Blog Archives
Game Portfolio 3 Final Turn In
Rhinoceros Anatomy Study
Well I am done with finals!!! GPF3 ended last month and this was my final turn in for the month. I learned soon much over the course of these past 3 months in finals. I believe it shows in my final piece here. I can see the progression and I know that I didn’t make the same mistakes on this one that I did on the first. I just love this learning process and can’t wait to do more of these.
Just a few of the references I used to help create my final sculpt. When you look at a rhino you just think they all look the same. They are so far from the same. as you really study each image of each different rhino, you start to see all the differences. The fun of this piece was I was sculpting based on about 10 to 12 different rhinos so I was able to incorporate different things I liked about each one into one final rhinoceros. Much different then doing a sculpt of a specific female or male model. I enjoyed the artistic liberty I was able to take.
As of right now, only 1 month and 1 week left of college, I can not believe how fast things have gone and how amazing it is to look back on this blog and see some of the work I did in the beginning and compare it to now. I sure have grown as an artist and I am truly a 3D artist now. I will continue to grow and I can not wait to be in the industry soon and be able to look back on this piece and feel like I am even better than I think I am now.
Game Portfolio 1 Final Turn In
Male Anatomy Study
This was my final turn in for my very first full character for Game Portfolio 1 class. We were tasked at completing our 80% done characters from previous month to 100%. As you can see from the first post, to now this post, I have put a lot of work into this guy. I learned a lot in this class and it feels like this was a true test of everything I have learned over the past few years.
I used ZBrush 4R7 to sculpt at around 8 million Polys, then Maya 2016 for retopology down to around 50k Polys. For color, I used Substance Painter and then Marmoset for the final render. I am finding it very fun to use so many different programs to come up with one final result. I received a B+ for my final grade and of course I would have preferred an A, but I understand that this is “Finals” It has gotten very serious when it comes to grades and critiques.
This is my model that I used for 3d.sk for this months male anatomy. I feel like i know this guy, I have stared at him for so long. haha
Bill Baxley the Bounty Hunter – Advanced Game Character – AGC 1508 – ZBrush Sculpt
Bill Baxley the Bounty Hunter
Hey everyone, Sorry it has been a while since I made a post, that will tell you how busy and serious my classes have been these last few months. But, I wanted to make sure I get this one posted because I am very proud of this one. This past month I had Advanced Game Characters AGC and our assignment was to create a character from scratch. We had to come up with a design of a character that we wanted to make and it was amazing to see how the design process can change from day-to-day. I originally wanted to do a Robot but once I got into ZBrush, this guy kinda just emerged from my digital clay. I really feel like I might have found my calling here with this one. I have been at Full Sail now for a little over 2 years and I have enjoyed almost every single class, but I have not gotten as excited about a class as I did this one. I am thinking this might be my focus, Character Design and working in ZBrush.
After the class was over and I turned in my final I decided to make a 360º Video so everyone can see the detail from front to back. I also wanted to show a few different views, some with Wireframe to show the layout, to without the mask so you can see the detail I put into his mouth and nose that you don’t see in the Main image.
Click for High Res
Please watch in Full HD and turn on Sound
Please feel free to comment below and let me know what you think. Even though the class is over I would love to hear different critiques and Ideas of what YOU think might have made him better. This is a learning process and part of that process is getting feedback from people. I would love to know what it is like to see my character with fresh eyes. Because I have looked at him for a month now and watched him morph into what he became its hard for me to see him and appreciate him to the full extent.
Visual Effects 1 – My 3 Projects – Full Sail University
Visual Effects 1
This month I had Visual Effects 1 and we were tasked to make some pretty awesome effects in Maya 2015. My first project was a Rube Goldberg Machine. We had to practice making rigid hard bodies and passive hard bodies. Along with different fields I was able to make the Rube Goldberg machine work. I then gave the scene some colors and also practiced lighting the bulbs by making the texture glow instead of using a light.
Quick History lesson
For those of you who don’t know, Rube Goldberg was the guy who invented the machines that you already know about. They are the machines where one thing triggers the next and then that thing triggers the next and so on. You probably just didn’t know that was the name of them. Reason everyone knows about them is because he was a cartoonist that drew these wild machines that we have all seen in cartoons and now in modern days people build them, but fun fact, that most people do not know is, he never made one himself.
