A rough monster I drew for Giles Ruscoe, he and I are concepting a monster for each other to sculpt in zbrush. :) follow up sculpts will be posted soon.
Here's Giles Ruscoe's sculpt of the derpy dog thing:
I've been trying something new with zbrush, making tilable textures and trying to reuse uv space. Overlapping UVs yes. Since I was actually taught not to do that >_>...
There really wasn't much to do in terms of the Diffuse Texture or Spec. A lot of the work was done from the normals and AO, even the SPEC brought it to life. All that's left is the aging process. Thought I'd post it looking brand new... also maybe a different bed cover, that looks quite boring!
EDIT: I improved the shape, polycount and everything, also was too dull to realise marmoset wasn't using the AO. Hurp Derp. You can see the difference by comparing them:
---OLD--
Finally, I thought I'd never get this done. I spent a good few hours trying to bake the maps. Xnormal proved to be much faster, but for a few bits like the drapery, it didn't seem to recognize which side it was meant to bake. So then I had to open up Maya and painstakingly wait for the viewer to actually catch up. Anyhow, the diffuse is coming soon, I'm thrilled to have this complete.
Been working on this for a little while, it doesn't help that I had trouble with baking parts of the map. I decided I'd do each part separately to prevent Maya from crashing! So on the left is what I'm doing in Zbrush at the moment, and on the right is a marmoset render showing off the finished bedposts.
It's a pain, because I made the mistake of using dynamesh and then turning it off which prevented me from going back in sub-divisions. It was also way too high poly even after I halved the polycount. So... lesson learned. ><
Had enough time to mess with the lighting a bit more, added a lighting importance mass, ambient occlusion to the level and some items like candles. I removed the chandelier because it really got in the way and didn't look pretty. Just not sure if the changes made much difference.
So I've been improving some items for the room, I'm still in the middle of it, here's a few screenshots. I've shrank it down because it was very big before.
Today I was feeling a bit down, so my progress has been slow with this. I
scrapped my old cabinet model because it was so bad and started again. Got some references too. It looks better (much better than my old one).
I'm pretty stuck on how I should alter the geometry on the feet of the legs... they take up 360 odd tris alone.
I made this not so long ago, after a bit of feedback I went back and halved the poly count from 1321 Tris/716 Faces to 633 Tris/322 Faces. Thought I'd keep it posted here for comparison.
Old version: 1321 Tris/ 716 Faces
New version is also clearer because I was really silly with the UVs last time.
New Version: 633 Tris/ 322 Faces
Final Version:
Edited the Specular map and normals.
It's been a busy few days, as I had my graduation two days ago :)
Here's the base mesh ready for zbrush. I also took such a long time on the hands! Damn appendages and their awkward edge flow.
The hands took me a day! But I think I understand how to do it quicker next time.
Finished, and added some edge loops to create a more even square mesh in certain areas.
I got some feedback saying he needs a bit of bulking up. I tried to
shift a few polys, but I think most of the bulking up will have to be
in Zbrush. :)
I've done a bit of modelling, it's going rather slowly. I expect I have
really poor technique when it comes to modelling. Hopefully I can learn
from this.
Starting with pieces separately, and joining later.
I've been helping out a friend for a competition. He says he wants a
soldier model to pose on his vehicle. It's all very quick and rough, he
chose the second design, so I will probably detail it a bit more and
start blocking out the character soon.
As most people who know me know- I don't really go out very often anymore. I barely leave my computer as it is, with so much work to be done and limited funds, I found better ways to have fun and even socialise. But tonight I was looking forward to finally going out and hosting an awesome games night to raise funds for my uni's graduation show.
It didn't turn out that great. In fact I wish I could have gone back in time and done something different so it didn't have to end this way.
For the past few weeks I've been busy organising the end of year show, I had also decided to organise a fundraising games night and a classmate and I chose a place that had been used in previous years for fundraising. We had the Wii, Xbox 360, PS3 and a variety of games on each, there was supposed to be a competition held, raffles and just plain fun, but not even thirty people turned up. I was disappointed, mostly because the absences were from the very students involved in the degree show- it was basically for them. The people who turned up made an effort to help and even brought friends over.
So what ended the night with a big bang? Some idiot decided it was okay to enter our area (it was closed off and you had to pay for wristbands to get in) for free, and continued to ignore me, pointing, laughing and no doubt being a racist piece of brainless turd.
It was not so bad when I saw him finally leave the area, he apparently 'knew' one of the randoms that had gotten in (I made his friend pay for him eventually), but then he had the nerve to bring back two orange faced scarecrows and show off his amazing 'ignorance' in front of them.
So I pushed him. Hard.
One of the horrificly tall umpa lumpas went crazy on me whilst I had an awesomly fabulous Princess Peach costume on, and destroyed it by pulling my wig off. Just imagine my pissed off face when she did that. I told them to get out- though I'm sure it was in a horribly rude fashion, since I can't even remember exactly what I said. Then they got banned from the club.
I practically ripped off the rest of my costume, and went to the bathroom, utterly and sourly disappointed with how I handled things. So tonight I express my sincere disgust- at mainly myself.
Three damn years without ever encountering a chav, and I loose my mind when I do. I must be spoiled, I'm in Britain for goodness sake.
This
week has been very sunny in Swansea, it's such a contrast to the
stressful and rainy days I've had for the past 9 months. There have been
some really great and really tiresome days, where I just felt like
throwing in the towel because of the amount of stress I've had this
year. And finally, it's over.
I
had my last Viva last week, and ever since
I've just been doing absolutely nothing- well actually, I've been
playing Diablo 3, watching Adventure Time, socialising and just eating like a king. But it feels like I've been doing absolutely nothing, and it's great.
Dissonance
is complete for the most part, I still want to do some tweaking before I
let people demo it. It's not a full game, it's an academic project,
something incredibly incomplete, buggy and imperfect, but that's how much
one person can possibly do in nine months without prior knowledge to
code and with the edition of concept art and modelling etc.
Here's the trailer
This
week I still have a few little things to do, like organising the end of
year show for our department at uni and just touching up some bits of
my project ready to show off on the day- I've been re-editing the
textures of Cecilia for a while now, I'm just so picky, but I will be
submitting her wireframe to dA very soon.
What Now?
I have time to do stuff! This is AMazing awesome!!!!
On
a serious note, I'm going to be spending the next few months
creating/improving my portfolio while applying for jobs. I know it's not
going to be easy, but I will keep trying.
Think I will finally post
something on Polycount, starting up some more character designs and
modelling would probably be the best idea.
I've thought about
places I might be situated in, and settle down at for jobs- but to be
honest, so long as it is within 3 hours drive from my parent's home I
won't be complaining much. I know it's hard to get in, especially as an
artist and a student who has only just graduated, but I'm hoping that my
work has/will pay off.
Cosplay/Hobbies/Events
I will definitely be going to the next MCM Expo, and will be making another costume,
I would love to dress as Leo from Tekken and Azula from The Last
Airbender- alternatively Luka the vocaloid. It will be pretty sweet. In
the worst/best case scenario, where I do get a job and I actually cannot
attend, I hope you all will forgive me for my yet-again absence.
Anyhow I'll leave it here. I basically just copy/pasted this from my deviantART journal.