SIMON!! TAKE IT!!

Here they are finally, Maya life lessons. Maya is God, it brings life into this world and it takes it away. You do not make Maya angry, cause when the 3D Gods are angry, they take away your time, your effort, and your motivation. Maya is cruel and unforgiving, no matter what. The difference is, how fast can you make Maya reach its boiling point? The quicker it spills over, the faster you can get back on track. Eventually, you'll learn how to sacrifice to the 3D Gods, but you can only hold their wrath off for a little while.

Jesus, why the hell did I learn such a scary bitch of a program? Anyway, moving on.

Tip 1: The Shelf.



This is your shelf, the long line that I circled in red. Up here, there are shortcuts to various commands that will make your life easier. Adding commonly used commands here will cut down the time you spend navigating through menus. You may not think it cuts down a lot of time, but it certainly cuts down on strain. 3D work is all about endurance, and this is the best way to not get burnt out.

To add commands to the shelf, all you need to do is highlight a command.


Hold CTRL and SHIFT, then left click on the command you want to add to your shelf.


See how it was added to the end of my shelf? Yes folks, it's THAT easy. If you ever find yourself using a command quite often, do yourself a favour and add it to your damn shelf! There are 3 items you should always have on your shelf.

Delete History (unless you're used to pressing Alt+D)
Freeze Transformations
Centre Pivot

These three alone will help you keep a clean scene. You'll see various other commands on my shelf, another one of my favourite things to have on my shelf is the Multilister (Windows > Rendering Editors > Multilister) or the Hypershader and the Outliner (Windows > Outliner). You'll often be opening both windows very often.

Now, if you want to rearrange a command on your shelf (like move delete history somewhere else), just Middle Mouse Button (MMB) and drag the command across the shelf and move it someplace else. Easy. If you want to delete an item on your shelf, MMB and drag the item over to the trash can (red circle).


So easy, useful and awesome I might just vomit. There, now you know about the shelf. You can also edit your shelf in different ways by left clicking on the little arrow (blue circle). Just go to edit shelf. Alternatively, you can make your own shelf, full of useless crap you think you might need.

Tip 2: USE THE GODDAMN OUTLINER!


I can't stress this enough, the outliner is important for clean, organised and speedy modeling. Especially when doing environments. Do you know where Polycube105 is? No? Well neither do I! In your outliner (you can do it in other places as well, which helps when naming bones), you can name your polygon objects, bones, IKs, clusters, etc so you know what it is you're selecting, you can easily find objects in your scene and most importantly, if you hide something, you know where the object is when you unhide it. It also shows you transforms, deforms and all that crap (protip, those'r usually bad, clean them up).


To access your outliner, go to Windows > Outliner (if you have ADD and skipped over the first tip, go read that and add the outliner to your shelf, like, now).


To rename an object, double click one of the objects in the outliner (for instance, arms) and type. You may think you have to add a dash or underscore when typing, but you can actually just use the spacebar when typing, and the underscores get automatically added! Instead of typing LOOK_AT_ ME, you could just type LOOK AT ME, and when you press enter underscores will have been added.


There, now you know how to rename an object in the outliner (red). You can also rename objects by double clicking the name of the object where the blue circle is. This actually works better when renaming bones, since you can use the Up and Down arrows on your keyboard to move up and down the chain (hierarchy).

Apart from left clicking on objects to select them, you can MMB and drag objects around to change the order of the objects. When you drag, you need to place the object between two others (there'll be a single line), otherwise you might accidentally end up parenting that object to another. If you do parent objects together (or have parented objects in your scene), there'll be a + sign next to your object, click that to open up the hierarchy.


You can then MMB drag the object away and unparent it; you'll be able to reposition the object in the outliner as you please.

You can also hold CTRL and select multiple objects when left clicking, or hold SHIFT and select a long column of objects. It works pretty much like windows explorer, you can figure that much out pretty easily. It's good if you want to select multiple objects to hide or unhide, or perhaps combine, whatever. You can use your imagination to decide what you use it for.

Do note, that I've also showed you how to parent objects via the outliner, which can give more predictable results than randomly selecting 2 objects and hitting P on the keyboard. The parent will always be on top (shown first) and the child(ren) will be beneath the parent. Sounds like some kinda sick joke.

Remember to name your objects often, if you combine or extract your models, you'll need to rename them, you'll also have to clean up your models afterwards. Let's see what happens if we combine two objects together.


See what happens? Those white boxes are usually never any good. This is the first sign your scene is becoming messy and you need to clean it up. I combined the arms object and the joints object together, the end result is the Polysurface1. I need to rename that now. I also need to delete the history.


Now you can see my scene is clean, and I've combined both of the objects together. In short, the outliner is very very useful, you should use it more. It's good for more than I just mentioned, and it's pretty much a necessity when building your own rig. I don't even want to think about rigging without the outliner.

Now, quickly, how to hide and show objects. Simple really, highlight an object and press CTRL+H. It will disappear. This is handy for all sorts of reasons, I won't go into why. But now, you want your object back, but where the hell is it?


Easy, open the outliner. Notice how the hidden objects now have blue names. Highlight them in the outliner and press SHIFT+H. Your objects will now magically reappear! Congratulations, you are wizard.

That's all for now, I'll add a few more things tomorrow. Like um, the inputs channel, layers, and uhh, selection modes.

Tiny Robot

Now it's time for something that isn't a hate induced rant of rage. Josh wanted us to do a simple 3D model of a tin toy, using only a few tools and a simple diffuse texture. Of course, this feels like going backwards for me, since I've already done this. I've read the book, seen the movie (hated it) and collected all the action figures. I can safely say that I'm over it, but starting out, it's a very useful project to do. Low poly skills are essential for high poly work. Many people don't realize this, eager to jump into Zbrush before they've mastered the basics. Zbrush isn't a miracle program, it doesn't have a "Make look good" button on it like some people seem to think. In fact, Zbrush will ruin your work if you don't know how to use it. Alas, I learned everything the hard way, so I know my words are truth. I know how right I am (forgive the arrogance), but saying these words to people who don't know any better is a waste of time. People need to know that hitting their head on a brick wall hurts, but without a frame of reference or the experience to know that this is the truth. They'll doubt it, question it and inevitably smash their head against the wall only to go, "Yeah, that does hurt."

I once heard a quote, "A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid the mistake altogether."

I thought there was more to it, something about a fool constantly making mistakes and not learning from them. But I urge people listening or reading, even if they don't care (I often don't) to be a wise man.

Anyway, my Robot is called... well, Tiny Robot. It's a small tin robot, patched up and made by a small boy who wanted nothing more than a friend. His wishes came true one day when the robot came to life and started moving. It was only made out of tin at this point, it was worn out and rusted, so the boy wanted to paint over it, but didn't get a chance to finish. I want to show this in the texture, I want it to be half tin and half painted. A 50/50 split between clean textures (somewhat) on a dirty, raw material. ENOUGH TALK! Pictures.


