The Adventures Of Hamish

Ben and Ham Soup

2012-01-12T16:33:00.000-08:00

Check it out! Ben and Ham Soup poster!

Ben and Ham Soup is a podcast I'm doing with a friend of mine, Ben. It's a comedy podcast where we talk about all sorts of dumb things we think about. It's available on iTunes (just search for Ben and Ham Soup) or go to www.benandhamsoup.com to be directed there.

This is a poster I made that we will put up around the streets of Melbourne. Keep an eye out!

2012-01-12T15:56:00.000-08:00

Well, the Scribe is done. I made a rig (something I was never very good at) and it seems to work just fine. I made a couple of poses using a tree trunk I made from a while ago (the Wizard's House.)

These renders are using the smaller 512x512 texture for submission. I think it turned out quite well. I definitely enjoyed this project and will likely create a few more characters in the future.

Until then :)

Scribe textures

2011-11-19T20:03:00.000-08:00

Even though I have to submit this thing with a 512x512 texture, I decided to paint it at 2048x2048 so I could have a high res render for myself. This image is 1024x1024. So I painted it twice as big as this, and I'll submit it half as big. It was all painted with one brush in Photoshop, and I only used a faint texture on the book cover, parchment and leather belt to save some time and trouble. Also I wouldn't be able to paint those very well.

And here are some close ups. I'm particularly proud of the face, beard and chest.

The text is an excerpt from Magician that I threw into google translate and translated it into Latin. The cover is Latin for Magician.

And here is the render with the 512x512 texture. I still have to rig and position the scribe to submit it. That'll be next time!

Mini Challenge!

2011-11-19T05:31:00.000-08:00

Gee it's been a while. My absence can be put down to a few things, primarily moving house and working on art that I'm not allowed to reveal to the world. Also laziness. But even though I'm super busy I'm going to try and get this thing going again. And I'll be starting with a Mini 3D Art Challenge!

Here's the info.

The guys over at gameartisans.org have some cool contests every now and then and this one seemed like fun. Having such strict guidelines makes it all the more enjoyable for me. My model can only consist of 1,250 triangles and I can only use a single 512x512 texture. This is around about on par with Nintendo DS graphics. The other guideline is you have to choose between one of six paths. These are Knight, Spy, Bard, Scribe, Wizard and Cleric. Obviously these are all fantasy characters and for whatever reason I was immediately drawn to the scribe.

I quickly found a character I liked and settled on the guy with a belt and a piece of parchment as a loin cloth. Another option was the dude with a paper skirt thing that is similar to those ads you sometimes see on billboards that have piano lessons and you rip of a piece of paper at the bottom with the phone number.

When I started modelling I noticed I had drawn the scribe with a slight curve. I knew I couldn't have him curve left of right and I definitely didn't want him to have parallel sides so I would have to decide if I wanted him to be fat or thin. Even though the fat guy would take up more real estate on the texture, I chose him because I imagine a scribe would be a well fed individual back in the day.

Here we have the initial model sitting at exactly 1,250 triangles. Problem is, the beard looks like crap and it makes the head look like its sitting upside down with the beard as the hair. I knew it couldn't stay like this.

At least this one didn't look like an upside down head, and because those spikes were triangular I was able to get a lot of them without taking up much detail. But it still looks bad.

Bam. Much better! I could have given the beard more detail if I kept it 2D, but I felt it was important to have depth so it is rather sharp edged. I could erase some triangles from the back of the beard and render my final image only from the front but I'd like to do this properly, as if it were going in a game.

Next post will be the texture work. I have to fit it all inside the 512x512 image so it will be quite low resolution. Hopefully it turns out well!

iPhone wallpaper

2011-02-19T03:30:00.001-08:00

This took a surprisingly long time for such a small and simple project. I get bored of looking at the same wallpaper very quickly and I had run out of pictures to use in my Pictures folder (there are 9,948 images in there, but I didn't try them all of course) so I decided to try making my own. Three days later I was finished.

As usual I sketched out a simple design and started making it Illustrator. The sketch was almost the same as the above image. The main idea was there would be different levels for each row of apps - an underground cavern for the bottom four, some grassy hills for the next row up, then some clouds, then the rocket, then a planet. The planet looked too realistic and it didn't seem to suit so I got rid of it. Once I was done I transferred it over to my phone and used it for about a day before I started to get annoyed by some things.

