GPF1 - Week 1

Month 3 Blockout

This is my blockout of a "common dolphin" for month 3 finals.

Month 2 Blockout

This is my blockout for the female asset for month 2. Modeled with using Zbrush.

Month 1 Blockout

GTE - References

This is my set of approved references for GTE.

AGC Final - "Priya"

This was my final project for Advanced Game Characters. Her name is Priya and she's supposed to be a first-class alien civilian. When deciding on her looks I was inspired by the thought of what would happen if a salarian from Mass Effect cross-bred with a twi'lek from Star Wars. One could also argue she also looks like the blue opera-singing alien from the movie The Fifth Element.

I used primarily ZBrush to model the bust, then switched over to Maya for the accessories. All of the textures were done using Substance Painter. The model was also rendered in Substance Painter but composited using Photoshop in the end.

You can check out a Marmoset Viewer version of this here:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rzYam

GAN1 Final

I think if I had more time I would've been able to make the animations better, but for the most part I was happy with how it all turned out. UE4 is definitely a powerful program and there's so much that you can do to make animations flow nicely together. For more info regarding this project, check the Youtube description.

LVL Final - Replica of Titanic Bedrooms and Hallway

For our Level Assembly project, my team decided on replicating the interiors of the infamous Titanic ship that sank in 1912. I was in charge of doing the first-class bedrooms and hallway that connected them. I modeled the floors, ceilings, walls, pillars, doors, railings, wall lamps, wall frames, bottles and chinaware. This included the textures for the assets as well. They were all modeled in Maya, textured with Substance Designer, and assembled and rendered in Unreal 4.

A shoutout to my team members for helping each other with this project: Justin Hentges, Tripp Topping, Fred Poulin, and Hanna Kline.

Soft Bodies - O Hot Dogs

Month 13
Visual Effects 1

Our final project was to demonstrate a soft body effect. I went with a simple theme for this one. I didn't want to show jello-s dropping from the sky like most people, so instead I went with hot dogs.

All I did was create a lattice for each hot dog and set those lattices as soft bodies. I applied gravity fields for each one as well as created springs. I wanted to set the conserve to .98 to make the hot dogs drop a bit more realistically but doing so caused the hot dogs to explode upon landing, so I had to bring the conserve down to .9 despite upping the stiffness of the springs to 50 or so.

In class today, however, I learned that I could have changed the weight as well as the damping to alleviate any issues I had, but in the end my project still turned out well and I'm happy with the results.

Particle Effects

Month 13
Visual Effects 1

Our next project for VEF1 was to showcase three different types of particles. I decided to go with sparks (electricity), fire, and water. I wanted to display them as if they were basic elements of the universe, hence the pitch black background.

I used a combination of fields for this scene, such as vortex for water, turbulence and uniform for both fire and sparks.

The video is just a playblast. I ran into issues during the rendering process. For some reason, the fire would completely disappear during the sequence where the camera moves up close on it. Also, the water effect would've looked much better when rendered. As it is now, it looks like bubbles.

Rigid Bodies - Rube Goldberg Effect

Month 13
Visual Effects 1

This was our first project for VEF1. We learned the differences between active rigid bodies and passive rigid bodies, and made an animation that showed the interaction between the two types. The best way to showcase this was through a Rube Goldberg machine/effect.

The active rigid bodies were the moving objects whereas the passive rigid bodies were the stationary ones (such as the platforms). I included an invisible passive rigid body platform underneath the glass bin. This was to support the bin after the torus lands on it, otherwise it would completely drop due to its own weight. The only field used in this scene was a gravity field.

Barrel and Crate Handpainted Textures

Month 13
Texture Painting and Sculpting

This was our second assignment for TPS. Similar to our first project, we had to handpaint textures using Photoshop and then apply those textures to some geometry in Maya. What makes this particular assignment important was that we needed to be able to demonstrate the illusion of depth of a basic polygon based solely on how the textures look. For example, the crate on the right looks like it has extrusions made for the borders, but in reality the mesh is just a simple 6-sided cube with no manipulations; it's the textures that make it seem like there's depth.

Dungeon Room Handpainted Textures

Month 13
Texture Painting and Sculpting

This was our first assignment for TPS. We were instructed to create four different materials all handpainted from scratch using Photoshop, then laid out in a 0 to 1 UV space and apply the textures to a corner room in Maya.