Textures are still unfinished, I've only begun to start detailing. Sooner or later, I'll get to making some Maya life lessons for John.

Alright, so there's this thing... (Cynical Blog Post 3)

That I never realized. The rule of three. Twice is too little and four times is too much. I won't go to far into the details, because Steve already covered it. Suffice to say, I do think that three is the magic number, just don't let your players know it.

Another thing I never realized, is the art and design split. I used to think that art and design could meld together, into some crazy blob of awesomeness. Turns out this wasn't the case, and while I bounce back and forth between art and design, this week I'm in the design camp. Let's talk about art.

Joanna Mowbray - Sculptures

Now, I rolled into this lecture as usual (30 minutes late, not regretting a thing, usually with some snickers). But this day, I had been constantly (and accidentally) putting my alarm on snooze. It was bad luck that my wake up alarm had gone off the exact same time as I entered the lecture. My alarm was set for 8:50, how I managed to not turn it off until 10:30 is beyond me. As I sat down, I noticed sticks in the ground. Yep, just sticks. The first thing I saw was Joanna's... something in space. Sticks in space? I forgot what it was called. But she said it was basically her outlining something; it was around there somewhere, but she never showed us.

Anyway, this woman was an artist. No two ways around it. She worked instinctively and freely flowed from thought to concept. She worked on paper (and with paper) for the ease of manipulation, then later used stronger materials to make her work last and stand up. The metals she used were dependant on what she wanted to do. One of her works was near the sea, so she used copper so that the rust would create unique patterns. Some of them she used stainless steel because it's very strong and clean, so it could reflect light well. Some she used bronze (I think) so that when the light hit it, it would create a nice orange/brown shadow underneath.

Her sketches were fantastic, lovely use of shape, perspective and shade. I wish she had kept her ideas there, because a lot I felt was lost between the page and the product. She prefers to work on her own stuff at all times, but will hand her projects over to people and supervise them if the work because too large or heavy for her to handle. She felt like an artist comes into constraints later on; she misunderstood the question that was asked of her. Since the constraints and limits she referred to were the ones that you place upon yourself, rather than what anyone else places on you. A lot of her work was circular, old designs would come back around, perhaps an accident or simply refinement. However, in my cynical eyes she just ran out of ideas. A lot of the work just looked like her previous work, and while I have no problem with revisiting old ideas and concepts to make them better - I saw no evidence that anything was being changed. Perhaps that is my inexperience as a sculptor talking (Yeah, Zbrush doesn't count, even though it should), but I thought there would be more to change. The shape was the same, the little hole in the middle was the same - oh, she just changed the colour - it's still the same. One thing I give her credit for though, was that her work had some awesome names. Let me list a few for you:

The Spaces Within
Movement in Space
Blades
Encompass
Abyss and Passages (?!)
Beyond and Within
So Far So Near (So Near yet So Far)
Surface Tension

Reading this, you're probably thinking how corny they all are. Well, they are corny, but only as words, when you see the work, they lose all sense of corniness. Abyss and Passages could be summed up as... a funnel. One piece of work she had walnuts and light bulbs (I think, definitely light bulbs) on a wall. She talked about relationships and how we don't think about how certain objects relate to each other. Someone asked what the relationship between them was; when pressed further, she simply said, "The relationship between them is exploring the relationship." I was taken aback, I'm paraphrasing here, but the quote isn't far off. It took all my energy to not burst out laughing as I thought, "So there is no relationship then," and shook my head.

I'm still amazed at this whole art vs design thing. There was a lot of talk about feelings and taking your concept in places you never imagined - which I agree with, they are all important aspects, but this seemed too random. It seldom made any sense, but I applaud her conviction. If there's nothing I like about the concept or the way it turns out, I respect how it was made. Working with metal isn't easy, and the jump from 2D to 3D is a harsh one.

Gotta get 100 words out of this... how do I distill cynicism into academia? Is there anything I can take away from this as a game designer?

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Cynical Obligatory Blog Post 2 - Nevar Forget

The title tells more than it should. This post is basically a way for me to "never forget" what has happened. It's not a reference to some horrible war or event I took place in-- well actually it is. Friday morning lectures are a war. A war against boredom and apathy. There's only so much you can care about lighting, enamelling, leather working (HAH) or fine art (ew). And to say that I care, even a little bit, is completely wrong. Someone said there was a point for us Game Design students. But hell if I can remember it, I probably wasn't even there when they told us what it was. But I can say for certain they were talking out of their asses.

I have a lot (well not a lot, a little bit) of respect for those who can find the joy and the upside to these lectures. There's the whole thing about cultural enlightenment, or some crap like that. Broadening your horizons and that you can't stay cooped up in your little box. I disagree, keep me in that box, I like the box and I like the darkness. If pressed, I could say that I took something away from all of those lectures, that each one shaped and molded me as a person and now I'm better off because of it. Hah, only someone as arrogant as I sound right now would think that their lectures had so much impact it was like watching the death of Christ. The stuff that I can take away from these lectures, are the things you would (or at least I would) think about when you're pressed against the subject. You would think about fashion when designing the character's clothes, you would think about lighting when creating lights and lighting a scene, you would think about enamelling when... making accessories? You would think about leather working... I guess... I wouldn't really, nor would I think about fine art. But still, everything you could take away from these lectures are to do with the person's experience in that subject, which is good for people who study that subject. But it has absolutely nothing to do with me. I don't need to know, nor do I care that the speaker hates working in the industry, I don't care if they went to Australia for 6 months, avoided being killed by everything and came back like the second coming of Christ (Jesus, a lot of Christ). For the most part, I'm looking to take notes, write this essay and move on. Perhaps I'll be entertained along the way, perhaps sooner or later I'll actually take something away from all this (apart from avoiding lectures at all costs) and perhaps I'll look at this blog post and shake my head disapprovingly.

Anyway, first guy.

Craig Atkinson - Fine Art

The fine artist. At least, that's what I call him. Since I was technically at this lecture, I'll write about it. If there's a word to describe this man, it's random. He does things for the sake of doing them and looks at the result with approval or disappointment. He seemed rather...immature in his way of creating things, the sort of attitude that suggests that if he drew a moustache on the Mona Lisa he'd go "yeah, I like that." I know Fine Art has nothing to do with actual drawing ability (something I consider to be stupid), but... it seems like he doesn't even try, or doesn't try so no one can tell him that he did a bad job even though he tried his hardest. This to me, screams weakness, someone who can't take the harsh truth of their work being bad despite them pouring their heart and soul into it. I see nothing of the sort, nothing that suggests he tried and moved on despite failure and was better for it. I hate this style of fine art, where everything has this alleged deeper meaning that you have to strain yourself to find. He felt like he was constricted by the limitations that the industry or gallery put on him, I think he was just constricted by the inability to actually do something worthwhile.

