5th Week Review

I had a little moan to Jared...and now I feel bad about it.  I know its self directed learning and all but I just thought we would be learning more modeling techniques and bits and bobs within MAYA itself considering we only scratched the surface last year with everyone having to use a downloaded rig from the internet as we didn't even have time to build our own... I apoligize though for what I said to Jared and it definately came out wrong - it was not what I meant.  I shall not repeat it now.  I am happy with the way that I've been directing my study time at University and at home however there's so many questions I still have unanswered that Google and YouTube cannot answer - for this I realise that there are books now... expensive books but still that doesnt matter... can you put a price on a decent education? (3grand a year isnt much considering we will have the rest of our lives to earn it back) Answer no in case you didn't realise... I get that now.  So this week I've kind of been a bit lazy on Maya and taken a bit of time off for myself and done a bit of my Case Study considering Nick Rodgers has been VERY VERY helpful to me!!! I've got a lot of respect for that guy now for helping out a student and I hope to do the same for a student WHEN I get somewhere within the Games Industry! Not if...WHEN... very determined one I am.  I will practice and practice until I make something of myself.

The project itself 201 Digital Environment is going great.  I'm loving the look of the lights that Simon, Alec and myself have been playing around with.  We finally got a character we can use (Toms) and therefore once again... it's all coming together.  I noticed that a lot of people in other groups are using animals in their work, Spiders, Cockroaches or bugs or just not realistic looking characters... thats not the feel or vibe we had from our Tudor style houses and therefore I think we are going for a bit more mundane style looking fella for our main character to interact with the surroundings... Still every group is beginning to worry about time as its probably about the time everyone goes OHHhhhh GOD look how long we have left...and we havn't started...so and so.....I think thats going to kick in officially either next week or the week after!

Its all good fun and I can't wait to join them....now....give it two weeks and I'll be saying WHY DIDN'T I DO MORE INSTEAD OF WRITING THIS BLOG RIGHT NOW! lol

That's a good point....I'll go do something in a minute.

Good evening.

(ps sorry if I went off on one a bit there)

UnderCover...

Updated 16 Nov:  A Sketch I found whilst looking back through the sketchbooks I've done in the past for this project - it appears what was below is very close to what I was aiming for :P 

The rest of this Post was when it was originally dated.

Hmmm so you can't see it I hear you say - maybe you need glasses?!  Naah I'm just kidding its very dark as we haven't finalised the lighting just yet.... we're getting there... all in good time mind you!!!

This is the start of the market stall... I will have to edit it later on mind you and remember everything else I put in as I cannot open Maya with nCloth at home at the moment.  Therefore I will continue to model around the cloth and make more models of different objects!!! ... I think I'll put in a few more lights etc.  Few more Stalls ....bits and bobs without the nCloth.

Been Working 2night

As you can probably tell I did a bit of modeling tonight.  A quick shield which can be put on the floor for 'rubbish' which will basically be everything any anything which people have modeled that will fit in...make it look busier but will add to the render time...everything comes at a price though doesn't it :p  I also re-modeled my light shape - it now has a door as well (stepped back a few saves) as I had to attempt to get rid of Expression Expression 4 error which came up when the time line was played.  It must have been when I added everyone elses pieces of work in the group to mine as well and then deleted them to continue with mine... I obviously deleted something inappropriately or incorrectly and caused this error.  From now on I am going to be saving a LOT more often and a variety of different files.  It's always a downer when any software crashes on you...especially if you've done the most marvelous piece of work the world will ever see ... and you havn't saved it... lol  The market stall will be used ... maybe a re-worked one once Simon has had a look around it.  He shouldn't have too many problems with it however I will have to do the Cloth over the top at Uni as my nCloth in Maya is being tempremental... at the moment.  Ahhh the joys of Maya hey?... and yes I still want to get a job in this industry! lol

Anyway..... good night.  Thats all for now.

Character Design

So I started a few designs this week on the character.  Here's what I came up with:

First of all I just played about with different shapes of people to create the possible characters.

I quite like this fellow chap.  Slightly sea-worthy fellow.  Looks like he belongs on out set to a certain extent however he's a bit TOO pirate... I don't think a PIRATE pirate would fit in with the style of houses and lighting too well... but we'll see.

Think this slightly depressed guy is probably too modern.  He looks like he's wearing a jumper his wife has knitted.  Very Mr. Casual.

Probably a bit too modern again.  A yobbish style of character that doesn't really want to do ANYTHING anyone suggests.

I think I quite like this guy.  He's not too interesting but I can imagine he would be once we start animating him.

Lighting Test

And so today the group worked hard on light, fog and different styles of renders. Very interesting playing around with fog. We tried a number of different ways to light them. I think the team really bonded well together when trying out different techniques. Was nice to see. We all managed to get cracking with our work and this idea is really starting to come together. We all know what we need to do now... model.... model a LOT of things eg buildings etc.

Quite like the fog idea on the lights however I'm not to sure about it as we may not need the fog created by me previously. Either way we'll have to just chose which will be most suited to the genre and hope that the rending time isn't added to too much by the amount of lights we have everywhere! lol

Texture Test02

So This time I was trying out my altered image.  I UV snap shot the image... and then imported to photoshop so I knew what I was working with.  This then allowed me to colour in the lines pretty much however to get a realistic texture it'll take a little bit more work.  I didn't bother saving this however I feel the base of it looks ok like this....with darker bits...  But I'll probably keep playing around until I'm happy.