Quick Follow Up

As said in the previous blog I have completed ahead of where I am meant to be at and such had to ignore updates for the short term to speed up work flow. This is so give a more overall look of the bathroom to show off the textures of most of the items I had in the due dates. So far I am happy with almost all textures. The textures I dislike so far are the texture for the toilet - just seems wrong; white wood texture used - not enough emphasis on the wood; and the floor texture - overall just wrong the depth of it just seems wrong, the look of the textures seems flat and or artificial, and sides don't line up where they should. Overall I like the texturing of this bathroom.

Tiny Update

I have been working very diligently to catch back up to where I wanted to be at. For this reason the blogging has been a little slow. So far the objects left to model/texture would be two more light fixtures near the tub and assorted random objects for decoration like soap, toilet paper, rugs, towels, and other objects. Here are the pictures for the toilet and the lights that are a little late. The main reason for this update being late is because I wanted to model the toilet last thinking I would need quite a bit of time for it. It was relatively quick actually. The light fixtures were actually harder to make than the toilet, specially since i had to scrap the first design for it would make it 10x harder to texture.

The Lost Blog

I am caught behind schedule yet again like last year. Last year we had snow days for almost 2 weeks. This time I was sick for around 2 weeks. I am trying to get back on track but Maya has been uncooperative so far. Anyhow I have gotten what is needed for the first blog. Another reason I am behind is I sometimes texture things before I need to. So all the pictures with have some textures to them. So far I have 1 light so far which is a mental ray physical sun and sky. More lights will be added probably in the next Blog. So far these are pictures I have. Things that have already got on my nerves are the texture for the sink. I have tried multiple times on how it should be but so far have failed quite a bit. I set it back to lambert 1 for the time being though. I like the progress on things like the tub, sink, wall separator, and a few of the textures around the room.

Random Side note it seems someone keeps eating bread over the sink. (me joking about bread crumb looking dots on the sink)

Reference Pictures

These are some pictures I took of various angles of my Bathroom. These don't fully give an idea of the layout, but will give me something to refer to when make things like the toilet, sink, tub/shower, and even how the structure is since I am familiar with it.

New Project

Before I work on other animations in the 3-D environment known as Maya, I must get to know texturing better. I am working on a new project where I will be modeling and texturing my own bathroom. Here is the Timeline setup for the Project.

Bathroom

·                    Get reference pictures

o   Due: August 29

o   Blog Here

·                     Finish watch Lynda playlist

o   No Due Date

·                     Modeling

o   Model Room

§  Due: September 3

o   Model Sink

§  Due: September 3

o   Model Tub

§  Due: September 3

o   Model Shower Addition

§  Due: September 5

o   Model Wall Separator

§  Due: September 5

§  Blog Here

o   Model Toilet

§  Due: September 11

o   Model Carpet

§  Will probably be put in last because of lag

§  No Date

o   Model Mirrors

§  Due: September 3

o   Model Lights Fixtures

§  Due: September 12

o   Model Towel and other finishing models

§  Will probably be put in last because of lag

§  No Date

§  Blog Here

·                     Texturing

o   Texture Room

§  Due: September 16

o   Texture Sink

§  Due: September 16

o   Texture Tub

§  Due: September 17

o   Texture Shower Addition

§  Due: September 17

o   Texture Wall Separator

§  Due: September 18

§  Blog Here

o   Texture Toilet

§  Due: September 18

o   Texture Carpet

§  Will probably be put in last because of lag

§  No Date

o   Texture Mirrors

§  Due: September 3

o   Texture Lights

§  Due: September 18

o   Texture Towel and other finishing models

§  No Date

§  Blog Here

·                     Realistic Lighting

o   Due: August 19

·                     Render

                                o   Blog Here

Final

My Junior year of e-Communications was riddled with many projects. I started from projects at which I was grouped with others to some all alone. One of my favorite was animations was Paper Boy. To end off this year I decided I should work together with the Paper Boy group again. So for the final project and for a project to continue to the next year, my senior year. This project was in dedication to one of my favorite games, Minecraft. To start off I started with making some models starting with the creeper. I sadly was not thinking about it and dissected the texture sheet and made the model with around 30 different textures. This could have been better if I only used the texture sheet with UV texturing on the model. Jake finally joins in and we start to make models quicker. I eventually got the idea of the UV texturing and started on changing our characters with it. After making most of the models including the world using a program called mineways we started on the story. I don't want to spoil the story since it is finished and most likely finalized so I will give a summary. If you don't want to see it go to the next spoiler marker.