I think the limitations imposed on a person helps to shape them, give direction and focus and really test creativity. It's not always fun, or easy, but it is satisfying. He would imply that working for anyone other than yourself is just a safety net for those who don't want to venture out in the dangers of the world, which I think is complete crap. Working together with people will always help more than harm, even as an artist, you can't get good if you have no one else to look at your work and tell you things that you missed completely. If I have to get positive about this guy, I suppose it's his lateral thinking. Moving from point to point, thought to thought instinctively and keeping everything very open and flowing. Kudos to him for making it in this big bad world.

I suppose later on I'll distill the cynicism into something more academic. But I'd really have nothing to say if I took that out.

Ruth Ball - Enamelling

I thought this was a welcome change from the week before. Ruth had been working for around 20 years, and the nature of her work evolved from common student dribble (pretty dribble, though) to something marketable and usable by the general population. She works very methodically, but still manages to make things in a creative and free manner. Her work (as one would expect it to be) is intricate, with the many layers and techniques of enamel working together to create a piece of jewelry. She goes from hard patterns to soft painterly strokes in her work. The variety of colours and patterns work well together to draw the eye. She is someone who feels that the exploration of technique can influence the work, I suppose that means that experimentation is good every so often and that one shouldn't stick to the same tried and tested formula for their field. She fuses techniques to create new pieces of work, something I often try to do as well, so it was interesting to see how another field of design handles it. She has worked for the industry in galleries and has had commissioned work, but she feels that it is possible to find meaning and creativity within the limits imposed. This turned out to be a common aspect, as so far most people who have worked within limitations feel like that.

She moved from small pieces of jewelry to rather large pieces of art. Large panels, boxes and other wall-fixtures that she used the same process on. She seemed to enjoy doing that, finding the boundary of how big her work could be. She also mentioned that she found the unpredictable nature of enamel work appealing and (from what I gathered) a little frustrating. As there's no way to know what happens when you light your work on fire, sometimes the results are less than desirable, or completely desirable but not what you expected.

Lamp Girl - Lighting Design

I don't have her name... Actually I should find that. Oh, it's Claire Norcross. So, Claire's work was all about lighting, something which sounded incredibly dull to me, but somehow was more interesting than I gave it credit for. One thing I noticed - which is something I agree with and found that Craig disagreed with - is that design is a social activity. People add to a design and take away from it. Is this a difference between "designers" and "artists"? I find myself straddling the line, but it's weird to see how my perception of artists is one of selfishness. They want to do what they want and no one can tell them differently. While designers are all about sharing, bouncing ideas off each other to refine it, or gain more ideas. A generalization of course, so if you're an artist don't think I'm calling you selfish (I am, though).

Anyway, Claire had a lot of weird and quirky ideas, but she saw them through and the end result was pleasing to look at (though not entirely practical). She was influenced by nature and her designs reflected that. I think that nature is aesthetically the best place to go for design, as the shapes, patterns and colours are so pure and untainted that you can often integrate those into your work to find something pleasing. The thing I liked most was the star light, which opened up into a lot of little stars and the light passing through created some nice shadow. It wasn't much of a light, but it was pretty. Claire seemed most interested in origami, the art of Japanese paper folding, in order to make her lights. She worked with a lot of different disciplines and moved around the world, which seemed to influence her work. But mostly, just seemed to be where the next job took her. She was looking at public art, finding it interesting to share your work with the general public in the forms of vandalising building by stringing them up with lights, or having weird floor panels that turn lights on and off. Claire found it hard to work alone, and as I said before, liked having more people around to do research with and find new designs. She viewed this as a distillation of design until she got to the final outcome. She often had to work on time constraints, saying that her work would have been better if she had more time - but she knew she would never have the amount of time that she wanted, so she had to make her work as good as possible within the limits.

Barry Purves (Yes, Purves) - Animation

Now, this guy had passion. I mean, the other lecturers talked about their work, this guy felt it. Everything he said had such passion and fire in it, you believed everything he said and often wanted to hear more (until the dull Q/A section with stupid questions). Animation is something I'm interested in, so it was good to see other techniques and limitations of traditional methods. 3D animation is very free-flowing, you can modify the frames (timing), you always have a consistent look and you can view your animation from many different angles easily. Barry seemed to look down on CG animation, saying that 2D animation and stop-motion animation had more feeling to them. I disagreed with this, and with most of his views on CG, but I saw his point of view. He liked the feeling of doing things in the moment. He described how that in stop-motion, if a character is doing a gesture they can't complete due to limitations (the cloth stretching, restricting movements), you had to improvise and turn that gesture into something else completely. 2D and stop-motion had to be perfect from the get-go, everything you did couldn't be changed or modified later on down the road (save from cutting it out completely). Barry liked the strings and mechanics behind animation, how seeing the operator(s) of a puppet could bring things to life. He told a story of Warhorse, a play about a boy in WW1 who went looking for his horse after his father sold it to the army. There was a part where the boy had to kill a horse dying from mustard gas and stabbed it in the ear. The operators of the puppet horse got out of it, bowed to the horse and slowly sunk into the shadows. I thought that was a really good way to infuse emotion into a piece. Even the operators of this horse showed such care and respect for a puppet and a fictional story character, the audience couldn't help but be moved to tears. He said that theater was made for the audience, how their laughter, cries and coughs influenced the way the actors worked. Something you wouldn't get from cinema. Barry's work - Screenplay - used this element a lot, people dressed in black (that you could clearly see, but obviously weren't supposed to see) using all these stage effects right in front of your eyes.

Barry was the first one to actually say, and give the feeling that he loved working in limitations. One of his works, a Shakespeare retelling only had 1 puppet, but thanks to this he came up with a great concept and piece of work to utilize that puppet, and the final piece of work was perhaps better off for it than if he had 3 or 5 or 10 puppets to use. This work was based on body language, something that every animator needs to know, even artists too. Body language can say more than words (especially if you watch Lie to Me). Barry liked to be spontaneous due to the limitations and was often aware (and made us aware) of the techniques behind his work. Barry gave a few pointers to wanna-be animators. Things like, how timing is important and how you should always show your thought process and be clear with your concepts. How your animations should always read clearly, and how important show and don't tell is (duh).

He showed us a few interesting short movies (along with his own mentioned above). One about a dead puppeteer being moved by alive puppets, one about a boyfriend and girlfriend (Polar Bear and Penguin) having an ordinary conversation about something the boyfriend did wrong (obviously, it's always the boys fault). The last one about knowing your place, and how people do their jobs with their entire bodies and often pay with them.

