I made a lot of progress on my OC modelling! I didn't do any persona modelling simply because I was enjoying this so much! I even worked on it a little bit throughout the weekend I was having so much fun with it!

One of the main things that I worked on was the OC's face!

I'm super duper happy with how this is turning out! This screenshot is a little out of date, since I've gotten the eyes in the head, eyebrow and a couple other parts in the head since I got this screenshot. The various eye holes were quite a challenge to make it look good while still keeping it look nice. The way that I went around doing it was duplicating a section of the head plus the blockout eyes and making it a live surface in Maya. I then did the outline of the eyes, making sure that they had 8 edges to keep things manageable. Once I got the main shapes going, I then went around every eye and connected them together with some polys. I didn't really try to keep the topology clean in the connecting areas because it's only the eyelids that I plan to make move. While it was, overall, a tedious process, it was still something that was relaxing in a way. I didn't model the entire head on my own. Using a base mesh that I found on Gumroad, I was able to alter the proportions partially based on a post from Nsio on Deviantart to get something that I wanted. I'm honestly quite stunned that I was able to change the proportions of the base mesh so much that it's hard to tell at a glance that it originated from the base.

I also got the body to a good enough state that I would consider it to be ready to be used on the model. Sadly, the head and the neck have very different polycounts, so it's going to be a bit annoying to connect up. One of the serious problem areas that I had trouble with was the palm of the hands. I had a lot of trouble trying to connect them in a way that looked clean, so I just did the best that I can and connected it up. It isn't the best, but I'm sure that if I were to rig the model, it would have mostly ok deformation.

Besides the parts that I forgot to take screenshots, that parts that I need to get around to doing is the clothes, texturing, and rigging. I'm going to keep using the Arise rigging system because it's just a great resource for someone like me that really doesn't want to learn rigging myself. I'll be sure to post screenshots of what I didn't post here in next weeks blog post.

For the coming week, I'm planning on making a few models for Low Poly Day. I'm going to make making some really simple models for some characters from Dead Estate. I'm considering making a little diorama environment to put the models in, but I don't think I would have enough time to do that. If that's the case, I'll just rotate the models with a nice looking background. I'm planning on making models for Jeff, Jules and Cordelia. Considering Jeff and Jules are the starter characters and Cory is a character I'm quite fond of, the choice was pretty obvious. I'm going to try to use the workflow I've been using for this model with the low poly ones. I don't know how it's going to work on such a low polycount, but that's what experiments like this are for!

I think that considering the results of the body and that I'm actively using the test I used before, the workflow experiment for organic modelling is a resounding success! I've already got some ideas on how to make my other OCs using this workflow! There's a few plans that I've got in my head for them, but that's still waaaaaaaaaaaay far down the line. I reckon for the next couple of weeks I've going to be having a lot to show! Get hyped!

Thank you and good-bye for today!

I did some more modelling for my persona's clothes and more experimenting with that workflow I've been using! I plan on trying to make a proper character model using the workflow in the coming week. I've got an idea on what I can do which could be sort of simple.

The character redesigns are still slow going. It's more of the same, trying to get clothes to look right in a way that I enjoy looking at it. I managed to get the saggy pants that I wanted, which I'm quite happy about! I used Maya's dynamic nCloth system to get the bottom parts of the pants to sag in a way that I think looks good. I think that the vest still needs some work, however. I've considered multiple times of just scrapping the vest, but I feel as though it holds too much of an important role in terms of the characterisation of the persona and the silhouette of it all. I might have a look at some other clothes that I could use instead that still give off a punk style, but for the time being I reckon I'm going to stick with it.

For more exciting news, I've done some more experimenting with my workflow!

This experiment in particular was quite a milestone. I did my best to make a very rough organic female humanoid model. I'm not really the best at making blockouts so I found one on Gumroad by Gakabox that I could use for this.

