Maya Assessment- The Temple

For the 12th December, just before we break up for Christmas we have been tasked with modeling a temple design based off of another temple model to see how capable we are at modeling and texturing.

 The basic, untextured block form of the temple, showing wireframe.

After most of the blocking out the finer details were added, such as decals and tiles around the roofs.

A near-top view of the temple showing some colourised detailing aspects.

A textured version of the temple with wireframe on. Textured with brick and roof tile images created for this exercise.

Off-front view of the temple. Note set of missing pillars near the front of the building.

Front view of the building with all pillars where they are supposed to be.

A side view of the finished temple.

And a nicely angled view (I think) of the completed building.

All in all I'm quite pleased with the temple, I does manage to look like the original temple we were asked to model (at least to me), and for that reason I am happy. Some of the texturing, I admit, is a little off, perhaps to do with the polygons in which they need to texture although it is probably down to the fact that UV mapping and texturing is not my forte. 

All well, for now I'm rather pleased. 

Fish Animation

An animation task from a couple of weeks ago. The idea was to rig and simply animate a swimming fish. This was done following a Lynda tutorial on basic deformation and rigging in order to teach us the basics of animation.

Ghost fish!

First a skeleton was whipped up and added to the mesh of the fish model.

During the process areas that were not wanted to be effected by the movement of a joint were "painted out" with a Paint Skin Weights Toll with the value set at zero.

When all of that was sorted out the the fish was simply animated by moving and adjusting the joints and setting key frames. Simple as really.

The finished fish with skeleton and rigging in place.

A shot of the fish some point into its animation process.

Quite fun and fairly easy to do. I hope animation in Maya stays this was, but I have a niggling feeling that it won't...

(It also appeared that my fish was just plain white while the one in the tutorial video was a nice blue a yellow colour. A shame really. I wonder why?) 

The Skeleton

With our week's classwork being based on the proportions of the body and how it can be altered to make characters and creatures look more exiting our homework was also suitably body based. We were tasked with studying the skeleton and it's mechanical nature (ie. its joint structure). First off we had to do studies of key areas of the skeleton before finally doing a front, side and back view of a skeleton complete with labels of bones and joints.

The idea of the studies was to sketch and try and learn about key areas of the skeleton using as many sources as possible. It was whilst in the midst of doing these drawings that I found myself thinking that surely all areas of the skeleton are key areas of the skeleton. Surely?

Next was the front, back and side view.

I learned from this exercise that drawing skeletons is not particularly fun. They are very technical and I found it hard to keep the proportions of different parts correct to one another. The rib cage and pelvis being particularly demanding.

All in all it seems like the key lesson here is practice drawing more skeletons Quinn.  

Tank Assignment

With us practicing and trying to understand perspective during class our homework given was suitably perspective based. The idea was to come up with a concept for a tank and to draw it in a perspective view. Easy right? Err. No.

Moodboard. Naturally.

 After shotgunning a moodboard together i got to drawing out some silhouettes of what I hope are fairly interesting looking tanks. I had a lot of fun seeing what shapes did and did not work for tanks and I was quite partial to the idea of a tank with large wheels like the giant land movers you see in large quarries and strip mines. However, number 8 was the one that became my favourite design. I think because it looked long and sleek. 

Note number 3 for obligatory Iron Cross.

With my favourite chosen, I got to work on this:

I used a whole array of photos from tanks to easily, but I think, effectively give it a tanky feel. 

But now the real fun began. I had to draw this tank in front three-quarter view perspective. 

Insectoid Character Design

The task given to us, a couple weeks back, was to come up with an "imaginative concept" for an insect-ish character which could be used to discuss possible art directions in some hypothetical future game. We needed to: compile a moodboard, do some sketches, work up further your three favorite sketches, do a front and left blueprint style view of your chosen character design and then a final three-quarter view piece of your final design. With two weeks to work on it this was our most demanding piece of concept work yet. So without further ado, moodboard:

With the moodboard to help me I got on with some sketches in my sketch book.

After scribbling down a few sketches I was quite clear to me which ones were my favorites. So it was off to Photoshop to see if I could work the concepts further.

God bless layer via copy (my preferred way of producing symmetry in a piece). .

