TPS: Hand-Painting Textures

Since I'm enrolled in Game Art, I really wanted to learn more about my craft (which is making assets for video games) for the longest time. The first few months of classes were certainly necessary and I liked them, but I felt like they dragged on for too long before getting to the subject I was so interested in learning. Now that I'm in my more game-oriented courses, I'm much happier with my schoolwork and I feel more interested and invested in my education. It feels more like a renewal of energy and motivation than anything else.

My first two weeks of Texture Painting & Sculpting were a blast, since it was my second game-oriented class in my time attending Full Sail. The first two assignments really tested me, as I've only ever tried painting simple textures or editing pre-existing ones in the past few years; nothing quite as serious at these two projects.

 

The goal of my first project was to create textures for a floor, wall, pillar, banner, and trim piece, and use at least four different materials while doing so (wood, stone, metal, and cloth here). I spent around two-three hours on the stone floor, and then wanted to use wood for the walls. Unfortunately, it ended up looking more like a second floor texture, likely due to the large metal nails on each plank (if they were smaller, I don't think it would look quite as awkward). Everything but the stone floor was done in a four-hour lab block. I'm most proud of the banner and trim piece, as they turned out better than expected!

The goal of my second project was to create a texture for a 12-sided cylinder. I came up with a lot of concepts, including a barrel made of rocks and crystals, a barrel containing magma that was constructed of obsidian, and even a barrel composed of pure ice filled with fish! But the concept I liked most, which I went with in the end, was a basket filled with scales shed off of a dragon (they glow!). The texture was created in about 8 hours in Adobe Photoshop, and I think the most difficult part was the scales. The critique I received from my instructor was helpful and understandable. I hope to revisit this texture and adjust what he suggested: stretching the UVs of the cylinder's sides in Maya so that my texture doesn't appear so warped, and giving more character to the basket, breaking up the "perfect" look of the weave.

VEF1: Rigid Bodies Project - Finished!

After a lot of work (and having personal conflicts over texture appearances), my first project for Visual Effects is finally complete. I wanted to go with a deadmau5 theme, using the photo I took at one of his recent shows as the main background and color inspiration for the rest of the scene.

The simulation was accomplished using multiple Passive and Active rigid bodies, different types of constraints such as Nail, Hinge, and Spring constraints (which I had to research further through Maya's documentation to get them to function correctly), and Gravity fields. I baked out the simulation in multiple parts, and then animated a camera to follow the movement of the machine.

After trying (and failing) to render using Maya's default rendering options, I chose to use Mental Ray. I'm glad I did; the end result definitely looked so much better than what I was getting before. I just wish I had remembered to stick a light behind the roulette wheel at the end, to show the winking deadmau5 head I had there. Still, it turned out really nice regardless.

Rendering took longer than expected. I started it a bit later in the day, and within an hour, it had only rendered around 100-300 frames of my 2,000 frame animation! There was no way I could stay up so late to keep an eye on the process, so I made sure my computer wouldn't fall asleep by adjusting some settings and chose to go to bed. Luckily, I woke up and the batch render went off without a hitch. I put all the frames together using Adobe After Effects and then took the compiled video to iMovie to add some nice tunes and simple credits.

All in all, I'm really proud of the end result! I hope my instructor and classmates will as well.

VEF1: Simulations in Maya

Visual Effects 1 is my first class that has really gone in-depth with the simulation/effects capabilities in Maya. Needless to say, as a newbie to the topic, I've had a few... unique... experiences.

The first project's goal was to work with Rigid Bodies, both active and passive, to get a provided Rube Goldberg machine running. As you can likely imagine, there were quite a few snags in the process.

Pretty much everything that I could've done wrong, I did. Forgot to enable gravity on certain objects, wrestled with body properties for hours to try and get things to topple over when hit, froze and crashed Maya due to objects moving so fast that my computer couldn't handle the calculations... You name it, I did it.

I'm pretty sure the only reason I stayed sane throughout all these issues is that they were usually so funny, they kept me laughing for quite some time. Made my friends laugh too! Laughter is the best way to deal with Maya's insanity, I've found.

So this is the start of my blog.

Well, I technically started this blog a few months back, but I never had the time or content to really show. Now that I'm a bit further along in my classes, and in a better mood about my work, I've decided to start posting here! I'm hoping that my schedule allows for me to continue posting updates more often.

This blog will mainly be about my time at Full Sail University (possibly switching to freelance when I'm done, unless I get another blog for that) and the work I've done while attending this school. So far, it's been both stressful and fun, and very educational.

And now that I'm done with that short introduction; onto the posts!