Or trying to at least. I haven’t really been around since university ended… Mainly because I’ve been very busy adjusting to life as a working adult. Currently working as an intern at ARM, helping out as much as I can in the demo team. My work there is confidential and I cannot say anything about it, but I am now used to the routine and feel it’s a good moment to take up blogging again.

Hopefully I’ll start posting some of my artwork soon again. I have a few things I want to start working on

Nice to see you all, silent readers

The high quality renders I forgot to include before. So so happy with how the came out!

Almost a week to the day of my last post, I can safely announce that I have FINISHED ALL MY WORK FOR MY FINAL MAJOR.

These last days were spent finishing up the presentation, which was just a case of assembling all the pages I have been doing throughout the course of the project, adding the last tidbits and RENDERING.

And, even now, I still get as bored as I always have whilst waiting for pieces to render. Luckily for me there it was mainly images which I had to render out, so I didn’t have to wait that much.

A breakdown of my last days (according to my faithful planner, which I would have scanned was it not a pile of scribbles, crosses, scratches and notes in the various languages I speak)

5/May -> 7/May: Finish drawings for last couple of pages: Interactions amongst characters. Sketches/B&W

8 + 9/May: Finish full colour pieces

10 + 11/May: Assembly and write-up of PDP, amongst other things

12/May: Maya scenes, render out images

13/May: render out and assemble showreel and write the final thoughts page

The videos for my submission rendered before lunch. I finished typing up my final thoughts about an hour ago, and it was only once everything was written down I realised I forgot to update my progress blog. So here it is, the final update before my hand in.

The only thing left to do, and which I will do after I finish typing this entry, is go out and print out the presentation pages, so I can mount them and make a really pretty printed sketchbook to hand in, and put all the work in a USB stick.

As such, I leave you with the final glimpses of work I produced during these last couple of days, presented in their page format because why not.

One more week and I am officially done with my undergraduate course. I feel both excited, nervous, numb… and slightly sick, but that may well be due to the burnout. So close to the end, and I feel my energy slowly seeping away. All I want to do is sleep. Literally sleep. Forever.

Which is not good, as I still have a bit to go. One more section and my presentation will be done. My showreel video is partly done… I have so much stuff almost done and so little actually done it’s worrying. Motivating, though, as the moment I get it all done it’s just going to be one thing after the other and I’ll have everything finished in one go.

To compliment the post, a screenshot of how the presentation is doing. Only 9 more pages to fill! And they will not take me that long so… lets hope I’ll finish it today. If I finish it today, i’ll be the happiest person on earth.

So, almost two weeks after my last post, I blog again. A small post, only showing all the drawings done so far, as I am still caught up with the massive amount of work needed to be finished before the hand-in. The presentation is almost done, which is a bonus, but that is only a fraction of all I have to do in order to have a submission that is up to my standard.

Next update will probably be near the hand-in date, just recording my thoughts on being so close to the end.

There clearly was a theme to today: Shark mermaids! Currently working on the presentation, as the characters are almost done, but I seem to have gotten a bit sidetracked…

The mermaids play a vital role in the ecosystem of the Cold Bay, but I did not focus on them for character development for some reason, and I do not know why. I have come to love their creepy design and fierce predatorial nature. I did a very quick model of the head of one (the WHOLE thing has literally taken me an hour, and did it as a break from work) and some concepts, but I do not think i’ll draw any more. For the time being. As soon as the hand-in is done I am coming back to them and making a full one in Zbrush.

Meanwhile, enjoy some art from today!

and a little sneak view of how I’m arranging my submission pages! Loving the simple, clean layout

So far, so good! I am happy to report that two characters have a base paint and I am ready to start the third one at any time!

Ideally, the three of them will have the base paint by the end of the week. It is a very nice feeling to be on top of things!

That’s the happy part of the post, now the more daunting stage: My Easter work timetable.

I’m going to be staying in Cambridge during the two Easter weeks, and planning on going in to class every weekday, arriving at 9 and leaving at 5-6 (depending on how tired I am that particular day). Easter will only happen during the evenings and weekends, where I will do something entirely not work related… ideally play some games, read some books and exercise.

– Just adding a sidenote to praise the calming and relaxing effect working out has on the body, and thoroughly recommending it to everyone. It provides total disconnection with computers and anything technology related for an hour and a bit, and after you’re done your mind feels clear and crisp and ready to tackle more work –

Why am I being so strict to myself? Essentially because Easter is giving me the perfect opportunity to bulk up my submission, go over things and make sure everything is up to the standard I want it to be… as well as two extra weeks to do things. This mainly being because everyone else is going away, which means the distractions that tend to take up my time will not be there to distract me, and I can get a full 5 day work-week instead of the three-day week i’m currently doing (Mondays 11-6, Thursdays 9-6 and Fridays 12-6).

