- I'm playing catch up for this class.
- I hate the cloth modifier.
- Next few months will definitely be rigging or animation I'm calling it.
- I got some personal projects in mind that all require 3D modeling.
This last week has been tough for me work wise. I have been catching up on a lot of 3D modeling, although I have been able to accomplish a lot now that I have 3Ds Max at home, it has still been a lot to do in a week. I have relearned all tools and techniques from last year as well as my complete hatred of the cloth modifier, which gave me plenty of trouble over the last week. For the next few months I think we are going to be moving in one of two directions. It will ether be rigging or animation, and there is only one thing I hate more than the cloth modifier and that is rigging so for my sake I hope it is animation. I just thought of a cool idea for animation using the daylight and cloth modifiers to make a time lapse animation which could be cool, but who knows. Most of these tools have given me ideas for personal projects like 3D modeling a zweihander with the taper and symmetry modifiers then using that 3D model in digital paintings, which is something I will have to do on my free time. Or using the daylight modifier to simulate shadows of a cliff or mountain that I could then paint. Maybe I'll do a blog post on some of the personal 3D stuff that I could do in the future.
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This Monday ill start working on simulations for 3Ds max. What that means basically is that I'll be working on for the last bit of the quarter. If you aren't already aware simulations are simply put simulations of the real world, (super obvious I know) they include light sources, mass or weight, and cloth. These all seem interesting and all will definitely be needed for making good professional grade work. Especially cloth and lighting, For all those super hero capes, realistic clothing, flags, explosions, dramatic lighting, and good old fashion reflections, that is required in all good professional work. For games I think learning good lighting will actually be the most important when it comes to simulations not only for the reasons earlier but also for creating mood lighting and realistic day and night cycles. I linked a cool tutorial about making realistic lighting.
VanLoon3D.“RealisticInteriorLightingin3dsMax-Vray.”YouTube,YouTube,23May2016,www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWu1z081EKY. Spoiler alert I like surface modeling more. Honestly this is mainly because i'm more used to surface modeling more but I recognize the usefulness of parametric modeling and as I've used it more the faster I've been able to make things. I kinda wish I still had 3Ds max at home so I could keep messing with the software. Surface modeling is really useful for making cool shapes like that space ship we made last year, while parametric modeling is really good for getting details right in a model like smoothing out a plane or adding weird extensions or making the model more complex in general.
'Let me preface this by saying I never like to admit when i'm struggling with anything, especially when it is about school but I feel like after the three day break of thanksgiving I've had a much harder time focusing in school. Its because of a few reasons such as my A.D.D. and just senior-itous. When I get super distracted during school it is basically a downward spiral of random thought followed by random thought that can be for some days impossible to get out of. On top of that I often get distracted with friends or conversations during class which is also pretty taxing on my efficiency to get things done. Lastly the main nail in the coffin is technology distractions (this is especially prevalent in our game design class) at home if I am given a difficult project to do I will generally just goof off on the internet for hours I'm sure everyone has done this at some point but It is all to easy to just start watching Youtube and never stop. Honestly nowadays school might need to start teaching students how they can stay on task during a school day.
For those who don't know what the difference between ADD and ADHD. https://www.healthline.com/health/adhd/difference-between-add-and-adhd This movie sucks, maybe that is partially because I have a bias against Assassins Creed, but it cannot be understated how much this movie sucks. Ill get the good stuff out of the way first. The movie does have lots of connections to the games though and seems to be faithful to the source material, the movie makes nods to a lot of the games plot, items and terminology such as the apple of Eden, the assassins spring knife gauntlets, the leap of faith, and how the assassins ring finger gets chomped off. That's all the positives I can think of. On to why this movie is garbage! For starters the visuals look dull throughout the movie, everything is plastered in this yellow overlay that honestly makes everything look like piss. The CGI sucks and is sometimes blatantly obvious. None of the characters are likable especially the main character who while we do get reasons to sympathize with him his performance is mediocre which makes his whole character seem bland. The movies pacing is so bad that on multiple occasions throughout the movie i got my phone out and began reading a more interesting web-comic, and I forgot that I was watching a movie. Assassins Creed got a 18% on rotten tomatoes, and a 5% from me. This is not worth the hour and 45 minutes it took to watch it.
staff!, Chosen by RT, et al. “Assassin's Creed.” Safe Haven (2013) - Rotten Tomatoes, www.rottentomatoes.com/m/assassins_creed/. So this guy named Darik Smith is a 3D modeler and he has made some pretty neat stuff. The stuff that i'm most impressed with has to be his environment modeling work. I’ve always loved good set pieces for stories and this is no exception. Just looking at some of his concept work is awesome and I super love all the detail that goes into the buildings and architecture. I want to get really good at making environments in general and making them in a 3D space will greatly help my 2D art. So i'm going to get good at making places. So that means improving with modifiers like Boolean, loft and lathe while looking for more advanced techniques in the future.
