Long time absence and newest creation.

Well hasn't it been a long time since my last post! I've been extremely busy, sick and had to move house over the past couple of months (chuck in a little procrastination on the side and you have a pretty horrible mix). Oh, yes, and I must announce that I have been accepted into the Auckland Media Design School here in New Zealand, it's the most prestigious design school in our country and they get employers from Gameloft, 2K, Grinding Gears and others coming in every time a group of graduates completes the degree. Doing another three year degree is a little daunting, but I have no doubt that I'll absolutely love it :D.

I've also been working furiously and found little spare time to complete any projects in Maya, but alas, things have calmed down a little and I've managed to complete another creation in Maya today :).

This was an exercise in low poly counts for me and while there is most likely still too larger an amount, it's a drastic change from my Chaos Rhino.

This here is a Space Marine Dreadnought, again from 40k (I'm thinking of trying something different now, I've done a lot of 40k stuff...) I tried very hard to keep the poly count down and ended up with 8657 faces, quite an achievement considering that my Chaos Rhino was over 299,000... I didn't try texturing this time because I'm so shoddy at it, I also thought it looked better untextured, and this way the fine details can be seen a bit easier.


Front angle shot.
 Rear shot.
 A birds eye shot.
 
And lastly, I thought I'd finish with a grand, low shot pose.

I have to say that this has been my longest project so far, despite having far less detail on the model, it took at least twice as long as the Chaos Rhino. I think this is because I had to go through and delete extra faces after figuring out which faces to delete, also I had to try and work a lot of cubes into different shapes that I hadn't worked with much before. There a definitely places I could go through and remove some extra faces, or delete a piece altogether and redesign it to lower the count again, but I'm content with the fact that I know I can do it. I'm so glad that every time I push myself with a new challenge, that I can rise to it and complete it, and be proud of my creation. This is definitely the career for me.

I hope you've enjoyed this post, and I apologise for it being such a lengthy space in between them!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

World design in Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

Image
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a game set inside the mind of a Celtic warrior and depicts her struggle with psychosis. As the theme hints, the game is rather dark and filled with Viking style ruins and buildings and depicts many forested areas in keeping with Celtic and Viking tradition. Because we are inside the mind of Senua (the main character) there is a wonderfully crafted and unique setting that shifts and changes as Senua traverses her environment. Elements from her reality and her mind clash as the player progresses giving unique and interesting ways to solve puzzles. The world leans toward a linear approach in its exploration, with the player being able to progress in one direction most of the time. Levels can be confusing at times as there is no minimap or map in general for the player to gain reference, simply the players own sense of direction. This is a great break away from the overreliance on such methods in modern games and I feel that if Ninja Theory had im...
Read more

Kairo and Abstract Art

Image
After playing through Kairo (Richard Perrin, October 2012) I found that while it lacked a lot in gameplay (it was extremely confusing at some points and way too simple in others) some of the shapes I actually found quite pleasing. The sheer variety of abstract shapes that the creator managed to achieve with simple cubes was very surprising. However, in terms of abstraction I honestly believe Kairo represents abstract art quite successfully. All of the levels use minimalistic shapes to convey an idea or image of something recognisable to the player. One such example is the level in which the player finds themselves in a garden type area with trees made of intermittently placed cubes. Image retrieved from: http://www.electrondance.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/kairo-garden-crazy-theory.jpg This level alone shows what can be created purely just by using cubes and while some of the objects of the objects can be hard to read or interpret, the skill of which they have bee...
Read more

Baked Lighting in Unreal

Image
This blog post will revolve around using baked lighting in Unreal engine 4 to create an interesting scene from purely grey materials. This exercise was a lot of fun and taught me a lot about how to utilise baked light maps from maya to give more detailed lighting on objects. I also leaned a fair amount about the lighting in Unreal such as using a plane in conjunction with a spotlight to reflect color onto an object from outside the scene. Here are some examples: This is the basic assets with no changes to lighting: This is where the light source has been changed to static. As you can see it gives a much darker appearance: Here I have increased the resolution of the baked light map to make it more detailed so the light can catch on more areas: In this shot I have placed a flat plane outside the widow with a spotlight facing it to reflect back some color and stronger light: And in the final shot I have added some color to the light source, some blue...
Read more