Sunday 24 February 2013

Taxidermy or Taxi-no-worky?

Slow week due to being a moron but here's an update on what I've been doing. Updated the texture on the buffalo, looks better now and less dark which is always a good thing. Need to fix those seems though. Been doing a few tests with the sheep chair, the annoying thing is my Zbrush sculpt is now too stylized, so I'm going to do a detail normal map and maybe try and use that as my base and use my sculpt to overlay slighty to see if that works better.


Been Zbrushing my little deer, I love deer they are just too cute. And again being super emotive with my sculpts this one looks sad. I will make you feel for these poor animals.


This bluryness of mess is an update on the modular parts, new parts have been added as I make the scene in UDK. I find it's easier for me to trial and error things and learn from my mistakes. 


Started work on the inside as well, I think I'm going to work on the taxidermy showroom and outside building and make them polished and if I have time do the factory part. I really want to so I'm going have to beast myself. But I think its good to try and finish off these areas to a good standard and work my way down the level.


And finally contemplating night time because I'm a sucker for cool lighting :D


So yeah it doesn't seem too bad when I put it all in a blog post but I know myself I have been lazy this week, so I'm getting back on the bandwagon of work this week ready for presentation on friday :D

Saturday 16 February 2013

Deer Sir/Madam

Okay so I finished the low poly for the deer, well at least the port to Zbrush one. The high poly for the horns are done now, I'll work on a low poly tomorrow maybe. Didn't get anything else done as I was having too much fun modelling the deer. Totally didn't spend 10 minutes making the other one on the left because I was bored. 




Friday 15 February 2013

Weapons Artist?

 What I'm modelling a high poly gun? But why you say?


To make this bad boy of course, I love Peter Gronquist's work, It's so cool. So obviously high polying stuff takes a while so that's what I have been doing today. Used an actual gun reference because the image I have for the deer isn't enough resolution. So sweet I'll keep ya updated.


One thing though I have to change is this pattern. Okay so I love starting things, love modelling and sculpting and doing new stuff every day. I hate finishing things and so I hop around a lot, so I will have to focus myself or I'll just end up with lots of awesome cool stuff but none of it finished. So I will make it my task to actually finish some of the stuff I have been working on. Also I find it a good balance to switch between animals and buildings that way I can do something fun while doing something more tedious and time consuming. But yeah I just wanted to put that out there, that I understand what I'm doing and I have to change. This FMP could turn out amazing and soo cool, but it could be a disaster all depending on if I can manage all this stuff.

Sweet, hopefully I will have finished this high poly tomorrow and maybe did some more UDK stuff and maybe finish the buffalo head or the sheep chair that are waiting in the background as I fairy around.

Wednesday 13 February 2013

It's all about Modulation Modulation Modulation

So what have I been up to the last few days? Boring stuff...yup sorting through the modulated assets, unwrapping them, applying the correct smoothing groups, making some basic tileable diffuses. It's all essential but boring so it takes longer than other more interesting things.


I've got the low poly and unwrapped sheep done, most of my yesterday was rendering out the normal maps to find out they were crap and having to do them again. Still have to do another one tomorrow because I re-unwrapped it today as the texel density was off.


I also started my lamb crow in Zbrush, it's sooo cute and kindof like a Persian cat. Need to get some fluff on it and it might start looking like a lamb. Obviously i need to sculpt the crow and the feet and such but its a good start.


I did a few test textures for the buffalo, just testing how he'll turn out. I might make him brown though, don't think I like him this black. Not that I'm a buffalo racist or anything :O. Certainly something I'm enjoying is the animal sculpts, I want to be a character & creature artist later in my career when I'm more competent in making them. So it is something I will keep practicing and it's an interesting learning process because we don't do animals on the course.


Also got my boring stuff into UDK and started to build the building, again this is all going to be vertex painted to add variation and rust, dirt, increase normal map detail in areas...all to break up the repetition of the tileables.

Saturday 9 February 2013

Armadillo Lamp & Sheep Wool

Okay so hard to see but did test bake for the buffalo heads, will be easier to see when it's textured...hopefully. I think I need to make the normal makes deeper but yosh...


 Modelled me some weird fox...I know the pose is weird but that's how its standing in a photo I have. Does seems to want to fall backwards so I will change it so it's a little more balanced looking. I also make a armadillo lamp....I love my FMP :D


Tried multiple ways of doing wool in Zbrush, I made a few of my own aplha's but it wasn't great. Tried to sculpt it but it became too blobby. I found a alpha on Pixologics website and it seemed to work better. But I dunno if I like it. Too many hours on trying to make it look cool, but it works alright right now...and now I'm blabbing.