The first thing I noticed were the trees. I didn't like the round design and the small fruit was too small a detail for the simple style of everything else. They were also too well hidden and/or too evenly spaced, even though I wanted them to show between the apps. The other thing that annoyed me was that you couldn't really see any of the underground cavern, and the grassy hills were slightly too far down.

Aah, much better. Square trees are much nicer than round ones, and with the fruit gone they suit the rest of the image. I originally intended to have the clouds white or something and the red was just a placeholder so it would show up against the blue as I drew them, but they give off a nice early-morning vibe which I like (even though the sun isn't rising). There's a much nicer blend between the grass, dirt (originally a lame line that looked out of place) and rock. The cavern was still just slightly too low though, so I tweaked it a tad more.

Not a whole lot has changed since the first design, but I like it much more. The little textures in the grass, dirt and rock were drawn in Photoshop, as was the waterfall and the faint diagonal lines.

And here we have it. It's a pity that you can't see the bottom of the waterfall, because I quite like how that turned out. I'll probably get bored of looking at this after a while and make another one. I also have another 3D project in the works, but it's rather a tough one.

Cube Land

2011-02-09T05:29:00.000-08:00

Here's another project I challenged myself to do in a small amount of time. This time I was looking through an old sketch book of mine and found what is essentially this, but I redrew it a few times to decide on what should be included and got to work.

I started by modelling the earth and water. I had to do the water a few times because I wasn't sure how I would get the white edges. What I ended up with was one mesh with two different materials assigned to it - one more transparent than the other. I used the same Toon Shading as my previous project, but this time instead of flat colour I used abstract painterly textures. Each surface has two textures created for it - one for being lit and the other for the shade.

The sketches I did had a few different ideas and I mixed and matched to get the final arrangement of things. The skeleton arm, pipe and tree were always there, and at one stage the sign had something written on it. Towards the end I added the lily pads, ladder, grass and rocks. I had a few other things, but didn't want to overcrowd it.

I was going to smooth out the jagged edges of the ground and water, but I liked the low poly look of it. It suits the simple style (even though the smoothed version would probably have worked too) and it kind of reminds me of Nintendo 64 graphics.

I knew I didn't want the outlines, but I thought I should try them just in case. I had them on the underwater grass, but they showed up far too much so I turned those ones off. I think because the water is transparent, it messes with the perspective a bit. The ladder looks like its underwater and out of the water at the same time. I think adding one too many things can really mess things up.

I have a few more ideas for mini projects. I wonder which one I'll do next...

a simple tower

2011-02-06T04:15:00.000-08:00

Betteo (also here) is right up there as far as my favourite artists go. His work and style is so imaginative and inspiring. Everything he does is interesting to look at. Some things really make me want to create art, and betteo's a.simple.tower is one of them. Here it is:

I did not draw the above picture!

One night at 11pm I was looking at this picture and challenged myself to see how much of it I could recreate before I went to bed. I decided on the 3D medium and I think by 3 or 4 in the morning I had modeled everything and figured out the basics of Toon Shading and outlines in Maya so I went to sleep. The next day after lunch I began texturing and by 11pm that night I had finished all the small details. Below is the finished product.

The only things not done in Maya was the sky colour, the clouds, the border, the grungy texture and the small horizontal hand drawn line under the castle window (an important detail from the original). Lighting it in Maya was a pain in the butt because I wanted each object to look at least somewhat similar to the original. I had a separate light for the castle, the ground and the smaller objects - each only affecting what I intended. You'll notice that the moon couldn't light the far end of the ground and the near side of the castle simultaneously. I have to say for 24 hours work I am very pleased with the result.

Here is a zoomed out image of the scene rendered in Maya without any of the Photoshop additions (with the exception of the sky colour). It's quite a simple scene really which is what I love about the original.

These small projects are fun and manageable around work, so expect more of them!

New grass!

