2012 now eh, years go by fast

Updated soldier, looking forward to using these guys in the final year project remake, can't call it Inception any more because it would only confuse people.

I have retextured my soldier from Inception and am making a new version of the animation, the old model had about 20 different textures for each part of the body which was terrible and incredibly wasteful, this new texture is one for the entire model same way I did the cowboy and bandito.



Also I went over the model, this model has a third of the number of polys that the previous had so I am pleased with how much I have improved over the past year.

Bandito finished!

Finished my bandito, removed the cowboys jacket because I didn't like it, now all that is left is for me to make the town they will have a stand-off in!

I have also started working on remaking the spaceship from my final year project, I want to make it really high quality so the whole ship will have the same amount of detail as the front part.

It's been a while, project was finished, I got 70% for it and finished my degree with a 2:1(Hons) so not too bad.

I've decided I need to keep this up more often with my latest projects so:

This is a video of my latest showreel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEyiCvuCZQ4

I'm going to do an interesting video for the opening text for each showreel from now on.

I've decided to re-do my George and the Dragon animation so I've made the shield and sword so far, trying to go for a grittier feel.

I made a cowboy, I need to make a Mexican bandito and I'll have a stand-off animation which should be fun.

Finally I'm trying to script up a short film to make to keep me busy in these times of hardship and unemployment.

This is a final render of my snow scene, looks pretty nice I think so just need to render out all the outside scenes like this.

Upgraded interior, I have textured most of it, still need to do the doorways, make a door at the end of the hall and I need to make a second room off to the side.

I have made most of my interior now and the majority of my outside scene animation is finished so I shall be able to start animating the inside scenes soon.

I have finally begun animating the outdoor scene and I've been having alot of memory exception errors, fortunately it turns out that while the view is this far from the soldiers you can't tell that they are not mesh smoothed so I wont render them smoothed until the closer scenes when the dropship isn't in it taking up memory. Also I got rid of the repelling as it was just becoming too difficult to do so now the ship just lets them jump out.

Animation of the next stage of scene 1 is done now, I'm beginning animation on the outside scene

I have finished my outdoor scene now finally, the door is yet to be done but I'm still thinking about how to do it, once that is done I will start animating.

In this picture the fog has been turned down as you aren't able to see the whole base so clearly with it up

This is the finished dropship, I would like to model the inside of the cockpit but it just isn't realistic in the time I have left.

This is my current progress with the dropship, I still need to add small details to it but I am quite pleased with how it is looking so far.

Dropship Tail Test

This is a particle test to see how the dropship trail will look when it is flying

I have finished most of my dropship model, this just needs a few bits of detail adding to it and then it'll be ready for texturing, hopefully by friday and can start some real animation.

This is a test render of an idle stance with the gun to see how it fits in the arms, I also made the arms longer because I wasn't satisfied with them and the hands bigger so I am also testing this.

I wasn't satisfied with the old gun so I decided to make a new one and this is what I came up with.

It's also considerably less faces than the previous model which is good for frame rates.

I have spent the last day testing my rig to make sure the character will distort correctly without any odd faces showing through or shrinkage on the limbs, everything seems to be in working order although I've had to repaint a few things.

Updated Snow Scene

I updated the snow scene with faster moving snow particles moving at a 35 degree angle against the existing snow. The result does look quite good but I don't want to end up with anymore particles than this now so I will consider this nearly finished.

Animation Test

This was a test of the rig now that has all been paint weighted, I'm fairly satisfied with the result, the legs are snapping too much when they come to the fully stretch position but it's too late to fix that now; I will have to use fancy camerawork to avoid it.

I need to move the torso more whilst moving, it looks too wooden currently.

Character Rig

I have decided as the deadline is getting far too close to start animating asap so I will finish the ground scene and then start doing animation for it so it can be rendered before the project is fully finished. I was testing the arms and how the shoulder pads looked with this animation.

Snow test

I would consider this animation test of the snow a rousing success, it looks pretty nice if I do say so myself. I may add another load of particles moving at a different angle of about 15 degrees against the existing snow to make it seem more realistic since its been snowing here alot lately and I've been able to watch it, it flies all over the place.

