"Success is about doing the small things consistently to improve. There is no other blueprint. People look at the big picture and then look at their life and that's where discouragement happens. Fuck the big picture. Focus on the small things you can control and the big picture will come into focus. If you try to chase greatness you will never catch it because you aren't chasing the right thing. Chase effort. Effort leads to results, chase effort and greatness will start chasing you." -Sparkreason

Here we are again for another small and delayed update. This time I have a two week old sculpt from a Saturday afternoon ZBrush session. This one took probably a couple hours to get to this level as I haven't touched ZBrush in a few months, but it started taking shape with some good critique from Brad Kotris-- now of Nerd Corps.

One thing I've realized is that modeling a character from a game can get very confusing when trying to reference detail from a low poly model with normal maps. Next time perhaps I'll stick with 2D concepts with turnaround or faces.

Cheers!

Guild Wars 2: WIP

It's been another long "break" from posting full of work, events, and some occasional side project time. I still don't have much completed, but here's a preview of what I'm doing with the open art test for a ArenaNet internship.

Most of the modeling is finished, with the exception of a few details that need adjustments on the front, grass cards, and possibly some decal cards if necessary. Fortunately I've still got some polys to play with. The texturing is where most of my attention will be focused in the next couple of days, especially that brick texture and the moss. Yeeeergh it looks rough at the moment. And the placeholder shingles keep telling me I need to take another look at my UVs.

In other words, I'm glad the deadline is in November so I can finish this with care and maybe build some companion houses. Thankfully I've got several pictures from my stay in Quedlinburg, Germany to help keep me inspired. Here's to finishing this by early next week so I can build another.

-Anne

Level 1 Camera Projection: Box

Here you have it, my second ever attempt at camera projection with a Pit box. I learned so much from this process about the necessity of a tripod, alpha channels, and Maya camera corruption. Especially Maya camera corruption. It's nothing special, but I was just happy to get something with parallax.

My planned Level 2 is a camera projection of a Pit box, a Jenga box, and CG Jenga blocks. I might even try some rebranding on the projections just to show that I can.


I'm also working on a little Luxo-esque lamp rig, just to see if I can figure it out. It sounds easy, but I still haven't figured out how I'm going to make the "springs" work. I was thinking of having the geo constrained to one end, and then constraining a squash deformer to the other side, but further testing is required to make it work.

Cheers!

Haunted Hallwa: Revisited

"Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere." -Carl Sagan

I had another hour or so to work on the lighting for my haunted hallway revisit. I think I'm finally starting to like it.

Of course, I need to take it into VFS and view it on a color corrected monitor, but I think I found a color palette that's starting to match what I had in mind. The obvious, cheesy text also wasn't doing it for me anymore, so it's been replaced with something a bit more subtle.

In lieu of recent lack of modelling jobs, I'm also going to be learning a bit more about camera projection and set extension. I've also got a little integration project in mind if I have time, though my work schedule looks pretty intense. Let's hope it all comes together and I finally finish something I'm happy with.

For a little while at least.

-Anne

Being Beaten by the UDK

 "A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution in available." -Windows 7

I'm mostly posting because I need these images hosted to get help on the UDK forums, but I suppose posting here at least tells people I'm still alive and working, right? I'm having some frustrating problems translating between Maya and the UDK, even on this model which I designed specifically to work there. -sigh- Something in my normal maps is causing some ugly seaming in my UDK skull, which "seams" (haha!) to have no effect on Viewport 2.0 or Maya renders.

 Viewport 2.0

 UDK Material and Mesh Preview (in red)

I suppose I may as well also post some progress I've made with my lighting, which I was able to work on for about 2 hours last week. It's not much but I realized there were quite a few ugly corners that didn't blend well, and I decided to go in a more orange/red direction. It's still very much a work in progress, as I deleted a bunch of the fill lights that weren't working.

 Lighting WIP, Minus Proper Fill

I'm not sure I like the change in colour, really. I was sorta looking at posters from Nightmare on Elm Street for horror lighting reference, but I think that palate only worked because of the contrast with the warm, safe lighting and the harsh dark shadows cast by the clawed hand. Still, that bounce needed fixing...

-Anne

UPDATE: Problem solved thanks to a reply on the UDK forums! Apparently I missed a compression setting during the normal map importing phase, and now it's working just fine. More to come soon!

Still Here

"A race is not well-run unless you've crossed the finish line knowing that you couldn't have kept going for one more step. If you could have, then you didn't give it everything you had." -Jackie Dugall

Just a quick post to say "Hey, I'm still alive out here!" I've been up to my ears in work at VFS, and on my time off I have been scrambling to prepare for my first marathon ever: Warrior Dash. Hopefully once that is over, and once we get past the end of the term at school I'll have more time to devote to getting props working in the UDK. I'm still trying to figure out how to get my UV sets working, but I think I'll figure it out soon.

In addition to the UDK stuff, I'm also going back to old lighting assignments and trying to take another stab at it. This is just a WIP, and something about it still bothers me. Too.... reserved.... and the window is throwing it off I think, since the actual window lighting the text is behind the pillar. Still no FG or GI, as I'd much rather get it looking nice first, but I've been meaning to play with both.

I did have time to do this little pen sketch of a Mr. Anthony Hopkins. Ironically, it was drawn during one of the design classes while everyone was going over how to design cartoony characters. I was happy that this turned out better than my last few attempts to capture his face, which means I must be learning something despite how seldom I draw now-a-days.

Cheers,

-Anne

Last Day at VFS

"Quantity has a quality all its own." - Joseph Stalin

The demo reel is done! Check it out at http://www.amslama.com/ !

Today ends the most important year of my career so far, and begins the chapter in life know as "job hunting." The quote for today is to remind me that while quantity is not equal to quality, quantity has some big advantages when trying to land a job. There is no more room for insecurities, only room for improvement.

On that note, I spent the last few days tweaking and rendering a lighting project from Term 3. Even now I'm seeing more things I'd like to fix, but here's what I have at the moment.

In case you're curious, below is what it looked like before. It's alright, but it looks like someone just left in a hurry rather than the abandoned house I wanted.



In the next week I'll be doing a lot of job hunting work, as well as some world building in Never Winter Nights and perhaps some modeling for a .hak as well. I've also got a few personal modeling projects for the UDK lined up, so let's hope I get some serious progress now that I'm out of school.

Cheers!

-Anne