For the most part, I'd have to say that cameras have been my Achilles heel, if only for the fact that I am not as skilled with cameras in general when it comes to other parts of a scene's composition. Even after two years of digital media classes and working the camera just right is a skill I have yet to master, though that is not to say I am inept, as most certainly my experience with that class helps me to understand the cameras in 3Ds Max, as they have extremely similar functionality. For the most part, learining more about a camera's more common movements and executing fluid animation definitely helped to overcome this setback. I have an example video of this below. Despite all this, for the most part this unit has gone by without a hitch, even the most feared and loathed topics of them all: rigging. This may come as a surprise, especially considering the extreme technical difficulties I encountered when working with rigging previously, but I feel that is has been my favorite this unit. I would have to attribute this to my prior experience with creature conceptualization, and my general love for understanding various parts of animal anatomy. Once the basic bone structure is created, as long as care and precise observation is maintained throughout the creation of the rig, generalizing the basic muscle groups and attributing them to your 3D representation in your model's bones comes with ease to one skilled in the talent. In short: If you understand muscle groups, you more or less understand 3D bones and rigging. I have also gone into detail describing my prior experience with lighting and I can once again attribute this to my skills with 2D art and illustration.
0 Comments
Anyone who knows me well is acquainted with the fact that I have a large background in 2D visuals. Working with light in a 3D sense is relatively the same principle as far as the general end result. You have your mid tones, your shadows and your highlights, and once color gets involved you start dealing with color theory and your colored highlights/shadows... It can all be pretty intimidating, especially for new artists and designers. Fortunately though since I have been working with concepts like these for just about 5+ years now, I can safely say I have some experience up my sleeve. Painting on highlights and setting up virtual lights in a 3D scene are two vastly different things, however they operate on nearly the exact same principals. I am well acquainted with the concept of lighting types like spot/omni/directional in my own artwork and I am also extremely familiar with how an object's material will effect the absorbed and reflected light. However, I would like to say that I am the most skilled at recognizing how a light's color, intensity, direction, and falloff effect a scene. While I would say that this unit helped my understanding of how to set up lights in 3Ds Max, it hasn't really done much to show me how light behaves in a scene, just by the fact that I am already so well versed in the topic. That isn't to say that my experience wasn't enjoyable however, quite the contrary, in fact, it reminded me of how I used to help my parents with the theater lighting back at the school my mother worked in. One of my favorite lessons was setting up RBG lights on a theater stage so that when combined they'd make white light.
Well to summarize the last quarter or so, I like to use the simple anagram UVW- also known in my mind as "Unwavering Vigorous Work". It's exactly what it sounds like, and in my experience it's been tedious, cumbersome, even frustrating at times, and yet somehow completely worth it and invigoratingly fun. Despite 3Ds Max's chronic tenancy to crash on me given the slightest amount of complexity needed for a given project, most of the projects went rather smoothly, most of them that is. Meanwhile I'm still trying to figure out why my temple is such a mess that the lazy UVW program cannot unwrap it properly. nor can I understand why this seems to be the only project thus far that has't gone along without a hitch. It is bothersome, but I feel as if I'm only going to get into more trouble with our coming unit, as I have barely touched any of Unity's 3D programming capabilities and have solely been doing work in its 2D functions. All that aside however, I truly do appreciate working with shaders, materials, and textures, definitely more than I do UVWs that is. Out of the three listed, materials have to be my favorite, as working with physical materials is just so oddly satisfying, especially when everything comes together and looks all nice, clean, neat, and shiny. It's probably because I just have a thing for materials and lighting effects in general, but I digress, it feels nice when it all comes together and looks pretty, what else can I say? All in all, I did like this section a lot, more than the previous portions of topics/units where we actually modeled stuff probably because this solely focused on the visual aspects of 3D models, which if you know me, I've always been a 2D artist at heart.
An example of a textured cube
While I do have a deep love for surface modeling, especially when it comes to making 3D models out of 2D splines, I am a little amused and bewildered by things such as working with particle effects and simulations, most notably things such as cloth modifiers and particle systems. While I also enjoyed working with mental ray lots, after the update to the 2019 version I am unfortunately unable to work with it anymore, knowing little to nothing about the Arnold renderer. Mass effects thus far has been a bit of a challenge, but nothing I can't handle, and I've been steadily coming along with it. Foliage has been nice already, and as you can probably already tell, knowing me, I jumped straight into the cherry blossom trees and the weeping willows. I am also a little exited as I have predicted that we might work with cameras more, or at the very least tap into some more environmental effects. This also might come as a shocker, but my more masochistic side is a bit disappointed that we haven't really gone into rigging yet. It seems rather odd, a student talking about wanting to go into rigging again after experiencing the horrors of it the last time they did so, but yes, I wish I could continue with it. Then again, while it is very improbable, it is still possible that we may tap into working with cameras more and rigging in the coming quarter, though that is mere speculation. I do not know for sure, however this would not be out of left field in the slightest, seeing that these have been worked on before in previous years. Either way I am very exited for what's to come. This is probably been my favorite modeling project thus far, aside from the chess set we did forever ago
|
Creator InfoThis is a blog for a Game Art Design class. Future programmer and currently an artist and writer. Archives
June 2019
Categories
All
|