Cannon! Second Iteration!

 Hey everyone! 

I'm busy with RPP but I decided to keep you updated on my cannon! Here's how it's going! 

Look at all them Tems! And a whole bucket of corn for me, too! 

Someone left an adorable top hat, though! I wonder who that was? 

I did both the duck and the bunny Tims, so that the scene feels livelier! I would like to add fluff and different colors to them eventually, but that'll happen once I introduce Substance. 

Look at this cute little farm scene! Complete with boulders and low poly grass! 

I really like the way the lighting makes this look. You can see a lot of the detail, which is awesome! 

We all know Tims love to play around! I tried to give them something fun to do in my little world! 

Tims also like taking pictures! Here's one now! 

And here's a nice view of everything. I really love all of the background details that the light shows. 

One is even hiding on my crate! I am eventually going to texture it to look like the game style I'm going for. 

And here's a last side shot of the whole dang scene! Just for good measure! 

And BOOM! There's my cannon!

I hope you enjoyed seeing my stuff! 

See you soon! 

VR Animation Progress!

 Hey everyone!

It's been yet another wild week at FIEA! 

I really am tired but here are some of the animations that I've been working on for our art VR Game.

These lovely models were made by the amazingly talented Aimee and rigged by the amazingly talented Bailee. I'm truly lucky to be working with such talented, wonderful people!

Anyways, here is what I was able to make: 

Our game is going to feature a monster character, with two different hands! One is a claw and the other is a tentacle. This will definitely make gameplay interesting! 

I'm excited to keep cracking at this project! 

I'll post more updates here in the future!

See you soon! 

Animation Progress!

 Guess who's back?

This crazy gal!

I've been working on some animations that I really really REALLY wanted to share with you! 

None of them are perfect, but I just wanted to have a nice place where all these come together and you can sit by a campfire, picture of a campfire, or campfire scented candle and take them all in. 

I have a lot to learn. I knew that when I started, especially as a 2D and traditional animator. But I've already learned a lot in my two (2!!!) months here. I am doing this as a reminder to myself that I CAN learn these programs. I just need to consistently practice. And develop self-confidence. In any particular order. 

I have a lot to learn about rigging and naming conventions and Maya, oh my, but I will keep on truckin'. Speaking of truckin'. I will also present you with this to start off this wild ride...

Guess who finally learned to render in Maya while retaining a slight semblance of quality? Me! Too bad it doesn't render in 1080p or above, but this will definitely do! 

I didn't change anything about this animation since my portfolio. I'm going to go back to it when I learn a bit more about rigging. The truck is not rigged whatsoever, hence why it looks like it's sliding. Since I made this animation in my first week at FIEA, I had no idea rigging was even a thing. I just thought animation was me taking parts of a thing and moving them around like magic.

Well, that's at least how my 2D animator brain tries to perceive it. 

But, onto some of my NEW stuff! And you heard me... NEW! I have been hard at work trying to learn fundamentals, which includes walking. Between that, MOCAP workshops, and other awesome feedback opportunities, I have been busy improving my craft. Hopefully!

And that reminds me. RPP has also been a newfound source of animation. I'll show those after I show some portfolio progress. As a reminder, none of this is definitively on my portfolio. Yet. I'm still getting a feel for animating in Maya, after all. I've only done a handful of 3D animations at this point, so none of these are necessarily gold-tier works of art. Not yet anyway!

Okay, enough rambling. You can tell it's late. Have some animated goodness! 

Here is my current iteration for a walk cycle project. I'm not done with it, but I'm slowly chipping away at it and adding more bounce and influence from traditional animation. He needs to look more alive, but I'll post here when I give him more life. 

Here we see our friend Boney might have had a few drinks before showing up to my blog. He's moving and swaying a tad, which makes him look drunk! Pretty funny for my first walk attempt with Mr. Boney, huh?

This character was actually what I was going to use for my walk cycle project, but the rig is just too janky at the current moment. It's a character from Balan Wonderworld and it came from a site online. I'm surprised it works, honestly. I just wanna make her move better because she is just so cute! 

She moves a bit better in this one, but then the model itself started to deform. Most likely since this is not a really great rig. I will probably end up rerigging it somehow. And maybe adding controls to make it easier to move. Because for now, I've been individually moving every joint. Hence why I only did half of the walk cycle in both of these... I wanted to test the limits and this rig didn't pass. Which is a shame because the character is just so dang cute! I'll keep working on her in the background as I continue with other projects. You'll see an update here if I can get her to move organically! 