Rube Goldberg (1883-1970) was a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, sculptor and author. Reuben Lucius Goldberg (Rube Goldberg) was born in San Francisco on July 4, 1883. After graduating from the University of California Berkeley with a degree in engineering, Rube went on to work as an engineer for the City of San Francisco Water and Sewers Department.
More info on Rube Goldberg here.
Here is my Pre-Pro Storyboard with my plan of what I was going to use and how I was going to do it. The fun thing about this class was they made us do our story board and plan before we even knew what we were capable of doing. My guess is so we didn’t feel limited to what we knew how to do and it would challenge us to try to learn how to do what we wanted.
Storyboard Sketches
Here is my final project, Please watch in HD if possible for best results.
Rube Goldberg Machine – Lesson 1 – Rigid Body Dynamics
Our second project was a Foundry scene that was given to us and we had to create particles for Smoke, Fire, and Liquid. We had full control of what the scene would look like. We used all kinds of particles to create certain looks. Lots and Lots and Lots of setting tweaks to try to pull off certain particles. My original plan was slightly different then the final project, but sometimes that happens. My original plan was to do Steam, Smoke, Fire, and Sparks. But I changed it up by getting rid of the steam since it was so close to smoke and changing the sparks to liquid to keep the scene short for rendering purposes.
Here is a look at my Pre-Pro plans. You will see how I had slightly different plans then the final project.
Storyboard Sketches
Test Renders of my Fire and Smoke
The Foundry – Lesson 2 – Particle Effects
Here is my final video of Lesson 2. I am very happy with the way it turned out considering some of the challenges I ran into on this project. Of course I see some of the errors and things that I wish I would have had time to change. Please watch in HD for best results.
Our third and final project was a super fun one for me. We had to practice creating soft bodies. The first thing that came to mind when the professor was presenting our final project was Jello! Who doesn’t love watching Jello Jiggle? So I did some research and found a video on-line of Jello being dropped at high-speed to give it a slow motion effect. I wanted to try to recreate that look of Jello falling and rippling in slow motion. But how was I going to do it? After many different methods I found one that really gave it a very nice ripple effect. The first few tests made it very stiff and cartoony. Once I found out how to make the Jello look real, then it came to color and trying to get a good look of the surface. I used a MIA X Material and set it to a solid glass, but then tweaked the settings for hours. Below is a few test renders once I got close to what I liked.
My original plan was to try to replicate the video as close as possible with about 12 pieces of Jello all interacting with one another. Once I got to two pieces of Jello I started running into issues where each piece I added after would change the dynamics of the first two pieces of Jello. I knew that rendering was going to take a VERY long time as I wanted to render in the highest quality of mental ray for this final project so I decided to just work with two pieces but make them look the best as possible. With 600 frames it took over 40 hours of render time to produce the quality I was looking for and the final video shows it!
Storyboard Sketches
Test renders of my Jello
Jello Simulation – Lesson 3 – Soft Body Simulation
Here is my final video for Lesson 3 and I am so happy with the way it turned out! Please be sure to watch this in HD so you can see the full quality that I put into it. I mean after 40 hours of rendering at least take a minute to watch it in all its glory. I also found a commercial for Jello from the 1970’s and thought it was perfect for this video. Please feel free to comment below and tell me what you think of all these projects.
Hope you enjoyed my 3 projects from Visual Effects 1 as much as I enjoyed making them. Feel free to let me know by commenting below. I sure learned a lot about Maya and how to make things look amazing within it. Excited to continue to learn more. On to the next class!
Character Animation 1 (CAN1) is in the books! All of My Projects
Another class is in the books. I had a great time in CAN1 this past month. Learned a lot more about animating a character. I do enjoy doing it, something about making it precise and getting the character to look fluid when they move appeals to me. I feel like I did a real good job on all of my projects and of course there is always room for improvement. Feel free to take a look at my projects below and comment on what you like or what you see I could have changed. I love to get hard critiques on my work. It helps me become a better artist, so feel free to nit pick.
Return to the Walk
Our first project was to make a character walk again to get us back into the groove of Maya and doing animation again.
