3D Ball Bounce Progress!

 Hey everyone! 

I took another crack at the Ball Bounce animation. This time, I let myself utilize the Graph Editor, which worked to my advantage, creating a smoother overall animation. I also created a rig for the ball, which was surprisingly easy. I'm sure making other rigs won't be as easy, but I definitely had fun learning a new aspect of working in Maya! 

For those curious, I posted my Ball Rig setup bellow. All it took was a NURBS circle and a little bit of messing with Maya menus. But, thankfully, I learned a lot! For future reference for myself and others, here is the tutorial I followed to gather my bearings.

I know that rigging the ball wasn't necessarily necessary, but I wanted to use it to teach me how to do more complex animations. That way, when I start animating humans or other creatures, I know how to get around the interface. 

You can also take a look at my graph editor, for more reference. I'm not too sure how to smooth out the points on it, but I'm relatively happy with the motion I've gotten from this attempt. The bounce itself is much smoother than the translation to the right. If I learn how to adjust these values to make them smoother, I will post my results here! Anyways, here's the graph!

Enough of the technicality aside, right? You came to see a bouncing ball and, heck, that's what I'm gonna give you! 

Again, I will continue to post updates here as I explore my art and animation further. I'm so happy to be doing stuff like this and I know it will only keep going up! 

Until then, I'll see you soon! 

Ball Bounce Animation... My First Attempts!

 Hello World!

So, I've been hard at work learning all there is to learn about 3D... Well not ALL there is to learn, but a lot! It's been fun bringing extra dimensionality to my work! 

I'm hoping that 3D will be as natural as 2D is for me, but that will definitely come in time. Until then, I'm going to keep studying and practicing. 

One of the things I've been studying is animation in this mythical Third Dimension. 

I'm starting with the absolute basics here... You heard me right-- I've done a Ball Bounce!

The Ball Bounce animation is like a rite of passage for animators. Many people start with it because it beautifully demonstrates some of the principles of animation, while showing animators the ropes of their respective programs. 

Heck, I started my 2D journey with a Ball Bounce or two... Check it out! 

So, it only makes sense that I would start my 3D journey with a Ball Bounce, too!

I technically started this project BEFORE starting all of the other stuff I've shown on Maya... But I wanted to show my progress through the animation itself. 

Also... My computer had to be reset and I'm just re-downloading the files now... But that is neither here nor there. It's fixed now and I'm thankful for that! 

So, without further ado, here is my work-in-progress Ball Bounce animation! 

As you can see, there are no bells or whistles... Just a bouncing ball! And a plane!

The ball moves kind of slow, as I'm not all too familiar with the Graph Editor yet. But it's definitely a work-in-progress.

Now, check out my second attempt! 

This one was supposed to roll at the end, but I was having trouble with the keyframing. I managed to rotate and scale it a bit to give it a more cartoony effect than the first attempt. But, it's still definitely a work-in-progress. 

I added some color to it, though! I think that makes it look really nice! 

These are the three attempts I have for now. Again, I'm still working with Animation in Maya, so I have a lot to learn. I'm just going to keep at it and continue to post updates here. 

Thank you all for coming along on this journey with me! I'm going to be so excited to get this down, especially since animation is one of the things that excites me the most.

My First 3D Sprite!

 Not only did I work on my 2D Sprite this weekend... But I also challenged myself to do something a little different. I also created a 3D Sprite, which floats and spins in the world I created for it! 

The sprite is based off of a little game for Windows called Platypus. In the game, you play as a red or yellow spaceship and you attack invaders. The coolest thing about the game is that it is made out of clay, which gives it a unique look! 

As you can tell, I went with the yellow ship for this project, which looks really cool fully-realized in Unreal Engine 20 years after the games' initial release. 

The background I made for this world glows, giving it a cool and futuristic look. It added some eerie lighting to the whole project too, which is really awesome! 

Here's the entire background. As you can see, it creates a cool patchwork pattern, which makes for some interesting exposure in my shots. 

You can see what I mean here, where a lot of the tiles near the bottom left are rendered in. They are emitting a glow, since I gave them emissive color properties. I raised the values a bit above normal so that it would have a photon laser look to it. 

Notice how the front panel has some transparency and emissive properties, too. This gives the cockpit a unique feel and helps grab the viewer's attention immediately.

I also gave the back of the sprite a glow to it, for the rocket booster. That way, it feels like the rocket is actually propelling through space and time! Or, at least, I think it looks cool! 

As you can tell, I gave lighting another shot and added some point lights in the background, to give this piece a laboratory look to it. I also wanted to be able to see the ship better in my shots. So there's also that! 