Skin used for my Character Model. I use
 something close to this in actual Minecraft

>>SPOILER>> The story begins with Jake, Sam, and I in the real world. We say we will go meet each other on minecraft and run of scene. We enter the minecraft world. While in minecraft we explain to Sam what minecraft is. We try to get the audience to know the characters before going on 2 big adventures. One to the ender dragon and one with the wither. We meet only one character along the way and that is the baby ender dragon Ohm. Other parts of the story will be hidden until debut of the animation. (This is a big animation and will take a long time to make.)  <<SPOILER<< 

From going off of the story we are now preparing a few tiny bites for a final for the end of the year. Most of the modeling even is still a work in progress. As of right now I am working on a scene in a cave of the test world to see how everything is coming together. The two things I am trying to finalize before the end of the school year is the texturing for the torch as well as lighting for it too. I feel great potential in this and we may go too far out of our way. This is something that is most definitely a work in progress and something may even be scrapped but right now hopes are high with the new school year. Things I would love to fix or improve on this thought is that the textures for the blocks are a little low, the textures for most of the mobs in the animation, and making a few of the blocks I couldn't send over using mineways like doors, torches, buttons, pressure plates, and really anything else of that sort. I also need to go into minecraft and make all the scenes. Just guessing off the top of my head but I would guess around 20-30 scenes are needed. The time and length of the animation is yet unknown and I predict 4-10 minutes.

Now about how we are going to animate. It is still undecided wether we are going to rig the characters or are we going to rotate and translate like most animations. I think that rigging would look nicer and smoother but we will have to change most of the models. We have most of the blocks but I will most likely update the textures to be more high resolution. We might have pre-made cycles for things like walking, running, mining, and placing. We will use a studio room from the e-Com department to get the recordings for the voices. We will also use one of the video design departments cameras to get the intro scene to the animation (probably doing it in the halls). I feel as if this will be very good animation that would exceed what was Paper Boy. This will be much more work especially on my part since i am stage design and most of the models. I am the director, producer, main writer, and set-up. The things that Sam and Jake would be doing would be stuff like animating and possibly rigging. I will help animate too but I will have to do many other things in the process. Sam will probably be the lead animator. Jake will be left with doing all the edits. I will probably help him with at least 50% of it though like I always seem to do.

To be clear how the world is being made and how textures are used we use the program called mineways. Mineways is a program that will transfer a portion of a minecraft world from the level.dat file. Through this it also includes the textures for the blocks. There is many options for how to export it to Maya. I recommend to try looking at a few tutorials about it if you want to try it out. Will all of this I can make a Minecraft world in Minecraft which is quicker than it would be in Maya by far. By doing this it saves massive amounts of time with the process of the world. Sadly it has the originally minecraft textures. This is only bad because in maya the resolution gets a little 'loose'. By getting a higher quality default texture pack I can get the textures for Maya updated to something much more worthy of this animation. I still need to do a lot and I hope I can spread the news of the animation. Here is a test render picture of my character underground. This was used to see how well the lighting is for cave systems. This lighting will be improved as well as I will add a real texture to the torch. As said this is a huge work in progress and would love support for this. Thank you for looking at this and hope you are excited for the finish of this as I am.

New Project

I decided to do a little work dedicated to Minecraft which is a fun sandbox game. To dedicated this i will be modeling some of the tools and a Minecraft World and more probably to come. I have had good success so far. Here is the basic design of the swords of Minecraft. This is also usable as a desktop background.

Full Quality Image For Background: Download