2010-12-06T06:18:00.000-08:00

Sheesh, having a job is a real pain. How am I supposed to get my 3D stuff done?? Well, slowly as it turns out. But I have new grass, which is nice. I didn't like the old stuff, so I changed it from 2D planes to 3D models. I think it looks a heck of a lot better.

I still kept some of the old grass for around the edges of the house. It looks nice there I think.

I also put in a new sky box, which is actually a sphere. I tinkered with the lighting again and it's getting close to finished I think. I hope. It's a little unrefined, but I'm still learning how to use this program.

Definitely happy with how this is turning out. I'd still like to change a couple of small things - lighting, colours, etc - but I need to start thinking about what my next project should be.

Hmm.

Wizard House in the Unreal Engine!

2010-11-21T03:08:00.000-08:00

Phew, I've been working on this non stop for the last couple of days. I thought instead of continually polishing the scene in Maya, it would be more constructive to export the scene to a game engine and learn how it all works. I'm using the Unreal Development Kit which is in Beta at the moment. I used the editor that came with Unreal Tournament 2004 in uni so I've had some experience with something similar to this, but for the most part I've have to learn the program from scratch in a couple of days from a lot of youtube videos. The good news is I haven't had any major problems and am well on my way to getting this thing done!

I exported the objects to a special file type and imported that to the Unreal engine. Unfortunately that doesn't bring the textures along, so I had to import each texture and assign them to everything. Again. I also had to create a collision box for the things I wanted to be solid. So basically everything but the grass has an invisible box around it that stops the character from walking through the object. This means I can climb on the roof. :)

I've been playing around with the lighting a lot but because I've just made a small room to put the house in I won't bother with lighting it properly. Mostly because the Directional Light that simulates the sun doesn't light the air-tight room I made. Perhaps I should turn this into a full blown level... But I won't think about that right now. This is more of a learning experience.

And here it is in game! It's fun to walk and jump around even if there's nothing to do. Well, it is for me anyway. I still need to add a few things like the trees and grass and vines.

Other than walking and jumping, you can shoot the gun.

Bye!

Decisions

2010-11-15T02:42:00.000-08:00

Just quickly, here are some vines.

Vines are fun to make, perhaps I should make some more. Unfortunately though, the lighting has been giving me some grief and I've spent lots of time working it out. I was fiddling around with it some more and got it to a point I was happy with, but one variation makes the front look good and the other makes the back look good.

One has a light high up in the sky that casts shorter shadows behind the house but covers the front, making it not somewhat flat and not as interesting as it could be. But the back of the house (trees, fences, etc) aren't drenched in shadow. The other has a light lower in the sky, which casts a nice shadow across the front of the house, but behind the house everything looks flat because there's no shadows under the objects.

I was looking outside in real life and when there's a small tree behind a house or it's overcast then it doesn't look so odd when something doesn't have a shadow. Since the front is the main attraction I'm thinking I should go with the lower light.

I also think I'm nearing completion, so maybe I should try to bring this thing over to a game engine. I wonder if that will be easy...

Tune in next time to find out!

Leaves and Lighting

2010-10-31T05:26:00.000-07:00

Another full week of work hasn't left me with much time for this unfortunately. I would have liked to get some vines done, but I would also like to get to bed at a reasonable hour. I'm nearing completion, so that will likely be next week's job. This week was the arranging of last weeks wall leaves (I don't know what else to call them. I think they are vines with leaves on them, but I'll be making more viney vines next week so I've reserved the name for those).

I had to be careful not to go overboard with these things, or it could look lame. I hope I've struck an acceptable balance here but I'm afraid I won't know until I look back from the future with judgmental and more experienced eyes.

I like this part. It was tough to get the flat textures turn the corners but I think I was able to make it look acceptable. It was more tough to make the rectangular shapes to blend in and not look like a few rectangles next to each other.

Here are a couple of shots of the front of the house. In the second image, behind that tree, is where I first started adding in these leaves. I can't tell if its a tad sloppy or if there are just too many in one area.

I don't have a before and after shot, but this is the new lighting I set up. Before the shadows extended too far behind the house and off the edge of the platform. Now the fences have their own shadows and aren't shrouded in darkness. It is a little too dark in those shadows though. I had to brighten up a couple of these images in Photoshop slightly before uploading them here. Of course I plan to rectify that before the end.