Here's some more trippy lighting for you, too! I think the spotlights make this look awesome. Like it's parked in the garage or landing to airdrop supplies in a hangar somewhere in space and time. I really dig the look! 

So that was my 3D project! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed making it! Now, this project wasn't entirely a bed of roses. In fact, I had a huge setback that I was diagnosing for over 2 hours. I made the sprite into a blueprint so that I could move it around easily... And something corrupted when compiling. I kept getting a "Static mesh can't move. Aborting" message on about 238 sprites. I couldn't edit the sprite in the blueprint mode, so I was kinda stuck. I just ended up deleting a few of the problematic pieces, which took away from the overall design but meant my animation could play.

I forgot to mention that all my problems stemmed from me trying to Transform the blueprint after setting it. I applied a simple rotation and the whole level borked. I couldn't even load my simulation without getting a wall of 238 object errors.

After deleting the 200+ problem pieces, I widdled the errors down to just 2. I still get the same error and I don't quite know what is going on, but I'm proud of myself for trying. Only one square of the whole sprite doesn't animate- the front panel close to the nose. It actually sticks to the origin while the rest of the sprite floats. A small loss, but one I was willing to take after 2 hours on the Unreal forums with not much progress as to diagnosing the issue.

If anyone knows the root of the problem, I would be happy to learn more about it! I need all the help I can get! I'm still not deterred, though. In fact, I'm more determined than ever to make great games. No bugs or errors are going to stop me this time! 

I'll probably work more with the Sequencer and Animations in Maya next, so expect to see plenty of blogs about those topics. 

Thanks for checking out my work again! I hope you stick around and see what I'm doing next! 

A 2D Sprite In 3D????

 So, it's no secret that I'm learning how to do 3D Art. And it's been one heck of a journey. But, I'm proud to say that I have conquered Unreal Engine AND learned about 3D art and tile placement along the way. Behold my GBA sprite, fully realized in Unreal Engine 5. 

This might not LOOK 3D, but it is! Remember those One Meter cubes from my last post? Well, they were the BASE of this entire pixel piece! If you look closely, you can see that this piece is made up of many, many One Meter cubes! In fact, there are over 1,000 of these cubes. All lovingly placed in alignment with one another. 

Each Cube or "pixel" was color-matched to fit the sprite's color scheme. The "pixels" were placed on top of a sprite plane, which we textured with our initial image of the sprite.

Speaking of initial images, here is the sprite we started out with. It was a 32x32 pixel sprite from Klonoa: Empire of Dreams, a game for the GameBoy Advance. Wahoo!

Now, the saturation in my version of the sprite is a little bit different because I have lighting effects on my individual cubes. In addition, fog and lighting play a part in how my sprite looks.

Overall, I'm really happy with how this project turned out! It was a bit of a learning curve for me, especially since I didn't know how to snap the cubes in place all to well. Thus, each cube was individually placed on the map, which took quite some time. My hope is that, as I continue to improve as a game developer, I will learn more about time-saving shortcuts that will make these processes more pleasant.

    The fog effects make this look particularly cool here. I changed the fog from grey to blue... and look how cool this looks! It's like we found Klonoa in the back of a lost temple or something. Neat!

Now, this build was pretty laborious, so don't you worry- I took plenty of in-progress shots while I was building it out. I've posted some of them below, so you can see the process itself.

Here's the first in-progress shot I took. Notice the sprite mesh that I'm building on top of? That's my sprite model wrapped around a plane. It creates a pretty cool effect, since it has luminosity, too! Also, it makes for a wonderful blueprint while I'm building out my project. 

Are you seeing red? I know I was for a little bit! I found it hard to line up the black cubes, so I temporarily made them red so that I could line them up properly. I had to redo an entire section of Klonoa's left side initially because I didn't line up some of the black cubes with the others in the world. It was annoying! So I bypassed another instance of that by making the cubes easier to see. 

And here are all of those same red cubes turned back to black! Now you can see the lineart was really starting to come together at this stage. 

By this point, we had most of the white and black on Klonoa built out. Even the shoes were filled in. You can tell what I haven't filled in yet because it's glowing in the picture. That's the luminosity setting on the sprite plane below Klonoa for ya! It makes it easy for me to check my work! 

Aaaand now those areas have been filled out! We have a nearly complete sprite-- I just needed to do the background! 

You heard that right! The background had to be placed one cube below the sprite. While the plane behind Klonoa would have kind of worked, it doesn't have the same retro feel as more cubes, er pixels, would. So we continue working! 

