Another sheet cleaned up

Nothing much special to say here, just some more stuff detailing key parts which move or need closeup drawings of how they work.

Quickish update for the weekend

Been finalizing some stuff, inking some older drawings for easier scan, redoing an orthographic which came out kinda so-so quality, which honestly the third try on it wasn't really much better than the first, at least proportionally, but seems better on quality otherwise... should be able to just tidy up the proportional issues in photoshop, or at least so I hope.

Tons of drawing work and such over the weekend anyways, but it's come along well so far.

Only have one totally finished on cleanup so far from photoshop, but going to put that here anyway for the time being. Should have several more done by tomorrow.

Shall likely need a little more time tomorrow, and the trip to class is a waste on mondays since it's about 2.5 hours of travel time for a mere 3 hour lab... not to mention once home again it takes a bit of time to settle back in and get things set up again to continue work, so think I'll just spend the time home as it'd be more efficient overall.

Anyways, picture time! This's a quick sample of some design schematics for the robot being made for character design 300. Going with a steampunk stylized dragon concept, so it's a pain to draw... on the plus side, from tests already done in maya, all it really requires for most of the fancy stuff like gears and such is just a few basic models to be done, and the rest duplicated off the primaries. Things like piping and such are highly modular and easy to make/place, and in fact many of these modular pieces have already been modeled, despite technically not supposed to've done so until next quarter I believe.



Honestly, I liked the sketched version of this better than the finalized cleanup version, but that's probably just because I was working on the cleanup so far zoomed in on minor details I could see the tiny imperfections with far greater ease, and zoomed out I notice them since I know where they are now.

Either way, though it has minor flaws I was not able to correct, in terms of providing basic concepts of how particular features work and go together, it's serving the purpose it was designed for just right.

The side orthographic will take up most of the rest of the night; it's pretty much done, but needs some serious cleanup work. Tomorrow should be able to see the final versions of the top and front done, since they'll be based directly off these design concepts and the side orthographic for overlaying, all the dimensions will be properly worked out in final form, which should make those two go faster than todays' work did.

Have to admit, either way, that I'm still much better at the modeling than the sketching of designs... despite having worked on this for weeks and multiple attempts at each, and design sketches ranging back since christmas, still having alot of problems, and I'm starting to think that the 3/4 view is doomed to be hideous no matter how much I attempt to correct it or redo it. Have something like 5 versions of it now or something, and each one comes out bad. Was supposed to do that first and the orthographics after, but this seriously flat out isn't working. Hopefully getting the orthos done will somehow make it possible to get a version which doesn't suck horribly, but I'm not about to hold my breath. Simon may just have to accept the fact that I know exactly how to build it, how the parts fit together, how they operate mechanically, but that the 3/4 view he may get may end up just looking not that good since it's such a complex model.

I could've done something simple, but then again, everyone else is already. I want something that I can be proud of for having taken the hard road and done it well, instead of something on par with a stickfa, which even the top students from years before essentially are. Even Andre, who is constantly mentioned as being one of the top students of the school to graduate, his own robot couldn't even do a proper walk cycle because it was flawed from basic concept, and honestly, I wasn't impressed by the design, which resembled far too much to me as looking like the stickfa with curved legs and an old camcorder for a head, made to look more futuristic.

I suppose that's to be expected though, the majority of the class, and as far as I can tell, modelers in general, do not have much innate imagination of their own, but simply convert anothers' dreams into something closer to reality. Not an artist, despite it being artwork. A strange concept really.

I'm willing to bite off perhaps a tiny bit more than I can chew at the moment, if it means something I can proudly display on the final reel and learn a great deal from. I'll make mistakes, as I've learned in several past projects, but those mistakes teach one how to do it better the next time by understanding where the flaws are now. I'd rather come across these problems while in college than when getting paid, as many as possible anyway. If it looks like something other than a stickfa with some armour glued on the sides, then all the better.

This of course seems to clash with Simon's school of thought being to do something simple well. While this can be effective at times, it also doesn't really show much else either, and severely cripples the number of learning opportunities. I have admittedly done so a few times now, when on deadlines or with a large course load to bare, but on special projects, the ones that mean the most, such as this robot design, it needs to have that extra touch of care put into it.

