Visual Development Project

  My VSD class was quite a fun and rewarding experience. When I took Shading and Lighting, I enjoyed that class a lot more than I thought I was going to, but this class was even more enjoyable and took things to a whole new level.
  The project we were to complete comprised of multiple stages, all of which was an enlightening, unique experience. First we had to set up the placement and lighting of a one shot render scene for wk 1. We did this kind of stuff a lot in Shading and Lighting. We also were required to UV the scraper and the pulley. The instructor I had for this class was great. He gave some great tips for UVing and showed us some great tools that really helped along my UVing skills.

Lighting and Placement Render

  Week 2 is when things got really interesting. I started texturing the materials I UVed in Photoshop. This was a completely brand new experience for me. I didn't even know you could do all that in Photoshop. Using the UVs I laid out for the scraper and the pulley, I created my own textures. I was very excited about how these turned out.

Pulley Texture

 The remainder of the course was spent refining the textures in the scene, trying to match the reference as close as possible while bringing our own creativity to the table. We were required to use the MILA material in Maya for texturing. In Shading and Lighting we were using Mia Material X. I find that the MILA is so much better. It has far more capabilities that the material x. There's just no end to what you can create. I was able to add reflections, dirt, and paint, create metal, glass and even add a bevel to the glass.

Diffuse Render

Glossy Render

Layered Render

Overall, I really enjoyed this class. I learned a lot and had a lot fun while doing it. I even came out of this class enjoying UVing more and I had a great instructor that was very informative. Even though I want to animate for a living I don't think I would like  to do more of this kind of work in the future.

Transmission Render (Final)

Character Design and Creation Finale

   I know it's been a while since a wrote in my blog so I want to tell about my latest experience. This  was the 4th week of my Character Design and Creation class. This had to be the toughest experience with a class I had yet. Our final project for CDC encompassed  everything we and learned in modeling up to this point and then some. From modeling in Maya, to sculpting in Z Brush, everything was covered. We had to model an ear, sculpt hair for models from the previous weeks, layout UVs and bake normal maps. We even had to do a resurfacing of our Z Brush sculpts in Maya, something I had never done before.

   Completing all these tasks on satisfactory level was a tall order but for the most part, I think it worked out OK. My ear build came out great I was very proud of the way it turned out. I think I also did good on the hair sculpts. Especially considering this was the first time I had tried my hand at sculpting hair in Z brush. I do think the hair breakdown I did before hand helped considerably to determine which parts of the hair needed separation.

Hair breakdown establishing parts and flow.

    I was really surprised by how well my UVs and normal maps came out. They were mountains better than any I had done previously. Unfortunately, they didn't work out completely. See, I had two very good normal maps for my resurfaced heads but I could only get one to load at a time. When I bake one map it comes out perfectly, but when I go to bake a new one, that one ends up replacing the other. It's like they both can't exist separately. I don't know why this happens. I ended up baking the second map again while my first map texture was still on the model in the view port. It showed up then. I took a screenshot of it as proof of both my textures knowing full well that I would lose the first one the next time  I reloaded the Maya file. If I could do it differently, I would spend more time on trying to figure out what's going on, maybe reach out for help from an instructor.

This is the screen shot I took of my final with both normal maps loaded.

   I another thing that didn't come out that great was my second resurface. I think a big reason why the resurfaces did not come out as good as I hoped was largely due to an issue I was having with the edge looping feature of the quad draw tool. I managed the  first head ok but the second suffered more because of it. I adapted to the situation by going in and out of quad draw using the edge loop manually but it wasn't as efficient  and very frustrating.

Troubleshooting the edge looping problem in Quad Draw

  I very proud of what I have accomplished with this assignment. I do wish my resurfacing topology came out better and my normal maps would have loaded properly but overall I think I did very well. I struggled a lot this month, but in the end I feel like I overcame all that and learned so much in the process and that makes me feel good.

Wk 4 Character Design

   This week in Art Ⅱ was all about character design. This is a topic that is near and dear to me. It's been sort of like a hobby of mine to design characters and come up with plots for a long time so I really enjoyed the material we had to do for this week. We was tasked with the job of creating a character but what I found so great about doing this was that it wasn't just about coming up with a design for the character but also a background for them. I thought that  including that part the character was pivotal because it plays such a important role in who that character is and why he is.

   The assignments consisted of many useful lessons ranging from the character description to concepts  to canon changes and expressions. What I found most  rewarding about these assignments is how they can help to shape your character. Once you decided which concept you wanted to go with and finalized the character's look you had to complete a turn-around sheet. This is an important sheet to have so all involved with your character's creation can see every inch of your design. I ended up very pleased with the result.

    The next Competency assignment was to create a construction shape form and to figure out the measurements for that form. This is done in order to help you successfully maintain good proportion and accuracy of your character. This assignment was also meant to serve as assistance in your last Competency. This was to create three proportionally correct, dynamic silhouetted staging poses.

I really feel like got a lot out this class and really enjoyed it. I feel my understanding of art fundamentals and their importance to computer animation have never been more clearer. This class was a refreshing reminder of why I fell in love with art in the first place.

WK 3: Animal Anatomy and Texture

 I know I'm a little late getting this post up but I've really busy. Always, last week in Art Ⅱ was really fun. We explored animal anatomy and texture by experimenting with two animals in particular and combining  them into a brand new one. Mostly all the assignments this was centered around this objective. The two animals I decided to combine were a peacock and a rabbit.

   We had to do several assignments in preparation for the creation of this new animal, ranging from animal studies to texture studies to image references but the most beneficial and interesting by far was coming up with creature concepts. The goal of this assignment was to come up with three very varied creature designs for your combined animal. This was great lesson because it reinforced the importance of the exploration of one's subject matter. Not limiting yourself to  just your initial concept can lead to unexpected, surprising results, and it did.

After we came up three creature concepts, the next step was for us to decide on one to complete with a full range of value, a skeletal study and a construction shapes form. I ended up choosing the concept on the top left.

Ultimately, this was a great week. I learned a lot about the mechanics of animals a why it is so important to remember when designing creatures. There are a lot of real world factors that I would have never considered had not learned this lesson in animal anatomy and texture.

Wk 2 Human Anatomy and Proportion

  This week in Art 2 we  learned about how to illustrate the body and it's parts accurately. As someone you has somewhat struggled with proportions in my drawings I thought this was a extremely helpful topic to learn. One of the most helpful techniques I learned was gesture drawing. I had never done this before  and it took me a while to get the hang of it but I find that it really helps to accurately established proportions. Normally when I  draw, I tackle the body little by little, causing me to measure the length of certain parts of the body differently. What gesture drawing does is allow me to layout a blueprint of the whole body before getting too far in my drawing and adding detail.

 The next assignment I did reinforced our knowledge of gesture drawing but introduced construction shape drawing. This technique adds depth and volume to the gesture by using shapes.  For this assignment we were to do a gesture image, construction shape image, and a refined rendering with a full range of value. The proportions on this drawing came out perfectly thanks to the gesture and construction shape phases that was done before the refined form.

 
   The final assignment I want to talk about was to gesture three sequential poses of one action showing clear weight and anticipation. Successful completion of this assignment meant that you were able to realistically convey weight and anticipation on paper. I personally think I nailed this assignment.

Overall, I got a lot out of this week's lesson. I intend to keep using what I learned from this week, onward to continue to improve upon my human anatomy.

Fundamentals of Art 2: Wk 1 Atmospheric Perspective

   I have finished my first week in Fundamentals of Art 2. This week I learned all about atmospheric perspective and relearned the importance  of linear perspective. When I learned about linear perspective back in Art 1, it wasn't my favorite exercise to work on. I just wasn't that into the analytical approach that comes with understanding 1, 2, and 3 point perspective. However, I enjoyed learning about atmospheric perspective a lot more.  I've always been really good at effectively using value to portray a sense of depth in my work but I never really utilized or even knew about the various ways you can create depth such as using line weight, placement, color, and saturation.

   An assignment that I really learn a lot from about creating depth was this one. We were instructed to create depth by using only line weight. I didn't know that line alone could be so effective at simulating depth.
 

  This next assignment I really enjoyed. Our task was to manipulate images in Photoshop in order to create depth by using placement, scale, contrast and saturation. This assignment really expanded my knowledge of Photoshop and reinforced the importance of placement and scale in regards to depth.
The last assignment I wanted to talk about was supposed to encompass what we learned about both atmospheric perspective and linear perspective. I was pretty please with the work I produced.

Atmospheric perspective wise, I thought it was perfect but in hindsight, I do think this image was sorta lacking in the linear department. Then again, linear perspective was never my strong point. Always, I really learned a lot from my first week in Art 2 and look forward to what I will learn in the weeks to come.

Full Sail Ahead: My Artistic Journey

   This is my fourth and final week of Model Creation. For my final project students are to create three additional props for a total of thirteen from the previous weeks. Afterward, we must construct an interesting looking scene featuring all thirteen props. These props should be designed utilizing the workflow from last week. A workflow consisting of building models in 3 mode, laying out the UVs, bringing them into Z Brush for a sculpting pass and then bringing them back into Maya for the bake and generation of a normal map.

    Ultimately, I think I've shown quite a bit of improvement when it comes to baking this week as opposed to last week. I believe this was mainly due to a better understanding of UV layout. I confess that I left 3DF without proper understanding of UV layout.  Last week I had  some problems baking my textures from Z Brush onto my models. I've come to realize that this most likely happened because I used the default UVs instead of laying them out myself. This week, however, I did my own Uvs and had much better results when baking. My textures actually showed up this time!

  I know these results are not perfect. I apparently haven't mastered baking or UVing  yet but this is definitively progress. I have learned so much since 3DF, It's hard to believe I've come so far in so little time. I feel that what I learned about UVs and Z Brush will be essential for when I inevitably need to apply textures to my models and I'm exciting to learn more on my journey.