Turn Around
This was my project that continues the walk from earlier in the month. This time we had to make the character turn around. This can be a little tricky because now you are moving on many axises not just in one direction.
Silhouette Poses
We had to make strong silhouette poses with Bugsy to try to concentrate on making strong poses
Final Project
Our final project is we had to make Bugsy walk across the platform from a standing position or a relaxed position. He had to take 5-6 steps then once he reached the button, do a turn around and then anticipate and hit the button,then make a strong pose. I choose to add a little more and make the elevator go down, for a little added bonus. This was good practice. Grades will soon be posted.
Discussion: Blog Post – Character Rigging 1
Discussion: Blog Post
Well this is a first… I get to use my blog as one of my assignments for class. All month-long I have been learning Rigging in Mr. Clavan’s Class. This has by far, been one of my most favorite classes so far. For some reason rigging just appeals to me. I think it is the precision of it all. Everything has its exact place and it just feels good when everything is perfectly lined up and precisely in its spot. We also got to do some coding in the last week of class. It is fun to see how you can make a code that literally does things that took me an hour to do and now I can do it in a push of a button. I am not sure if I will become a rigger, but it is definitely at the top of my list of things I might want to do when I get done with Full Sail.
Part of my assignments this month is to make a post on my blog once I am finished with my Rig showing off my work. So here it is Mr. Clavan, hope you like it.
Prior to this class we had done very minimal rigging so this was kind of our “real” introduction to how full rigs work. We learned from start to finish how to rig a character, but of course each one will be different, but the basic principles should remain the same. Here is a few shots of the progression of my work.
Video of my Rig in action, Enjoy.
I am very happy with the way he turned out and apparently so was my teachers. I received a 100% plus got an extra 10% for doing extra credit with the fingers having their own separate controls. Below is some screen shots of the finished product showing off some of the controls that I made and how it was rigged.
I am looking forward to CRY2 and I here it is even more fun then CRY1. But until then it is time for CHRISTMAS!!
Catching you back up to Speed – Some past few months of Projects and Grades.
Character Creation and Design
CDC was a pretty fun yet challenging class. It was our first real run at Zbrush. I feel pretty proud of my grades even though it wasn’t an A+ I learned a LOT about Brush and all 1 million of its buttons.
This was my final project. We had to create a detailed arm in Brush and then bring it over to Maya to re-topologize it and create a Low res arm and then place the maps of the high res arm on to the low res. Not to bad for my first run at a fully detailed arm.
Compositing Fundamentals
Compositing was an awesome class. We got to make movies! Well, kinda, just little 3 to 8 second movies. But we were doing exactly what the industry professionals do and we got to get our hands on Nuke.
My Bike was the star of my final project and I came up with the idea to put my bike in scenes that I think would be fun to ride in. It was a bit more than just plugging in my bike, we had to tweak so many options to try to make it look like it belonged in the scene. Once again another program with another million buttons to learn.
2D Animation
2D Animation was fun. Lots of drawing which really helped me get back to my roots of art. Drawing the same thing over and over many times can be a challenge even if it is a simple ball. You really have to make sure you get it as close to perfect as you can when you are doing animation because even the slightest difference in size or shape can throw a whole animation off.
Here are a few of my 2D Animations that I made into Gifs so you can view them. Please click on them so you can view in full size.
Production Modeling
Production Modeling is a class I really got into on certain projects. This class we really got to dive deep into Brush which is my favorite program so far. Even though we still have our fights, I usually win. I got to do lots of “Speed Sculpts” where we had 25 minutes to try to recreate something. It was amazing to see the different from the beginning of the class to the end in only 1 short month. I feel I really improved on my skills and plan to continue to play in Brush and become great at it.
Here is a bunch of my work in PRM but my Halo Energy Sword is what I am most proud of.
Here are a bunch of the things I made in this months class.
So there you have it. It has been a busy past few months, but I am glad that I can show you why I have been a little more quiet these past few months on here. I plan on making sure I keep everyone up to date more often and maybe even adding some other older work later. Currently I am in Animation Fundamentals, which is taking what we learned in 2D animation in traditional art and applying it to 3D animation on the computer in Maya. It is much more fun as I am not having to draw the same thing over and over and over and over… My next post will be about that. Hope you enjoyed seeing what I have been up to and PLEASE feel free to share any feedback in the comment section below. I love hearing from you guys and also would love and critiques on any of my work.
