Week 48 Challenge

dDo

dDo

Rendered in 3ds Max

First time I have tried using the latest dDo and color me impressed.

Hard Surface Challenge Week 48

Rendered in 3ds Max

One more thing to model and I can start the low poly and texturing of this bad boy. This electric guitar will be the first time I try out the new version of dDo!

Sci-fi Goodness

Spent some time on this high poly but this is a small part of the environment that I'm working on.

First Ddo Run

First attempt at trying out Legacy dDo, so far liking the control and ease of use with this program!

Prop Model Grind

Decided to get back into the weekly prop modeling thread on polycount. This time, I will attempt to also texture and import the models I create into UE4 to further help my learning of the engine and to deviate a bit from what I've been doing.

The next environment will be sci-fi as the last project was identical in how it looked when I compared the two together.

Small Break

I will be taking a breather after this update to reflect on what I have done so far. Currently figuring out how to create shrubbery that will be a higher quality than I am used to doing and will need to wait till I get my hands on SpeedTree.

Textured a few more bits and added subtle grime here and there to the scene but will move on to another project. This was always intended to be a quick environment to facilitate learning new techniques like 4 way blend textures.

Level Grinding the Night Study

Replaced temp textures and figured out what was up with the 4 way blend textures. Last big part of the project is adding in all the plant life and finalizing the grime on the piece.

A Night Study That Fits the Name

After spending an uncomfortable amount of time I realized to get it to be night I just had to rotate the light source and turn it off. I still need to adjust the intensity of the pseudo emissive lights and figure out why the 4 way blend material isn't being nice to me but inching closer to some kind of state of finish.

Night Study That Isn't Exactly Night Yet

Adding more props and set up basic textures and shaders all over this business. The new aspect I have never attempted before is creating a 4 way texture blend material on the walls, something new and exciting that should spice up the clean look of this environment so far!

Night Study Progress

Another environment that I've been working on. This will be a long project in getting the texturing to be something that I will be satisfied with but for the most part the models are done save for tiny detail props and deciding what to do with the roofing.

Lucina Debut

The latest animation project: this one dealt with rigging Lucina and the Dalek. Here I experimented with special effects like reflections and SSAO along with modeling a stage and importing into the program. The next item to prefect is adjusting the rigs for Lucina and Leopold along with a new animation at some point.

Crazy Miku Train

I decided to continue learning the Miku animation engine and editor for the foreseeable future. Took another model from the Polycount art giveaway and rigged it; learned a ton on how to create rigs that can use pre-existing motion data, even got the special effects and stage working correctly over the past few days.

Leopold and Miku

I couldn't help myself and ended up learning how to rig, weight, and create facial animations for a character model that I obtained via polycount.

At first the PMX Editor was daunting but I ended up learning a great deal thanks to the Miku model as reference. Without it creating the rig for this guy wouldn't taken far longer to learn via trail and error as tutorials for the program are a few years old.

Miku Does the Parov

Finished the cleanup of this animation project!

Now onto actually working on the environment that I've placed on the backburner.

More Parov Progressions

Fleshed out the rest of the nearly 3 minute animation, now the next tasks are to smooth the animation, animate the hips accordingly, fingers, and for last the face.

Still a ton of work to do but for this month's project it has been going along rather nicely.

Parov Dance WIP

Decided to work on another animation instead of going to the environment as I think a rework of it is necessary to feel the motivation to work on it.

Started working on this dance last week and it is just 30 seconds of the total animation. This is an extra challenge as it is more than double the amount of frames and far faster motions than the previous dance.

Miku Dance Complete

Managed to finish everything for this animation and now moving towards other projects!

Hand Animation Hell

All of today was devoted to animating the hands: mission accomplished, my soul can recuperate for now.

Next on the list is to tweak areas of the animation and onto the face movements before calling her finished!

Cleaning Up Animation

Progress on tightening the animation in several sections. Will continue to do so till it is in an acceptable spot for me to feel content with it.