Speaking of limits, here's her range of motion. This is essentially me moving the model like a madman to show people where the model's limits are. So, in a team setting, this would be helpful for a protagonist character, so the entire project team can be completely aware of what is or isn't possible. But, it sure does look crazy, doesn't it?

I will also post some cool RPP things that you may like. I know I like them! This RPP project is the first one that I've had to do 3D animation for... all my other projects were 2D. So it's been weird and very alien to learn all this jazz. But I'm trying, which is all that matters! 

First order of business... Hand Rigging. I've never rigged before, at least not successfully, so this was crazy! From weight painting to parenting... I did the whole nine yards. It ain't a perfect rig, but at least it moves! 

Let's check out that sweet motion! 

As you can see, it's not perfect, but I'm proud of it! I have literally never even MODELLED a hand, so I'm happy that my little proxy geometry resembles one at all. I gotta do something with the joints, but I will figure it out later! 

And here's another animation from that project for you! It's a beautiful butterfly! 

This beautiful proxy was made by Levi... Thank you Levi! Levi made an even better game-ready model, which I'm excited to get into! 

I'm not super-proud of the rig I did for this, as it was my first ever rig. So, I just did the head, thorax, abdomen and two joints each for the wings. I'll show a more dynamic rig when I have something to show.

But those are my animations for now! 

I hope you enjoyed learning a bit about my process! I'll try to update this as I continue to practice, practice, practice! 

Cannon Proxy

 Hey everyone! 

I'm going to keep this shorter than usual, since I've been nothing but busy working on RPP, animation, and you name it. 

But, I decided to work on something interesting... another 3D Modelling project! 

I just want to learn how to do stuff that makes me a little uncomfortable, which 3D Modelling definitely is for me. From UVs to textures, I fall behind pretty easily.

This project is pretty exciting- I get to make a cannon! One of the first things I thought to recreate was a cannon from my favorite... the Original Spyro the Dragon! 

In Peacekeeper's Homeworld, there is a gnorc cannon operator who tries to shoot you as you charge at him. I decided to give his cannon a spin. What do you think? 

I staged this in both Maya and Unreal, so you can get a feel for what it looks like in engine! 

I even gave modelling a character a shot, too! I modelled a Tim from Balan Wonderworld because I thought it would be an easy little project to do! Also, it doesn't really distract from the cannon, which is the main point of the piece. 

Well, let me know what you think sometime! I would love to hear feedback! I had quite a lot of fun doing this, despite how busy I have been over the past few weeks. Since industry review, I've been putting my head down and just working. I have a lot to learn and I need to do it now.

Bad things can sometimes lead to good things. I'm not confiden in my art, but I'm still here and still kicking. That's all that matters. I'll just keep trying and giving it my best, even if I fail. At least I'm trying-- consistency is key!

It's late and I'm rambling so I apologize! Sorry to get philosophical, but I'm just motivated to keep going, no matter what the results are. I hope you're motivated too, wherever you are!

Okay, well... 

Bye for real now! I hope you liked my pictures! 

Industry Review - Animation Portfolio I

 Hey all!

This will be the shortest post ever from me, but today is our much dreaded anticipated Industry Review! I cobbled together a quick portfolio of three animation projects I'm currently working on! 

Here is my final iteration:

You can check it out in the YouTube link below for my first iteration:

Wish me luck! 

Foreground, Middleground, and Background... With Ori!

 It's been an extremely busy week for me at FIEA, because this is our MIDTERM WEEK! And what's a midterm week that doesn't have every assignment under the sun due at around the same time? Not a midterm week, I guess.

That aside, I have been extremely extremely busy this week, but I managed to work on Common Art for just a little bit. I didn't get to do as much as I had initially wanted, but I am at least happy with what I made. 

Let's check it out, shall we?

So, if you know me well enough, you've probably heard me talking about my cat, Ori, quite a lot. Ori and my dog Goose are the light in my life nd they help me get through my time at FIEA. My mom constantly sends me pictures of my babies, so I feel less alone when I'm at school.

My week has been really awful, but just one picture of this cat makes me smile. Take a look and see what I mean.

He's so cute and I can't wait to be back home with him. I wish he was here with me but he would hate my dorm. So at least he has plenty of room to roam with my parents.

My kitty aside, I chose to recreate a screenshot from Ori and the Blind Forest with my cat, Ori. He's been on my mind a lot and I wanted to connect him to his namesake via my art. 

So, using this picture as my reference, I set out to do just that!

The picture I drew has a little more color to it, which was a stylistic choice I made. Ori from the game is much more peaceful and gentle than Ori my cat, so I wanted to give some playful color to the image. I went Bob Ross style on the trees, too, making plenty of happy accidents along the way. 