Front and profile mugshot(ish) style pics as required. Getting everything in line was a pain.( Note presence of smaller abdominal claws which were subsequently dropped from the design as I felt that they didn't and much to the creature and just got lost in the thorax detailing.) 

Although I was fond of them all, ever since I did a sketch of 'im in my sketchbook there has always been a special place in my heart for "Super Mantis" (called so because of his size, not as an indication of any super powerful aspects).

I used a leather texture on his shelly part.I don't think it looks half bad really.

The final picture. I must admit that drawing this (not so) little fella was a complete and utter nightmare. Trying to get his thorax and shell look right in a three-quarter view was eye-gougingly

stressful but after a while I finally got what I was looking for. I'm quite happy with how the colouring came out but wish that perhaps I could have made i a little more interesting, replacing the need for black outlines with shade and tone. But, alas, I was quite frankly losing the will to live with this piece after trying to get the line work to look right and am still rather happy with the out come.  

Maya- The Turret

Over the past few week our class work has revolved around building and designing a gun turret which could be used in a game. Using simply square blocks I got to work assembling what eventually became this:

As you can seen not too much detail, at least not at this point but all was well for the time being it did, indeed, look like a turret. I say "all was well" because when I tried to texture it with a basic checker patter there was something definitely off.

Something had gone askew with the polygons inside the turret body warping the appearance of the texturing on the outside. But not all was lost, thankfully there were models provided to work from if we wished so I (unfortunately) had to abandon Warpy McSkewy and set off to work on a pre-provided model.

Our job then was to take the base of the turret and embellish our turrets with panels, rivets, spheres, greebles and nurnies (nurnie , stops being a word very quickly after saying it a few times. nurnie, nurnie, nurnie...). The result: 

 The turret base all kitted out.

The turret base made all lovely and shiny and detaily and what-not.

Achieve with normal and bump mapping.

A long time coming- Some Maya Work

Yes, I know, most of this stuff should have gone up way earlier but now just be thankful that is is finally up. Maya models are (naturally) a huge part of the course, with Maya being the program used by us to make all things three-dimensional ( apart from those basic shapes cobbled together in unity, but I digress). The first honest piece of Maya work I had done was all the way back in week one with a rough model of a grain silo:

There it is, not particularly impressive but cut me some slack it was the first thing I ever properly made in Maya.

The second thing made was for homework that week was a fish we had to make along side a tutorial on Lynda.com. Unfortunately due to some server issues further down the line it seems to have been lost to cybernetic oblivion. I might still be around however, I'll do some fishing around for it and keep you posted (Eh? No. Didn't think so).

Next, along with another tutorial, we had to model a hammer, a crowbar (or pry bar, if you're from the Colonies) and a ladder. This time not only did we need to model them but texture them instead, which was an interesting (and totally not fiddly, frustrating and stressful) experience. The results:

The hammer and crowbar seen here roughly textured but still managing to look like a hammer and crowbar, a result of which I am quite pleased with.

The ladder shown here at it's most flattering angle, the texturing of said ladder if where most of the stress came into play as I found it nearly impossible line the texture of the rungs along the side of the ladder in line with the ladder rungs. As a result the ladder looked a bit off and the result was, quite frankly to say, embarrassing, hence the wonderful front view to hide its and my terrible, terrible shame.   

Next in line (Lord, I hope this post isn't going to be too long) was some furniture work which was, like the work before it, made alongside a Lynda tutorial. It consisted (note consisted) of two chairs, one square and one round and two tables, one square and one round. So, er, yes all of this was completely and irretrievably destroyed (as far as I am concerned) during the same server issues which claimed my poor little fish. It still, however, may be around if I dig deep enough an I will keep you on note about it but thankfully I do have a rendered and textured version of the square chair and square table:

The articles of furniture as seen with wire frame on and untextured.

The textured articles.

Seen here also is my all so beautiful wood grain texture. Made in Photoshop.

There is still more work to go but I think I'll leave it for now with this post. Expect more Maya work to come and I will see what I can do for those thought lost. .