I'm really happy with the results that I managed to get out of this! I'm really excited with the potential of using this for some actual models that I can use in the future. Like the other experiments, I used Maya's Quad Draw in conjunction with the live object tool so that I can follow along with the shape of the base mesh. I also had some topology guides on my second monitor to follow along with as I went about this, since I am really bad at edge flow. I didn't completely finish it since I only wanted to see how far I can go without having a character in mind (I managed to get this done in a day, which is impressive for me!). There's plenty of problems with the mesh, like edge flow and nasty topology, but for a test, I think it passed with flying colours! There are a few issues that I ran into when I was working on this however. One of the main problems that I had was vertices slipping underneath the surface of the mesh. This was because of how the base mesh was structured. Like many other base meshes, it's comprised of various different shapes in a blockout of a character. This means that the vertices will sometimes get confused when extruding, and go underneath where I want it to go. This should be a fairly simple fix of dynameshing the pieces together in Zbrush. I also don't get as much detail as I could if I were to make the model myself. I don't really want to concern myself with this though. The amount of time that I save using this workflow compared to learning and perfecting sculpting and stylised anatomy myself is immense. The other issue is more of a mental one rather than a technical one. For some reason, I have this little voice in the back of my head that says that this is cheating. Which, to be frank, is ridiculous. Why would using a free base mesh be cheating? I think the main thing is my obsession with having to every part of the pipeline myself and my perfectionism. I have a really hard time asking people for help, so this could stem from that in a way. I'm trying very hard to shut up that voice in my head, but it does peep through every now and then when doing this.

I'm very excited to see how far I can push this workflow! The character that I've got in mind is an OC that I've had floating around in my head for a while now. They started out as a little play around with a Picrew ages ago that I've somewhat fleshed out into a character. I'm hoping that this new way of making models will allow me to actually make it while saving time on having to learn sculpting. I've found some more resources on Gumroad that I'm very excited to use. They all help to make the certain style that I'm looking for. I really hope that I will be able to make some progress on it and show it next week!

I'm also planning on making something for this year's Low-poly day! It won't be as high priority as the OC model, but it'll be a good opportunity to see how the workflow deals with lower polygon character models! It will also be a good opportunity to see if I can make some models with different restraints that I'm used to. I've got a good image in mind that I want to make!

Thank you and good-bye for today!

This past week, I did a bit of experimenting with a new workflow intended to create organic humanoid models. Didn't really do much in terms of my other models since they've gotten to the parts of the process that I seem to stagnate on (in particular, clothing and texturing). I reckon I got some good results from the experiments though!

It's no secret that I'm not the best at sculpting. It's one of my many white whales when it comes to 3D art. Zbrush is obviously a very powerful tool, but when it comes to learning it (and learning on my own in general), I always get scared of failure and lock up before I get the chance to fail in the first place. The problem, however, is that I want to make things that tend to require a lot of sculpting in the first place. The most obvious of these being organic humanoid character models. I've got a few OCs that I haven't shown at all on here because I don't have anything that is tangible.

However recently, I had a thought to myself: "What if I take the easiest parts of sculpting and one of the most intuitive parts of Maya and combine them into one?" Essentially, I have attempted to take the very rough blocking out phase of sculpting (where one blocks out the main shapes of a character with rudimentary shapes) and combine it with Maya's quad drawing tool. This can allow me to create characters in a way that can be a bit more comfortable for my skill set, if I give myself time to refine the process. The blocking out phase is easy enough since for the time being I can just follow along with references or anatomy until I can feel confident to make something more unique.

For my first two experiments, I wanted to just get my bearings around this new(?) workflow. I got some very rudimentary anatomy references and sculpted some rough shapes of the parts I attempted to make. I feel that this part in particular is very well suited for Zbrush brush. For one, this is the only part of the process that actually involves something that would resemble sculpting. For the time being, I tried using Maya's sculpting tools to get the shapes that I wanted since I just wanted to quickly try this out. While they aren't particularly good, it was decent enough that I could actually get a result. With these early experiments, I just wanted to see if this workflow could actually produce something that at least somewhat resembled the reference material. There isn't any particularly good topology and are very unfinished. They did, however, show me that I could potentially use this in order to get a better result. The arm test in particular seems quite promising. It might have been unintentional, though. Because of how the mesh that I used for the blockout was just segmented spheres combined together it produced a clear distinction between the shoulder, bicep, and forearm.

For my next experiment, I tried to use more complicated reference material. I ended up using half of the model that I ended up using since Maya's mirroring can be a bit bad. Something that is noted in the image above and what I used in all my experiments was the Live Object tool. This allows new vertices, edges, and faces to magnetise to the surface of the live object. This works particularly well in conjunction with Quad Draw, which allows the user to place vertices anywhere. This includes the surface of a live object. I think the results of this particular experiment was a success! There are many problems like the pinching on the model, and I missed some basic topology stuff. But like a said before, this was just to see if the workflow could actually make something. I'm honestly quite surprised with the results of this! I remember trying to make a face in Blender when I was first starting out (it might have even used the same reference) and it never ended up going anyway because of the limitations of purely hard surface modelling.