The one thing I distinctly remember thinking by the end of this lecture was that; animators are messed up. I wouldn't like to meet one of them (or their concepts) in a dark alley. That's for sure.

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Whew, that was long. Note to self: Do this crap sooner rather than later, so you don't have to retell 4 weeks of lectures in a single sitting.

Chilled Out

Well, nothing much to say about the other thing that I've said little about. Only lately I find waking up a little easier, something I'll regret saying because I predict that tomorrow will be hell. Anyway. I think I've finished the Big Chill picture completely, I added some snow and ice effects to really drive home the fact that she's an Ice demon/summon.

I had a whole idea about what the game would be like, but I figured I'd devote another post to that, seeing as I'd rather focus on something else right now. Slightly unrelated, but I made a sprite tutorial for Rhoda last night, I think it reads pretty well, but I wonder how much they'll grasp without videos or me being there. Actually, I think that this probably lasts longer, as I imagine people forget what I've said 3 seconds before I say it. I did say I'd include some sprites here, so I'm making good on that.


Blockout Animation (for Idle)

Lineart Animation

Colours + Shading (early shading, I changed stuff in the final sprite)

Haven't finished this animation yet, but I plan to do so tonight and get started on attack and magic animation block outs tomorrow. These sprites are for a project called Story of a Lost Sky, which is an SRPG based on Touhou (yeah!) I'm making the sprites for it, which seemed like an easy commitment at the time, but spriting can be long, so I haven't found much time to do work. I should be joining in on the design process, but the project lead is a programmer and he thinks all programmy. So it's hard to follow. Some of the decisions I made are there in the game somewhere, but I couldn't tell you what as pretty much all ideas are bounced off other people until it becomes workable.

Oh well, till next time!

PS: Summoner isn't a word. GDI.

PPS: Finished the animation, well, kinda. I'll probably do more work on it later.

6 AM Wake Up Call

Oh god, I didn't realize that there was actually time before 9am. It's horrible, absolutely horrible. You go to bed, it's dark, you wake up, it's dark. You leave the house, it's cold, you look at other people and wonder, "What the hell are you doing up so early?" I see school kids at this hour, I can tell you now, I would never have gotten up at 6am to go to school. But I would for my dream job.

It's interesting and this whole experience so far has given me a new outlook on the games industry. I love art, and I love doing it, but there's something about design that just seems much more satisfying. I would love to say to someone, "This character is mine, I did it." But I would much rather say, "This level is mine, these mechanics are mine, you like the boss fight? I designed that. You hate that level? I didn't do that."

I don't often fancy myself a designer, despite being able to do it rather well. But I always figured it would be easier to get into the industry as an artist then move to design later. So it had never occurred to me (until now) that I should probably just try and get in as a designer and do some art stuff on the side. The other way works well for me as well, but I won't complain either way.

Initially, the concept of doing stuff on a game idea that wasn't yours didn't truly appeal. But I find it's rather fun and challenging to do so. Stretch the bounds of your creativity, only to find out that the camera has kicked you in the balls. I like level design, well, I'll be honest. Of all the things I would want to do in this industry, level design is rather low down. But doing it now makes me think it isn't so bad. This time now has taught me a lot, mostly about the willpower required to even function at 6am, but also about various design practices that I never really thought a lot about before.

The simple question of, "Is this fun?" is not one you would think you would ask yourself many times. Often the answer is simply, "Yes." But why? I reckon if you asked a lot of people in my course why this game is fun, they would be stumped for an answer. If you asked why this level is fun, they would probably have an aneurysm. Yet, this is real, you have to ask yourself that, and most of all you need to apply it. Designing for other people is hard, you need to think about those 3-10 year olds. Would they find this interesting? Would they find this boring? But those questions aren't easily answered within the constraints placed upon us. Often you need to think about other designers, how the level flows, the pacing, the camera (OH GOD THE CAMERA!), accuracy and artistic license. So even if the answer to the previous questions is, "I don't think so." you can't really do anything about it.

Or can you? You can, but the method for doing so isn't one I like to think about. Back to the drawing board. Oh lord, shoot me now. Not to mention we're quite crippled in the awesome programs department. Understandable, we're temps, so why waste money on licenses and awesome stuff for us? I don't blame them for that, you just gotta work around it.

So between waking up at 6am, getting home and only having 2 hours to do anything at all (oh, and falling asleep on the toilet only to be woken up by the toilet alarm), I find myself thinking about all sorts of things. This semester should be interesting, I can only imagine it is the start of good things.

As for now, a picture I'm drawing in my spare time. I may be doing level design, but my passion is still characters. This one is for some competition called the Big Chill. The basic idea is to do something related to that, so I chose an Ice Queen thing. I haven't actually pinned it down, this picture is more for me than anything else. It's also practice because I haven't drawn a real 2D picture in ages and people are waiting for me to do stuff. So let's warm up.

Mission Complete

That's right folks, we're done! Take me out of the oven and poke me, I'm ready. It's been 48 hours since I last closed my eyes and participated in an activity often called sleep. Except I won't be sleeping, what I'll be doing is far beyond sleep, other dimensions and parallel universes, you know the drill. So as I write this with what little strength I have left (said like a true martyr, on both knees and fist raised to the sky), I considered why I was actually doing what I was doing. Often the hardest question is the simplest.

At the core of the question, the easiest answer is that I simply want to get better at character design and modelling, what better way to go about it than actually design and model? Though after a short time, through what I consider natural research or plagarism I found out there's most to every character than meets the eye. I don't have the mental capacity to go deeper than that (I lied, I never had the mental capacity to go deeper than that) but suffice to say I learned a good bit this term. An exercise in seeing how a protagonist and antagonist can exist in the same place while having totally different goals and affecting the outcome of the game ever so much.

Enough talk, I'm finished with Haruka for now... well in terms of deadlines. I might try some more stuff out with her later on. In general, all I wanted to do was show some emtion, maybe tell a story and show a relationship between different characters. We'll see how it goes, though the only part about this semester that bothers me is the contextual stuff. I'm terrible at that.

I had intended to finish this post yesterday (the 11th) but I fell asleep. So much for willpower huh?




A couple of pages from my final hand in. Overall I was pleased with this project, but I'm sure I can do better. I can't wait for next term to try and prove that right. So it's Christmas time finally! Gonna play games, sleep, eat food, clean stuff, make sprites and 3D models of random stuff if I can. Next updates will probably be sprite based...maybe.

Diligence, Diligence!