You can see here that I've made the sprite layers right over the plane. Here, I've built out the perimeter and started filling it in on the bottom left. You can probably guess that this is where most of the 1000+ cubes in my level came from... 

And here it is with everything filled in! It looks great and the background was definitely worth the extra time It really helps the character stand out, even more than the initial plane did. 

Before I wrapped this post up, I wanted to share all of the materials that I made for Klonoa here. 

Each of these materials was picked directly from the sprite plane, which helped me keep it consistent with Klonoa's initial sprite. There are over forty of these materials, which all stem from a single parent. If you edit the parent in any way, all of the properties in the different instances (or children) that stem from it will change too. So, if you wanted to make an object more metallic or luminous, you can edit the parent material and all of the dependent materials will change too! 

Pretty cool, huh? 

Overall, I had a really great time learning Unreal Engine 5. I'm excited to see what I'll make with the engine next. It seems extremely versatile and I want to jump in head first as soon as I can! 

Thanks for reading!

My Journey in Unreal Engine

 Hey everyone! It's been a busy weekend, but don't worry, I've been hard at work exploring all there is to explore in the land of 3D!

I hope you're ready for some progress updates... Because I have a lot to share! Not only did I work on my Truck Animation, but I also took some time to get to know Unreal Engine. Specifically, Unreal Engine 5. I'm not going to lie, I was a bit intimidated by UE5 at first, but after getting to know it, I feel a little bit better.

So this might look like a jumble of cubes (and trust me, it is!) but these cubes are a little special. I made them in Maya and imported them to Unreal. This was a test to see if high-quality materials could be imported in-engine and, low and behold, they can! 

Don't believe me? Fine! Well, check out the wireframe from Maya below.

Now that's a pretty HD cube, if I do say so myself. 

I took these cubes, beveled them, and ensured that they were one meter wide, which is the default grid size in Unreal. I did this to prepare for another project, which you'll hear about in just a little bit (or another post, whichever you prefer). 

But before I got down to the brass tacks, I had a little fun! 

This pyramid has a MATERIAL assigned to it, which can be changed in a variety of ways, from metallic properties to ambient lighting. Materials are a great way to get a feel for your world. Not to mention, but they came in handy on another assignment (I swear, I'll get into it in a sec)! 

Now, you might be thinking that there is really no reason to make a cube in Maya and import it into Unreal. Especially since Unreal has its OWN cubes. While you might be right in some aspects, the customizability of Maya makes it easy to add some bells and whistles to your work. Check out the shweet bevel I added to this cube. Even our friend Manny is impressed! 

Anyways! This was my post about cubes and delving into Unreal for the first time. Was it scary? Kinda. Was it useful? Sure! You'll see just how useful it was in the next post! 

See you soon! Very soon! 

3D Truck... Now In Color!!

     We're almost over the hill, folks! We've officially learned about geometry in Maya, lighting, shading, and a teeny bit about rendering. You know what that means? Our truck got a paint job!

    

    She's certainly a beauty, ain't she? Fresh off the dealership lot and ready for a test drive. Woohoo! 

    I added some luminance to the front and back lights, which looks really nice when the truck is in motion. I also added some translucence to the windshield and windows, so it gives the model a neat look. 

    You can really see the rendering effects on the back here. Not only do the brake lights look activated, but the exhaust has a nice sheen to it too! Looks good enough to drive, but I don't think you'll get too far (I haven't built the engine yet, haha)!

    Since I learned how to texture, I played around with some area, volume, and point lights, so that you could see where the truck was headed. I also added in some color to the world and gave the truck a little road to drive on. 

    Once I learn how to properly texture, I'm excited to see how this world builds out. It would probably look nice with some flowers and bushes. Sounds like a town beautification project is in order! I'm in! 

    I figured out how to (very basically) edit the terrain. I am honestly really happy with the way the plane turned out... It reminds me of a Spyro level. Take me on back to Dream Weavers Home World already! 

    Hopefully I will one day make 3D models (and skyboxes!!!) that look like the OG Spyro trilogy. But until then, I'm going to keep learning until I get there.

Oh, and we weren't done! You probably figured I did another animation of the truck. And you would be right! Here it is! 

As it did last time, something about the Playblast made my video a tad sluggish, so I sped it up to make it seem more like it was drifting and less like it was stuttering around. 

    I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. I still have a lot to learn about lighting and shading, but for my first rendering attempt, I'm pretty stoked that this turned out the way it did. The car hasn't burst into flames (yet), so we're good to go... Maybe!     

    Thanks for taking the time to look over my stuff. The next thing I need is a musical backing track from Stewart Copeland and it'll be good to load into the PS1 dev kit. 