I reckon that if I refine the base shapes, and remember what good topology looks like, I could really make some cool stuff with this! I'm not sure if I'll make something with it right now because of my other projects, but It'll be good to have in my back pocket.

Thank you and good-bye for today!

Easter holidays sort of stifled how much I planned on doing last week, but I've still got a little bit to show!

First is a little bit more of the Navi model!

The model is pretty much up to the point where I can start doing UVs and texturing it. It's not really my favourite part of making a model, but it's what I have to do to actually make something. There is a little bit extra that I've done in terms of how the model looks. The main thing is the antenna. I've just made them thinner and much longer. I'm hoping that doing this will allow me to facilitate having doodads and doohickeys appear in front of the antenna for more expression on the model.

This next one is a little bit more substantial! Got some more redesigning of my persona done!

Don't mind the weird Earthworm Jim end of the singlet, I'll talk about it!

One of the main things that I wanted to do with the model is make the jacket have more of an identity than just some overwear. Instead of trying to fit the outline of the previous iteration, I've decided to make the upper body's silhouette more unique through having a much smaller vest. Something that was very odd was that the arm holes of the vest protruded out much more than I liked. I just fixed this by pulling back the verts really far. The singlet that I'm planning will also help with this. I tried to ages to get a proper T-shirt to look good on the model. However, every version of it that I attempted to make would have some tiny detail that I didn't like. Turns out that I got it right super early in the process, and I just decided to give the model a singlet. The plan with it is to make it very torn and rugged to get a punk style going with the model. I don't think I'll tear up the vest, but I'm always open to making things look nicer (perfectionism, what's that?). For the tears I'm thinking of either doing some simulation in Maya to get a base to work with, or working with some booleans in Zbrush. I've found a really cool article talking about how somebody goes around making stylised clothes. Maybe I could use that with the vest as well? One of the tutorials I'm very excited to follow is the belt one. I feel that the belt and pants in particular are something that I need to work on, so having a tutorial to help will is much appreciated.

Another adjustment I made was eeeeeeeeeeeever so slightly smoothed out some parts of the main body meshes. It's subtle, but the shoulders and lower legs are where it's most prominent. This is mostly to make it a bit more bearable when rigging. I don't know if I'll keep the thick lower legs, since they make it a bit annoying when making shoes. Then again, as long as I can make the shoes look better than they already do it should be fine.

I'm pretty hyped to work on my Zbrush skills! It's something that I've been neglecting for the longest time (as well as my animation, whoops!), so it will be good to finally actually do some stuff in it! Something that I also want to try out is a technique I thought of for making humanoid models. If I get around to doing it, I will for sure show it here!

Thank you and good-bye for today!

I've got some cool redesigns of my models that I'm making progress on! First, however, I would like to regale my experience of an animation test. This happened on Monday and Tuesday so it doesn't really qualify for what I would call "this week" for the blog, but it's fresh in my mind and I wanted to talk about it.

I've mentioned a couple of posts ago that I was in contact with a recruitment agency that could potentially get me a chance to have a short term animation gig at a company. I animated the horse rig and added it to my reel. To my surprise, the company wanted me to sit an animation test for them! Just to see if I was able to do what they wanted of me. Through out the weekend, I was super excited. I was telling all my friends about it, and I was really nervous about the whole thing. I was told that the test was scheduled for Monday, so I put an alarm on to make sure I wake up early as possible for it.

Come Monday, I wake up, get on my computer and mentally prepare myself for the upcoming assessment. I woke up at around 9 to give myself some leeway for it. Whenever I have something big planned for the day like a phone call or an appointment, I usually try to not start anything that would take a long amount of time. I'm just waiting around at this point.

An hour goes by. Then another. And another.

It isn't until 2:30 that I actually get an email from the company. That's fine, they're probably busy, they're a small company. I get introduced to the CEO and the lead of the dev team, and get some info about how long the test is intended to last for, 3 hours. I also get some link for resources that I will need for the test. I run into my first problem. I don't actually have access to the google drives that have what I need. I request access and shoot some emails off just to let them know that I need to be given access. Half an hour goes by before I'm able to actually see anything. Ok, annoying, but whatever. I get given some models and a brief on what is needed of me. I also get some links to reference videos that I can use for my animation. I did not get warning, however, about the content of the videos. I figured it would be something unsavoury based on the description of cattle being "stunned". What I did not expect was, with no warning, cows dangling from a hoof with a slit throat and blood pouring out. I'm not the type of person to trudge the horrors of the internet for irl gore, so this certainly was upsetting to me.