So, there are 2 weeks left until the ultimate deadline of ultimate destiny is upon us. Oddly enough, I'm feeling rather calm about it, just a couple of days ago I was freaking out like I usually do thinking about what I have to do and when I have to do it by. But I've been underestimating myself since I got things done really quickly.

The test now was to take a mesh I was happy with and turn it into a real time model. A lot can be lost when going from a 10, 000, 000 poly sculpt to 10, 000. Zbrush often gives a false sense of security in how solid your model is - it'll look nice in Zbrush, everything does. Well, except the crap stuff. So when you take it out of Zbrush and put it back in Maya, you're often left in the dark for the longest time, UV'ing and baking until you finally look at the model, often with dissatisfaction. But some clean up, texture work and nice rendering will slowly build confidence back up. But there's still a lot that can go wrong, if your UVs (basically flattening out the model so you can paint on it as a 2D texture) aren't right the bake and textures will look funny. If your baking settings are wrong or the mesh is unclean then you won't get good results. The list goes on and on and I've encountered every problem at least twice. A lot of people said that Haruka was creepy, and I reckon even now they don't know what to think of her, so I did a quite paint-over of my sculpt to preview what she would look like with textures.


And I really liked that, she was looking freaky because... well, how else is someone with a big head and no eyes supposed to look? I really wanted to try and get that pastel look, but that's mostly about materials, shader set ups, lighting and render more than anything I've learned. Yet, after all my trials to get a low poly Haruka the previews of my model weren't looking...great.


Well... it's a start. Haruka is supposed to be innocent looking and all those descriptive words (I'm saving the good stuff for contextuals...), so the face and eyes were the first things I worked on. It didn't take long to complete the textures, it was rather simple which often worries me cause I imagine it should be harder. Yet I suppose that's the trade off with all the headaches the steps before it cause. So after a while I finished her textures and specular map and decided to render them out in Marmoset. And I have to say, they're looking nice! I was pleased about it, so the last thing I do when I render her out for final images will be to separate the mesh into different chunks to better control specularity (this has to be a word). Yet I may be screwed with the other Haruka, since I can't render Alphas in there... time to learn UDK right?

I can't believe it's not...working

Unlike how delicious the brand of butter I simply referenced is, 3D is not so tasty at times. There are rare times when you can eat your favourite food, enjoy the hell out of it but still be kicked in the taste buds by some unexpectedly bad after taste. It happens once every... hundred times or so, but when it does you feel like you've been made a fool by something you so dearly trusted. Today, I had that experienced. Unlike with food, where running to down the closest thing (like apple juice or jam) usually clears the bad after taste, 3D work takes 100x longer and usually requires a lot of thought and problem solving.

True to my word, I said I would be complaining about Maya, Zbrush, and whatever I could get my hands on. No matter how much experience you have, there are somethings you can't predict. I write this mostly as a precautionary warning to myself and anyone else reading it who can utilize this shared knowledge of pain. Which mostly means I'm writing this for myself.

1: Sometimes it's better to work in pieces than it is to work as a whole.
I'm not sure what to think about this. Intersecting pieces vs a whole continuous mesh? I've used both methods already, and I honestly can't say which is better. For ease of mind and matter, I suppose intersecting pieces is better, but maybe for animation a continuous mesh is better? I'll tell you one thing I know for damn sure, it's a hell of a lot easier to retopologize and bake intersecting pieces than a continuous mesh. Easier on my over heating brain and my over heating computer.

2: EDGE PADDING AND ANTI-ALIASING ARE GOOD.
I cannot emphasize that enough. I always thought there was little reason to care about these settings in xNormal, but it turns out I had been taking them for granted. What they do is they make the normals and occlusion so much better when baking. It makes the rendering go past the UV borders and ensures that you can't see any nasty seams. It also cuts down on time spent cleaning up your easy bake mesh afterwards. I never knew, luckily I work methodically (or I'm paranoid...) so I can fix these issues up, but I never would have seen this coming. And to think I did it just to save my computer some effort rendering. Good for nothing...

3: Decimation Master is...sketchy.
Well, I spent most of today fighting with Zbrush crashing on me every 3 seconds. I have no idea why it's doing this, chalk it up to the randomness and sheer frustrating...frustration of 3D programs. Photoshop never did this to me, photoshop has always been kind and gentle. I love photoshop. I can't say why Zbrush isn't working, my usual method of figuring out what's wrong by eliminating what I've done and retracing my steps isn't working because Zbrush has quite a rigid work flow, another reason I want 3.5 R3, though, probably not a great reason.

Well, that's all I have for now, at least Haruka is coming along nicely, the bake turned out well except for minor (or not) grievances that I've outlined above. Update somewhat soon, when I finish the textures.

Haruka Sató - Stylized Cont.

Well, it's been a while since I updated. I guess it's time for progress shots, yay! Anyway, in general the modelling has been going well, since this was a new style I was eager to get started, but the eagerness soon faded as I started sculpting and realized that even something that seems so simple in 2D is just as hard in 3D. Certain parts were easy and just a matter of deciding tension points and general aesthetics, but the face and eyes were haaaard. Though I say that, you must know that it's in relation to the other parts of Haruka, but the face is important for the overall look, since it's so damn big, it has to look right, right?



So here's where I am currently, people say it looks creepy, and I tend to agree with them - but I also think it's kinda cute, which perhaps says more about me than I realize. Maybe I'm too close to it, or maybe I just know too much about it. Since I can say to myself, "Well, before it looked like..." and take some comfort in how messed up it looked before. Or maybe I'm some kind of Alien lover. In general, one of the things I was trying to do was add character to basic form. Some characters just have...character, but usually the best thing to do is keep them neutral if you plan on doing facial rigging and animation. I guess I should stop focusing on that in the future, that might make it easier to add some drastic facial expressions in my sculpting stage which I haven't done yet.


Apart from creepy, people haven't really said much about it, though I'm trying to make it cuter just because that's what the concept art looks like, even though I think I've come as close to the concept art as I can get - especially in regards to the hair, which is my favourite part. The main difference between concept art and 3D model is the belt/skirt area. It's a lot thicker in the 3D model and less flowy, because mainly if it wasn't it would be hard to get those dynamic movements when animating. Also, the belt buckle thing had to go. It just looked wrong, which kinda supports what I was thinking about things in 2D don't always work in 3D. It's mostly a compromise job, since a lot of ideas and concepts just spring out in 3D that wouldn't work in 2D because of complex drawing angles (not that I suppose that stopped anyone who's actually good at drawing).

So far, Steve said the eyes are too far apart, which is an easy fix (in both ways, easy to change and easier to reverse should it look bad). I think that could help a lot (also, eyebrows! Only villains have no eye brows...) though it remains to be seen. Secondly he said the forehead was too harsh, which I can see as well. Perhaps roughing in a hairline will help? My only worry is that it'll change the mood a little, but we'll see huh?


