Lighting

Been a while, I know.

I've worked on tweaks here and there.   Started to work on the light system for the Dining Room models. Still need to work on it, of course.

 Moved the lights I'm not sure what I like better...Problem is the table is already so dark, so you can't see on top of it, but I will have candles/fire burning...so hopefully that'll be enough light.

Sunset version.

Napping on a Couch

After a weekend of camping out with my dog (her first Camp out), I'm back into finishing up the modeling.

Learned how to make a couch diamond pattern type of thing. I have to figure out how to "paste" it on a couch model. That's next. :-)

I've also worked on a little bit on a velvet pillow for my Diamond. I'm not sure if I want to do it though...it's a simple thing to do with caustics, but we'll see.

I probably will start working on my Interior of a Cult Church soon...it's REALLY crappy, but the models are nice and simple...it's the textures that sucked! Embarrassing.

Worked on tweaking my Opening for the Demo Reel. I like it. It's very simple.  However, I need to redo the particles again as I need a lot more.

Sorry not much to show, but here's the couch. Most likely it will be a leather or vinyl look, which should be easily achieved by shaders, hopefully!  I probably will work on this a little bit more. I need a little more creases on certain ones, so it's all uniform.  This is going to be a little tedious...as the ones that has the creases were N-gons, while the ones that don't are just quads. So I have to create the lines in order to make the creases in the right spots.

Sink

First week of school is over...and it went by so quick. It hit me a little hard on how much behind I am with the Dollhouse. I'm hoping that I'll have a few more assets by the end of the week. If only I can make my models a little quicker, but the more that I do the models the better they get. I just want to make them look decent so I don't have to worry about fixing any models later on.

I think it looks alright. I know there's the "hole" of the sink that's missing, but I highly doubt that they will be seen when I do the full rendered scene. Worse case, I can just texture it there. I have to sacrifice certain details somewhere.   Will be working on the simple faucet head soon. I found a nice tutorial on it, so I'll be able to make it.

Candles - I've been working on the models, then I realized that something is messed up with the glass holder. Upon looking much closer, I found some edges were messed up. And frankly, I think 6010 faces is too much for a simple model like this.  So I decided to just redo the whole model. I made the original model over a year ago. Much have changed since then, especially now I know more about subD and how to fine tune the edges. After redoing the model, I got it down to 1333 faces - already smoothed. MUCH better. :-)

Still tweaking a little bit more on the glass. I need to find a glass model specifically for references. There's something a little off about it. So it's always a good idea to go back to your models and see if you can reduce the polycount somehow without losing the details.

Onward to roughly about 12-15 more models for the Dollhouse.

More assets:

Coat Rack. I used CV Curves to create the hooks and the "legs".  I did a Paint Effect on curve, and changed the smoothing and size. I found this to be a little easier and forgiving than creating a circle and extrude. It gives a much more softer look to it. While I was working on it, the quads became triangle tessellated after converting the paint effects to polygons. It's okay, but it gave me so many tris, as well as it looked horrible when I tried to smooth it. So, I began a tedious task to remove the offending edges.  I deleted over 500 or so just for the upper hook (made one, then after removing the edges, I copied/rotated to make the 6 hooks).

This morning I went back to work on the legs, and I wanted to do the same technique as the coat hooks. I pulled up the option menu of Paint Effects to Polygon - and lookie here - it says, "Quad Output" - I checked the box. Voila - no more tris.  Dang, that would have been useful last night!

Another simple asset. Reading lamp for the Reading room. Took me a little while to figure out how to get the soft curves on the base of the lamp. I didn't want to use curves and revolve. Instead, I just added edge loops and placed the edges in the right spot to give the curves needed. Converted it to SubD.  The lampshade will be separate as I want to texture that separately, while the base I will use just a simple dark copper-like shader with patina. Think it'll work? :-)

Glass Crazy

I've been working on this piece for a while. It was a side piece that I did a year or two ago. I learned how to make my own glass shader. When I worked on it again for my portfolio review class, something was off. For some reason, the color turned out to be more gray and I couldn't figure out how to get rid of that grey spot as you can see in the first picture.

I was able to download a glass shader that someone created off CreativeCrash.com.  It's OKAY to take someone else's shader, but it's not okay to say, "I wrote this shader. I created it."  You didn't, don't be stupid.  If you tweaked it a lot, changed the colors, here and there, or started from scratch, then you can say "This one is mine."  However, there was still "something's off" with the downloaded shader. It was a Blinn material (#2), and I changed it to Anisotropic material instead (#3).

