starting the next project.

I've started planning for the main project, i decided to make an in engine version of this place.
Im using Source/orangebox engine for this because i dont have UT3, also i think making this sort of thing would be easier, the most annoying part is importing things but i found an application that makes that part easier.

its called broadway tower, its a little watch tower built not far from my house, i thought it would be an interesting idea to tackle, apparantly on a day of clear weather, thirteen counties of England can be seen from the top of the tower, including across the Severn Valley to the Welsh mountains.
i havent been there in a while but im gonna go over christmas to take a bunch of pictures. Ill also try and take a panoramic photo for the skybox wich will be the first part of the project ill do, (ill also try to make it a HDR skybox wich means ill have to edit the panoramic to fit with these templates.

The above picture is an example i found of the different exposures i need to have for each image in the template. The example image is from a tutorial i am using to build the HDR skybox.

An HDR (High Dynamic Range) skybox is a 32-bit floating-point format, saved by an application that supports HDR as a Portable Float Map. It contains enough information to allow the resulting texture to change considerably across different exposures.

I have also downloaded a program called HDR shop that lets you easily combine images at different exposures and export them as one .PFM file

hooray

almost done, i know the face sucks but i dont have time to start over on it, at least all the shaders are working correctly.

bit of progress

finally got the mudbox baking process down after some difficulty with uvs and stuff, starting to look ok,

the diffuse is a blank colour, just has a normal and ao, i made a height map too but it doesnt work right.

my eyes hurt

i was checking out blogs and somebody linked to the shader im using, (i cant remember whos blog it was sry) david chuengs blogTHANKS


its got Diffuse, normal, specular, reflection, gloss, ambient occlusion, and two cubemaps that i didnt make,

the gloss map is just the diffuse greyscaled and i just used a high pass filter to make the ambient occlusion.

the shader i used also has a glow map section so you can make decent looking self illumination, i might try it on the brake lights or something.

over the triangle limit :L

after lots of deleting verts im still at about 9500 triangles, nm

bit of progress

heres my low poly (its about 8000 triangles i think)
getting close to finising this now, just need to trim some traingles so i have enough for the hat + hands. gonna play around with mudbox, need to quickly get to grips with it so i can finish this.

character project getting a move on.

Decided to do the WW1 project but not make an infantryman, i wanted to do a more colourful character so i checked out ww1 french troops, foreign legionaires and scottish blackwatch, eventually i chose a Don cossack, officer from the red army.

did this yesterday

thanks to carter for helping me out with the normal

W.I.P Van

wireframe

render

deer thing

New painting picture thing

Amusing image

grody

Unwittingly he trained a dolphin to kill the president of the united states

This is supposed to be for that pub interior thing, doing this i came to the realisation of that im shite at perspective, i couldn't remember the perspective 3 point whatvers and just sorta winged it, i guess if you where making a map and did a detailed colour painting of part of it you wouldn't need to worry so much about accurate perspective anyway as making the model in 3d would do it for you, looks okay but it took too much time for such little payoff, i also gotta work on colouring and lighting when using photoshop, its easy to forget about things like lighting direction when your dodging and burning away at stuff then going crazy with the blur tool. yes i did cheat on half the textures in this scene,

I feel Obliged to make a blogger post.

I duno why i neglect this thing so much, i guess its because i don't really like writing. It probably comes off to other people that i don't have an opinion or don't care about the various stuff were supposed to be writing about but thats not entirely true.
I've been reflecting on the past year and a half this afternoon and thinking about what i've achieved as an artist. I came to game art with .. some enthuisasm but skeptical on how this degree will actually help me in any way to earn a living. I learn't about the good possibility of getting a job in the game industry wich we all hope for and how enjoyable this would be, i was pretty glad i took the opportunity and gave up everything to come here.
I started off pretty well, learnt 3dsmax pretty rapidly and banged out some models, also my neglected 2d skill started to return i even felt like i was improving, learning to apply my skill properly was something that a school art environment never tought me.
The first year had its ups an downs but i felt i did pretty good in the end. I know im not like Teh Best Evar, but im good enough and thats fine with me.
Underlining this optimism i kept getting a nagging feeling that a job in the games industry will be a lot harder to achieve than we were initially told, but no matter i'll just try even harder.. or NOT
For some reason i fell way behind in the second year, i always seem to start out okay then make some sort of mistake and end up playing catch up the rest of the year, i think i was just lazy although at the time it felt like i just couldn't make my hands work when trying to draw, i guess i just lost the excitment of doing it and my creativity suffered.
Then i got like an F in one of the assesments and got threatened that i would have to leave the course..
UH-OHs. It felt like i was just crap at the course and there was no chance of me getting a job. But what could i do? i wasn't going to quit now and work at morrisons thats just not me, so i decided to stick at it, I still don't understand why i got an F in my 3d work as it was the same quality as some other peoples D/C grades, i never liked that old 3d teacher dude. never mind, water under the bridge and all that, it was time to improve somehow.
I got to modelling and caught up with my 3d. i also attended (most) of the 2d classes and got to drawing, i lacked a tablet thing but i was able to borrow one and got some photoshops out.
few weeks later and we started our group project wich was awesome. I was givin a clear outline of what to do and got on with it.
I feel i have achieved quite a bit, i'm a competent modeller and if you think im crap you just haven't seen enough of my work, i learn't lots more 2d when sketching i actually feel the benifit of the life drawing, my anatomy has improved tenfold. My photoshop skill was non existant last year, and now i can make some nice shiny pieces, my colour-blindness can get in the way but i like being a left handed, colour-blind artist.

I think im sorta safe and won't be booted out of the course.. i have this habit of not knowing about big pieces of work i was supposed to do and i hope nothing like that's gonna creep up on me but i think im okay.
If i was truly in danger of a fail then micheal powell should of said SOMETHING, they were all RWAAR DEFFO GONNA FAIL, now none of the course leaders seem to remember any of that and just ignore me and my work even in the presentation micheal powell just wrote stuff in his book and missed all my good pieces of work while chris went to get coffee, i just took it as im safe and what im doing is enough to pass the year. I worked hard to catch up and now i can finally draw becasue i want to and have FUN doing it.. HOORAY

Uh oh time to go my food is ready cant fix spelling mistakes or proof read this, i miss having food cooked FOR YOU haha amazing, anyway HERE YOU GO I WROTE SOMETHING THORN IN MY SIDE BLOGGER.

i was bored

Sea, Air yaught?