Week 6- Hallowe'en Assignment

With All Hallow's Eve around the corner our homework given was suitably ghoulish. We were tasked with coming up with a scary monster concept. By now I'm sure you know the drill; mood board:

With this this all assembles out of images grabbed from all four corners of Google images I set about to do some concept sketches trying to figure out what I could do.

I briefly entertained the idea of an aristocratic pumpkin guy.

The pumpkin seen here at the top  was a large influence on my final concept.

Scribbling out these concepts gave me a fairly good idea of what I wanted to do.

So in Photoshop I drew out and coloured my final concept:

Wouldn't like to run into him on a dark evening, luckily with that large glowing pumpkin stitched into his torso you'd see him coming from a mile away.

 Lo and behold, the aptly named "Franken-Monster-Pumpkin-Thing". I had a lot of fun with this guy, splicing together a large, ugly Frankenstein's monster-esque thing with a large malevolent jack-o-lantern. Complete, of course, with large hacky-slicey pole arm (all the better to butcher you with, m'dear). 

   

Week 5- Perspective Homework

Perspective is one of those things in art that you can't really be bothered to learn but know that it is of fundamental importance, so you jump into the deep end and just slug along with it. the work for week 5 was two pieces of fairly rudimentary one-point perspective both based on the teachings of two YouTube videos.

The first piece is that of a room drawn using one-point perspective (and as steady a hand as one could muster).

Apologies for the scanning, but I'm sure you get the picture (no pun intended, even if it is a terrible pun...).

The second: a slightly more complicated piece of an abandoned highway on some apocalyptic near-future Earth. This one was done with a ruler and boasts a sprinkling of colour.

A grimy and gritty abandoned highway. I have inked the more important lines but many of the original pencil lines which join up to the vanishing point are still there, I feel it just helps one to see the inner workings of a picture sometimes.

  

Oh, perspective. There to teach us that art is not all just crazy squiggles and vibrant colours, it, too, has a duller side (its own inner chartered accountant, if you will).

Week 4- Gun design Homework

The title says it all. For homework we had to design a futuristic, mechanical projectile firing weapon.
As with all design projects a mood board was required:

Some are real weapons most are from games or concepts which other artists have come up with. With these in tow I was able to get sketching my own ideas down into my sketch pad.

These are the above aforementioned with ideas ranging from quadruple-barreled shotguns to high powered single shot railgun pistols (naturally I also included some doodles of vaguely gun shaped things).

Looking at these sketches I found myself quite partial to the idea of a futuristic break-action quadruple-barreled shotgun. A gun that perhaps one could use to defend your space freighter of boarders and invaders. 

I think I can honestly say that I am most proud of the "space shotgun shell" in the lower left hand corner
(Note slightly boss-eyed top right-hand barrel in the gun's front view...whoops).

  

The finished thing (done in Photoshop if you couldn't guess). I took aspects of some of my other weapons and combined them with the quad-barrel shotty-blam to make a big, hefty, probably-hard-to-hold but powerfully frightening hand cannon of a shotgun.

Week 4- Crusty-Ocean things (Crustaceans)

The task this week, following a couple of tutorial videos by FDZ School of Design on YouTube, was to design three crustacean monster concepts by first designing a silhouette for the creatures and then working it up into something more readable as it were. Naturally, as with any design project, I started with a mood board of many things clawy and crabby:

Gotta love isopod eyes, stare right into your soul...

Using my reference to help me I got to work of three monstrous (or at least monster-ish) silhouettes which ended up being: something crab-ish, something isopod-ish and something lobster-ish.

I like the one on the right, the way his arched hulking back moves down to his twiggy little arms. I feel he is just the right sort of unpleasant.

To finish it all off I through in a splash of colour, numbered them, added a sleek grey background and a few bubbles ( I though this may make it look all good and professional and what not).

The line up completed.

Week 3- Caterpillar Exercise

In class this week our task was to produce a complete painted rendition of a piece of line-work given. This was a caterpillar like alien creature as seen below:

The line art given.

Base colours added with shadows.

The finished piece showing base palette to the right. 

Despite my lack of practice in painting with Photoshop I was fairly happy with the results I got, even if he is, perhaps, a little neon.

The sheet given to help guide our progress (in case you were curious) .