As you can see, the glass material was too crystal clear for me.  I used to have something that is similar to this - fake glass with a candle in it. So, from what I remember it's not crystal clear.  The anisotropic material is somewhat similar, but the light reflected isn't that smooth.  This is just a very small part of a larger scene.    Still need to push the shaders a little bit more.  I really like my first picture, but I need to figure out why there's a "gray" spot there. It can't be color because the rest of the shaders are on black, and if I turned it black, it will show up black instead. 

Definitely will smooth the model for final rendering, make the candle more wax-like appearance (this is just a placeholder), and work on candle flames. I probably will change the color of the table, I'm not sure. I will also add baseboards (just noticed it now...looks very weird right now). The whole scene will be a lot darker than this. I probably will darken the scene and see how the glass shader reacts.  They will react differently in different light situations

Logo Design

I've designed two logos for my name, and these two videos are what I came up with.
First one that I made a couple years ago.

I know the quality isn't that great - that was when I wasn't too familiar with high quality rendering.   I recently changed it to add my last name as my instructors said, "Who are you? Cher? What's with the first-name-only?" They were right. At the time that I made this ('09), I was playing around with gravity field, and I had no idea on how to add four more letters (my last name) to it.  Secondly, another instructor said, "While I like the idea, I don't like seeing your name disappear at the end. It needs to be prominent".  I haven't touched the logo design until Portfolio review class last quarter. I realize that I don't like it at all, so I decided to scrap the idea.

My second name/logo idea came from helping someone on SimplyMaya.com  and helping figure out what's wrong.  I liked it a lot and decided to use it for mine.  The timing is way off with the glow, and the pass thru of the letters. I still need to work on it and tweak it. Will add "Texture Artist" once I finalize the animation sequence.  It's supposed to be done backward sequence. Since I don't have After Effect, this is what I'll have to put up with now.  It's alright, nothing too dramatic. Simple enough.  If I have to scrap it again, I will.   I do have an idea of changing the particles to add more "pop" to it.  For now, here's my rough copy...bad eh? :-)

Why and Discoveries

Why did I decide to do a blog? To show off my work progress, rants, and share my discoveries during my journey.  I'm working towards my BS degree in Game Art and Design. I already have two degrees from previous colleges - Veterinary Technology and Visual Communications.

I learned about the 3D software, Maya in 2006. I've dabbled a little bit learning about it, and recently started to get more educated and discovered things that I wished I've known for years.  Maya itself is a wonderful and very powerful software, but it can also be very intimidating, because there's endless things you can do with it.

I'm not much of a modeler. I do try my best, but I've discovered that I'm a slow and tedious modeler. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing...we'll see. :-) I really enjoy UV unwrapping though, and I would say that's my favorite thing to do.

My strengths would be textures, dynamics, and particles. There's still a lot that I can learn.  Softwares that I frequently use is Maya 2011 (I could get Maya 2012, however my laptop's graphic card cannot handle Viewpoint 2.0 nor High Quality view, so I'm stuck with Maya 2011 for now) and Photoshop. I know it's a plus to learn how to use Mudbox/Zbrush.  I may learn a lot more as I get further down during my Portfolio weeks, but I highly doubt that I'll ever come out with a great high poly model.  I may implement a high poly model onto a low poly model to give it the details. Character designs and creation are my weakest, not my style.

Things I've learned so far:

• Google Images is your best friend
• Create your own library of textures and references - no matter how small. You'll find inspiration all the time.  I have around 2 GB of stuff. Organize your library, and make backups.
• BACKUP your work!  Out of all my years at school, I've only lost one, but very important to me, file that I wished I backed up.  I *can* recreate it, but it took me a long time. Why didn't I back up? Well, I had a thumb drive that fried on me - backed up everything else EXCEPT for that one damn file. 
• Learn EVERYTHING you can, and implement it! 
• Accept criticism as a good thing. There will ALWAYS be someone that hates your work and will rip it apart. If you see a lot of criticism from people that are saying the same thing - fix it, it's obvious something is wrong. 
• Your teachers can be your greatest assets.
• There are no stupid questions - except perhaps this one: "I pressed a button, and my vertexes turned into different colors and when I moved one, all the others moved with it! I'm so upset!!" - SERIOUSLY DUDE?! It's called Soft Selection and you pressed 'b'. This is a great tool to use, and I've used it frequently. I've seen this questions asked SO many times on various forums, especially new people who are lazy to use the search button. 
• F1 is your friend
• Use search buttons on forums.
• I talk too much.

I've said enough here to start off with and during my progress more and more tips/tricks will be revealed.