Practically any other design I've seen done before that they've put on the wall posters in the school, I could do without even trying. They're simple, and though they look nice, they are ultimately so simple that I don't think they're honestly going to impress anyone when it matters.

I just hope I'm not signing my own epitaph down the line somewheres right now is all. Maybe I am, maybe I'm not, I suppose there's no way to tell, only thing I can do is my best, and strive to go beyond even that. Hopefully this will eventually showcase such in the manner I imagine it shall when completed.

Anyway, shall toss the other stuff up tomorrow, still have alot of work to do. Some parts may need to be finalized in photoshop a bit later if I keep having as much trouble as I expect to have with the 3/4 view.

Time to grab a quick meal and get back to work I suppose.

Walkies!

Two new videos today; updated walk cycles!

It's mostly one walk cycle with two versions; in version 1, the walk is normal, heading towards the camera. In the second version, it's a silhouetted form, to give better idea of the shape and animation without being distracted by the model itself which can draw attention away from the specific motions. After review, I've noticed several very slight things which kind of bother me, but kind of look natural too so I'm on the edge as to whether to bother changing them or not.

The eyes! THE EYES! =O

A quick 24 second video (well 12 twice, two camera angles) of the upgraded eye model. This is manually animated as no rig controls have been added as of yet.

This shows the full range of motion possible for the model.

Also, it's hard to tell with this low res video since it's been compressed twice, once by aftereffects, and once by youtube, but there's small tiny gears inside of the eye which are rotating to turn the gyroscope the lens is built upon.

Overall quite pleased with the design!

The second eye will be slightly different, thinking of a telescope like assembly, which should be much easier to model and look appropriate as well.

Oh and there's some flickering of the shading on it; this's a compression error, just ignore it for now.

Beginnings of... A MONSTER :O

So we need to design a robot for class... no big deal. I've been working on the basic concept off and on since Christmas now, so know what I want to do with a pretty good amount of certainty at this point.

So far, have the eye design pretty much modeled, just need to correct one error involving the rotational axis of several sections being incorrect, to which I'm waiting on a response from Matt with an explanation on how to do that since it's not working the way I expected.

Anyways! Here's a quick video of the iris design in action, followed by a semi transparent render to show the completed housing assembly.






The way this's set up, the iris blades can close in a circular pattern, similar to a camera iris, or the iris of the stargate in SG-1. Same concept and looks nice, while leaving a gap to allow the inner 'pupil' to see.

The iris is mounted on a gyroscope which allows it to rotate vertically and horizontally, with small gears to turn the gyros.

Furthermore, the 'pupil', is a mechanical construct of 4 cameras; infrared in the center, for primary vision capabilities, with smaller red/green/blue cameras around the central section which provide secondary inputs so that things which are cold or heat shielded don't go invisible.

The pupil can also rotate slightly in relation to the iris assembly, to give the impression of an eye looking around.

Behind the pupil and iris assembly, is a reflective surface which allows light to be reflected back, vaguely similar to a cats' eye, for adequate night vision.

It's pretty complex overall, but the rigging honestly shouldn't be that bad, and it'll be wonderful for a nice closeup shot.

New junk!

In the process of doing alot of rendering right now so there's a bunch of videos that aren't available to show just yet. For now though, I have some rather... well alright most of it's good but I think Simon's going to kill me when he sees the dalek.

The dalek is kind of messy; just playing with Nfur before bed, trying to set bald spots is a ridiculous pain to do though with how it's set up. Absolutely loathe the maya paint tool.



As a replacement for the Joan of Arc tutorial, I made my Kiana Schrödinger character from 2nd quarter instead.

She's finally fully rigged, and able to be posed as needed. The tail and ear controls are a bit primitive at the moment, but they allow for fluid, organic movement with little effort, so they're good enough for the moment. They just aren't really capable of complex motions yet is all. Think I'll see if it's possible to attach an IK handle in, or a toggleable secondary set of FK handles. Maybe have one primary one for basic movements, and can turn on advanced settings after the fact if so desired. I dunno yet.