I also tried to sculpt my brick today...might try it again or maybe do it in NDo if I can get it working again. Took me a while to understand the image projection in Zbrush. I kinda understand it but It would seem to work better just for polypainting.


Anywho that is my update for today. Need to actually finish some stuff which would be nice. If I focus on teh boring stuff tomorrow i.e. the modulated building parts, then I can start the UDK file which would be cool. 

Friday 8 February 2013

Buffalo Wings

So I need to get into that habbit I did for rooftop and blog everyday. Great evidence of what I'm working on and how fast or slow I am moving.


Okay so I did more blocking out today, it's all very boring stuff trying to work out stuffs. So getting there and understanding my texture sheets a bit. As you can see I added a floor and other things, I am going to block off the player because I have bucket loads to do as it is.


I also did test scales today to see how the level was coming on, I always find this useful as you can play the level and ammend things. And yeh in doing this I had the building way too big, Also come corridors where too small and walkway was too high. Basic things I can change now because of these tests I do :D


I also got bored of buildings and did the cutest buffalo in the world. I forgot to symmetry him in max but it's all the same for Zbrush. I'll take him into max, retopo and bake my normals from there. I just think it's a better method than Zbrush normal map function.


Also for the lol's I gave him furryness....yep that is all.

I should also state that I was working on my Zbrush for the sheep chair, found out the sheep head was too small, tried to fix it in zbrush without destroying the facial detail I had. Tried and failed at dynameshing and transposing it bigger and so gave up and I'll just make them bigger in max and do the Zbrush again. It's all a learning curve so I don't mind.

I plan to do this weekend is try out some Zbrush tileables to add height variation on the bricks and also do other tileables such as metal, grating, concrete...etc. Also hopefully get the buffalo head finished and make a start on Zbrushing the window brick detailsa

Thursday 7 February 2013

The Journey Ahead

So it begins, well technically it started almost a week ago so I have to detail what I have been doing since then. So I think everyone is pretty familiar with my idea, it's a taxidermy factory and I plan to do a number of areas. So this week has been whiteboxing and trying to get ideas of what the factory should have in it. The first thing I did was get a ton of reference for pipes and factory, Putting them all up would be crazy but i will select a few awesome ones and add them on at the end of this blog.


Right so I've been looking into the processed and obviously there is no taxidermy factories it's all done by hand so i have to devise a way to make it a pipe line. So I have rolers that flatten the pelts, Industrial washing machines to clean them, even like a lava cauldron to "treat" the pelts". So its all going to be based of stuff in real life but just given a new purpose. So as well as this I want an assembly line that is pumping out the stuff that all these other parts are creating and boxing them out. You can kindof see as well antlers, because i want there to be a showroom area full of animals and stuff to make it more interesting and so the level should consist of factory part, outside and showcase area. This gives me more than enough to do within the time period.




I tried some test imports for scale and proportion and I like that type of scale, just one problem...


The building looks like an ugly church with the tileable mesh i tried to test out. So on to a knew idea then...


I found this concept on DeviantART, by Robin Olausson. Really talented guy, check out his work ; 

http://www.robinolausson.com/main.php

He kindly gave me his permission to use his concept for the factory, which is super awesome. This is just so much
better than anything I could have produced.


So with that I started to model the outside of the building thinking abotu modularity of the building and stuff, its not perfect yet but this is just me blocking it out. I will refine this and hopefully give myself a good idea of how I will model the building. Right not it's all about not rushing in without doing the proper planning so that's what I'm trying to do.

I also did some test tileables to see what style of brick and stuff I want. I will be vertex painting in UDK as well so that will break up the repetition, also with the amount of pipes I want as well it should be a nice busy building :D


And then so my eyes don't bleed from all the tileables everyday I model the awesome cool stuff that will appear in my level. I don't want to be one of those people that has an awesome inspiration base but then never uses it. I am going to try and model many cool awesome stuff as I can. So this is the base for the little guy, I'll take him into Zbrush soon get him all pretty and stuffs :D


Finally Thursdays are a slow day with interviews on and stuff the day passes without me even knowing but I'm currently working on the three headed sheep chair. Again I'll take into Zbrush, might be my weekend just doing some fun sculpting and experimenting with how to create wool.

Okay as promised some kick ass factory pictures;