Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Term 2

 Well, here we are again. Another exciting and stressful term has come to and end. This term was quite a bit different from last. Most of our classes did not have homework, but rather, one big project we worked  on all term. Not too much to show compared to last time, but blood, sweat, and tears definitely went into this stuff. Hope you like!

Sculpting:
  By far the most anticipated and most enjoyed class all term. Even though I chose to pursue 3d back in the early years of college, I always wanted to try my hand at sculpting. due to class schedules, I was never able to take it till now, which in hindsight, I'm glad I waited. I'm still amazed that this was the first time I've ever sculpted.



Nurbs:
 Probably the most difficult class for me this term was Surface Modeling 1, aka NURBS. What is a nurb? Well, its a non-uniform rational b-spline, silly. And what does that mean? ... Well I have no idea, but basically its a different way of modeling things in 3d. I usually use what's called polygon modeling, which is much like building a very blocky simplified shell, that can later be smoothed out. Nurbs is all curved based, which makes it more accurate. Its got its own set of rules though, and it was a challenge to get even a very simple model to work. My final came out looking something to the equivalent of a child's scratchy crayon drawing, but this one won't be going up on the fridge. I will however, post the concept I used. The rest is up to your imagination.



Hard Surface Modeling 1:
 This class was not only great review for me, but I really did learn a lot as far as building something that's functional and structurally sound in 3d. We did have some homework in this class,  but our main focus was one fairly complex model. I chose to do a robot from the video game Portal 2. His name is Atlas, and he was a pain in the Atlas to model. I truly didn't realize how many little pieces were on this guy until I really got going. I still have some more hours to put in on him as far as the modeling goes.



Texture Painting:
One of the very nice things about this class was our final required us to paint an object that had at least 10 different materials on it. Luckily for me, I modeled a little robot that was full of pieces to paint. This is still a work in progress, but it should be done by the end of this week.


Intro to Zbrush:
Zbrush is an amazing program. It allows you to start out with a very blocky character, and end up with a character so detailed you can see the pores, wrinkles and veins. The final for this class was to model and texture a sea creature. I found this concept by Mike Baccin.. My model is currently missing some teeth, eyes, and those red lips, but I'm happy with the way the color on the wings and shell came out. Thanks again, Mike Baccin!
Concept by: Mike Baccin

Work in Progress: Zbrush model

Anatomy:
Anatomy was a great class. My drawing skills were really rusty and it was nice to get back to a traditional medium for a change. My eyes can only stare at the computer for so long. This class had some very time consuming homework, but I came out with some nice portfolio pieces, and I got a lot of figure drawing practice as well. Its been almost 9 years since my last figure drawing class! If my schedule permits it, I'd like to continue figure drawing next term.