    Jokes aside, I'm excited to continue to show you my progress. To whoever is reading-- thank you for embarking on this journey with me! 

    Battle On! 

Breaking Into The Third Dimension!

     Ladies and gentlemen, we've finally done it. We've finally entered the Third Dimension. It's not so mythical after all, huh? 

    Thanks to Nick's awesome Introduction to Maya, I have successfully modelled my first object in Maya. 

    Huzzah! 

    As a huge car aficionado, it was especially convenient that our first 3D model was a truck! I am happy that now I know how to build basic vehicles. This will help with creating props or other assets in-game (and it also makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside).   

    I took a few liberties with the design, deviating from the tutorial a bit to add doors, mirrors, license plates, mirrors, and exhaust! I wanted it to have a nice, stylized look, which I think the additional details help out with nicely. 

    It honestly feels so awesome to finally break into Maya. I'm hoping that my other pursuits into this new realm will be just as fun with this one! 

    I did do one more thing with this Maya Experiment, however... One that is right in my wheelhouse.

    You guessed it, folks! I animated it!

    The animation is playing at 60 fps, which looks a lot faster in Maya than it seems to run in the video. That's okay because I sped my video up. Double Huzzah!

    Look at 'er go! You can tell I was listening to eurobeat when I made this. I'm an Initial D fan through and through, after all! 

    There were a few previous iterations of this video (one that turned sharply, and one with a waaay too fast drift), but those Playblasts saved in my Temp folder and I didn't realize it so now they are gone to the Digital Wasteland. 

    Oh well! 

    I will continue my travels through Nick's tutorials and I'll post any findings here! Hope you all enjoyed the ride (ha) through my first 3D project (in Maya at least)! 

See ya on the Flopside! 

Useful Links and Resources

 Here are some useful links that I've compiled to both make my life easier and allow me to close out of some of my tabs!

I'll organize these tabs a bit, so I can quickly pivot between them:

Maya Tips

• Getting Started With Maya
• Maya Introduction
• Sir Wade Neistadt

ZBrush Tips

• ZBrush Introduction
  
• Getting Started With ZBrush
  

Unity Tips

• John Lemon's Haunted Jaunt
• Unity Learning Hub
  
• Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Unity
  

Unreal Tips

• Unreal Sculpting and Basics
  
• Getting Started with UE4
  

Houdini Tips

• Getting Started With Houdini
  
• Houdini Learning Resources
  
• Houdini Apprentice
• Houdini Education
• Foundations and Hotkey Overview
• Modelling and Rendering Tutorial
  

Physically-Based Rendering and Shading (PBR)

• The PBR Guide
  
• Adobe Courses on PBR
  

Presets and Brushes

• Nick Zuccarello's FIEA Blog

I will update this post with other potential things I find around the Internet! Whether it's Photoshop, Maya, or Sony Vegas, I will pop any links here so I don't have to remember what dang diddly blog post I put my helpful stuff in.

See you on the Flipside! 

Research and the Stuff I Like!

     When I find cool resources online, I'll go ahead and post them here. If I make them, I will be sure to let you know. If I get them from someone or somewhere else, I will also let you know here. 

    This is basically a way for me to keep tabs on any resources from my favorite artists or other places and people on the Internet. So I can delete the notion of "where did I find X or Y thing" and just come here. And if you're an internet wanderer and you stumbled upon my blog, maybe it can help you too. If so, welcome! 

    I guess I will start out with my favorite resource of all, SEGA Harmony magazine covers. If you would like to know, SEGA published an internal magazine from some time in the 1960s to the 2000s. They called this magazine Harmony and its covers featured current SEGA products and, later in its life, Sonic, who became the undisputed mascot of SEGA. 

• Here is a link to all of the issues (and their covers): SEGA Harmony
• Fandom actually has some great Gallery images for this magazine here.
• And on a completely different tangent entirely, here are some references for poses/clothing. This is a clothing magazine from the 1990s and early 2000s called FRUiTS. It features a lot of Harajuku/Japanese Street fashion. You can see all of the full-page scans here. 

I will post more links to stuff from time to time! I like to show where my roots are so you can get a better idea of what inspires me! 

Common Art

 Hello and welcome to the Common Art tab! 

This tab is currently under construction, as I have not yet started Common Art but when I DO, my stuff will live here. In fact, I will probably live here too, since I'm going to be so busy with my art! 

I guess I will go ahead and put some of my goals here, so that this space doesn't feel so blank. Here is what I want to get out of my time at FIEA:

1. I want to be more confident and learn how to network.
2. I want to improve my craft and learn the ins and outs of the fancy new software that game devs use.
3. I want to explore 3D art, as it seems like something I will really enjoy.
4. I want to seek mentorship from my peers and teachers, as I learn best when I'm learning with others.
5. I want to take care of my mental health while making my dreams come true! 