But, yeah! 

I picked this picture because it had prominent depth, which I hope I was able to recreate in my rendition. I am so glad I got to use him as a study for Common Art. He has such a beautiful pelt, so swirly and chaotic. I really loved drawing it! 

For making it this far, I wanna give you a bonus pic of Ori. This is the face he makes when he's screaming for attention. Gotta love Siamese kitties. 

You can also see his newest toy- a tag that he stole from the counter or somewhere else. He's always getting into trouble. Total opposite of the peaceful, sweet forest creature from Ori and the Blind Forest.

Well, thanks for reading! See you next week, when I will be way more rested and peaceful, like video game Ori! 

Bye for now! 

A Game Resolution Crate!

 Hey everyone! 

What a wild week it's been! From RPP to tech art, we've had a lot of assignments, but I've got a lot to show you so buckle up! 

Boom! 

Here is my game-ready crate model! Get ready to press A, everyone because this crate has collision and everything. 

You can jump on top of it! 

I just need to learn more blueprints so I can make it break or explode! 

This crate was lovingly crafted in Maya, ZBrush, and Substance. Unfortunately, my Substance skills do not yet pay the bills, so I had to do more than enough of the work in ZBrush. 

It still turned out great, though, in my opinion! I'm proud of myself for facing my fears head-on and working past all the difficulties! 

Yeah, have some beauty shots of just a solo crate, this time! I wanted to be sure to show it in a natural environment, so I stuck with the plain ol' template world! 

I tried to take these beauty shots from all angles, so you can see all the detail in my texture. And my ZBrush sculpt. All in all, I'm really happy with how this looks! 

Have a look from above, while you're at it! The view is great from up here! 

Or you could drop down low and take a look at this really really close?

What if I added more friends for our crate? Now you can really look at all of the details I've added without having to rotate around. Woohoo! 

Here's the same stuff from another angle. From here on out, we are going to continue cycling through these, so I won't comment on every beauty shot. 

But yeah, this project was a bit of an undertaking for me, especially since I have been drowning in homework. It's the last week of bootcamp and with everything pretty much due on Thursday, I'm gonna have a helluva time getting through this Pit of 100 Trials. 

So, that leads us to the problem I had with this assignment. No matter what I did, my ZBrush was not properly sculpting my model. It twisted, warped, and grabbed my planks, but it did not draw on them, as I wanted. I was pretty discouraged, so I sought help from my classmates. 

After a little bit of troubleshooting, we were able to figure out the source of the error- I hadn't subdivided the polygons! In fact, I only had a few polys coming into ZBrush, just the planks, corners, and borders. That was it. Because of that, my model was getting mangled instead of sculpted. 

No worries, though! We always persevere! At least, I try to! I was able to give this model waaaaay more polys thanks to Dynamesh and subdivisions- with my high-high poly model sitting somewhere around 5 million polys. I ended up narrowing the high-res model down to 1 million polys, which is still a lot, but allowed me to keep a lot of the details. 

In addition, I was able to make my low-res model teeny tiny... It is only 3,000 polygons (I say only as if 3,000 is a small number). Silliness aside, I'm happy that the model still retains a slight level of detail at that size. I was really happy that it turned out the way it did! 

Overall, I'm really grateful that I was able to figure out workarounds for my issues. I want to thank the resourceful, kind people in my Cohort who are always sweet to me when I have questions. If you all are reading this, thank you! You are the best and you can get through whatever challenges are in your way! 

I had a few more roadblocks, though, namely Substance Painter. That program makes no sense to me- probably because I've never used it before. I was able to import my UVs into it, but then they disappeared, leaving me confused out of my mind. The only thing I was able to get out of the (limited) UI was I could export my normals, which I used as a base for my texture map. 

That's right- ladies and gentlemen... I did what you probably think I do every assignment... I hit a roadblock, was unable to proceed, so I used a creative solution (MANUAL LABOR!) to get out. I hand-painted and mapped my textures. With a brush. And not in Substance. 

After about an hour of wrangling with Substance and replaying Nick's video on it over and over, I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to navigate the program. The thing with Substance is- while Maya and ZBrush are overcomplicated and cluttered, Substance is minimal and vague. It is the exact opposite, yet managed to be harder than either of the above programs. 

So in a fun twist, I had to do my texturing by hand! It was a fun experience, albeit a slow one. But it taught me a lot about patience and keeping calm in even a situation that I can't navigate. 