In the end, it is worth it.

As reported on my previous post, I have been occupied with the fun task of UVing. My respects to the people that enjoy this part of the pipeline; I personally loathe it. I can see it’s uses, but I don’t think it’s my cup of tea.

A minor setback occurred in the form of me having to completely redo the low topology mesh for the selkie as the one I was working on was too high to be a low-res mesh. But with that bump out of the way, here comes the next part of the UV adventure!

Baking out the normal maps:

Now, I still have no idea what I am doing wrong, or why this keeps happening, but seriously:

WATCH OUT FOR FLIPPED MAPS!

9/10 times zbrush has decided the UVs I created would look better flipped and produces the maps the wrong way round.

There is also the strange situation in whic only once out of all the times I’ve baked out a normal and a displacement map they have worked properly…

I’m confused, tired, and fed up of this. So, in order to avoid a burn-out, I am going to leave the maps for the mean time (until someone can explain everything in baby speech to me) and I’m going to concentrate on painting the models for now.

The plan for this next week will be to finish as much of the basic painting and first pass textures as possible, so as to work on the finer details over the Easter weeks. The first week will be spent painting, the second one polishing. Hopefully this way I will end up with three characters i’m satisfied with and ready to make a showreel with.

At least, that’s the plan…

The title of today’s post kind of summarises the general feeling of the last week and a half. I don’t think i’ve felt as numb as I’ve been doing currently (and having a cold does not help at all).

Workflow has been slow, work has been dull and monotone, and REPETITIVE.

I knew I would have to do things again and again, but I didn’t think I would have to do them this much! I have the process down to a T now, so i’m thinking about doing another tutorial post soon to explain it for those interested in Zbrush that would like to know a simple way to do things.

So far, this is the advice I have to offer: In order to get your UVs in Zbrush… USE MAYA.

The process breaks down to this:

1. Export your subdivisions/models out as OBJs
2. Import them into Maya
3. UV each of them roughly and export them again as OBJs
4. Back in Zbrush, use UV Master to create neater unwraps for each individual piece
5. Yes… export them back out as an OBJ and into Maya
6. In maya, rearrange all the newly UVed pieces out in the grid.
7. Now, export back again as an OBJ! Isn’t all this repetition fun?
8. Now, when you import all the final UVs into Zbrush, they have kept! So yo can essentially polypaint and export each individual paint out into Photoshop and just piece everything back together there.

That’s all for today, I think. Still got more fun UVing to check!

One would think reducing the topology of a model would be an easy and quick task, but it took me a bit longer than it should have done… mainly for silly reasons that I hadn’t picked up on.

Namely, with the giant’s model, I hadn’t realised that one of the versions was much bigger than the other, and I had to spend quite a bit of time rearranging and realinging the two versions… until I got tired and I just re-exported everything again to make sure everything matched and it was to scale.

The giant was the only one that gave me trouble, for some strange reason. The selkie model and the mongrel model were all perfectly fine and exported smoothly. Yay for me!

I’m going to spend the rest of the week looking into the UVing process and doing some trial and error tests before setting off to try it out on the final characters. I know the process I need to take… but knowing how these things works, something can go wrong very easily. And it most probably will, so it never hurts to be prepared.

I never actually expected to be getting back on track at this stage, considering this is pretty much the half way mark. 6 weeks down, 6 to go, and although my concepts are lagging a bit, my 3D work is pretty much there.

It’s a nice feeling, not having to stress much. I have a plan deviced to catch up with the concepting and the presentation side of things, but for now 3D work takes priority.

However, even the 3D work is pretty much there! There is not that much left to do:

• My three chosen models are complete, and already at the polishing stage:
  – my giant needs scratches on the rocks and perhaps a bit more defining around the rock area
  – the selkie only needs the scars to be touched up
  – the mongrel needs a new hair-do
• Once the little fine-tuning is done, I shall move on to the reducing stage! Which is pretty much what is sounds like; reducing the topology on the models by taking out any unneeded vertices and faces, mainly the ones that are unseen

And once all that is done, and I am satisfied both with the high-poly mesh and the low-poly mesh (and have made sure they are both 100% identical) I can get on to UVing, mapping and painting. I can’t wait!

Having had a play with the polypainting tools, and knowing how much fun it was to paint a simple head, I cannot wait to try it out on the full characters. Should be so much fun!