More Photoshop work.

My love for Photoshop continues, not just in it's ability to touch up photos and airbrush people but more the ability to make UV's, Textures aswell as create things. I was challenged to create an app for a phone/Ipad completely out of Photoshop elements no pictures no textures. Just tweaking and working the elements of photo shop to create something.

I chose to construct a sort of TV/Radio application for the Ipad something simple yet appealing so that it was intuitive and easy to understand. No instruction manuals just hit a button and go.

Here is what I came up with it.  The below icons are patterns I created using various techniques

the left icon is mesh and is used on the speakers and the carbon is used various parts of the paneling.

Hand Painted MMK Tank

My love for Westwood Studios will never die. Growing up as a kid I loved the C&C franchise, the game play the cinematic's it was all so well done for it's time. Earlier in the year I showed my model of the prestigious Mark Mammoth Tank.

I decided to hand paint the body of the tank, the turrets, track and wheel bearings are some textures but the green on the tank I painted in photoshop.

I most likely will add this to a game I'm currently building as some prop or something to destroy.

Jim Raynor 2nd Model

The struggles are real! I've been working hard but not hard enough. I've been building and working on 2nd model for class. This time I think i bit of more then I can chew. I chose to do a space marine (Jim Raynor from StarCraft)

I tried to limit my polygon count this time where I felt that with the Alien I had done previously I had way to many polygons that didn't make sense and were unneeded. After talking to my lecturer I've felt that I need to practice more on my organic modelling to really capture the way things are. My hard modelling of surfaces like the Tank and vehicles I feel is easy to understand.

Anyway above you'll find the video of what it turned out. Ideally I would love to get back to it and hand paint it but we'll see. For now more practice on what is organic modelling.

Pirate Pete The Cinematic!!

Pirate Pete The Cinematic.

So here is the green screen shot myself and some of my fellow students had done for our assessment its was our intro cinematic for our Pirate Pete game. Basically the whole plot is Pete gets drunk crashes his boat and washes ashore and has to find his booze a new boat and more importantly his wench.

For a not so compressed and grainy video goto this link here

Actor Review

So we've been working on a green screen shoot for our Pirate Pete game that we have been developing.

It's been a lot of fun and giggles but also a lot of planning was required as well. From rehearsing and re shooting several takes to get the takes to get the overall feel of the cinematic. And portray the light hearted mood of our game aswell.

We Hired Costumes and acquired props but a lot of it was done using 3ds max, which made it that little bit more difficult. But all in all it came together nicely.

Once we've got the final copy I'll upload it here for you to all enjoy and laugh and giggle at.

Mucking around in Photoshop

So I was mucking around in Photoshop just making some webpages just for shits and giggles. The restriction I limited myself to was basically it had to be able to scale to 3 different media formats. So I chose, Ipad, Iphone and PC.

Iphone Resolution.

So Ideally I'd love to work on this in Flash or DreamWeaver, just to animate the symbol make it spin around like a propeller. Make the bubbles pop and add extra little effects.  

Detailed PC Resolution

Home Page PC

Detailed Ipad Resolution

Home Page Ipad

I think alot of it turned out quite well, I'm hoping when I get time I might produce it and clean it up a little bit more especially around the coral on the right hand side.

Mark Mammoth Tank

Mark Mammoth Tank

I've been working on inspired by the old school RTS classic Command & Conquer by Westwood Studios.

It's taken a lot of time and has a lot of poly's. I'm not looking forward to unwrapping it but I think it will be exciting to create my own UVW Map in photoshop. 

Advancement on the Ol' Alien

So I've been working diligently on my Alien and texturing him. Bringing him to life using different paint textures. I've also realised that I still need to work on my UVW unwrapping skills as they're a little rusty and I'm not as confident when unwrapping detailed objects such as a body type.

Huge frustration I've also found out is that Mudbox 2015 isn't backwards compatible with 2014 which is f#@ken bizarre. I'm hoping that with the coming weeks and a little bit more practice my unwrapping will get better.

Here's the progression on the Alien.

 

My First 3D Model!!!

So I've been busy lately in class building a 3D Alien with the help of my lecturer Anthony!
We basically started out building simple body parts from boxes, and then adding polygons to them to give each object form and shape.

From a simple box I'v sculpted a calf, arm and other body parts of my alien.

Block Stage 1

This is one of the early blocking stages of building my Alien, As you can see the start of a simple box and by adding more loops and topology gives it the desired shape of both the torso and arm.

Blocking Stage 2

I then proceeded to the leg, food and hand of my alien. Once again adding more loops to add topology. You might be asking your self "Why is only half the model getting built?" To save time and resources when you build things such as cars, humans etc etc, a lot of objects have symmetry. We add the symmetry once we are happy with the model and that will complete the block part of the model.

Blocking Stage 3

The Face is a little different to the rest of the model. The way in which we start a simple low polygon face is we start with a simple plane object and then we produce more loops and extrude them to start building the face up bit by bit, making sure that our reference image and our model look similar and aren't all distorted.

Blocking Stage 4

This is my model so far as I've started to attach all my objects together by stitching them, as well as making sure all the topology is good and that the shapes line up. Some how I think my polygon's aren't so low.

Mars Hud

So 2nd Semester has been getting hectic, Absolutely loving the course, but the artist in me is keeping me back. The age old trying to get things perfect is some what hindering when it comes to modelling or anything visual. Because of how my course is based, knowing how to do a specific task is one thing but being able to visually show it is another.

