Light Studies

The topic of the day (keeping perspective in mind), was Light. It was about how light bounces off different shapes etc. Provided with the reference image I've added to the bottom of this post, we had to draw the monster, concentrating on the shading we did, whilst picking out the light.

Pumpkin Man!

The shin bone's connected to the, Knee bone. The Knee bone's connected to the, Thigh Bone. The Thigh bone's connected to the... well, I don't know! It's so confusing!

Adding bones and rigs was the topic of today's lesson. Starting to dive a little more into the animation side of things now it's starting to get a lot more confusing!

We started off with some tenticle work, I went off on a little tangent as I saw my tenticles looking like horns:

But then we were set the task of riging a 2d image of a pumpkin and then animate him a little. Here's my result!

The Starship Enterprise

Ok, maybe a slightly more basic version.

This is a project we were set in our Visual Design (3D) lesson. It was our first model for us to produce using blueprints.

I focused on keeping it low poly, and did some simple textures for it as well.

Here's a nice interactive spin around:

(NB: This will not work in Internet Explorer)



Here's a video for those on mobile devices or if the Sketchfab application doesn't work:

Coconut Game

Today in Games Encounters we created a simple coconut throwing game that grant's you your last battery (if you remember from my last stage in the game).

I'll let the video do the talking, one extra thing I'll add however, is watch how the coconuts fade before being destroyed!

To download the game CLICK HERE

To download the scripts CLICK HERE

Church

Today was a little bit of a self-directed lesson. We had a task set to model this low poly church, and texture it using the maps provided.

It was a good thing to do as it helped make us think how to create certain parts of geometry. Also it taught us about symmetrical textures only needing to be half the full image. When uvw mapping you can flip the texture. Being able to do this saves memory and decreases render time.

Generator (Almost there)

So today I worked on this generator. The hardest part was the texturing. This is one of the first models I've built where I've edited a lot of the textures in Photoshop, working them until I thought the looked acceptable.

I could have spent weeks getting the textures right but you just have to take a step back sometimes.

Here's a little video I made of the generator exported into Unity.

I still need to add a few more things to it. I want to add power lines coming out of the generator and into a power box attached to the bunker. As I'll also be changing the batteries for Fuel tanks, and you'll need to get the generator working to open the doors instead. ;)

Silhouettes

Today's lesson was about learning the technique of drawing Silhouettes.

Not much to be said about this other than we were inspired by Feng Zhu, and that I found it very disappointing when I didn't produce work similar to his!

Charging Up

Tonight I have produced a short video showing you around my current Game Scene we're creating in Unity in our Friday 'Game Encounter' lessons.

This lesson was more about scripting, and we created a simple battery that we could pick up. After 4 batteries the door would then unlock for us to open.

After we created our own 'house', in my case a Bunker. This was to practice exporting and importing from 3DS Max, and applying our scripts to those models.

Any way, I'll let the video do the talking (no seriously, I did a commentary). If you want to download what I've done so far, head over to this link, unzip the folder after downloading it, and run the unity file: 

Click Here to download my game so far

Flying Through Space

Ok, so it's not Felix, but this asteroid was built in today's lesson.

The purpose of it was to practice a new modifier called "Noise". Essentially it just randomly displaces the polygons which is great at creating random structure for landscapes and rocks.

In this render I put in a camera and attached the point it follows to the asteroid. Creating quite a movie like scene.

I also put a subtle 3 point lighting system, and changed  their intensities and colour to help represent the solar system lights coming at it.

Some Drawing

So this is a quick post of a few drawings.

Firstly this one. I'm not particularly happy with this one. It was done in our life drawing class, and you probably can't make it out but it's a close up for skeleton ribs. It needed a lot more tone and depth, and took way too long. The only good thing was I counted the ribs correctly.

 This was a small homework task to draw a gun using perspective. I really struggled with this too. I really didn't understand the text for drawing circles in perspective, and I have no idea what to do for angled parts (like the handle). So I shall be asking Steve for some advice tomorrow.

Finally we have a small study on bugs. These were quick sketches on a selection of bugs. I wanted to explore a few shapes for insects; the bodies, legs, and wings. I found a few common trends in the legs and feet, the bodies also. I'm glad I done these and now I'm thinking about picking one bug, and drawing it in several views to then try and model!

I left it there for the night as I was starting to get annoyed with my drawing - it's definitely not my strong point.

Thankfully it's 3D tomorrow. ;)

Turntable render

This is the same model as shown in the last post. However this time it is rendered in a 'Turntable' style.

This helps show the viewer you model un-textured, the wireframe, and textured, all in just a few full 360 rotations.

Take a Break

Just to practice the Multi/Sub-Object maps:

Chick Peas (Multi/Sub-Object Maps)

Using Multi/Sub-Object Maps was today's lesson. We learnt how to apply UVW Map Modifying to our objects/planes, and apply the correct mapping setting to project our texture correctly.

So here it is:

 

30min(ish) Mixed Media Sketch

Just a quick mixed media sketch to get me back into drawing. Shall hopefully be doing 2 drawings/sketches/paintings a week.

Abraham Lincoln

Mediums used:

• Watercolour
• Pencil (2B & 3B)
• Fine Liner (0.4mm)
• Chalk

Lesson 2, Game Encounters

I am LOVING this lesson right now. I'm really getting into creating scenes, the atmosphere, and the interaction between the player and the world.

Today we were introduced to scripting. I'll keep this blog short, but watch the video as I have created a commentary for it!

These are the scripts I created today:

doorCollide.js

cutScene.js

lightingFire.js

Spinning Matchbox.js

Looking forward to the next lesson!

Palm Tree

We were set a small brief to create a textured palm tree using some of the techniques we learnt in yesterday lessons.

The key things we were re-capping with this brief, was applying textures and using an opacity texture to see though the leaves.

The texture's I used weren't amazing, but for a quick palm tree model I don't think it's too bad!

Shiney sweets!

So Steve Brown (My lecturer) suggested making the icing and sweets shiney!

Looks much better :)

This is what my material editor looks like now:

Gingerbread Man

On our second lesson in Visual Design (3D), we worked on a gingerbread man image. We learnt how to extract from a line after drawing around it.

Today, on our third lesson, we went back to using Stardard Primitives converted to Editable Poly's. We then push and pulled verts, edges and polys - as well as extruding and beveling them to create a rough outline. With this then created we applied several modifiers (Such as Turbo Smooth) to fine tune the shape we wanted.

This gave us a much better model to work with, containing much better edge rings/loops, and clearer topography.

I applied a basic texture to mine, as well as a very simple bump map that you probably can't see very well from my render:

 

 Here are my final outputs: