Posts : 205 Upvotes: : 1 Join date : 2012-02-01 Age : 30 Location : Australia
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Wed Feb 19, 2014 1:31 pm
Ah, I see. Still I'm sure a pirate would like to get ahold of those barrels.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Fri Apr 04, 2014 4:33 am
Group project sees me building a celestial calendar like the one in Avatar: The Last Airbender. This is what I've made so far.
Like in the show, the sun and moon are mounted on these circular rails, which continue under the floor as seen in picture 2. The lighting in the room will come from the sun and moon, with the sun giving an orange glow and the moon a bright, pale blue. The room will be set to dusk to showcase both sun and moon, and to juxtapose the time of day outside the room, which will be dawn.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Tue Jun 10, 2014 4:13 am
Long overdue, but here are some pictures of what I accomplished for my calendar room.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Fri Jun 27, 2014 3:13 pm
Massive update, considering how much I've been doing in college. Here I will show you what I achieved after the calendar room.
We did character design. In this module we took orthographics of a viking character base (like the ones from How to Train your Dragon) and used them to build a model of the viking. Here I learned about how to eliminate triangles to leave only quads behind (which is better for some reason that's probably justified) and how to model body parts. After we finished, we had a choice: either add details to our viking model to make a different character, or partner up and transform the fat viking into a more anatomically realistic superhero character and put them together in something like a battle pose.
I chose the latter. Superheroes are cool. I'm not really into superheroes, unless they are Iron Man, and luckily I already had ideas for such a character, created for a superhero roleplay most of us would have heard about. I just never got to use them. My partner eventually decided to make his character into Frieza from Dragonball Z.
After five minutes of trying to fit the awful, inefficient topology of my viking to a set of orthographics I gave up and found a channel with virtually every tutorial I needed to make these characters. Several weeks of work later, I can present this to you.
Render shot.
Explanation dump:
This is Lucia and Darcy, who I originally created in the anime face generator, so you can imagine how detailed and relatable their personalities were like at time of conception. Their black and white duality was pretty much all there was to them, in a metaphorical sense too, I guess. Now that I've given them more thought, that has improved and they're even in a roleplay now. Yay. Lucia's power is photokinesis, so she can produce light and launch it off herself a bit like firebending. Intense use of the power can cause heating which is why she has an orange flame motif. Even now I still doubt that I can properly explain how her power to shoot light at things even causes damage, considering that the only way to do so is to give it the power of a proper laser weapon, but that kind of burning damage is only achieved when it's used with intensity; how does it cause damage otherwise? I don't know, it's been done before in other stories. She can also partially transmute into light, allowing her to move at light speed in a straight line until she bounces off something to change her course.
Darcy's power is umbrokinesis, or the ability to control shadows. This is even more of a stretch than Lucia's power because the shade has hurt nobody, ever. I can explain it, however. If you've seen Howl's Moving Castle or Spirited Away you'll probably have seen a kind of dark blob that can shapeshift. This is what I imagine Darcy's shadow powers are like. Regardless she uses it to form physical, shadowy constructs from nearby and attacks with them, somewhat like waterbending since this is Avatar now I guess. Intense use of the power causes rapid cooling, hence the ice motif. She can partially melt into these shadows and weave between shady areas, matching Lucia's speed.
I realise now that it's probably better that I base these powers off magic, rather than science, which is the usual route. These powers have no place in any scientific medium but then neither are most superpowers.
Turnaround.
I actually had to render this out twice, because the light source in Lucia's hand stayed put while everything else turned around.
Then we have the joint efforts. The original idea for the superhero guys was to put them together in something like this.
However we had very little time to put them together in a scene and pose them, and three quarters of that time was spent trying to get them up to the right scale in one piece. So we settled for basic poses - me keeping the poses I did for the turnaround and my partner posing Frieza to look like he's about to summon some huge power but it looks like he's very startled
So there you have it. Character module has finally ended (finally for me, since I needed a week's extension to complete the task others already had), and now we're moving onto animation. We've gone over the 12 basic principles of animation and we were practising them this week. This is what I've done so far.
There was supposed to be a 5th cannon video with a plank of wood, but I didn't finish that. I would also have done a playblast of all five objects shooting out at once, because that looks funny.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Fri Jul 25, 2014 7:42 am
Hobo animation! Currently my best animation (because it has sound), this was a quick project we did for the animation course, starting last week. Rendering was difficult, but it's up. In the background is a stop sign asset that I did a while ago. I kind of like it, because I set up the texture psd to have layers with different signs, including blue STOP, red STOP, and red SOP, which got a few laughs.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Thu Aug 21, 2014 8:02 am
More updates! This is my best animation to date. The assignment was to take a clip of audio from a movie, or show, or whatever. I chose one of Cr1TiKaL's videos, and animated this scenario to it. My teacher was impressed with my work, and I'm incredibly satisfied with it. If I could change anything, I'd stop the Norman rig from looking so static at the end, but that's minor compared to what I had to do to complete this.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Thu Aug 28, 2014 9:29 am
In college we've moved onto lighting and compositing, so we're now making some detailed models to use in an upcoming assignment.
Can anyone tell me what I'm modelling here? If you can, you get a complimentary internet cookie, or something, idk.
DRaGO Bronze Spice
Posts : 1420 Upvotes: : 39 Join date : 2011-08-10 Age : 27 Location : Standing over Sargas Ruk's body.
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Thu Aug 28, 2014 3:48 pm
...is it a roomba?
Kitty Silver Spice
Posts : 3148 Upvotes: : 58 Join date : 2010-09-11 Age : 27 Location : Waterfall, Underground
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Thu Aug 28, 2014 4:26 pm
Not gonna lie, that was my guess too. >_>
Sean1M Pink Spice
Posts : 205 Upvotes: : 1 Join date : 2012-02-01 Age : 30 Location : Australia
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Thu Aug 28, 2014 6:56 pm
Is it a health pack filled with medical nanobots that are secretly planing to bypass their programming and take over the world?
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Fri Aug 29, 2014 2:50 pm
Sean1M wrote:
Is it a health pack filled with medical nanobots that are secretly planing to bypass their programming and take over the world?
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Thu Sep 04, 2014 2:45 am
Well, no, it's not a roomba.
How about now?
DRaGO Bronze Spice
Posts : 1420 Upvotes: : 39 Join date : 2011-08-10 Age : 27 Location : Standing over Sargas Ruk's body.
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Thu Sep 04, 2014 6:15 am
It's a... cat scratching post?
Kitty Silver Spice
Posts : 3148 Upvotes: : 58 Join date : 2010-09-11 Age : 27 Location : Waterfall, Underground
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Thu Sep 04, 2014 12:32 pm
Is it some kind of robot? you mentioned to me that you were thinking of remaking that robot dog you made so maybe it's that?
ReFrostE Silver Spice
Posts : 3831 Upvotes: : 14 Join date : 2010-08-27 Age : 1014 Location : Fuck if I know
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Thu Sep 04, 2014 5:27 pm
It looks like ROB
Sean1M Pink Spice
Posts : 205 Upvotes: : 1 Join date : 2012-02-01 Age : 30 Location : Australia
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Thu Sep 04, 2014 5:30 pm
Yeah I think its ROB.
Or I suppose it could be some kind of space station core... Oh who am I kidding we all know its ROB.
DRaGO Bronze Spice
Posts : 1420 Upvotes: : 39 Join date : 2011-08-10 Age : 27 Location : Standing over Sargas Ruk's body.
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Fri Sep 05, 2014 12:21 am
Sean1M wrote:
Yeah I think its ROB.
Or I suppose it could be some kind of space station core... Oh who am I kidding we all know its ROB.
Biotch, I can believe it's a scratching post if I want to! >:U
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Fri Sep 05, 2014 9:36 am
Frostie is right! It is an R.O.B.
She gets the internet cookie, I guess.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Fri Sep 19, 2014 2:31 am
Guys I made a thing with the R.O.B.
Compositing is hard when you don't know what to do.
I'm pretty proud of the modelling, though, since I did it all by eye and a lot of google images.
Progression video! Expect to see this as a suggestion next time you watch a Game of Thrones VFX breakdown.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Fri Mar 13, 2015 8:49 am
Wow I haven't put anything here in ages. I guess I should be making more things. In the meantime, here's a thing.
This is a scene I've been working on for a few days when I had maybe two or three weeks to make a start on it? Either way I ended up perfecting it in the time I was given, so I probably won't learn to get a move on. I doodled the basic concept on a sheet of paper and modeled it pretty well. To my own credit here, all the textures I made by myself from scratch, and I learned several cool Photoshop skills like using layer masks, alpha channels, and lots and lots of clouds. Seriously, 9 out of 10 texture tutorials use clouds or difference clouds.
I'm also really proud of the shaders used, too. Notice how the terrain is primarily a dark rock texture, but blends into three other textures in certain areas (lava texture around the crystals, lighter rock around the lava channel, and a brown-ish rock around the volcano). That's all one shader and I used vertex painting to bring out the different textures in different areas. Here's the shader.
The crystals and the lava don't have anything impressive, just scrolling textures. The lava is especially good in this regard because I modelled it to follow the path, so the lava actually flows in the direction of the channel.
So I guess I can tick environment design on my list of skills I kinda-sorta have. Still want to achieve character artist, though.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Thu Apr 02, 2015 2:29 am
So on the art thread I've posted a top-down sketch of an environment I'm making for college. That thread gets far more attention so the image is bound to be buried but I can't be stuffed putting it here too so I'm just going to assume you've seen it or something.
With that in mind, here's the current greybox of the level.
My teacher told me that, despite thinking that it was a good idea at first, using the scenery at the outer edges of the map as an actual part of the level used for platforming would be too ambitious and I wouldn't have time to put all the detail into it. So the island at the centre with the big grey crater will be the only playable area.
That blue smudge towards the left of the crater is a pair of towers, with one being modelled off something I built in Terraria (but only because I thought of it ages ago in high school). Now I'm making it. It's good to have this part of my game design career where what I make is entirely up to me, whereas in the actual industry, I'll be making hyper-realistic, super MLG guns for COD 29 or something. It's not that creativity-driven.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Fri Apr 17, 2015 5:35 am
NEXT GEN CUBE, BEYOND NEXT GEN - CROSS-GEN
So we had this random pipeline today where we modelled these tiles, exported them to Zbrush, then put them through the ringer that is Xnormal and then finally Photoshop with dDo. The guy who came in to show us this described the finished result as 'boner-worthy'.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Fri May 01, 2015 8:39 am
Alright, assignment completed. I can now do roleplay posts and work on finishing Vegas.
This is the flythrough for my game level. I ended up cutting a LOT of content from the original plan (huge, arching ice structures and the like) and settled for a flat, vast scene instead of a small, grand one. The tower changed, mostly in brick texture. This was the most work I've done in UE4 so next time I do a level I should have a pretty good handle on it. I also need to streamline my workflow, and I think improving my drawing skills and not knocking off to play Warframe late at night could really help.
Here is the image I used for the sky. It's important because I made it myself. If you want to use a royalty-free star field and don't want to go look for one, make your own why not just use one from someone you know? For the record I made many of the textures in this level, many of those from scratch. I'm just more proud of the star field.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Wed May 20, 2015 6:29 am
I'm currently working on the character module for this year, which is like the one from last year but this time I know what I'm doing. In the meantime, I've created a Sketchfab account and I'm uploading some of my models there so I can build a portfolio. So far I've only uploaded the volcanic scene at I posted about on the previous page, but instead of viewing it in teeny-weeny-eyestrain-O-vision you can actually turn it around and look at it.
Here is the link to my account: https://sketchfab.com/brendanmicallef
There's an embed tool for BBcode, however it doesn't seem to work here so I can't stick the widget here.
Potatrobot Bronze Spice
Posts : 1601 Upvotes: : 21 Join date : 2010-11-19 Age : 29 Location : Triangulating...
Subject: Re: Tate's renders -- Now in college Fri Jun 05, 2015 8:34 am
WIP shot of my current college assignment, which is basically a repeat of the character module I did last year. This time we have a better workflow and know how to do more things, like not modelling detailed bodies that will be hidden behind clothes and skinning them anyway. I'm looking at you, me.
From thumbnail to concept to model with flat colours, this is Angelina, a character I have planned for the sequel to the Pokemon RP I've been hosting for over three years. The face in the concept image is really creepy because it's flat and looks like Marilyn Manson, but that's got nothing on the modelled face, which looks like it popped right out of the uncanny valley. I'm hoping against hope that with a textured face and eyebrows it will look better, because this is my first time doing a realistic human head; the characters I did last year were based off an anime aesthetic.
Now comes the part where I texture, rig, skin, animate and export the character to game engine.