obese city

Some of the emotes are scary, but I see that more as a technical failure (well, time failure) than an issue. These were fun, especially the drawings.

The process for this included just getting some simple textures in (after doing AO) and drawing over the progress. This really helps me mold what I currently have to what I need. The draw over is pretty ugly, but the result was fun and the conceptualizing of this result did not take a lot of work.

More platforms:

There's a great program out there called CrazyBump that let's you generate, preview, and adjust normal, AO, Displacement, and Specular maps in real time. Even lets you throwin the actual model instead of just a preview sphere/cube/ect. Try that shit out. Holy moles.












Sorry if some these boards are unclear, I had a lot of fun doing them regardless. I learned that maybe I should use a little more reference pictures if I want to be more accurate (this piece I just didn't--I guess I learned this after doing them). Might help out.

Mind drawing. Found that I draw weight better when starting from the ground up. Some super quick ones.

nooo

rm

al

Finally getting the normal map/Mudbox/retopologizing workflow down. Thanks to Kirk, Drew, and this dude: ( http://www.cgsharpe.com/?p=55 )

Alternative WorkFlow For Modeling

1. Start with low poly base mesh, all quads; edge loops and topology does not matter at this point

2. Bring into mudbox, make high poly

3. Bring into TopoGun ( http://www.topogun.com/ ) , make edge loops for animation

4. Bring low poly "traced" model into to Maya, unwrap

5. Bring into xNormal ( http://www.xnormal.net/Faq.aspx ) , bake Normal/AO map from high to low

6. Use AO and normal map for texturing

7. Enjoy

Hopefully I should be able to use this for making enviroment assets for DarkStar. Looks like a plan.

Another lesson in reading the mutha effin helpfile...

Old Stuffs

This picture is somewhat scary (on all levels), but I learned a good process with it. Using smudge tool + the option of having "fingerpainting" on is a really cool thing to use when blending (the picture looks better bigger). So, start with a few moving streaks of fingerpaint to make a line of lighter color. Then, move in with the smudge tool to blend these streak in as a flattened form, or plane. Good for making blended forms. Also, liquefy is the equivalent of the sculpt geometry tools in maya for fixing large areas of the painting. Might be good even just for pencil drawings. Try it out!

cute eats bear

AO pass at character

AO on ship...wish the baked texture would look this good...

Setting up rendering for enviroment...totally fake...thanks Kirk

Ready for trouble

Maya blendshapes!

Blew my mind out last night.

So got my first custom rig off the ground. Learned and implemented some cool stuff at 4 in the morning:

Reverse Foot, with custom attribute control

IK/FK Blending for legs and hands

Roll Bone (not implemented totally, character doesn't have hand)

Back/Neck Spline IK

Pole vectors for elbow and knees

Clavicle control

Blend shapes

ect., ect.

Had a lot of fun working on this. I like all parts of the pipeline, honestly. Basically read step by step (and learned so much) using Learning Autodesk Maya 2008 text, had a lot of good stuff going on with it. Pick it up, its a pretty good resource that lets you really get a good understanding of WHY you do certain things a certain way.

Skinning is next up!

On a side note, Thank you to all vets...it's sad veteran's day seems to be "most celebrated" by those who are opposed to health insurance...maybe we should consider the generosity among humans that exists here in this day, a generosity that goes beyond mortality. Whose financial empire are they trying to save? But let me not get too deep, I am just a young person who doesn't follow politics or watch TV, as they are both just a form of entertainment... but I am someone would probably die if I came down with anything serious, rather than let my love ones financially suffer. Thanks all vets, in many instances you only fought for others.