Farewell!

Curses

2010-10-24T07:40:00.000-07:00

Curse real world activities like work and sleeping at a reasonable hour. I can't get much work done!

Just a quick update today. I wasn't happy with the grass last week because it was too obvious that they were made with long 2D planes. I made some smaller grass tufts and surrounded the grass I had to hide the more visible areas. There's a lot of grass now, but I think it works. I definitely want to put it in a game engine now so I don't have to look at the ugly shadows.

I also made some leafy things to put on the walls. I haven't yet arranged them in the scene, but I have these four variations to mix and match with. I'm not sure if they will look OK, but here's hoping. My main worry is that they are too dense. Shouldn't be too hard to rectify that though.

I gave them some depth so they don't look like 2D planes. I may need to model some special shapes for certain areas around the house. Let's hope I don't have to make lots of different textures too because that will take a very long time.

That's all for this week. I'm working a bit more now, but hopefully these leaves will be on with some vines as an added bonus. Goodnight.

Trees and grass

2010-10-17T07:04:00.000-07:00

I made some trees and grass this week. The trees didn't start off very well. The green I used was too saturated and the dark line made it not fit in with the rest of the scene. I also had some trouble deciding how much realistic texture I wanted as opposed to how much abstract colour. This is the first batch of trees I made:

But a couple of days later when I opened the program I realised they wouldn't work and went about changing them. I didn't have to do that much though. I knew I wanted to get rid of those black lines and make the edges less circular. I put a very faint spiral thing on there to break up the even texture. I ended up with these, and then made a couple more slight alterations seen in the last few pictures.

I then started on duplicating the grass I had done earlier. I made a few more sizes so all the tufts wouldn't be the same length. Also shown is the final tree, one that is a slightly bluer green so they aren't all exactly the same.

The shadows don't work properly in Maya (most likely fixable, but I don't need to worry about it at this stage), but I'll work on setting up proper lighting at a later date. I plan on importing the scene into a game engine and lighting it there and seeing how it looks.

One thing I need to figure out is how they make grass in (recent) games look good. Mine are far too obviously 2D planes arranged in a star shape from above. I think I just need to add a heck of a lot more, but maybe more importantly, make the radius smaller so the star shape isn't as obvious.

It probably shows in my explanations that it's 2 in the morning which means it's time for me to sign off. Until next time, chaps.

Small Things

2010-10-10T05:24:00.000-07:00

Everything in the scene now has a texture! Technically.

I still need to make one for the edges of the ground, and I've been having some trouble with layering two textures onto the same mesh. You see, I want dirt under the pond because it will break up the grass texture so it doesn't look like it's the same texture repeating infinitely (which is what's happening). When I add them both together all sorts of bad things happen and the ground mesh basically breaks and doesn't render properly. This might just be a glitch in Maya (the 3D program I'm using) and when I export it to a game engine it might work. If it doesn't I have a few more options so fret not.

But all that's for later. Now we see the last of the models that were textured:

The lantern is a simple model and it came out pretty much how I wanted. I was a little restricted in fitting all of the texture into one image and had to recycle some of the pixels. This is pretty common, but I don't like the vertical lines on the circular base for the candle. But it's a small object so it doesn't matter.

I was putting the rocks off because I knew it would take ages and ages to put detail onto each one, but I ended up combining them all into one mesh and making one texture for it. This made it far more simple and easy because I had the rocky detail recurring over the texture and all I had to do was paint the white lines. Finding quick and effective solutions to problems is one of the reasons 3D is so fun for me. :)

And here we have the grass texture. I went through a few iterations, each one less detailed than the last. The problem with grass is that because it has a lot of small detail it is very easy for it to look realistic from a distance. Considering the style of the scene, I chose to go with a very simplified texture (though not 100% simple). If I zoom in all the way and you look closely you can see a very faint grassy texture that's set to about 3% opacity. It might seem too simple, but once there's a lot of grass and bushes it will (hopefully) blend in rather nicely.

And I'll leave you with a nice shot of the front of the house. If I was lazy I'd call this complete and go play some games, but I want to push this as far as I can and really make it something special. I hope I have it in me.

