back at uni and I have lots and lots of work to do, so I'll probably be posting more WIP shots here. maybe even some more finished artwork eventually :p
currently working on a character model for my advanced animation for games(AAG) module. so glad I get to model that drawing I posted last time :3
11:04 pm 07/08/2007 oh hay
look a raw scan
I'ma colour that now~
3:24 pm 14/07/2007
I'll get around to doing real finished work at some point. for now, here is a giant steam-powered robot coming to beat you to death.
5:23 pm 08/07/2007 wii
diego is alldone. I was kinda worried he looked a bit washed-out but a quick overlay trick(best anything ever) fixed that sharpish ;3 he's still got his crazy weird bounding box problem that I have no idea how to fix but I'm hoping it won't cause any problems other than the gizmos being all funky.
you may notice the gun on his hip is gone; turns out the one on the model sheet was inaccurate(>:/) so I'm modeling his grenade launcher seperately. this will take a little longer as I've never done weapon modelling before and it's all hard and stuff. especially guns. god, why do people love drawing/modelling/looking at/wanking over bloody guns? I really can't understand what's so fascinating about them, they bore the pants off me :/
still, this is what commissioning is all about - doing stuff you're not necessarily crazy about so you get the practise of it anyway. soon as diego and his grenade launcher are finished I intend to start on my summer project - modelling a norn, an ettin and a grendel and some environments for them to live in :3 mole suggested I try doing things in unreal to make a creatures mod type thing BUT don't expect anything amazing on that front any time soon as I have never used unreal before and haven't the foggiest idea how to do anything, much less write AI code, simulate biochemistry or work out genetics. we'll see.
3:39 pm 30/06/2007 updates schmupdates
yego has skin and stuff now. painting textures is part relaxing, part boring, mostly because I know I have two warmachine starter boxes in the spare room ready and waiting - nay, begging to be painted. still, I do my bit for diego now, paint later.
9:18 pm 28/06/2007
UVW unwrapping is SUCH a pain, but yay it is now done. now to arrange the bits on a sheet and paint up a texture :3
8:18 pm 21/06/2007
I hate modelling hands :/ I used to hate drawing them til I finally managed to figure out something that worked for me, now I have to re-learn all over again. in other news, diego has arms now. well. an arm. the mesh is going to be cloned+flipped over once I do his head, then I'll do hair and other non-symmetrical things like the machete scabbard stuff.
10:36 pm 20/06/2007 so uh
well, I have my first-ever commission :3
thanks ginger chris! let's see how good a job I can do of your diego.
I tend to work in short, concentrated bursts of activity. so this is the result of the first of those. um, I'm not sure how long this part took. basically I went to see the fantastic four movie(BLAAAARGHH) at 6:30, came straight home and got to work. now I am tired and need to WoW for a bit.
7:33 pm 18/06/2007 u giev glods?
it's that time of year...
...when every student you know starts jostling for your financial attention ;3
yep, I need money too. being one of those artistic types, I'm actually going to offer commissions for the first time... ever, I think :o I normally am not the type to demand money for my artistic endeavours, but equally I am never open for requests and the like. so this is a rare opportunity :D
now, if you know many artists you know that far and away the most popular subjects for commissions are people's characters. everyone likes to see their own creations reinterpreted by another artist; that's why art trades are so tremendously popular.
I am not going to draw your character...!
...instead, I am going to model him/her/it in glorious 3D! because digital modelling is what I do, and I always need more work :D
now before you start getting starry-eyed visions of shrek or pixar-quality characters, bear in mind my modelling work is for games, not movies. whereas shrek's model probably numbers in the billions of polygons, my models are considerably more modest, weighing in between 1000-5000 or so. to give you an idea of the level of detail... hmm. 3D models in DS games are very modest, generally between 100 and 1000 polygons, because the DS can only process up to 3000 polys on screen at once(my figures may be inaccurate!). I think this is about the resolution of the N64 also. 2000 polys is the base resolution of a character in World of Warcraft. a lot of modern games use around 5000 polys on their player character models. so the models I'm making could be for any of these platforms.
my basic price list goes something like this:
£5 will get you a 2000 polygon character, fully textured with either a 512^2 or 1024^2 diffuse map(depending on the complexity of the model) and as many extra shader maps as I feel necessary.
£8 will get you a 5000 polygon character, textured as above.
add £5 if you want me to rig it for animation(most likely using 3DSMax's default biped).
