More Ogres and Crossbows

Just a quick update on where the models are, not a huge difference as I have been working on my critical studies and visual forms but slowly battling through the work

Once the Ogre is done I can hand that over to Joe Hornsby to rig and get it into UDK and then him and Matt Watson can animate it.

Then when I have that and the crossbow done I can start looking at weapon set ups in UDK which look fairly complex so I want to get that done earlier on in the assignment to make sure I can do it.

Finally I have been playing with the UDK and the landscape tool which is a great tool used to easily make outdoor environments that seems quite easy to use.

Here's the most recent Ogre turnaround...

And I finished modelling and have just started texturing the crossbows, although the texturing is still in a very early state...

Drawing Time!

Thought I would do a quick mid week post of some of the drawings I've been doing over the last few days.

I've been trying to get a minimum of an hours drawing done a day, which doesn't always work out but I try...

So here are some of my personal favourites I've done recently, shame the rest are not this good...

I also started reading a bit more of my anatomy book and thought I could draw the muscular structure of the body as well to make sure everything I'm reading is sticking in my head...

Ogres and Crossbows

So I haven't updated in a while so here goes...

I knew I wouldn't get a full weeks worth of work done of reading week with everything going on and well...I want to enjoy myself and see family and friends I haven't seen in a while, but I did get some work done

This is the ogre model so far , I did the majority of this work in the first week of major project...

Then over reading week I have modelled the crossbow which only needs a few final tweaks...

And also started the main tent for the Mongolian camp last night...

I'm going to start texturing some of these models when I get back to uni, I'm not doing it now because...well...I cant be bothered at the moment. But the modelling seems to be going smoothly so I'm getting a fair amount done at home...

That being said I'm beginning to see the mountain of work I have to climb before the end of the project...and the top of it is in the clouds somewhere, so I do hope that things continue to go smoothly for the majority of the project.

Once I've modelled and textured the crossbow I might try getting it in to UDK to try to set up the parameters and settings of it to get it working in game and even begin setting up the environment as these are things I haven't done before and will most likely need some help with it along the way so best to start it early and hit all the stumbling blocks now rather than at the end.

End of Advanced Tech

So on Monday I handed in advanced tech, I've had quite a bit going on since then so I haven't had a chance to upload the final products...

So here they are!

Starting with the wireframe turnaround (Polycount = 7029)...

Textured turnaround...

Textured turnaround of the head...

And morph targets...

I would upload the deformation test but it seems I saved it straight to the university dropbox so I dont have a copy for myself...good work there Dean...I'll have to pull a copy down from there sometime.

Any feedback is welcome and very useful as I still have time to change parts of the character before it goes into UDK.

The beginning of production!

Pre-production is finally done! Hurrah! Now its time to start the production...and boy is there a lot of it...

Yesterday the advanced techniques project started and I have started to create the head of my Mongol warrior, this is going reasonably well but quite difficult...maybe because I haven't done any modelling in a while

Tomorrow we will be taught how we should be creating the rest of the models so I will begin modelling that tomorrow...then if things go according to my original plan then I will have the modelling done by friday so I can take it into Zbrush over the weekend and play with it in there to see what I can produce. Although looking at how long this head is taking to make I will be pushing it trying to model it all in a day and a half.

If this doesn't go to plan I might put a day or two aside during major project to produce a better normal map using ZBrush.

I'll be keeping a record of it all again as I did with pre-production over at The Paupe Project.

Lighting and Compositing & Major project

Hey everyone, bit of a late update but hey ho...I've now finished my lighting and compositing project and I'm quite pleased with how its turned out.

To start we had to light a scene with materials such as metal and glass as well as do reflective lighting all with standard lights so there was no use of global illumination ect. We had one day to do this although we could go back and change it, in the end I left it how it was to concentrate on the bigger parts of the assignment.

Then we moved on to the lighting of the untextured hand model that was created at the start of the year, this turned out fairly well and I only used 3 photometric lights in the scene. Here is the finished result.

Then we had to move on the the compositing part of the assignment, this was the part I think I was most successful in but we shall see when I get the grades...I decided to do an exterior night time shot and an interior daylight shot as they would show the widest variety of skill if they worked out well, although I did only add one model to each (or 2 of the same model) to keep it simple so I didn't try to bite of more than I could chew like normally. 

Here is the exterior shot...

And here's my interior shot...

Hope you guys like it and feel free to leave feedback in the comments about any improvements/things you like, its always welcome :)

As a final note I now have to keep a blog or diary of the major project to hand in for marks at the end of the project. The link is here if you interested and I'll try to add a tab at the top of the page. I've created a new blog for this just so people who follow me don't get spammed with updates :)

Textures and Grades

Hi everyone, sorry its been a long time since my last post, didn't have the internet at all over reading week, then I was busy handing in my texturing assignment for uni, then....well I just forgot...

But anyway to start with I got my first marks of the 2nd year and the first marks that count towards my final uni grade... the project was the modelling texturing and skinning of a hand (which is on this blog) luckily I managed to do well with a 2:1 at 68%, so only 2% off a first which is great for my first art project, it was a really confidence booster :)

Now on to more recent stuff, I finished the texturing project on Monday and was pretty pleased with the results, texturing was always the bit I was most concerned with when I switched to art and I've had some decent feedback off peers so it should go well

First off here's the Beer Keg turnaround...

Then the Shipping Container...

Now the deodorant bottle...

And finally the jewellery box...

Overall I'm pleased with what I produced, but there are a few problems such as the smoothing groups on the deodorant bottle and the jewellery box wasn't great in the end, but i did have quite a few problems when transfer mapping and generating ambient occlusion maps towards the end of the project.

I'm also working on a side project at the moment while the the work load isn't too much, I'm quite excited about it personally although it's not really a big thing, ill post an update showing it over the next few days.

So a fairly successful start to the year! Bring on the rest of it!