Dungeon Room in Unreal Engine

Month 12
Art Creation for Games

This was the final project for my ACG class. It's a dungeon room where all the assets were modeled with Maya, textured with Photoshop, and then imported over to the Unreal Engine where the assets were laid out appropriately. The shading and lighting were also done in Unreal. The image above shows a breakdown of some key elements, such as the normals and UV texture layout. Below are bigger resolution images of the beauty shots.

Reusable Textures and Assets

Month 12
Art Creation for Games

This was actually a bonus assignment for my ACG class. I used Photoshop to create and layout the textures in a 0 to 1 UV space, then I modeled the buildings using Maya and applied those textures.  The purpose of this project was to demonstrate that we can reuse the same collage texture to create multiple assets of varying degrees in appearance.

CAN1 Final Animation

Month 11
Character Animation 1

This is our final project for CAN1. It's basically an animation of a character starting out with a pose, then walking a few steps towards a button, turns around to face the button, pushes it, and finally settles down to a last pose. Above are examples of the pre-pro that I drew for this animation. I started out with some ideas for initial poses followed by a basic storyboard of the character approaching the button and pressing it, and then some thumbnails of how I planned to break down the poses.

Above is the playblast of the final project.

The tools that I learned to use during this month were the graph editor, MEL buttons, and the attribute editor (keying specific attributes).

Strong Poses

Month 11
Character Animation 1

For this project, we had to come up with some strong poses. Above are pictures of the pre-pro (all hand-drawn) that organized my ideas for those poses.

We then took those ideas and posed the character rig. We enabled silhouette mode so we can determine whether or not the poses are strong.

Leggy Walk

Month 11
Character Animation 1


For the first half of the month we focused on the Leggy Walk scene. The video above is the blockout in stepped. The focus was to show the main contact poses.

The playblast above shows the final version of the walk animation in auto tangent. It includes the contacts, passes, ups and downs, and foot rolls.

Layout Rig

Month 10
Character Rigging 1

This was the final version of our character rig that we worked on for the first half of the month. With the exception of the face and ears, the body was totally rigged, including the fingers and feet.

PRM Final

Month 10
Production Modeling

This was my final project for PRM. It was a little girl that I modeled based off of Ryan Lang's Gretel. The style is supposed to be Disney/Pixar-like. I still feel like I could've fixed up the proportions a bit, and I know that the face and hair could've been improved even further to match the reference more closely. But otherwise, I think I did a decent job.

Hand Sculpt

Month 10
Production Modeling

This was a hand sculpt that I did for PRM. It was all done in ZBrush. At the time I thought it looked pretty good, but looking back on it now I feel that I can definitely improve on it to make it look even better.

CFM Compositing Final

Month 9
Compositing Fundamental

This was our compositing final. Many thanks to Fred, Justin, Tripp, Julian, and Larry.

Stereoscopy

Month 9
Compositing Fundamentals

This is an example of our stereoscopy project. Again, the assets were provide to us. Our task was to make a stereoscopy effect on the still image so that if you wore 3D glasses you could see the effect.

Using Nuke's 3D System

Month 9
Compositing Fundamentals

For this project, we learned how to use Nuke's 3D system.

Learning How to Use Nuke

Month 9
Compositing Fundamentals

These are just a couple of examples of our earlier compositing projects. We learned how to use Nuke by utilizing the assets that were provided to us. For these examples, we dealt with the layering system and color correction.

FOA Final Animation

Month 9
Fundamentals of Animation

This was my final animation scene. It consisted of doing a few steps approaching a ball, then kicking it, and then animating the path of where the ball bounces. We also had to utilize the graph editor to make the proper inbetweens. Due to time constraints, I wasn't able to make this scene turn out as well as I wanted to. I'm sure that I would be able to make a better animation now that I know more about animation.

2D Animations

Month 8

2D Animation

These are just some of the hand-drawn animations that I did in class. Our goal was to demonstrate our understanding of the principles of animation, such as slow-in-slow-out, follow-through, etc.

CDC Final

Month 7
Character Design and Creation

During this month, we delved into ZBrush and learned how to model organic figures. Some of our initial projects dealt with modeling heads and resurfacing. For our final, we had to sculpt a muscular arm while emphasizing primary, secondary, and tertiary forms.