Lastly, random picture I drew in class today. Didn't have much else to do, and I suppose tomorrow's lesson will be shorter in that I really need to be at home to finish Haruka, retopologize her and then bake her. That sounds weird, even to me. I hope I can finish retopology tomorrow, but it can be so boring that I often procrastinate while doing it. Oh well, no time for such luxuries, deadline in 2 weeks or so and I haven't even started my contextual studies part. Not that pushing contextuals to the wire has ever stopped me from completing it before. I'm getting pretty quick at 3D modelling/creation, but it certainly doesn't mean my work load goes down.

Haruka Sató - Stylized Start

So today I start working on the stylized version of Haruka. You can see the similarities but of course a lot has changed. The above drawing is what we call a "model making" drawing. Basically it says all it needs to say (so why say more?) It doesn't take long to draw these things, but it can be annoying trying to line everything up. I used to be really anal about getting stuff to line up perfectly and spend ages doing it, but sooner or later I realized what a waste of time that was since I could easily tweak the shape in Maya or Zbrush. I mean, if I can go from a cube to a person just by sculpting then this shouldn't be hard at all. The main reason I even did these was because stylized proportions are different and figuring it out in 2D is a lot quicker than doing it in 3D.

Damn... Josh and I talked about a lot of things yesterday but I can't remember exactly what it was. I think the main topic was giving the bag equal amounts of character - as well as making the serious Haruka's bag be more menacing and slug-like. I figure by now just a simple lattice deformer will work for the bag, but I also want to try animating the UVs to give Haruka's cuffs a little more of a ghostly feel. Either with transparency or some kind of eerie glow/incandescence. I dunno, I'll figure something out later on.

Anyway, let's see how long it takes to build a bash mesh for Haruka. I'm feeling really good about this, a nice fluttery feeling in my stomach tells me as much. Or it's telling me to go toilet, either way it's good.

Deformer isn't a word. Damn you English, damn you.

Brand New Day

Woo! So today was pretty good, finished the texturing and overcame a few design problems. I'm gonna stop tweaking the textures because I could seriously spend another 2-3 days just doing that. Thing about design is that somethings have to be improvised. No matter how much you plan or how cautious you are there are somethings that you can never see coming. Stuff like how the bag handles are different in the concepts, how the buttons changed and so on. The main thing was that Haruka was supposed to wear bracelets (if only to cover up a horrible seam). But after doing so many variations and trying different ideas nothing worked out. I was potentially screwed because I would have to redo the UVs and join the hand and wrist together.

There's another note, keep the hand attached to the arm throughout the whole process. Unless there's a sleeve or something.

Anyway, after lamenting and wasting some time figuring stuff out, I just decided to go with the shackles that you can see attached to Haruka's bag. They fit perfectly ([gayvoice]great accessories[/gayvoice]) and go quite well with the character. I figure if you see them alone you'll be wondering why Haruka is wearing something so weird - so the mystery is noticable from the get go. She's not a convict cause of her clothes, so it worked out in the end after all. Not to mention how when I rig it I can do it much more organically.

Things are looking up. I also got asked to draw more Balloons for a christmas release of a thing for my thing. That's awesome, though horribly timed - still, I was in no position to turn it down.

Early AM O' Clock Part 2

As I write this it is 6:14 am. I'm quite awake oddly enough despite waking up at 10am this morning and going to Open09. Speaking of which, it was pretty fun. Lots of ideas and talking going on, who doesn't like talking about games? Probably a lot of people, I might be the minority here...

God why am I still up... Do I risk just...staying up and getting an energy drink as soon as the shops open? Nah, to hell with that, I need sleep (it's taking a lot of effort to not swear). Anyway, I figured at this point I would post a thing I did today cause I finished my other thing so I can start the thing I wanted to start tomorrow...

I hope I finish the thing by thursday...that's what? 3 days? Pssh, I can do that. Anyway, while I was doing something I remember that I should write down what I was thinking about while doing it. Soooo uhh, here goes.

Eccentricity - Specular Power - Controls how strong the highlight hot spots are. Low values (black) make smaller, stronger hot spots while high values (white) make larger, weaker hot spots. Make maps with details from diffuse map (lots of different shades and values)

Specular Roll Off - Specular Masking - Controls how strong or spread out the hot spot is. Low values are weak while high are strong. Make with flat/block in values.

Need to find the right balance...need a lot more strong, small hot spots.

Specular Colour - Specular Colour - Controls what colour the highlights will be when light passes through them and returns to...the void? Somewhere... lost my train of thought... Oh right. Using dark, dark colours (usually blue from what I can tell) to make the specular highlight as white as possible. Can get a rough preview by setting the specular layer on Linear Dodge (add).



Currently I need to tweak the colours of the spec map, and change a few values here and there. I also cannot believe my image hasn't uploaded yet, jesus what is it doing? I started when I... started this entry and it still hasn't finished. It's 6:45... really? I must have dozed off. Yay, there it is. Only 6:30... no, that can't be right... anyway...

Rendered with some toolbag thing...downloading Unreal Development Kit to see if I can use that as a rendering engine. Lighting in Maya is annoying. Uhh, probably going to sleep now until... well, tomorrow. I wonder if my parents are reading this - if you are, don't call me for a couple of days. I won't be conscious.

EDIT: Clarity note, I may have had spec roll off and eccentricity mixed up. Spec Roll is where I control the intensity of the highlight and eccentricity is the sharpness of the highlight. A spec map is what I expect it to be basically, a greyscale version of the colour map. Light/White = stronger highlights. Invert the roll off map and get a base for eccentricity map.

Early AM O' Clock

So here I am again (at the time of writing, 3:15 am) posting in the middle of the night after working on...something. Oh yeah, textures. So texturing (boohoo, not a real word either) is going rather well. I used the colour scheme from the last picture I drew and it worked out rather nicely. I was at a loss on how to improve the textures, so I'm glad they turned out pretty well.


Haruka is missing her bracelets because I messed up the UVs for them so the lighting was messed up. I forgot that I should delete the other half of the object if the UV sets were overlapping when baking my normal map. So after that I pretty much started on the bag and was very pleased with the result. It's dirty and very bloody, the lost soul might need some work, but I might just use an incandescent map for the cracks and glow maps for the eyes. I still need to work on the spec maps, but I'll explain that stuff later when it isn't so late.


Tomorrow is Open09, might not go considering it's 3:20 am right now and the thing starts at 10:45 am. Jesus why does crap have to happen so early in the morning? These are game designers and gamers. We don't get up before 12pm unless it's life or death (or a new game just came out).