“Darik Smith.” Environment Concept Art, dariksmith.carbonmade.com/projects/6042572. Last summer had to be one of the best summers that I've lived through, it was a roller coaster through and through and one of the high points for the summer was this internship I did for a company called Design Foundry. I spent two weeks up near the DC area with my aunt and uncle. Every week day My aunt and I would drive about an hours drive around DC into Maryland to this warehouse where I would exclusively work with 3D models basically all day. The people there were super nice and I had a fun time working on various small projects. Really I was only using the texture modifier and some simple primitive editing with a few modifiers. I did get a good refresher on 3Ds Max though. It was a strange new experience in a strange place that I almost never visit. Overall it was exciting new and enjoyable and gets me excited to work for a design company in the future.
This is the company I was working for https://www.foundrycrew.com/ And here is some of the stuff I made for them Ill admit making 3D models are not my strong suit specifically when it comes to making stuff in 3D. The last few weeks have been super helpful for getting caught up, on the stuff that has somewhat slipped my mind since last year and I am just now starting to get back into the school mindset as well as working with 3D models mindset. The workload has been becoming much more time consuming over the last few weeks not really for game design specifically but school in general. It hasn't helped that there were two hurricanes that hit NC this year and both caused us to loose school days, the fallout of that being it has been hard for me to fully re-adapt to school and it still feels like I'm just getting back to school, except we keep getting more and more assignments and projects. This has caused me to get slapped with reality and now I'm catching up for the first quarter. For game design this has been much easier than I was making it out to be, essentially we have been going over the basics of 3Ds Max again you know lathe, lofts, Boolean all that good stuff.
Destiny 2’s newest DLC Forsaken has dropped! With it comes loads of new content, story mission, loot, and game changes the game desperately needed. The new story focus’ on our favorite character Cayde 6 everything is fun and dandy for the first mission Cayde is making quips and cracking jokes, and then bam! He is dead. Bungie killed off one of their most beloved characters. Suddenly the rest of the story becomes a classic revenge story modeled after old cowboy stories, the only difference here being in this your a space wizard hunting down the guy that killed your good bud cayde. This has honestly been the best story since The Taken King. Another addition has been the new PVP/PVE mode gambit. This gamemode has two teams of 4 players facing off trying to kill enough enemies to summon a boss called a prime-evil. Once you kill the prime-evil you win a round. There's a catch though the other team can send over a player to harass your team while you gather motes to summon your prime-evil, this is where the PVP part comes in. This mode is crazy fun especially with some friends to play with. Paired with all that as well bungie has officially reworked the weapon system, I won't go into too much detail but basically it combines the weapon system from Destiny 2 with Destiny 1’s weapon system. This system is so flexible you can essentially run around with 3 shotguns, overall another good change. If you were skeptical about destiny 2 before now is definitely the time to pick it up all of the new additions to the game make the game worth playing again. Not to mention with the annual pass we will be getting more content as the months progress. I've linked the patch notes for forsaken below, as well as an actual breakdown of how the new weapon system works if your curious.
Forsaken Patch Notes https://www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/47197 Detailed explanation of the new weapons system https://kotaku.com/destiny-2-s-weapon-system-is-now-drastically-different-1828669413 Welp I’m a senior now….
Everything seems so different yet so familiar at the same time, like how for a fourth year in a row we start the year in Mr. B’s class with careers. I guess some things never change. This year is slightly different though instead of just learning about careers through some boring powerpoint. This time Mr. B had us “apply for a job” which is a cool concept. We were assigned to find a job then write a cover letter, resume, and create a portfolio. Which we would then turn in instead of actually applying. So I decided to “apply” to Bungie the creators of Destiny (which im currently having a lot of fun playing). I think that the most important thing i've learned up to this point has to be that writing cover letters suck. I was somewhat lucky on this assignment because the bulk of my portfolio was already done and i already had a resume written down so the main thing i had to do was write the cover letter. It's not fun. With the help of the internet and my mom whose job it is hire people i got it done. For my portfolio I had updated my art from last year and changed all references from me being a junior to a senior, as well as updating my resume for everything i did over the summer, and that's about it two weeks down only one year to go. I see u guys next post.
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Miles RomanHi, I am a student at Durham School of the Arts, and this blog will be documenting my experiences with my Game Design class. Categories
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