See you next Sunday (which reminds me, we're back on schedule)!

Triumphant Return

2010-10-04T18:55:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a while. Too long in fact. I was working full time for a few months and had some projects I wasn't allowed to put up on here, but I should have started updating this place about a month ago. I've been working on the (what I recently decided was definitely a) wizard's house lately, and once I do the grass texture it might start to look almost finished. I have quite a few objects I'd like to add in though. But I won't get ahead of myself. Here's what I've been doing:

So I've mainly been working on the textures. Here are the two swords. The one of the left is much cooler than the one on the right. I might even change that later, but I doubt it will ever be shown in a close up to see all the detail.

...Except for right now. I'm definitely happy with the one on the left, but for the second sword I had trouble finding a good colour that was different to the cool sword. I originally planned to have a silver/metal hilt, but it looked too similar to the blade like it was a mistake. I suppose it's not so bad, but if I were heading into battle I know which one I'd choose.

Here we have some small bushes. There are four slightly different shades of green, and I've been rotating and slightly changing the size of each one so they don't all look the same. I'll also add in lots of grass like in the next picture. I want heaps and heaps of grass and plants all over the place.

I really like the axe and tree stump. The tree stump took a while to get right but I eventually got it. I would have liked some more green on there (maybe some brighter moss) but once I surround it with grass it should be exactly how I imagined. The axe looked too real until I added the black outlines and now it fits right in.

I added in some supports for the roof. I don't know if they would be effective in real life, but that's what I like about 3D work - it only has to look cool (most of the time). But check out that window! They were exactly what the building needed. I wasn't sure about using the stone texture for the walls, but I went back to it and did the windows and really liked the colours. Greens, browns and blues really go well together I think.

I started off with two windows, one with light glass and dark metal and the other with dark glass and light metal. The dark glass one looked much better, but I wasn't too sure about the light metal so I combined them both so it was dark on dark, but made the metal more bronze coloured and made the glass a more greeny blue. It was still a little bit too realistic, so after adding the black outlines it was perfect.

I believe the door is the only thing I haven't talked about yet. There's not much to say really, its made with a reddy/brown version of the wood texture but with door like features painted on. I think it works well.

I think a good place to end is here. Maybe on Sunday I'll upload some new stuff and stick to Sundays. I uploaded today because I had waited far too long. That's just less than a week to get some other work done. See you then!

Blog: DS Edition.

2010-05-10T05:05:00.000-07:00

Here is a nice looking photo of my new DSi XL. Photography counts, right? I actually took lots of photos, but not many of them turned out too well so you only get to see one. I have no work this week because I've been working longer hours and mother's day gave me no time for anything. I promise I wasn't playing lots of DS.

This game is cool.

Don't worry, I won't be working full time for too many more weeks. I'm going to hit the art hard when I'm done. I'll still try to update with smaller things until then. :)

The Adventures of Hamish (now with work)

2010-05-02T05:09:00.000-07:00

I'm surprised I have anything to post this week. I've been super busy with work and extra activities (basketball mostly). But I have a few things of interest so let's get into it, shall we?

First of all, I tweaked that old texture and made it more suitable for the scene. I removed a lot of the realism/texture so it showed mainly flat colour and the black lines. I think it suits the scene now, but it still isn't what I want for the walls, which is a shame. I probably won't find a use for it.

But never mind, because here is the new one:

I put a lot of time into this one, with many variations and so forth, but only about an hour ago did I find a way to make it blend in. It lacks the black sketch lines, but I'll be putting wooden posts around the edges of the building to frame it so it should be sweet. I made it a little bit darker for the chimney, but I think I'll make a new texture from scratch for that later.

And here is a quick little project I did for a friend over a couple of nights this week. Turned out pretty well considering I only had about an hour each night to start and finish it.

As ever, I'll try my best to get stuff done for next week, but the work I'm doing over the next month or so takes up heaps of time so I'm afraid for a while I may only be able to deliver a small amount of exciting art.

Well, bye!

My bad

2010-04-25T04:09:00.000-07:00

Sorry guys, I was too busy this week to get something done for tonight. I started a new job and a basketball team and haven't had much spare time. I did get some work done, but it's not ready to show. Next week I'll have to be more efficient with my spare time. In the mean time, here's a picture of Kirby:

(>'.')>

Does that count as ASCII art?