So, that's why I took so many pictures of my model. It's a test! Did I pass or fail? Does my hand-painted texture look okay? I really hope it does- I worked hard on it because I wanted to give my last assignment for 3D Bootcamp my all. 

Here's a Bird's Eye view for all you avian aficionados!

 

And another. 

And we're officially back to Earth again! And we're nearing the end of this post. So, let's wrap up with some stuff I learned. 

For one, 3D Modelling is hard. And very time-consuming. It's much different than the Paint 3D and Nomad Sculpt that I know and love (can you make game models on those- I sure hope so!).

For two, I'm doing better under pressure. I just need to keep learning all I can and moving forward. 

And lastly, I'm happy that I was able to proceed with the assignment despite my complications. I'm proud of myself for moving forward, no matter what grade I get. 

Anyways, thanks for checking out my Grand Finale post! I hope it was everything you've hoped and dreamed of! 

Just kidding, it's a crate. I hope that's not all you're hoping and dreaming of! 

Alrighty, bye for real!

See you soon! 

A High-Resolution Box?! WHAAA-

 Hi everyone! 

I've been hard at work on this week's assignment! With a hurricane and some internet interruptions, it has been difficult to do, but I'm proud of myself for achieving my goal! 

So what did I make, you might ask?

Well, a BOX of course! Or, I guess you could say a FEW boxes, since I stacked them so nicely for my game-ready model?

And not just any box- a high-res, textured one! All handcrafted by yours truly!

So, I was having some problems with my proxy model from last week, as the UVs were not showing up properly, as my shapes were too thin. So, I rebuilt my model again. I actually built it twice over the Hurricane, as my bevels were not working properly in my initial alpha model.

So, the boxes you are seeing are TAKE TWO of my modelling process. And I actually like the way this turned out much better. I used the multi-cut tool and ZBrush to make the panels, which gives them a much more organic look than the previous iteration.

I also textured all of the panels, which was much easier to do with the UVs actually working properly. In my previous proxy, I was only able to use a material instance in Unreal, as my material was only able to show up on one of the six faces for some reason. In addition, my beveled edges were NOT a part of the UV, which was highly irritating. 

Thanks to my friend, the multi-cut tool, I was able to get the precision I wanted in my model, while also having none of the UV woes I previously experienced in the first pass. I believe this worked to my benefit, as it gave my box a clean look, without being too clean. 

In fact, that's where ZBrush came in, as it helped me make a high-res model that looks good from all angles without using too many polys. It's a box, so the poly count wasn't too too crazy to begin with, but you'd be surprised how much beveling and extruding faces can do. 

I also made sure that my model was only quads and triangles, which was made even simpler with ZBrush and the multi-cut tool. Thanks to the multi-cut tool, I was able to keep my shapes pretty even. 

My hope is that this lighting helps you see the details in the box model itself. I tried to show them stacked so that you get a good idea of the depth and the way they look in comparison to the rest of the world.

Also, Fun Fact Time! Did you know that my model was initially really, really, really tiny once I went to my first iteration? That's right, you probably didn't know, unless you happen to be my roommates, my cat Ori, or my family! 

Yes, you heard that right, my model was like, 1/100th the size of one of the little tiles in the Unreal World, so I had to scale it way, way up. I am definitely glad that I grouped all my objects in Maya.

And yes, these boxes do have collision and you CAN climb them! It's actually kind of fun- they make excellent platforms. I just need to learn how to use more blueprints in Unreal so I can make them breakable. Maybe I could put a coin or two inside a few weeks from now, huh?

I really like this angle because you can see some of the cracks I put in on ZBrush! I tried to make these boxes as crate-like as possible! I really think they look so much better than the original proxy from last week. I really hope my work pays off! I really am happy with how they turned out. I hope that Crash Bandicoot is proud! 

I like this shot because you can really see the texture I made. I lovingly painted this myself and even gave it a bit of a stressed wood look. Maybe in the next iteration, I can make some of them different from each other and give some of the textures a moldy or unstable look. I really like that idea! But due to time limits because of the storm and some personal things going on, that was a little out of scope for me in this round! 

I really like how the texture looks on the top, hence all of the angles facing the up-end of the box. I tried to make the planks look displaced (think of how long these boxes have been baking in the desert heat!) and I tried to extra-emphasize it in both the texture and in ZBrush.

So yeah, I've been staring at a lot of boxes this week, whether that be in reference form or in Unreal, Maya, ZBrush, and Substance. I hope you enjoyed looking at my submission this week! 

I hope everyone is able to get power and help their friends and family that were affected by the storm. I hope that everyone is able to do their best!

See you all soon! 

Best Wishes to everyone!