Last-gen/Next-gen?

(Squirrel in Shepherd's Bush Green)

This week was intense. It made me rethink a lot of things I had taken tor granted in 3D and it made me work until late in the evening once again. I learned a lot about Ps2/Gamecube style graphics, about techniques like vertex lighting, tiling textures, UVs, poly counts, planar continuity, normals...I could just go on and on.

It was frustrating. I was really proud of everything in my model but as I got close to the end I understood how vertex lighting worked and had to redo most of it. I didn't finish in time. It's not a strict thing but it was a deadline I really intended to meet. It's another thing I wanted to improve. The teacher was really proud I didn't give up or restart the model and says I should finish it in my free time. I agree, it's too much to throw away.

Today I found out our class is visiting Blitz Games in two weeks. They asked us to bring the things we have been doing in the course and offered to ask our questions and show us their workspace.

In other news Vlad's daughter was born three days ago! Hooray for him!

Meet the set

I was challenged to make TF2-style textures (diffuse, specular, normals) for my small set and this is how far I got during the time Escape was open today. I wanted to remake them all but wasn't fast enough to remake them with TF2 style and quality. Still I worked a lot faster than a week ago and a lot of people recognized the colors instantly.

The light is the one I had yesterday without any changes. It has nothing to do with the style of the game though.

Maya, Photoshop, Gamebryo

It's hard to describe what I'm feeling today. This day is being a great one so far, and one I'll not soon forget. Today I created textures, speculars, alpha and normal maps really quickly and in the end exported the models into Gamebryo and walked around in it as if it was a videogame for the first time. If you don't know much about cg graphics or game engines this might not sound impressive but it was an important moment for me. It's the end of the first week and I feel like I've learned so much it's "Unreal". Sorry for the really bad pun, I just had to do it.

The image above is a simple screencap from Maya without depth map shadows and the set was made with these pieces.

Chapter 3

I am writing this on the end of the second day of the course. Why is that? Because yesterday I stayed up for hours redoing what we did earlier. I did a Half-Life 2-looking set with the essencial props (models and UVs). That's right, wall, door, ground, crates and barrels. Twice. Long but rewarding first day.

It was the first time I felt comfortable with UV mapping. Finally.

Today was texture day. We only did the texture for the barrels but tomorrow we'll do the spec and at least try to do the rest of the set. I learned a lot new tricks in Photoshop. We were so interested in it that neither the teacher or us realized it was an hour past exit time already.

The class is full and this time I'm the only portuguese. The guy who came from furthest away is australian. The rest is one cool guy I knew from Core, some Sony fanboys and a guy who wants to work in architectural visualization (yeah, weird - but I actually think the future of architectural visualization will shift from static pre-rendered images to real-time "visits" to the buildings in game engines though).

On related news, seven of the previous Games Escapees passed the first test to get into Rare today. This doesn't mean they will end in there for sure, but it's definitely a good sign.

Back from Portugal, ready for chapter 3

(image by hioxz)

Landed in London at midday. Got back easily, without mistakes and found my room just as I left it which means I have some long overdue laundry to do.

Going back to Portugal was really nice, though I didn't do a lot of things I wanted to do. I won't dwell on it. I ate home home made food again! "Mother-made", which is even better! I got to be with my best friends and travelled to several places from Portalegre to Santiago de Compostela (Spain). Watched some movies I enjoyed and some episodes of good shows. I didn't sleep much for several reasons.

I'll try to compensate some sleep tonight. Hopefully I won't be woken up by Tony Carreira again...ugh. I thought I was far away from that but once again it chased me.

Wobsite

Sorting out my priorities once again. What do I really need? Work done, to show and to practice. I also need a website in that I can direct people to, somewhere where they can see what I can do.

So I set off for the cheapest and quickest way to get a website online. Checked out several things like hosts and Joomla! but Vlad said in my case Flash makes more sense and he's right. It's not the best thing for a site like this, but it is a program I already feel familiar with. I basically just need a clean wall where I can hang the best things I have done and will continue to do. Better to start now so I have it done and polished when I need it the most.

Flash it is then.