Since I started playing Spyro at age 5, I've had a passion for bringing my worlds and characters to life. I am very happy to have this opportunity at FIEA nd I want to take full advantage of it! 

Hopefully my wistful monologue gives you a better idea of who I am. I hope to make my dreams a reality this year! I just have to BELIEVE!   

Animation!

     Animation, especially 2D, is something I've really grown to love over the years. I started with animation in 2008 when I watched a YouTube animatic of my favorite book series, Warriors by Erin Hunter.

    The first time I ever drew digitally was in 2008. I opened up MS Paint and just drew to my heart's content. And here is what I created, all those years ago! 

    Since then, I have been teaching myself the fundamentals of animation on my own while learning from the likes of Richard Williams and Eric Goldberg (in book form, of course). One day, I hope to improve my animation, which I think FIEA will help me out with excellently. 

Hopefully, I will be able to use Maya and Unreal to bring my animations into the mythical Third Dimension! Come with me on this journey- I'm excited to show you my progress.

In the meantime, have a small animation (my first ever on Maya) of a primitive polygon truck rushing the camera! 

    Going to be working on a bouncing ball and some other fun things this weekend. I'll keep you posted as my art continues to develop! 

Portfolio

     Want to see where all of my stuff is at? Glad you asked! Check out my portfolio NOW at 

this beautiful, shiny link! 

    Thanks for taking a look! 

Tech Art Post... But Where's The Tech Art?

     As you can tell, this post is a little bit empty. I can definitely not provide any examples of my tech art, as I have never had experience with it yet! 

    Also, when I do have assignments, I will post them here! That way, you can see everything I am doing and I can wistfully recollect upon my time at FIEA when I'm an 86 year old woman drinking hojicha tea on the porch with my cats. 

    That aside, I hope that FIEA can get me started on my Tech Art journey (I'm sure it will). I just wanted to put a post here so that those curious that may or may not click every tab on the top have something to see! 

    Anyways, I hope you enjoy watching me actually put stuff here! Woohoo! 

3D References

     Also something interesting about my artistic process... I'm very inspired by "retro" games. I say retro in quotes because they aren't "really" retro... they're from the 90's. But, my generation has insisted on calling them retro and making me feel old so here we are. Anywho, back to the main point- I'm inspired by Sega Dreamcast and Saturn characters and 3D art. To me, that era in gaming was the cartooniest and I would like to capture that in my artwork. 

    I also enjoy the style of Sega CD, Nintendo GameCube, Wii, and DS games, so I have also included them in this PureRef Style map. GameCube is a system I have definitely missed out on, as I never had one growing up. It took me getting my own full-time job to finally experience it (and really appreciate it!). 

    I would like to make a habit of showing the things I'm referencing, so you can get a better idea of where I want to be with my work. That way, if I'm missing the mark of where I want to be, someone can let me know (or I can see it myself, whatever happens first). 

    Wow, I always ramble in these posts. I guess I have a lot to say. Thank you for reading! 

My 2D Art

     Hello again! I wanted to show a quick example of my 2D art, which I feel is my strongest suit. I work a lot with paintings and digital characters. I've posted some of my favorite paintings below. I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyed creating them. 

        I am hoping that I can take what I've learned about digital painting and apply it to texturing once I learn a little more about 3D. I think that having painted textures will work much better than having flat colors, as I have done before. 

    Thanks for sticking around to watch my art grow! It means a lot! 

My First 3D Post... A Bit of a Backstory About My Artistic Journey!

     Hello people of the mythical Third Dimension! I'm your host, Mackenzie O'Brien, here to take you on an epic journey through my 3D process. 

    Coming from a 2D background, adjusting to 3D has been a challenge, but I want to take you on this journey with me. I specifically focused on 2D animation prior to FIEA, but I want to take the skills I learned from that craft and apply them to all three dimensions! Hopefully, the timing and principles of animation that I learned while working in 2D will help me on this journey. 

    I'm very passionate about bringing my artistic visions to life and I'm confident that I will be able to master the art of 3D soon! My eventual goal is to make a fully-rendered character in 3D. I've posted a model I made below, as this is the character that I hope to fully-render via Maya or ZBrush. She's a character from one of my game projects, INSTITUTION. The game was conceptualized in 2012 in my sophomore English class... I would one day love to bring this vision to life.

    Before I get carried away, I wanted to thank you for embarking on this journey with me today. I hope you stick around as I continue to grow my craft!