WWE NXT / 2K Sports Full Sail Event
I am feeling very honored to have been chosen to represent Full Sail for this event.
Full Sail and WWE have a great partnership and for me as a student it is awesome to get to see WWE Wrestlers on campus along with the full production of what goes into tapping a WWE NXT event. Full Sail invited 2K Sports along with a bunch of reporters from all over to come see our campus and show off the new WWE 2K15 Wrestling game. I was invited to be one of 4 students to represent the gaming side of Full Sail. I honestly was unaware of what the event was going to be, or how big of a deal it was going to be, but when Rob Coble asks you to do something, you do it! I know he would never steer me wrong so I jumped at the invitation. Little did I know I would be standing up in front of all these industry professionals with the likes of Garry Jones (President of Full Sail), John Saboor (WWE Senior Vice President of Live Events), Rob Coble (Full Sail Industry Outreach Liason-Game Studies/Career Development), and that’s not all… Chance Glasco (Full Sail Hall of Fame Member, Former Senior Animator at Infinity Ward, One of the original “Call of Duty” Creators). I was in awe standing up there with 3 of my fellow peers.
Afterwards, we got to speak to the media and a very nice man named Jim Varsallone came up to me to discuss my website. I was very honored once again that with all these powerhouse people up on stage with me, and he choose to come chat with me about what I am doing. I didn’t think too much of it until this morning when I see this new article in the Miami Herald and I was mentioned along with everything and everyone else.
http://www.miamiherald.com/sports/fighting/article2631353.html
Afterward, I got to go hang with Chance Glasco and Will Fitzgerald and some of the other students who were invited to the event at the WWE NXT match and watch some good old wrastling!
It was definitely a night to remember for me in my Full Sail Journey!
My Final Project for MCR (Model Creation) and Final Grade! Woohoo! Guess what it is?
I am very excited to say I got a very good grade in MCR. I received a 97% on my Final Project which was a huge deal and as you can see it was worth 60% of my final grade. MCR was probably my hardest class I have had since being at Full Sail. We were Deep into Maya 2014 and modeling tons of props to create an entire scene. I, of course, choose one of the hardest scenes to challenge myself. I worked very hard for a week and a half and this was the results.
Please click on the image to blow it up and get all the full detail of my work.
Original Reference Image
I would really love to hear what you think of this? As you can see I tried to get as much detail out of all the props. The couches were my biggest challenge and I was running out of time towards the end. So those I do know they needed more work. But I would love to hear some constructive critique so I can improve. Thanks!
Here are my props that I created for this scene
I did have a LOT of fun in this class but I am happy that it is over. It was a lot of work, a lot of stress, and a lot of my free time taken up, but I feel I handled it well and I am very proud of my final project and my Final Grade. Another A+ in the books. I feel I learned a ton about Maya and I feel I have wrangled her under control. But now in Shading and Lighting she isn’t cooperating to well. But I will not give up, she will be wrapped around my finger very soon.
Week 3 Update of MCR – Time to Start the Final
Week 3 of MCR was a pretty fun one! We got to be the Guinea Pigs for ZBrush. I was more than happy to get to ZBrush, as I have been playing around with it on my own getting myself familiar with the software, that way when it came to this day, I would be ready. Thank God I did, because they sure do not go slow in this class. We learned how to Make a basic pillow shape in Maya, transfer it over to ZBrush, Sculpt in some very high details, then bring it back over to Maya. Once back in Maya, we learned how to create a BumpMap of the high detail geometry and place it onto the low res geometry. It is a trick of the trade for items that need to look great but need to be low res Poly count.
Also I am very happy to tell you that I have received 100% A+’s on all three weeks of assignments. Also by getting them turned in on the “Soft Deadline” I get some extra credit points towards my final project. I hope I won’t need it, but I am proud of myself for getting things done ahead of the actual due date.
I have already started working on my final and will be very excited to post next week when I am done and show you. For now, this is what you will see come next week, but fully modeled in Maya.
Yes… Every single piece in this scene, I will have modeled in full glorious detail. My goal is to get this up on the wall!
Wish me Luck!
My Full Sail Journey.com 