Here is one of my pieces of work that I constructed in class, Basically the object of this piece of work is to turn a picture of something into a HUD (Heads Up Display).

So below is the original image and the after is my HUD.

Original Image

My HUD

The idea behind my HUD is that I was trying to be simplistic and very clean, as I was thinking that this was a HUD would be for a helmet for Astronaut on Mars. So I had limited real estate to work with. Cause if I went to busy it wouldn't be very practical. 

Semester 2 (21/7/2004)

So it's begun!
Finally!
Semester 2 is here and I'm excited to get more knowledge under my belt.
I plan to be more active with my blog so stay tuned!

Today I learnt about the "Lathe" Tool in 3DS Max and have started to make chess pieces for my first assessment involving a chessboard with textures. The ability of being able to turn a simple line into a 3d object is a great way to trace an object and turn it into 3D.

Here is how my Chessboard and pieces turned out

I'm quite happy with how the models and texturing turned out but need to work on my choice of background images something probably doesn't conflict with the glass texture.

Pirate Pete Review

“Yarrr matey’s!!! This be full of treasure!”

Pirate Pete brings the fun back into 3D platformers again. It’s been a while since the market has been plundered and raided by the likes of such a game.  This game rewrites everything you know and love about platformers, shoves it down a cannon and shoots it into a pile of treasure! Loot this game

“The deepest circle of hell is reserved for betrayers and mutineers”

“Ho ho ho and a bottle of rum” That’s what you’d need to play this terrible game (Pirate Pete), What the hell did the developers think they were making? Do you self a favour and stay away from this game and give it to the kraken.

List for booth.

Print Media – Brochures , WIP folder, Development

Lights

Signage -  make it loud so people know where to go

LCD Screens/ TV – At least 2 to show people  from various angles

Security

T-shirts

Manpower – People manning the booth

Theft Cover

Business Cards 

Target Audience for Pirate Pete

Who is your audience? Pirate Pete is a 3d platformer that strikes the hearts of its audience and takes them on an epic adventure down memory lane with a cartoon based theme.  If you like Mario 64, Spyro, Crash Bandicoot then Pirate Pete will appeal you.  If you drooled all over Johnny Depp’s costume during The Pirate of Caribbean saga then get a box of sorbent Eucalyptus Tissues as Pirate Pete takes you a wild and wacky adventure.  

Does the Audience Exist? I believe the target audience does exist as platformers have been around since the beginning of time with Sonic and Mario, Pirate Pete takes that old proven model of that style of game and adds puzzles into it with an immersive storyline to draw a broader range of players.

UVW Map and there power

So Half way through the semester we learnt how to make a UVW Map. At first glance I really didn't appreciate the method of a this technique and honestly thought it was more work then it was worth. I mean why not use the multi-sub object tool and just identify which polygons you want textured.

After designing my spaceship for my lecture's class and as I unwrapped my model and saw it's UVW map I was convinced more and more that this method was an utter piece of crap.

How does one Texture So Many Poly's!

As you can see it came out with a shitload of little polygon's and even with the stitching method of putting polygons together, It would take a long time and in an industry where it pays to be efficient, This method was turning out to be anything but efficient.

My un-textured Spacecraft

I persisted with the texturing and used both the multi-object method and a bit of the UVW mapping  technique but refused to map those little polys just simple due to time restraints 

but I was still unconvinced on this method until...

I saw a particular video. Doing a gaming cause obviously I play games and enjoy them. I have pretty much since I was a child due to my father being a programmer. I've always had a PC and pretty much always will. So when I saw a video on a game I played (and sadly still do) on how they textured there model in game using 3DS Max, Photoshop and holy shit UVW maps to texture. I was like "oh damn" I gotta get good at this. 

The video can be found Click here. It's off World of Warcraft's Web series Azeroth Choppers. Now while I couldn't give 2 shits about building a bike. If you scroll to 3.45 you'll see there techniques on how they build there models. After watching this video I became inspired and started to respect the methods power and how it could be used.

I've gone on to since build simple models like barrels, crates, doors, rockets, SAM sites and other assets for  my game in Unity all having being textured with this method.

Hopefully in the future with a little bit more time and skill i'll be able to design something like Blizzard  did.

Week 1

So I've been a bit slack and probably should get around to writing some more about my show reel and my progression through the course.

Week 1 - Temple Scene and Learning 3DS Max. 

The first week within 3DS Max the program was extremely foreign to me but with some tutorials and worksheets provided in class, I slowly progressed, and very slowly started to learn the short cuts and how to manipulate objects to my will! 

I started out building a car for my group project under the "Googie" Theme as well as learning about standard primitives and how to turn them into an edible poly. Using this method I learnt how to create Arrays, Extrusions, Insert, Bevel polygons to transform a shape into something a little more appealing and different.

So starting out with the Car, I started with a simple square and started manipulating it to look more like a "Googie" era car with a space sort of feel. Ultimately my knowledge and ability in 3ds Max was holding me back from unleashing a master piece!
We also built a temple scene in another class, using these same methods and introduced texturing to our polygons to make the scene more realistic and stylized.

 The whole googie theme is about a space age and alot of curves as you can see due to my lack of knowledge I was yet to acquire that style of car

Test

This is just a test to see how it looks.

My Side Project with my mates: Podcast the Uglystick

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