A New Path

I decided to pursue a long ambition of mine, long stowed away in the back of my mind and low on the laundry list of things to learn and do: animation. While working in tandem with the modern home environment I slowly animated different things using the MikuMikuDance program as it was strictly an animation only engine allowing me to practice my animation skills.

The video below is the latest animation and I continue to polish the frames till it gets to a state of being rock solid. However long it takes I will get 'er done and move on to new animations. Currently working on a new environment as well so the 3D realm is still burning with a creative fire.

Production Quality Lighting

I went and build production lighting over night and what a difference it makes. The last several weeks I had only bothered with preview lighting thinking it would take days to render the highest settings but took less than half a day to finish.

Color me impressed with UE4 so far, onto a new environment yo!

Elusive Finish?!

I think it is high time to post on polycount and see what they have to say about this particular piece.

Fleshing Out the House

Still going at it with this environment, still feel that I need to add more detail props and flush out the exterior section of this home. The to do list keeps on expanding!

Modern Home Progression

Thought I'd screen some caps of various sections of the home in transit to some completish state. The addition of the book atlas worked out better than expected and marked the first time I made one using a grid system.

The next atlas will be for plants and that'll be a challenge, I've barely created foliage but it'll help liven up the place.

Modern Home Texture Sample

Small part of the atlas.

It has been awhile since I posted but every day I've chipped away at the environment and finally am creating an atlas texture for the books that'll house various parts of the place.

Found a cool Cthulian font and some nice borders to create the spinal part of the books, still need to make the covers, backside, and what the open pages would look like. So far I have enjoyed creating this immensely and aim to put this amount of detail throughout.

Blocking Out the House

I've begun to detail out the several sections of the environment with minor props. Last night I had an epiphany on how to adjust the Box and Sphere Reflection Captures that had stumped me for awhile: did not know I could adjust the scale to fit within the parameters that I wanted.

I only baked preview lighting so there are notable shading errors in some of the screenshots. There are also reflections on the glass material that do not accurately portray what I desire so that is another task on the ever expanding list of things to do on this bad boy.

Steady Progress

UE4 Render

I am taking it a bit steady on this project by doing at least 3 tasks each day, if I feel up to it I do more than that to maintain a quality bar of some sort.

Decided to change the color of the walls to a whiter color but keeping the previous colors to the roof. There are more rooms to this house but will save those shots for later.

Recent Absence

The past two weeks I have taken a breather from the hard surface challenge and decided to create an environment of my own to pass the time. This'll be for a long while and slowly chipping away at it and adding details here and there each day. A daily goal is to model at least a couple of assets that I jot down in an ever expanding list of things to do.

The goal is to get this environment to a state that I feel is worthy of the skill set I have attained so far.

UE4 Goodness

UE4 Render

Another asset placed into the tiny scene. I think I'll switch gears and get back to doing the weekly hard surface challenge again.

Yet Again UE4!

UE4 Render

Another asset that I had previously modeled, and then, optimized for the Unreal Engine. Essentially copied and pasted some of the macro variation nodes from one material and inserted the baked maps into a new material to see how it would turn out. Will pump out more of these, and maybe if the environment leans to it, I will flesh out some kind of mini scene and transition out the UE4 assets.

UE4 Work

UE4 Render

I decided to take a slight break from the hard surface challenge to bring some of the assets I've modeled so far into an engine that utilizes the PBR system. I am still getting accustomed to the subtleties of UE4 but will continue to push through it so that I can eventually add some of these assets onto my portfolio.

UE4 Madness

UE4

Got a copy of UE4 and so far loving how the engine handles PBR, materials, well, many things really.

I followed a tutorial for the most part but this will be my test environment for trying out new techniques.

Week 12 Update

Keyshot Render

Clay Render

Wireframe

After some critiques updated the mesh and rendered the puppies one more time.

Week 12 Challenge

Keyshot Render

3ds Max Clay Render

Wireframe

Barely finished this week's concept but going to see if I can try to render the following several challenges differently, maybe even render in engine as practice. Had to render the wireframe multiple times since parts of the mesh would have the push modifier applied to it instead of the wireframe; this went on for far longer than I'd like so decided to say forget it and leave it as it is now.