Tank Render is Finally Finished

It's finally finished! A whole semesters worth of work in my 3D class, done and dusted. 

Above you can see the final video render, which was compiled in After Effects. The actual render it's self was made with 3DS Max and Mental Ray, look below if you want to see some final stills.
See here, here and here for posts detailing the progress.

Have Some Nostalgia In Yo Face

Well, for me anyway.
Today instead of doing homework I decided to do some routine maintenance on my Dad's computer. What of course I knew when I started was, that this is the ultimate procrastination. It's about an eight year old Acer, and I don't think any real work has been on done on it in about four or five years.
Anyway's, I was going through my old files on there deleting stuff and came across some real vintage 3D work. Before I was doing it at TAFE, I was doing it as a hobby since I was about 15 (so roughly four years of experience).
Among the files I came across my personal Blender 3D folder. Blender, if you're not in the know, is an open source 3D program. It's okay considering what you get and it's free, so it was nice to use before I started getting into 3DS Max.

Dem reflections

What you can see above is render I created in early 2009, so I would have just turned 16 years old. It's quite basic, and I've overkilled the reflections. Even the ceiling is reflective.

Doesn't matter though, we all have to start somewhere. This was of course not my first modelling experience either, but rendering. Not too bad for a first attempt hey? 

If you really want to go back my first experiences including modelling in Gmax and making the textures in MS Paint. I've come a long way and I'm glad I stayed with the hobby. 

Anyway, that's my reflective post for this year (no pun intended), one for the archives it would seem. 

Rouge Robot

My classes for this year are almost finished and this is the ass end result of my final Photoshop assignment.
That handsome bugger is me, and I'm a rouge robot. Or something. Who cares, that rhymes.
The whole of the background is PS created from images and what not, and the editing on me was done with matte painting techniques.
I had quite a lot of fun with the matte painting, and I'm going to start endeavouring to seek out more tutorials on how to do it with my trusty tablet.

Yes, I'm really that tall. 

Breaking Into The Industry- Kindle Edition

Today I got my greasy mits on an Amazon Kindle. What's the first thing I do with it? Read a book? No. Browse the the Amazon shop? Nope.
Going through the menu I come across a section titled 'Experimental.' Selecting it brings me too a page where it's explained that they're currently testing a beta for a web browser. As you can see in the image below, I tested this blog out on it and I'm impressed. 

Even though the display is only monochrome (to help imitate real paper) the resolution is quite high. This makes me happy as a blogger, it's good to see that my writing can be viewed easily on a device primarily designed for reading. 

The Progress Continues....

 

Why hello there. This post comes at ya from my TAFE. Why you ask? Well one, my net has shaped and two, the computers here are much better than my one at home.

I'm still working on my tank, I've just started texturing and work on the 'display piece' has started also. It's only a small square which has a desert scene within it. The idea is when it's finished; I'll make an animation of it rotating around in a circle. 

A bit of work still needs to be done, mostly just the modeling and texturing of random junk laying around the desert. I also need to finish off the texturing of the tank. 

Here are some close-up screenshots of the scene so far...

Close up of the poster on the wall. It totally doens't say "all bow down to the mighty Brendan" or anything.

Fuck You, MS Paint

My old arch nemesis, screwing me over like always.
Many an apology for the not so great quality of the following renders. They are of course an update of my TAFE tank, in which I originally rendered to .BMP. I decided to upload them to my Facebook art file (as you do) only to find that Facebook doesn't accept bitmaps. After laughing me arse off for a little while, I decided to convert them to jpeg. I could of done it better in Photoshop but since I'm lazy, I decided to just do a save as in MS Paint.
Notice how I went save as instead of just save? Yeah, that's suppose to create an entirely new file. MS Paint decided just to overwrite my BMP's instead and just leave me with the crappy compressed jpeg's. They went from about 1.37mb's to 40kp's.
So fuck you MS Paint, and while I'm at it, fuck you Vista. I'm sure you had something to do with it you slippery gypsie.

Anyways, here are the renders themselves. The modelling is pretty much done (bar some tweaking) and the texturing will begin soon.
It's 81,401 polygons just in case anyone cares.

I’m Blue da ba dee da ba dow...

You might be wondering where updates are on my current 3D project. It would appear that I haven't worked on it one bit since I posted about it unfortunately, every bit of my 3D happy time is currently going into my current TAFE project instead.
This is a high poly tank, which I'm about 60 or 70% done with modelling. I thought I mind as well post the development of it here while the record room goes into a temporary limbo.

da front

da back

The bits I need to work on include most of the turret, and the back bit that's just a flat face right now plus some other bits and bobs. Obviously it's not going to be blue as the texturing is pretty much the second part of the 3D unit. All class time is modelling now and I have about three weeks until I need to hand it in fully modelled. From there the class will all be texturing and lighting.

For those of you who know nothing about tanks (which was me before this assignment), this particular tank is a M47 Patton. Read more about it here if you're interested.
Here is what it looks like in the real world:

So Much To Post, So Little Productiveness

Is productiveness even a word? Apparently according to Google it is, I guess you do learn something new everyday.
The point is that I have so many different things to post about on here, but I don't. I dunno why, I'm not lazy, honest. I really can't figure it out, maybe just the pure amount to blog about is overwhelming? Who knows, but lets take it one baby step at a time shall we?