3:23, spent 3 minutes staring at nothing while I was thinking about nothing. Wow, 3:25...what was I doing? Oh yeah, it came back to me. I was thinking about uhh, the relationship between Haruka and her bag. How two characters joined at the hip interact with each other? Usually that sort of relationship is reserved for friends who work together for a common goal. But Haruka's bag (and souls) are working against her in a constant struggle to get free. So displaying that relationship will be difficult, but so far the easier way is by clarity of texture. Haruka is visually clean and innocent (I guess) while the bag is dirty, bloody and intimidating. As far as rigging goes I think the motions of the bag have to be sluggish and jelly...like, being dragged around by an unsuspecting Haruka. While Haruka will be more energetic and fluid in her motions, like she's running to a place she cannot wait to get to.

I have to rig this soon, not looking forward to doing that. I wish I could just hi-jack an old rig I made (like the one for Lyra!) but ultimately I need to make it again so I can properly incorporate the bag.

Note to self: Generic characters are good for a reason. I'm starting to see why the bald marine is so popular.

Seems so far away...

So apparently the rain makes me a little melancholic. Either that or I'm sick in the head. Sometime while texturing (picking colours while texturing is...not a good idea I'm starting to realize) I got sick of it and thinking about it. So what do you do when you're bored out of your mind of the monotonous, mundane task you're doing? The Internet! How I love the Internet sometimes, but during my procrastination session (which makes it sound important) I came across a series of pretty depressing pictures. Stuff like Calvin and Hobbs when Calvin was on some medicine that killed his imagination so Hobbs disappears. People generally being depressing, suicidal nitwits and imagining a life where they aren't alone.

It sounds incredibly sad (in more than one way) but it was pretty good stuff. I could just imagine Haruka's depression after being alone for so long. Long story short, I was in the mood for drawing. Apart from generally giving me a good idea (and more confidence) about Haruka's colour scheme, it was fun to draw once again. I took a new route in drawing so I'll probably be using this method more for speed drawings. I say speed drawings, but it still took me a couple of hours to do.



So while I was in this...depressing mood so to speak, I found it pretty easy to draw. This is a mix between a mood picture and a concept realisation. A lot of it is based on my 3D model, so that makes it easier to pick accurate colours (note, you can't see the colours I picked, because the picture is mostly blue - you know, cause Haruka is blue). It's good to go back and forth between 2D and 3D. Because too much time in 1D is bad.

Deadlines approaching soon. I didn't want to be like Steve, posting blog entries at 4 am. But hell, I'll be up all night. Panic mode has not disappeared what so ever. Back to the grind! Texture time... or maybe retopo time. No... Textures. New Rule: Keep it simple, stupid.

P.S Why is Texturing not a real word? It seems like half the words I'm using on this damn blog don't exist.

Little Miss Penny's Oven - The Easy Bake

Even as a child I loved to bake stuff. Cookies, cakes, cats, all those C words. So when I grew up I thought, "where has that childhood dream gone to?" I wondered why I haven't baked in such a long time when I used to love it. Making treats for all my friends and bringing them in for the teachers. That's when I realised, it was because that wasn't me. But how weird would it be if I was?

Moving on, the title may seem deceptive - I know I would be peeved if I were reading this and didn't see any sweets or cookies. But it is actually relevant, in a way to 3D modelling. You see, when you have a high poly sculpt and a low poly/real time mesh. You want to get the details from the high poly onto the low poly. We call that baking. You bake the details from the high to the low so that when you apply it to the low you get the feeling that you're looking at the high. Ok, so that sentence doesn't make much sense, so I'll show you.

Remember all those Zbrush meshes I've showed you over the past... however long. Those are my high poly meshes. I can't use those to make a game because the game engine would crash and burn faster than the Hindenburg. So I made a new mesh based on the high poly. After you bake the details you can see the information from the high poly but on a low poly surface.



You can see the wireframe of the low poly mesh as well as the flow (remember I talked about flow a few posts ago). All in all this mesh comes to around 10k tris (triangles), I might poly strip a few edge loops (excuse the jargon, it means I'll remove a few of those blue lines to make the tri count lower) so I don't go over 10k. The normal map took a little bit of cleaning to get right, but that's always the case. Cleaning a normal map isn't as simple as color picking and soft brushing. You have to get into the meat of the channels and work the RGB channels separately until the final outcome is desirable. I guess in the channels it's just as simple as colour picking and soft brushing though.


You can see the before and after of the images. As you could guess, without the clean up the model would be looking very ugly. There were a few artifacts with lighting in Maya, which annoyed me because I noticed a similar thing happening on a previous render.


So after ditching that lighting set up (FU Daylight rig). I found another method of lighting that I quite liked. It also made me feel a lot better about the model and my baking/cleaning skills after seeing it like it. I was getting that feeling in the back of my head like starting over again wouldn't be so bad. That's a terrible thing.


So that's where I'm up to right now. Next up, hair!

Balloons!

Ok, this has nothing to do whatsoever with my projects, but Andrew Thompson (no relation to Jim Thompson...I think) sent me an email with some reviews for Balloons! It's an iPhone app I did the graphics for last year. Overall the reviews have been very positive - my concern was whether they liked the graphics - and they did! Damn it was nervewrecking to read, but I suppose Andrew wouldn't have emailed me if they were crap reviews.

Review 1
Review 2
Review 3
Japanese Review 4 (how's your Japanese?!)



So, that was quite a lot of fun. Didn't feel like it at the time, but what can you do?

Interim Game Idea - Wandering/Wondering

I dunno why I'm doing this, but I considered doing a short game idea to help contextualize my character a little. The game title would be Wandering/Wondering, mostly because the character Haruka spends a lot of her time wandering the land looking for her family and the other character (the demon/whatever hunter) spends a lot of time contemplating his actions and trying to find Haruka. Each character goes to the other side, but don't we all?

Anyway, I considered all sorts of possibilities for the game and character in previous posts and comments. Thanks to a little help from Steve (the MCP of game design) I was able to narrow down the list of ideas to something more concrete.

The main characters would be Haruka and a still unnamed man who's a demon hunter (I'll call him DM). You play through both perspectives of Haruka and DM in order to understand the full story.

Haruka's innate ability is to draw in lost souls, delay, manipulate and absorb them. Of course, she doesn't know this. She becomes more ghostly when in danger, able to run through certain walls or disappear completely and reappear in a random place (her memory hazy). She has little control over these powers and often doesn't know she has used them. Certain people she meets and captures give Haruka other abilities, classic things like more strength or the ability to do things (pick locks, fight, plumb etc). Haruka doesn't realize how she's using these powers, nor does the player until near the end of the game. But the truth is that she's tapping power from the souls shes captured and the more she uses a certain power, the more of the soul's memories she uncovers. The souls are very malicious towards Haruka (wanting to get free) so over using a certain power harms Haruka. Fortunately (or unfortunately) Haruka can gain health by running through crowded areas. Since she passively absorbs souls, she can absorb bits of the souls of the people she's running by, but the consequences (more story/character wise than game play) are that the people are in grave danger. Haruka is safest around a crowd and vulnerable alone, which is a great character contradiction for someone who feels lonely. She wants to be near people, but can't because she'll kill them and she doesn't want to be alone but it's safest for everyone.