£3 makes a 100-1000 polygon character with a 128^2 diffuse texture(DS resolution). this resolution is quite a challenge for any 3d artist but done well it can look really good. if you've got a chibi-style character design it can look utterly adorable :3
if you want a super-high resolution model(no maximum polycount), I will not guarantee it will be textured nor rigged, but I can model it. it'll be £10 though because high-poly modelling is a special torture. this means that if you want me to normal map your character, it will cost £10 on top of whatever else you're paying. and I may or may not hate you forever.
special spangly glowy effects will cost extra because I haven't done that before and I'll need to look into how it's done.
all models will be presented in a .max file - if you want it in another format ask and I'll see what I can do. you are free to experiment with, animate, edit, recolour, sex change, et cetera, your finished model SO LONG as you give me credit for making it in the first place. you can also use it in a game/mod with the above proviso.
now, your part of the deal is simple. to start, give me either a full front, back and side model sheet(coloured or B&W, I don't mind so long as you tell me what colour everything should be) of your character OR a damn good description. your model will look a million times closer to how you envision it if you draw up the model sheet, believe me. I CAN model 'a fat hairy guy' but if that's all the description you give me he could be three inches tall and green or five metres and scaly. more visual descriptiveness is better. if you want to accompany your sheet/description with references, photographic or otherwise, that's great.
I have no problem modelling naked characters or men with prehensile cocks if you like, but I reserve the right to snigger childishly at such a design.
I will keep you updated during the modelling and texturing process, and unless I am truly hellishly busy you can expect a finished model within two to three weeks.
payments may be made via paypal(my paypal account is floofyscorp@gmail.com) at any time before I deliver the finished model. if you make me work right up until the very last beauty render then decide you're not going to pay me, I will make sad puppy eyes and use it for my portfolio instead. remember; though the design remains your own, the model is mine. if you can't use paypal for whatever reason, don't be discouraged - mention this in your order and we can work something out.
I will be adding image references(for model resolutions, my past work, and such), later. think on it for now :3
if/when you decide to commission me, email me at floofyscorp@gmail.com with what you want, including your description/model sheet and some kind of imaginative title.
I paint wargames miniatures too, but I currently have more than enough of that lined up so I'm not advertising my services right now. still, if you gots some minis needing painting, drop me a line.
4:03 pm 29/05/2007 dum dum dada
so... second year is done :3 I guess I should show what I've been doing this year, eh?
I had... 5 modules altogether. since 4 of those modules were based more or less entirely on the computer, I have stuff to show for them. drawing and composition was all real-paper work but I've got copies of one or two pieces from it. you'll need the newest divx codec to view the video files.
first of all, animation for games had an ICA in three parts spread over the year. one in december, one in april, one toward the end of may. the first was biped animation, for which I produced 6 hilariously bad 15-second animations. unfortunately one got screwed up at encoding time(the best of the lot in my opinion) but here is the best remaining. and yep, that's hazel. makin' a tree grow :3
part 2 was looped animations, and skinning meshes using physique. I liked this one a LOT :3 result was 4 15-second animations, all of which loop on themselves. this is the 'taunt' animation which I had a lot of fun doing. also, pi! :D
the final part was lipsynch, which is deceptively hard ;_; still kinda fun though. learned a lot. this is the result. not my model! but the sound clip(from the incredibles) was my own choice.
environmental modelling was a huge challenge and a pain in the ass. even though I had 4 months to finish it, I procrastinated and ended up doing the majority of the work in three weeks. it was really tough. but I learned a TON about environmental and architectural modelling as well as working with HUEG meshes without max melting down. here is one of the final renders(texturing wasn't an important part of the assignment). I got an A for this assignment! :3
character modelling followed after environmental modelling and was my most anticipated assignment. it was a lot of fun and a lot of work! this is one of the final renders.
games level design suffered from the dreaded 'procrastinating til the last moment' because I was scared of drawing maps o_o;; I did a bit of a rush-job on it, I admit, so the presentation wasn't the best, but I had fun designing the levels and characters. all the mapwork was on A3 paper so I have no scans, but the character designs are digital so here are a few of my favourites.
...I KNOW I scanned the two big pieces from drawing and composition but I'm damned if I can find them right now. so, you'll have to wait for those.
5:42 pm 01/05/2007 more work?
I got some sexy new boots. they are filled with win if somewhat uncomfortable right now. wearing them in.
this was drawn on the 'page of feet' I did for my obligatory 12 pages of life studies, which is by the way killing me. fewkin' 'ate lifedrawing. I belatedly realised that a boot doesn't count as 'life studies' unless someone's wearing it so I may creatively edit the top to make it look like it was on someon'e leg. best thing I've drawn in days and in entirely the wrong place. ah well. sketching up presentation board/action scene now. have mirror, must do more life studies. blaaarg.
8:30 pm 24/04/2007 work work
got a scanner at last! now I can scan sketches at home, thankgod. on that subject:
the brass thief, a character from dan abnett's excellent 'ravenor returned'. the brass thief is an inculaba(as my note shows), which as far as I can tell is a daemon summoned by a psyker and given orders by them. very neat, and I loved mr abnett's description of the thing. got an image in my head of this little evil brass creature, smoking and shimmering in the air. might even model it sometime. the swords were only described in the book as 'rhyming swords' so I made up a design which I'm rather taken with. simple but elegant.
anyway, after scanning it I decided I absolutely HAD to paint over the sketch with my metallic paints :3 I mean, come on. the name begs for it. the result won't be scanned as metallics look awful scanned, but I assure you the result is quite nice. also shimmery... :3