I took the following set of pictures while on a fairly recent family holiday to France. If you want to read more about that, look here and here (the second post is my favourite!). Anyway's, one of the towns I stayed in was called Pontlevoy, which is in the middle of the country. Of course like everything in France, its quite old. All over the town they had these one hundred and something year old photographs posted on the walls in the locations they were originally taken.
I have taken my own picture of those, and then tried to match them with their present day counterparts. There was some guesswork sometimes as I couldn't usually look at the older picture and the present day scene at the same time, but I feel as if I did an okay job. Plus I had had a few 1664's at the time (hic!), so there is that to consider also. France sure does have some good grog.

Clicky for bigger resolutions.

Comic Books

I told you I would update this blog more, you're all just haters who don't believe.
Today I finished my first assignment for my Photoshop class at TAFE. Why is there is a Photoshop class in a games development course? No idea. I do love some good 'ole Photoshopping though, so I'm not complaining. To start off they gave us this image:

Our task as students was to colour this in per say. It may sound like they just give us some crayons and ushered as on our way, but no. It's more than that. We had to professionally colour this is in like they really would in the industry (using flats etc). Probably not the games industry, but at least a industry.
We also had to do this using real colour theory, you know, with a colour wheel and shit. First off I coloured it in with complementary colours:

And then with analogous colours:

Clicky on the pictures for a closer look

We also had to make our own colour palettes as well. That's the good thing about TAFE, they give you heaps of room to create it how you like it and they let you explore your own creativity extensively. 

Personally I feel the analogous one came out better, my lecturer agreed. 

Oh yeah, I have a development blog

Considering this is my development blog, I thought it might be cool to you know, actually update it.
Yeah, that could work.
First off you may remember roughly six months ago when I started TAFE. That was a course called Certificate 3 in Digital Media, I've completed that now and I'm now doing a course called Certificate 4 in Games Development. Its' pretty awesome, includes a lot of 3ds Max, Photoshop and coding. While I'm not the biggest fan of the coding sections, I'm really enjoying the graphics based units. Expect to see work posted as it's completed. Also while I'm on the subject, I'll probably post some Cert 3 stuff. Mind as well give it a good home on the internets.

TAFE hasn't completely killed my personal projects though, I've recently started a new 3D render. When I say recently I mean a few days ago, so keep that mind when you look at the following image:

I'm trying to recreate a 60's music room, complete with record player and a reel to reel. 

My to do list is huge. For starters all the objects you see in grey are just place-holders, I haven't even created those models yet. The current ones also need a bit of work, for example I really want that couch to have a just sat in kind of look. Also those shelves need to be populated with more shit, they're looking kind of bare right now.

But yeah, I promise to actually keep this blog updated for now on :)

Ego Brain

It seems to be a fact; I can't go more than a few months without Photosopping something up.
If I leave it too long I start to get the shakes and feel like I'm going to power chuck everywhere. Yuck!
So the last couple of days I've been working on this piece of crappy artwork:

 
If you're a fool and don't know, its inspired by part of the song 'Ego Brain', by System of A Down.
It's my interoperation though so if you don't understand, don't fret. You just might see the song in a different way to me.

TAFEing All Over The World!

That title was suppose to sound like that ELO song, you kno... forget it.

When I was travailing abroad I still had TAFE work to do as the holiday cut straight into the end bit of the certificate, which can be the nastiest as that's when you have to do all the main assignments.
So after getting my lecturers blessing, I packed up my laptop and my tablet and set off on my worldly adventure.
The following set of pictures showcase some of the different places where I had to do my work, some of them were quite cramped...

It started off easy in Bali, I had a huge limestone desk all to myself.
It should be noted that laser mouses don't work on limestone so I had to buy a mouse pad. It took me ages to find one, I didn't think that it would be so hard. I ended up with a Disney Micky The Mouse one as it was all I could find, I'm still using it to this second :)

This was a bit more cramped but it wasn't the worst. Considering how small some of the French cottages I saw were, I'm counting my lucky stars that I got any space at all.

This was while working in a car which was probably the hardest. Every time you went around one of Frances millions of roundabouts, you had to hold on to everything. 

This was another cruisey work space in a hotel. I only got to work here for one night though.

The last one was a kitchen table. While it worked well I had to move everything whenever it was meal time.

This last picture was taken on the flight home when all my work was completed. Typical that these seats had powerpoints in them, could of used them when I actually had work to do on a plane! 

I just played Seven Days A Skeptic instead ;)

I hope to never have to do work on holiday again.

More Abandoned Photography

I can't say there is much to explore and photograph in Perth that's abandoned (and what there is will probably get you stabbed and then mugged) so I don't get the chance to do this as much as I would like.
Luckily for me though I'm currently on holiday in France, staying with friends in the country side. Next door to their cottage is an abandoned one.
Photo time.
Here are some sample shots, but please check out the whole post here which has been posted to a abandoned photography Live Journal group. Cheers.