Character Sheets

Month 6
Methods of Design

One of our final projects was to design turnaround sheets for two characters from the Grimm Brothers tale called The Juniper Tree. In this case, I went with the stepmother and the son. We could pick a theme, such as futuristic, fantasy, western, etc. I chose futuristic, in particular, a Neo-Victorian era of sorts. I drew everything out using pencils and then made the final renders using markers.

Aesthetics

Month 6
Methods of Design

For this project, we took an original artwork done by an artist, identify the reasons why we didn't like that particular artwork, and then recreate our own version of it. We could use some, all, or mostly none of the elements from the original artwork. Our method of redesigning the piece was also up to us. In my case, I chose to do Fernand Leger's pochoir "Tete de Femme". I used pencils to draw out the basic outline of the character, and then rendered the entire image using markers.

Redesigning

Month 6
Methods of Design

For this project, we needed to take a small object and look at it from an interesting view or angle. We then needed to draw it out and apply some unique colors and artistic choices to further enhance the redesign of the object. I used pencils to lightly draw out my object, which was an iPhone car charger, and then I used markers to make the final render.

Character Design for Maquette

Month 5
Fundamentals of Art 2

This was a character sheet that I did for Fundamentals of Art 2. The purpose was to design a character that would eventually be used as the basis for our maquette project. I decided to make my own rendition of the Hindu goddess, Kali. While I was able to successfully complete the character sheet, I couldn't say the same for the maquette. I was able to shape the body and even the head, but I struggled with the face and the long strands of hair. The maquette unfortunately didn't turn out as well as I had hoped for, hence why I don't have a photo of it.

Figure Drawings

Month 5
Fundamentals of Art 2

Some figure drawings.

Exterior Rendering

Month 5
Shading and Lighting

We were provided a scene where we had to apply all the shading, lighting, and rendering techniques that we learned. For this project, we also had to show that we knew how to apply image projection. This technique was used for the wine bottle's label.

Interior Rendering

Month 5
Shading and Lighting

When we were assigned to this project, we had already understood the basics of shading, lighting, and rendering in Maya. Keeping in mind the techniques that we already learned, we also delved into tile textures and bump maps, etc. With this project, we had to apply all those things into the scene.

Line Art of a Pharaoh

Month 4

Fundamentals of Art 1

This was a line art project that I did for Fundamentals of Art 1. The image depicts a profile view of a fictional Egyptian pharaoh. Initially I wanted to use markers to make the lines bolder and to fill in the shading completely, but at the time I wasn't comfortable with just using markers so I chose to use pencils instead.

Bathroom Scene

Month 4
Model Creation

This was my final project for Model Creation. I chose to do a bathroom scene. I was provided with an photo where I had to use Maya to model basically everything that I saw in that image. It was a little difficult because the photo wasn't large, and it didn't have the best definition and resolution, so I had to improvise a little on some of the objects.

Cafe Scene

Month 4
Model Creation

This is one of our earliest projects. We were given a scene, which was a cafe, and our task was to populate it with prop assets that would belong in this particular environment, such as tables, umbrellas, chairs, cups, plates, etc. I used Maya to model these objects.

3DF Final Animation

Month 3
3D Foundations

This class taught us the essentials to using Autodesk Maya. It was also the first time I learned to model and animate using a 3D program. The scene depicts a lone viking warrior who manages to avoid a series of falling rocks, but his luck doesn't last very long.

Visual Storytelling in Your Field

Month 2
Overview of Design Technologies

One of our projects for this class was to create a visual presentation of what a day in our dream job would be like. In my case, I want to be a digital modeler so my task was to show what I thought was the pipeline process of modeling an asset and putting it into production. I hand-drew the images which then got scanned and imported into a PowerPoint presentation. For the sake of this blog, I converted the slides into a movie file.

Digital Identity UPDATE

Month 1
Digital Literacy

Later in the month, we had to update our digital identity. We were given the option to change it to something else or to keep what we originally had. I decided to go with the latter. I used the web app at tagxedo.com to create the image as well as manually supplied the words and text that made up the collage.

Digital Identity

Month 1
Digital Literacy

Back in Digital Literacy, we had to establish our personal digital identity. I decided to go with "Digitally Adept" because I felt like I could adapt to any kind of tech or app. I took a picture of my Macbook's keyboard and imported it to Photoshop where I did some heavy image manipulation to it to create this poster-like image.