Portfolio Website!!!

I'm working on my portfolio site!
It's been pretty fun!!!

Portfolio Draft

Bad Draft

2D/3D Final Portfolio Project

Life is lovely ( ^ 0 ^ )...

Here is progress on my Portfolio Piece! It needs several more pushes, but here we are:

The following digital painting is a concept art piece by Melanie Bourgeois'. As soon as I saw this image I felt imediately warmed by its character and color palette:

The biggest challenges involved with this piece involved mapping out perspective and figuring out the best way to make a roof texture. In zbrush, I felt like a carpenter! Most of the following images are rendered through maya.

Here is the wireframe:

The tri count for the game res model is about 11k right now. The polycount should be even less after tweaking of the wood planks.I wish I could have worked faster...But I found myself in a rut. 

Making and using insert meshes = SO MUCH FUUUUN! I created sets of tiles ranging from sets of 4,6 and a couple of loner tiles. Being able to use the transpose tools to build uniqueness in the roof tile layouts was pretty cool and took some getting used to. I whs it could've come out cleaner, but at least I tried to be a little accurate by number of rows only. My next move is to do some minimal retopo of the game res geo to better fit these tiles. 

Portfolio Piece Update: Wooot I Built a Timbered Houuuse

Here is an update on how my portfolio piece is going. I approached this past week thinking, "HAAA, I'll be in Zbrush in nooo tiiime..." I was wrong. After putting in 18 hrs or so into this project, this is where I'm at. I am quite proud... The plan is to approach this assignment with a little bit of modularity in mind. So I had to map out exactly what's going into zbrush, considering proportions. As I developed each piece of the house, I figured out which pieces could be reused about the build or mirrored. Examples include the windows, wood planks, half of the roof, half of the balcony, etc.

Unforutnately... as I continued mappings, I found myself focusing on solving problems with small pieces while not recognizing the largest challenge of all. That was solving the impossible. Melanie Bourgeois; art is absolutely gorgeous and I wanted to capture every single charming aspect of it's shape language. I didn't realize until too late that the sides of the house were designed with impossible construction. Recall impossible objects and optical illusions... This art piece portrays a very subtle one, that you notice briefly in passing yes. But the gravity of it smacked me in the face when I had to size the support beams and side wide window.

After solving that issue by slightly straying from the concept arts details (which made me salty because I loved the width of that lower window)... I realized that I should definitely size all key unique pieces to be exact in comparison to other crucial pieces.

I have already made copies of pieces that are higher res in comparison to the low res base models. Soon all pieces will be absolutely ready for zbrush. I know that I'm behind, but I do feel that I've gotten the most difficult part of the challenge out of the way. Lots of tiny things to fix, like figuring out whether the circular window should be inset to the roof side panels, or finishing up the base of the column.

There are still a few details that I'd like advice on, because my brain has been set in the zone and it's hard to stretch for certain solutions. I'm wondering how best to approach ZBrush. Should I import all key bits together, and export pieces separately? Also for some reason, no mater how much I budge the roof window set, I can't figure how to smooth the top to match the split middle of the roof. Is it okay for that piece to be slapped in and unconnected to the roof itself?

Overall my plan is to see how much I can push and get built with modular pieces with minimal sculpting in Zbrush. I am so fortunate that color is already set for this piece, So that I can focus on getting these first steps right before I fully explore texturing. Can't wait to make Bourgeois' lovely art a 3D reality and share it with her!!!

Can you spot what makes this concept an "impossible object?"

Portfolio Piece

It took  me hours upon hours to decide upon a piece. I couldn't figure if I wanted to go for a sci-fi or fantastical environment portfolio piece at first. So I had to outline what the piece would mean to me and what I want to learn from it. I will fully flesh out the reason for choosing this piece soon.

I chose to realize Melanie Bourgeois' "Little House" concept art as a 3D environment piece:

Melanie Bourgeois' Artstation

Substance Painter Project

Got to explore substance painter last weeeek! I love it dearly. But it's still going to take some getting used to. I found myself getting familiar with stencils, masks, materials, opacity, etc. It was quite the trip. There are limitless possibilities with this software... My layers are messy, I will do better about organizing themz!!!

I thoroughly appreciated the video tutorials that were provided to us. I will find myself frequently referring to them until all of the methods sink in.

Working With Substance Designer

Here is my first try at playing with PBR texturing in Substance Designer!
Pretty cool stuff... I'm sure I'll have a clearer idea of how to take advantage of the process as we move on. Fore now I was able to apply noise textures, play with metallic/roughness, colors, and set in some edge wear.

I got a little confused in terms of figuring how to apply a texture and color to just the visor. But I found the solution after figuring out how the blend nodes work. So I now have a clear understanding.

 

 The following image features the default version of the helmet without a color change, and a slightly darker visor instead. I don't know which one is better really, since there isn't as much contrast as I would like. But I just wanted to play with the nodes and understand how they work.

 Earlier node setup:

Here is where my confusion had been. See the spare little uniform color I placed? Connecting it was confusing, because I couldn't figure where the blend node needed to draw from and connect to:

I added a frame for the Visor Color--I figured out what went where. But I still feel that my nodes are a bit messy. 

Prop Concept Design: Kowloon Awnings

Kowloon has a lot of stylized awnings, so I thought I would work on a stylized roof for a restaurant booth.