Chapter 3 ends

After not having an internet connection for a while, I'm back. Not only that, I'm back home again!

Now it's time to refine the work I started during the course to the point where I feel totally confident with it. I restarted a few things and I focused more on some other ones but now I have to get it all done and show it to the world. That's why I need to look into making a simple gallery website with my contacts on it.
In fact it's what I'll do now. Brook Green Hotel is getting some overlays.

In other news, Diablo III was confirmed and it looks absolutely stunning.

Dark Age 2.0

My internet connection at home is gone so bare with me for a couple of weeks, ok? Sorry everyone.

Quick summary of the last days:
-Light mapping
-Moderation on Normal Maps
-Parallax Maps
-Modular sets
-Environment Mapping
-Trip to Blitz Games
-Conversation with the Technical Art Director from Ninja Theory

I have to go now, take care.

Persian props

week 3

(real-life pixelart in Manhattan)

I am aware I didn't show the second week's progress and the reason is I decided to remake the model and I have been doing it in my short free time since then.

This week was different from the last. If I said last week was intensive, this one was insane. First day was a bank holiday, second one was a day full of theory about a lot of things and a briefing for the next three days.

The goal was to make one or two items that could be in a Prince of Persia game, mostly Sands of Time. We had a list of about twenty differend objects we could do. I am also here to train myself to work under strict timelines, so I chose to make three objects. I am proud of what I have achieved.

The images in the next post represent those three days. (This is so I can have a separate tag for "Gallery" for clarity's sake)

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.