At first I was going to go with 'Luminopolis' for my company name... then I realized that there were already quite a large number of people using it after some google searching. Hence, it has been changed to Nekolith, with this as the company logo/video. You'll be seeing more of it from now on since I also rendered off a video for use which is just the paw/yingyang icon and name, which can be composited onto other works, such as the demo reel, allowing for animated consistency throughout.

Here's a composited still life of 3 household objects I had laying around;

A thumb drive (it's animated to open, and this scene is rendering out at school now for the quarter's demo reel), a remote control; Magnavox NA471 in case you want to verify it's authenticity of appearance; and a lamp made from popsicle sticks that my uncle Vaughn (I just realized I have no clue how to spell his name... that may or may not be accurate) made probably 20+ years ago. I would've rather modeled the one I made, but it's back in Amherst and I'm not traveling back to get it just so I can make one, besides, this was a very similar design and looks good anyway.


This was a self taught test of how to mess around with maya Nfur; have since learned a fair bit better control, but this was good for learning alot of interesting stuff like how each attribute affected it as a whole, and how to get it to render quicker. Have since learned how to apply to specific areas, rather than having to rely on a single object application.

I was going to put in the swf of the anijam video segment I did, but then realized that blogger doesn't particularly car for swf files. I could convert it, but it's too much work for just before bed, and it was excessively messy anyway due to needing to animate about 1200ish frames in a few days. Hence... limited cleanup. If anyone's really really interested I can see about a copy for later, but it's not that big a deal right now.


This's the case to the tears of Noesis game I was working on for GD100; the background for it was originally designed as a desktop wallpaper for my mother for her birthday, but it came out so nice as it was, it seemed a waste to just leave it.

Waste not want not, so just made some adjustments and adapted it for use in this situation instead. Works fairly well really. I liked the blue version better, which's on the final printed copies which were actually used as inserts.


Due to the arena style combat in the game design, I wanted to show a 'level design' of sorts. This 'Colosseum' level design is excessively rough, and the shot isn't particularly great either. Overall, the whole thing took about 30 minutes to make, so I suppose I can't complain. Overall it looks nice for the effort put into it, which admittedly wasn't much.

Idea being to run the 'ball' (in this case a gemstone with the ability to grant the holder visions of the future) to the end 'goal'. The game's concept is vaguely similar to that of a football game, though only in the most basic premise; rather than guys in armour, you instead get magicians with spells. Seriously, wouldn't sports be so much more interesting if your opponent could cleave the ground in half and raise a wall of rock from it to bar passage from the goal line, or be forced to dodge meteors landing when carrying the ball? XD

I'll possibly provide more info on the game concept for later use, but I'm admittedly a little concerned about the information being grabbed since it could actually be turned into something playable, especially with all the mechanics and balance notes I have compiled.

The instructor's been generous enough as it is to ensure that all copies of this data is not available to the school, since 'technically' anything produced while there is the school's property... hence, we've been given the opportunity to create something in which it can't just be taken away, preventing us from getting royalties from it. As such, I'll be taking extra precautions towards ensuring that this idea is safe, since I rather like the concept and can see a potentially good market in it someday.





Anyways, that's it for tonight, most of the stuff I've been working on can't really be demonstrated without movies that have yet to be compiled into a viewable state. So far I have most everything rendered off at least, with only three main sections left to go, all of which are fairly fast to render. The issue is moreso about compositing them together, and the fact that many are either just targa sequences at the moment, or uncompressed video, of which neither is particularly useful in terms of value to show right now.

Tomorrow's agenda is to re-render the dalek and space kitchen, get the previous work properly set up into uncompressed video formats, and finish the walk cycle on Kiana up above there. Want to have her doing the walk cycle for the final reel, even though it's not actually required.

Been awhile

Have a fair bit to show, but don't have time to show much so just going to drop on a quickish playblast of the character model I've been working on. The blue areas glow when rendered properly, but since this's just a playblast, it's fairly low quality so won't do that. Fixed the hands and am happy with them now, though still a bit irritated at the head. Don't really have time to fix it though, and have tried several times already anyway.