Stone Wall

2010-04-18T07:27:00.000-07:00

Holy heck this texture took ages to finish, and after all the time I spent on it I don't know if it's right for the house wall. I should have planned ahead... Well, I did, but at the last minute I decided to do a stone wall instead of the other thing I had planned. I like the texture itself, but it doesn't seem colourful enough for the roof. I'll sleep on it (for about 18 hours because I'm very tired right now) and decide if I want to make a new one tomorrow. It seems like a big waste of time, but I got some good practice in and I must do what is best for the project!

Anyway, close up picture (with lighting):

I put in a blue sky with Photoshop because it's better than a black background. I have an idea or two for the real background, which I'll do much later.

I don't think I mentioned this last week, but please ignore the weird texturing in certain areas. For example, the back of the half-cone roof has the shingles going diagonally. This is just because a different texture will go there later, so there's no point in fixing it up now.

This started as a filler project for when I didn't want to work on the spaceman, but I'm having fun so I might keep going with this. We'll see how I feel.

Goodnight :)

PS - Last week my font changed inexplicably. Please bare with me while I change the font each week until I find the one I like most.

Textures!

2010-04-11T07:27:00.001-07:00

I've made a few textures this week. The red and yellow roof one took me forever because I was trying to find a good style. I wasn't sure if I wanted a more realistic style or a more cartoony one, and in my browsing for inspiration I remembered Borderlands and thought I'd try my hand at a similar style. I guess it's mainly the drawing of outlines over the texture that gives it that look. It turned out quite nicely so I've decided to go for it.

Above and below are shots of the back of the house which was nice and straightforward and no problems arose when applying the textures. I also made a dark wood texture for random use around the scene, wherever that may be. I'm sure I'll find many uses for it, but I definitely made it with the roof frame in mind.

Both textures are seamless, which means I can apply them to a surface and they will line up perfectly - tiling infinitely. This gives me more flexibility when texturing for multiple reasons, but one drawback is I need to make it wrap around everything. Flat surfaces like the back of the house work like a charm, but this half cone at the front is being difficult. I could either have the texture in perspective and looking good, but with an ugly seam running down the length of the roof (seen on the Right) or line them up so there is no seam, but have the texture warp because cones are the devil (seen on the Left). I have a couple tricks up my sleeve yet, so fear not.

I also made a lighter version of the same wood texture above for a little variety. If you look closely you'll be able to see the same patterns recurring, which is a small drawback of seamless textures, but I can texture this (and other things) with just one 512x512 pixel texture instead of having to custom make one texture for each object. For example, I will probably use this texture for the axe handle.

Below we have the style I decided on next to one of the earlier attempts. It's basically just a photo with lines drawn on it, and while I think it looks good, I felt like I wanted to see this House scene with lots of bright colours in the end. I'm not sure where the yellow came from, but I like old-timey houses with red roofs.

Technically its 12:59am on Monday, but to me it's still late Sunday night so I totally didn't miss an update. I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but next week I'll try and get more work done.

Later dudes!

Chipping away...

2010-04-04T02:11:00.000-07:00

I've been quite busy this week (as opposed to being creatively challenged last week) so I'm afraid I don't have too much to show you. I've just been chipping away at weighting the Spaceman which is extremely hard and confusing for me. I might need to settle for a less than perfect job, which means his wrist might not twist properly or something. Anyway, I've bound the rig to the model so he moves around, even if not perfectly.

I've been doing some sketches to try and decide what to populate the little house scene with. Since it's just a small scene, I'm going to try and cram it full of small details without getting to the point where its overcrowded.

Here we have a lamp hanging by some rope.

A couple of swords (the one of the left is real, the one on the right is made of wood), an axe and some small grass bushes. I'll put little tree type things in there too, but I need to make the textures first.

And here we have a fence. It only goes about a quarter the way around the house.

If you can think of anything else that might fit in, let me know. Next week I'll probably have some textures done.

Bye :)

Slow week.