Haruka's story takes her from place to place, which is unusual for a ghost. She finds clues that eventually lead her no where. The player uncovers these new clues and gains new insight from using abilities. As she uses her power she realizes the evil surrounding her and where her true power comes from. As she sees her "baggage" she can finally see all the souls she has captured and tormented, as well as all the blood that follows behind her. Depending on the game style, the final boss would be Haruka's "baggage" or DM.

A final thing to note about Haruka's perspective is that she sees threats as story book demons, ghosts and ghouls. In truth these are actually hunters who travel around the world looking for strange oddities. Anything from ghost busters to demon hunters try and kill Haruka, but so far none have succeeded. Haruka's instinct is to defend herself from those trying to hurt her - she doesn't hold back because she doesn't see them as human. If she did, she probably wouldn't exist.

That would be the first perspective, the other perspective would be from DM. From his perspective, DM sees all the destruction Haruka causes and his job is to hunt her down and put a stop to her. The player doesn't really know why Haruka is doing this, or even who Haruka is. He just has to fight the lost and tormented souls (un)lucky enough to not have been captured by Haruka. These souls take on various different forms depending on the person. It might be accurate to say that DM is more of an exorcist than a demon hunter. Though hand in hand?

DM sees many of his fellow comrades die to Haruka, so his view on her is very negative when he finally does meet her. It's up to the player to try and decipher the clues on what Haruka is doing in order to see that she's as much of a victim as the rest of the people. Naturally that's often easier said than done, there are a lot of grim possibilities when DM fights Haruka. He could win (difficult) and destroy Haruka, leaving her baggage to rampage wildly without her. He could lose the fight and become one of the souls that Haruka has in her palm - that way nothing gets resolved. This outcome would happen if the player can't beat Haruka or hasn't tried to see what has happened with her. The final would be to realize that Haruka isn't the enemy and try to focus on her baggage. Through this Haruka would see DM for what he is and finally the baggage would be the true enemy for both of them. That would be the true ending.

The final fight would be similar for both characters (as in DM vs Haruka, Haruka vs DM and both vs baggage), in which the true goal is not defeating your opponent, but understanding them. It would be Haruka realizing her demons and how to fight them, and DM understanding Haruka's dilemma.

The last perspective would happen randomly, you'd see how the souls Haruka has captured came to meet her in the first place and what circumstances led to their death. Haruka is more drawn to people without a purpose, wandering like she is - so you'd see what caused them to become like that. The player wouldn't know exactly what was going on with these perspectives until the end of the game. It would feel like someone met with Haruka and bonded with her, eventually leaving (the ideal would be having their issues resolved - but that's a fake truth).

Lastly, the game would probably be more of an action/adventure game, with more emphasis on the adventure (like how Ico has action in it but it's not the main thing). So with that done, I suppose I'll end this entry and get back to slaving over my 3D model like a good porch monkey.

Back from the Grave - A Swine Flu Perspective

Oink oink oink internet, oink oink oink CBS sucks oink oink oink dying slowly oink oink.

(So I've been gone for a while, no new posts or updates. I would have loved to have posted stuff and shown what I was doing but my internet died while I was in the midst of contracting SWINE FLU. So while sick and cut off from the world for an entire week I worked as my strength allowed powered by SHEER BOREDOM. I would have gotten more work done if the light didn't hurt and my arms didn't burn, but all pity aside I did respectable...which is a way of saying I did crap but give me props anyway.)

Oink oink oink, oink oink, oink oink retopologization oink oink oink.

(What I was going to post about before god smited me (smote? Smoted? Don't get me wrong, this was a modern day smiting) was about retopologization (try saying that 3 times fast). I know it doesn't sound like a real world and it barely is, but the importance of doing it while 3D modelling is immense. Many a mistake and crap model was made before I discovered it. It's all about how the edges flow, which probably means little to nothing to you. But what can you do. This is as far as I got before giving up on the notion of posting anything related to the subject AS YET. Notice the lines around the mouth. See how the flow directly across, bending up and down to fit the contours of the mouth? This is bad. It's supposed to flow around the mouth in loops. As shown in the later picture).


Oink oink oiiink oink oink, oink oink, oink oink.

(Instead, I worked on my model until I was happy with it. I went slowly with this in order to lessen my frustration. Lessons learned:

• Thinking is frustrating. Perhaps just as much or even more so than actually solving the problem before you get to it.
• I messed up on the neck...scarf tie thing that droops over her shoulder. Next model that won't be a problem.
• I some how ended up working backwards. Literally. Uhh, not sure how that happened, but it didn't really affect how I worked. It just took a while to figure out when I was retopologizing why nothing I did was taking any effect. I'm not used to working on the left side, so that was annoying.
• Add/Split in 3D Coat is a GOD SEND. Seriously, it can be pretty frustrating to do this stuff, even more so when the tools don't work. 3D coat sped up the process greatly, but not without it's own set of nuances.
• Not sure how this bake will turn out (more on that later), but if it does I need to find more of a consistent balance.
• HOLY CRAP THIS ISN'T LOOKING HORRIBLE NOW

So, a good deal was gleamed from this, but making a second model in less than a month is going to be stressful. Tentative deadline for finishing srs Haruka is the 15th or 16th. Tomorrow I should have this stuff baked and if everything goes well (haha... unlikely) I can be texturing by the weekend, hopefully finishing by Monday. Tuesday the latest. That gives me around 6 days to make Haruka's backpack. Rigging isn't a huge issue, though I would love to throw in another face rig. But we'll see how December looks for time. It takes about a day or 2 to make a good rig, so 5-6 days to rig both characters... not sure what I'm going to do about posing the backpacks, maybe separate flies and/or transpose in Zbrush? Who the hell knows. I realize at this moment I might be making 4 models this term instead of 2. THAT'S NOT COOL AT ALL. I kind of screwed myself there. But enough whining... actually I got more left in me. What the hell am I doing? Do I pose the backpacks and rig them separately? Should I just throw in a simple rig for posing or create a rig for animation? Thinking about it makes my head hurt... I might skip out of class early tomorrow just because I'm worrying about it. 3D stuff + deadline = SWINE FLU. Yes, I'm blaming Jim for this. And God. Mostly God.)

Oink oink, oink oink, oink oink.



Oink.