Last thing before bed

Should've slept earlier, not sure why I didn't, oh well. Here's a quickish last minute playblast of the car model so far, still a long ways to go but got another section done today, and fixed some older ones that were annoying me with inaccuracies and minor problems.

Took about 9 hours worth of work to get this much done, scary how long it takes, but I guess that's the price of doing things right.

Oh, and sorry for the quality of the playblast; really last minute thing before bed, took like 5 minutes to make so it's kinda messy and doesn't have more than a simple control turntable, which makes for crappy camera angles but it was fast and I'm tired.

Car update

Update on the car, coming along slowly, but it is coming along.

Made the top armour section, and fixed the lower part significantly, as well as an error I noticed on the rear lights. Hard to see in the image unfortunately, but it's getting better each passing day.

Finished the model fully now

Hadn't attached the cockpit during the last post, this time have it fully connected so that it makes sort of sense going from a cylindrical shape into a rectangular one.

Also, I made a quick playblast of it for an example to show off the finished product. Doesn't go into much detail, just a simple turntable, but not going to go for complex shots with it; have to do those tomorrow so may as well save it until then.

Monkey see, monkey do do ...fling?

More work today, got the interior of the cockpit for the ship done, this'll allow for outside shots and most of the shots up to the very end. It's not textured yet, so not finished obviously, but it can be used for the animations except the very last two shots which require the pilot, which isn't done yet.

Textures and lighting will make it look far better, but don't have those up yet, not needed for the animations in question however, so not a big deal.

Anyways, here's a shot of the interior; very basic looking, wanted to go for the whole 60-80's view of the inside of a ship. Lots and lots and lots of buttons, not much of anything for readouts. Controls are basic, joystick and a throttle, chair's cushy (20+ g's suck on escape and reentry), with a nice bomb to ride a la Dr. Strangelove.

This's supposed to be based on the planet of the apes original opening... I've never seen it, neither has my partner, Greg Ripley. As long as we stick to the script though, we're allowed to add any number of details we want. We kind of abused this, but Mike seems to like the idea so far, so good enough. It doesn't have to be a carbon copy of the original, and I think I'm actually glad I haven't watched the movie yet because of it. Most of the other movies people got were so popular as well, that they would be confined to only what was done in the movie itself, not open to interpretation of the script, like this whole class is supposed to be about.

Being able to read a script, come up with your own interpretation of what it means, storyboard it, create an animatic, build it, and shoot it... it's a pain but having some artistic license makes this alot more interesting than just following what was done before. So... this'll be an example of an alternate reality version I suppose.

Further car stuff

The previous showing of the car through a screenshot wasn't all that great, and I'm quite pleased with how the wheels turned out. Wanted to do a test run on how fast to animate them spinning for later on, so did some number crunching with some reading into how quick a wheel this size SHOULD rotate at a given speed, so here's an example of a wheel sitting at rest, and then accelerating to 40kph.

BMW Vision

Been working on a car model for class, it's a bit slow though, each piece is pretty painstaking work due to the vast number of organic curves. Getting each one just right takes forever, but so far, it's been worth it. Each piece is near perfect, regardless of how complex they were to make, and I'm quite pleased with such.

Here's a quick screenshot since I'm not sure how to add wireframes to a render just yet.



Further info on the car model:

Based off a BMW Vision concept car, I've noticed a few key traits to the design which should help in modeling significantly. Primarily, it's that the car itself seems to be comprised more of a central main chassis that's pretty much the shape of a 'normal' car, but has the nice looking side pieces attached like armour plates, more or less. Much more elegant than bulky armour, perhaps, but the concept seems to be the same; just excess 'stuff' bolted onto the sides.

This makes it a bit easier to model, however, since it means I've been able to isolate a few key sections which are physically distinct from the rest of the car. The front hood section is one such example; the lower fender area that covers the side of the car and part of the back (seen in the picture) is another, then there's an upper part that trails from the rear to the hood of the car but is thin and narrow, tracing along the entire length of the car. The inner main car itself seems more like a rounded bubble with these extra pieces merely stemming off of it. The side doors, and several other pieces can be easily separated into their own sections as well.

For the amount of effort it's going to take to get this thing just right, I'm a little annoyed at the stickfa having wasted so much time. I suppose I could've jumped ahead of the class's suggested pace, but didn't realize it was going to end up so complex, even with having simplified the issues alot.

Car'll be done by the end of the quarter on time, that much I'm not worried about; rather, what I'm worried about is what's going to have to be sacrificed to get it out in time and done right.

Something's going to have to be sacrificed somewhere, there's only physically so many hours to work with. Quality on the car is one thing I'm not willing to sacrifice, however. I want this one to be nearly perfect... it's going to be the showpiece of the demo reel this quarter, the #1 prized possession, to show the top end capacity of what I can do.

Problem is, this means that quality elsewhere is going to have to drop... I'd really wanted to learn flash inside out, but with how much of a ridiculously disproportionate time sink it is, I'm afraid that's looking like the main area that's going to have to suffer. Photoshop's pretty easy and fast, haven't had any issues breezing through there. Maya's the main thing that NEEDS done, since it's the whole point of the course in general. I can't skimp on the mini-movie opener for Mike's class, since I have a partner there who's relying on me to get my stuff done, and I refuse to drag someone down with me.

So... chances are flash is not going to have remotely the time left over for it that it deserves. Suppose that's how it goes though. It'd be nice to know it inside out, but something has to give, and flash just sucks up way too much time for the end result. It's hours upon hours of busywork, just stuff to get used to practicing the motions, and that makes perfect sense considering... and I value the course, but it's going to have to be turned into quick scribbles instead of carefully done stuff from now on I think.

They weren't kidding when they said the flash homework was going to kill us. Oh well, can't let one secondary course absolutely ruin every other main course that means more.

And of all things of value, that car is going to have to take center stage, so most of my time is going to be devoted to perfecting every tiny piece of it.

More photoshop stuff today

Catching up on photoshop and flash stuff, got a ways to go yet over the next few days, but it's coming along well so far.

Evidence of such is here!

Apparently, this blog doesn't accept .swf files, fortunately it's possible to convert them to other formats, but it really hurts on the file size. This tiny example is a painful 8.5mb, so don't think I'll be loading it up too heavily with videos.

This was originally supposed to be a laser, but after several failed starts and discovering flash can't actually do what I wanted to do without blowing ten times the effort into it, ended up going for a still interesting, but not quite as nice effect as the original desire. Still looks nice, if not very laserish.

Junk and stuff

Been doing alot of stuff which I'm not sure how to place here, but the stuff I do have is rather interesting.

For example... KITTENS!













Or a nice icon of Slaasnesh with fire and stars. Star background I could've made, but I found a photo from hubble of the pleiades which I just had to use... with some minor adjustments so it'd look better with the icon.








Also, this old guy just didn't look old enough, so the photo was aged significantly through quite a few different methods combined.






Anyways, I'll add more as soon as I can figure out how to add .swf files to this thing.

Been excessively busy last few weeks, have more stuff to post but having problems finding time to set it all up. Shall do so in the near future as able to. Have a 6 day weekend starting tomorrow so should be able to find some time int here somewhere.