Particle snow test

The was a test making snow using particles to see what it may look like in the final animation, there are less snow flakes than originally planned so the final animation may have more but that will most likely make it longer to render.

Scene 2 Render

I tried a second render but this time added fog and made the camera lower down to test it and I'm pretty pleased with the result however this fog is way thicker than I'd like to have, just put it this thick because the scene isn't finished yet and needs more stuff.

Scene 2 Test Render

This is a test render of the ground scene, the snow was added in afterward on photoshop however when I make the proper animation I will have snow falling so I did this to see how it would look.

I have made the spaceship considerably more detailed than the last time it was shown and I think I will keep it to this standard now, the next thing I will work on is the ground scene.

Spaceship scene 1 test

This is a test render of the first scene without shadows, after making this I've realised the transition to the docking bay doors is too fast and I may zoom to the doors instead or slow down the ship speed, also more detail is needed in the front parts of the ship but overall I am quite pleased with how it is looking.

The motion blur also worked quite well but the glow on the antennas I thought needs reducing.

Spaceship

I have continued with the creation of my spaceship, I still have more detail to add and the textures are only temporary but I'll make proper ones soon.

So I got a picture of Brandon Routh (his face was exactly the same scale as my models face) and made it into a texture, couldn't have worked better, it looks awesome now.

Also ignore the flipped text on the chest, that was just because I was messing about.

Soldier completed

I have finished texturing the soldier and this is how he looks, the face texture isn't really properly finished but it shouldn't take long, the next stage is to texture the gun now.

I have decided to remove the shorts and revert to the same type of legs as the original model, I just could not get them to look right with the textures, most of the model is textured now and some have placemark textures so its progressing quite well.

Specular and bump mapping

I rendered this video out to see how the shine on the armour was looking and also to see the specular and bump mapping detail and how that will appear in the final animation.

I have also been doing research on other ship models to see how I should expand my own and I hit a wall so I have found two that I will try and follow a similar layout.

It took me all night but I finally made some textures I am pleased with, alot of the model is still untextured but the metal I am very satisfied with, its a kind of camo you would expect for troops who would often operate missions in metal enviornments such as spaceships.

Texturing

I started texturing the model as can be seen on the shin pads, shoulder pads and knee pads, I wanted to go for a worn rusty metal however now I have seen it I have decided it's not what I want, this is supposed to be the special forces in the future so it doesn't really make sense that their armour is in such disrepair as if they have been in a war for decades.

Detailed soldier

I have added alot of minor details to the soldier and I'm pretty happy with the result so I think I will start texturing next.

Equipment

I have made the helmet and gun for my soldier, the helmet I am pretty happy with but I think I will change the gun and make it more detailed and also have the clip at the back, at the moment it juts looks too much like a G36.

Lots of progress

Since the last post I have made lots of progress, I have created the whole body for the model including feet from the old one as I thought they were good, lots of detail around the torso now and also shoulder pads!

I wasn't going to add these in but after playing mirrors edge recently and looking throught the concept art I saw the SWAT officers in that and had to have the same.

I also could not figure out a way to have them without them getting in the way until I realised how cool it looks to have them a bit off the shoulders rather than completely down.

Rather than making all the body parts seperate I decided to combine everything together so it would be seamless, whilst this will make texturing harder it will reduce polygons and make rigging easier.

Recent Progress: Arms

Well after looking at my character again and again I finally decided to create a new one, pretty normal for me to recreate my whole character though, it has happened for every single project.

I've started off with the torso while using the same head and I'll build around this.

Currently I'm working on two things, the side of a large spaceship and a space marine type character, the image below are from the docking bay of the ship I have been working on.

The soldier I am not really happy with at the moment I am considering changing the design to a more original and interesting idea.

Beginning

I have created this blog to keep a journal of my progress whilst working on my university projects. Currently ongoing projects are the Individual Project, Design for Industry and Imaging Innovations.