Some Renders from the Current Term...

So this is some of the not-so-interesting project brief work that we got from Blitz. Weird project specifications all round. Props with no Spec or Bump allowed, Crabs with a 4000 tri limit and an environment project with a texture budget of 2x1024 for diffuse, Norm and Spec. WTF!!!!

When Jolyon Webb had put down his specification crack pipe, long enough to crit the projects he had set he made some really interesting points on the projects just to help polish them up.

For the roof, it was really just a matter of sorting out some of the colours to make it look a little more coherent. I'd really blanded out some of the colours to get them to sit right and to yoink it back from looking too much like toytown. But Jolyon showed me that perhaps keeping it more like the original reference (which was pretty bright!) Would be more interesting, and I agree with him on that point, so I'll be giving the roof top project a quick tweak during the week.

The Crab project he had seen before, but it was the silhouette that needed more attention. If you put a self illuminating colour on your model then it appears in the viewport as a silhouette and it becomes amazingly apparent that it could have had a better distribution of tris on stuff like the crab elbows which were looking decidedly blocky.

Lastly he grabbed a screen shot of the garbage bag and painted it over in CS4 just to show what could be done with the silhouette to add a bit more character to the overall look of the detritus.

Some times it's a battle with teachers and visiting guests to know where the balance lies between representing reality and stylising it slightly for greater effect. On stuff like the garbage I stuck like glue to realism only to find out that it could have been better if I had just gone with my gut and made it a little more saucy with dents and dinks and stuff.

But although Jolyon is a hard man to please, it's encouraging to know that all I have to change on the projects is a few little things here and there which can be tweaked in a day.

FMP Update...

Starting to feel like a factory production line with these now, but I've realised that I can use the models that I produce to create the render base for these images as the beginnings for the actual model.

This little badger is going to be the front gate for the external courtyard in my scene; sitting directly perpendicular and adjoining to the right of the main building as you look at it.

I'm enjoying the composition of materials in the piece but I think I'm going to have to revisit the clock and play around with the design. Also the design for the gate itself is going to change too.

Some inspiration sites...

>I've found a site which has turned out to be an absolute gold mine of fascinating stuff;




DarkRoastedBlend by the way that is a Mongolian Death Worm...



It's very much in the vein of a CoolHunting site but they just dredge up what ever is unusual in the way of technology, architecture, art, sports and much more.


I really recommend it to anybody looking up military or weapon hardware as they have some outstanding articles on stuff like concealed spyguns from history, including a door key that doubles up as a flintlock!!







What da F**k!?!? That door had it coming!

The site also had a wicked travel section including an extensive section on Japan (of course!)

And for those of you who didn't know the Japanese were vending machine bonkers here is a standard lingerie vending machine, which also vends in the un-used variety!!

Here's another assortment of the weird and wonderful. I'd also like to underline just how rubbish Blogger is for uploading pictures, really guys what are you sodding paid for!?

Codemasters Talk...

Today hailed the return of a Codemasters speaker to the course.

Previously they had been a regular fixture on the courses' lecture roster but faded away soon after the present 3rd year started the course. Let's hope we can look forward to more regular appearances.

Guest speakers have been a bit sparse in the last couple of years and the 'recession' excuse is a bit weak now. Lets get some more games companies in!!

The talk today was an eye opener in a way that I expect the speaker was not intending. The lecture started in a bit of a meandering style, launching into some of the influences that had inspired our guest speaker to start drawing and painting and then on to a sample chronology of his work from early employment to current projects.

His work was really a mixed bag of styles, 3D and 2D and surprisingly varied qualities of work too. But what bit me was how much dicking about he had to endure as part of being a game artist.

He had experienced the monotony of making small, non-descript shrubs for racers, mud etc. He had been made redundant when a company was closed by Sega and he had suffered the extreme drought of working as a freelance artist. And all this in spite of him being a considerably talented artist.

It makes you think.

FMP Update...

Here's a front elevation of the Absinthe house. I've based the fascade on Maison Coulliot, a famous art nouveau style house in Paris. I'm not massively sure on whether I'm going to be keeping this colour scheme or even this style but it'll evolve as it goes along.

Doorway...

This is another little concept I was working on over the weekend for the front door.

Again it's a 3D paintover; lovingly mocked up in Max and then painted up in Photoshop with a liberal smattering of texture overlay and other tricky chicanery!!

The model is simply skylit and rendered out. A top tip for anybody wanting to try their hand at some 3D paintover action is to add a different colour material to individual bits and bobs which they might normally have to paint around by hand. For example in this piece I made all the windows white. Then after you have rendered out your lit version, delete the skylight and hit render. What you will find is that the renderer spits out a flat colour render of your scene with absolutely zero value information.

You can now use this flat colour separation plate in Photoshop to colour select fiddly areas with ease, thus saving hours of mask painting!!

I stumbled over another little trick by accident whilst I was trying to vignette the edges of the image: If you apply the dark edging with the gradient tool and then use it as mask on a Hue/Sat adjustment layer in the layer palette what you can do is lower the saturation around the edges of the piece. This, I felt, really made you focus on the centre of the image more.

Subtle but effective.

Lastly, another happy accident. I like to experiment while I work with layer blend modes over the work in progress just because of the unexpected results. Whilst I was overlaying the original render image over the whole I set it to negative or difference and it made all of the shadows illuminate which gave the rim light effect that you can see on the support posts in the image.

I'm happier with this image than the preceding one but these are a learning curve whilst I'm making them.

Next I'm working on various external wall elevations.

Doorway...