So, it occurs to me that this has been a great year for those who like sneakin' in their video-games. Maybe it's at least partially because these last couple months have been particularly laden with stealth-type games that I feel that way, with Mark of the Ninja, ACIII, Far Cry 3, Dishonored, and Hitman: Absolution being dumped on us somewhat end-to-end over the past while. But consider for a m...
Once again, an update on my TF2 map. Last time you heard from me, I was finishing up the conceptualization of my map. I felt I had a pretty strong idea of where I wanted to take it, both visually and gameplay-wise. So this past while, I've been taking everything I've done thus far and remaking it in Hammer, Source engine's editor. That certainly sounds like a stupid task, to redo literally ever...
Hi everybody! ( Hi doctor Nick! ) Just an update on my TF2 map . So, I set out from the place you last saw me with a somewhat drastic goal: what if the waterfall... Went the other way ?!!! I know, crazy right? Well, after thinking about it, I determined that the map would be much better off if, instead of a shear drop right at the horizon, your eyes would behold a vast and beauty-ous waterfall....
Hi there! This is a blog about all things polygonal. As in, those things you've been shooting, stabbing, and generally murdering since 1997. It's been nearly two months now since my last blog. My utter failure to execute on my past two projects (and the outcome of one that I deemed not worth showing) brought my motivation down a few pegs. I've been feeling the itch to get back into working for...
I did this model. Nothing to write home about. The inspiration should be pretty clear. It was meant as a speed modelling challenge to ease me back in to working again, Though it quickly became less than speedy. Pretty well 95% of what you see was made within a couple of hours, but I always end up spending several hours on top of that trying to find ways to make it better. Any improvement I gain...
This Week, I continued on with my Zero model (From 999 ). I was unexpectedly busy, so I didn't get it finished, or even get it to a presentable state for that matter. Keep in mind that I usually try and get to a good point for show-and-tell when I do these. This time I didn't have that luxury. Illustration by Kinu Nishimura (I think). It quickly became clear that I wouldn't be able to reproduce...
This Week, I was pretty set on not doing a blog. I came to the conclusion that to really give my work that extra oomph , I think I need to bump up my research. I figure I was pretty successful with the guitar project because I'm well acquainted with the subject and I took extensive measurements. All my previous work reeks of amateur because I didn't put the time in to understand the objects and...
This Week, I'm still on easy street, waiting for renders to finish up. I managed to increase my processing power by more than two-fold by setting up a network between my computer and another in the household, which is pretty sweet. I now have 8 cores (4 of those hyper-threaded) at my disposal, as opposed to my former 4. I leveraged this power to double the render quality, taking about the same...
This week was a bit of a break for me. I'm in the rendering stage of my guitar project which mainly consists of tweaking for 15 minutes and then waiting an hour or two for it to render out, ad nauseam. It's times like these when I wish I had a little more power under the hood, It's only been a few months since I upgraded to a quad-core but it's already starting to lose it's novelty. Just notice...
This Week, 12mins for 1440x2560, 2.5mil polygons. ( High-res ) I finished up my guitar modeling in record time! Took me 3 days of constant work, but I managed to overtake my deadline beyond my expectations. I resolved to take a well deserved couple days off, and as a result I was rather bored for the remainder of the week! Looking at it again, there are many things I could have busied myself wi...
For reference. This week (Well, just today actually), I began to model my guitar, a Godin 5th Avenue Kingpin. I've whipped up a modest preview for you folks: I'm done the body and the neck of the guitar, which are by and large the hardest parts because of the extremely subtle curves and nuances. Looking at it again, the body looks a little off somehow, but I can't put my finger on it... I've al...
None of my usual work this week, sorry. However, I did take a hack at recording some music: You Do Something to me - Chet Atkins by Akrid I took a shot at "You Do Something to Me" By Chet Atkins off the album "Almost Alone". Fun fact, Chet named the album as such because almost the entire album was recorded solo by himself, and, I suspect it all took place in a log cabin deep in the woods. It i...
This Week In order to make last weeks subject a little more "Complete", I unleashed my inner graphic designer and made two ads. I ended up trying to make each representative of a specific marketing cliché. Rotated in order to not add another page of length to this blog. This one is supposed to be pretentious. It's an ad for Suntory's Yamazaki single malt whiskey. This one is the excessive excit...
This Week I went back and refined some older work that I had left for dead. I created this image of a Japanese convenient store probably a few months ago. The objective was basically to layer on and get familiar with as many effects as possible. Stupidly no reference used, as always. I tried creating an interior for the store, but I figured that's kind of a whole other can of worms that I'm not...
Not sure where that reflection on the ground is coming from, but I kind of like it! I rendered out my storefront with good settings, which took a whopping 36 hours total! This may or may not have been due to a bug that I discovered after I rendered it that causes reflections to render incorrectly (You can see this if you zoom in). I found a simple fix, though it seems I have to implement it eve...
I was pondering not showing what I've been doing this weekend, as it's truly hideous and not even close to a presentable state. In 3D, there are many artists who choose to obfuscate their abilities by only showing their best work. It's crazy how much polish I (and others) feel we need to put into WIP images, But I've come to the conclusion that If I'm to do a weekly blog I don't have that luxur...
This is poor work for many reasons. I took a bit of a break this week, or at least I didn't pursue with my usual vigor. I cycled through 3 projects, gathering a ton of reference, only to realize that the subjects were far beyond my comprehension, which was a depressing realization. I put a decent amount of time into modelling a Luger P08, but my method was convoluted from the start. I was using...
I can't think of an interesting factoid to discuss with regards to this one. There's not much to say about it other than working on this quick project nearly drove me insane, for numerous reasons. Front and center would be a bug I encountered, concerning the scale of the scene causing the geometry memory use to skyrocket. The other reason is all the tinkering with settings and fiddly bits when...
There Probably Won't be a Title. Ended up re-sculpting the face Continuing on with my character , I decided to mess around with what I have decided to call concept comping, as I can't remember if there's a real name. This is probably not something I would have done had I not started this blog, but it's a pretty interesting subject. Concept compositing is a fairly rare technique that can quickly...
Today on [Title Forthcoming] I resculpted my retopologized mesh at a leisurely pace throughout the week, resulting in this: The face needs another go... 2 hrs of work down the drain... I thought talking about the displacement maps in this image may be a good topic. But I'm finding it spans a few too many areas that I have yet to mention to be an effective thing to cover. I've decided that I wan...
'Sup! I spent most of my weekend trying my hand at a character's head in 3D. I think it turned out pretty well, so I thought "Why not share what I've learned with the internet?" and here I am. Full disclosure: I'm a hobbyist, been playing around in 3D for two years or so. This is my second and first time working with zBrush and topology respectively. I'm not a great artist, but I think I know m...