2010-03-28T02:41:00.000-07:00

I found it quite difficult to get some work done this week. First I had to upgrade to Windows 7, which wasn't too bad apart from backing everything up and then reinstalling all my programs again. Once I got my computer up and running though I got a few hundred viruses that I couldn't get rid of so I had to do it all over again. Windows 7 is quite nice though, so I suppose it was all worth it.

Unfortunately I had to downgrade to an earlier version of Maya so I wasn't able to continue with my Spaceman. In the meantime I've made him a raygun to use which I made as a warm up for the day. Obviously it is yet to be textured, but even then I'm not sure if I'll figure out how to attach it to his body so I might not use it for anything.

What took up most of my time this week (when I wasn't watching movies or playing games until 4:30 in the morning...) was a little scene of an old timey house I started while I was upgrading. I'm thinking it might be a Wizard's house or something. I've always liked these old English houses, especially when they're somewhat stylised. I'll still add some trees/bushes/grass/vines, a sign or two and whatever else I can think of to make it look interesting. It's definitely far from finished.

I'm not sure if, when I come to texture it, I should go for a colourful vector look or a more realistic one. Maybe I'll try for somewhere in between.

A few different angles:

I'm not really aiming for low poly but I'm not going to add loads of detail just for the heck of it. It might be worth keeping low poly as I might try to bring it into the Unreal Engine at some point just to see how all that works.

Next week might have some textures, or it might have some animations. We'll just have to see what I feel like doing.

Round One.

2010-03-20T20:42:00.000-07:00

We've finally arrived at the first official update of this magnificent blog! I'm sure both of you readers are ecstatic. I have quite a few pictures today, so I'll jump right on in.

Last time I said I was working on something from DFACbyScottCVol.1, and that is indeed the truth. To be more specific, I decided I would model, texture, rig and perhaps animate a character because I haven't had much experience in modelling and rigging characters and would like to get much better at it. For starters, I thought a dude like Captain or Thompson would suffice as I can put a helmet on them and skip a lot of hard work modelling and rigging a face. That's not to say I won't be modelling or rigging a character's face at some point in the future, I just didn't want to bite off more than I could chew. Anyway, this is the character:

So I drew up a front, side and top profile of him to model from and got to work. I finished a few days ago, and here he is:

You will notice there are two versions. The white one is just the simple version, and the green one is where I tried to put in some slight watercolour texture to match Scott C's primary medium. You can kind of see on the book that he uses watercolours. I'm still not sure which one I like more. Here are some different views of him:

Another reason I wanted to try and add a bit of texture in there was to try out this new Photoshop feature I discovered that eliminates the seams on textures. It lets me bring a 3D model into Photoshop and paint and draw directly on the model. This is amazingly cool. I've spent many hours in the past lining up textures manually so this marks the start of heightened efficiency. It's not perfect though, but it certainly helps:

Notice the line (I think it's a zip) where it bends underneath - there are a couple of tiny little white bits digging in. Probably not too noticeable from a distance, but it still pains me to see it. RRRAhAGARAAHRAHRHARGGH

Anyways, what's taken the most time this week is the rig itself. The rig is a skeleton that, when moved, animates the 3D model of the character. Just like in real life.

Yep, just like real life. Look at all those joints and controllers on the left there. You don't need to know what they all do, but I want you to know that it's much more complicated than it looks. But all that time was spent for a good cause. I can now make him run while giving the thumbs up!

You'll notice that the model isn't moving along with the rig. That's because I haven't binded the two together yet. That's for next week. But since it won't be too interesting unless I get some animation done, I might have to do a smaller day project to keep you interested. Look forward to that!

Hamish

Ready Set Go!

2010-03-15T23:18:00.001-07:00

Hello there. I'm Hamish and this is my new blog.

I decided to make one of these because I don't do enough work. So, every week (I'm thinking probably Sunday) I'm going to upload a picture or two of what I've been up to art-wise. It's not so much for people to look at as it is for me to make sure I do at least one thing per week that's worthy of submission to the high-quality-art-database that is the internet.

I even put up a sign above my computer to remind me to keep updating this place:

I almost definitely won't forget now. In fact, I've already started something which I'll show next Sunday. That'll be an easy update. It has something to do with this:

I can't wait.