I eventually get started on the animation. Mind you, the rig wasn't really much of a rig. It was basically just a model with some joints. No controls at all. I stomach as much as I possibly can of the video and animate for about an hour and a half. I then get a message from the CEO. Asked me how I was going. I said I was doing pretty good, and that I was just a bit confused on what I actually needed to animate. He then asks me if I had spoken to the dev lead. To be fair, I didn't. I figured that I had everything that I required for the test. After this, I get sent an email from the dev lead himself. More resources, a proper explanation of the task, and a little warning about the content of the videos (hour and a half late, but thanks for the warning). I had a look at the new set of resources that I got given. Another problem. This is completely different to what I was given and what I was working with. Alright, hour 30 down the drain, but I've still got time. Once more, another problem. The animation that is required of me is much too complex to animate in 3 hours, let alone with what was basically an unfinished rig. At this point, I'm stressed, panicking and trying to figure out what on god's green earth im supposed to do for the rest of the day.

By the end of the work day, I'm done. I can't do anything. Things are unclear. It's all a mess. It's at this point that I break down. I'm sobbing and I cannot control myself. I would also like to mention that I was more or less given my friends a play-by-play of what was going down throughout the entire day, and I made it very clear that I wasn't happy with the situation at hand. I hobble over to my brother's room and console in him about the entire ordeal. He helps me to write up an email to explain the situation to the woman at the recruitment agency. She's an absolute angel and responds that she will have a talk to the company's team about everything the next day. I end the day off really upset, but a bit better despite the messy ordeal.

Tuesday rolls around and I get an email from the CEO. Basically asking if there's anything I've done, since the folder for results are empty. I explain to him that the woman from the agency will be talking to him and the team, and that she will explain it. Tuesday is also the day that me and my brother have a big ol' day. Nice walk to the bus interchange, head over to Costco for some yummy yummy cheap food, then head to the library for me to do some uninterrupted 3D. It's around when we're leaving Costco when I get a call from the dev lead. I explain everything that's happened the day before and he's very sympathetic about it all. I tell him about the cow rig, and he asks me if I could rig it myself. I'm not happy about this situation, as I assumed that the animation test was going to be animating. I say that I can, but it won't be great since it isn't my area of expertise. My brother and I head over to the library and I get started with doing something that would make this rig at least a little bit usable.

It's also around this time I get a call from the woman from the recruitment agency. She says she told them about the whole situation, that I wasn't happy about being given a warning about the videos after the fact, and that I should limit how much I do today to a max of 3 hours. Not just because that's the time for the test allotted, but also because they would have to pay me for any more. As much as I would like the cash, I really don't want it to be some such a messy situation, so I do an hour and a half of trying to figure out how Maya's IKHandles tool works and head back home to do at least a little bit of animation. I get back and do as much as I possibly can with a half-done rig and whatever I can. By the end of it, I've barely done anything, but I just want it to be over with. I send it over and send an email to the CEO and the dev lead about what I did, how much I did, and the circumstances that lead to me doing so little. The dev lead was, again, very sympathetic and appreciated the honesty in my email. I ended Tuesday a lot better since I felt as though a huge weight had been taken off my shoulders and that I was able to finally relax after what was two days of mayhem. I wouldn't have to deal with any of this anymore and I seriously doubt that they will hire me. Not only because they should focus on refining their process (it was mentioned they recently shifted from outsourcing to in house stuff, so it's understandable), but because the work I did isn't indicative of my skill as an artist. If I get a word back from them asking to progress my hiring further, I would have to put some serious stipulations in place before they hire me.

I reckon that's enough of that, I would much like to show what else I've been doing recently!

For starters, I'm working on a redesign of my Navi model!

This is still a work in progress, but I think it's coming together quite well! For this version, I'm adding more volume to the model lengths way, rather than adding things that add to the verticality of the model. One of the main reasons for this is the two spokes on either end of the model. I plan on adding some holographic-looking hands on the ends so the model isn't just a floating ball with eyes. I reckon it would also look really neat and add more character! You might have also noticed the little cap like overhang as well. I want to make it look sort of like a cap, like one you might see a mailman wear. This is again to add length to the model, and to also make the silhouette more interesting. On the original model, the only part of the model that extruded outwards was the antenna, which resulted in a pretty boring silhouette. I'm making the top half of the model a different colour compared to the rest. To lean into more of the hat part, but also to make it more interesting! My plan for the original model involved a lot of plain white colours. This looked clean, but also kind of boring. Another focus on this model is reducing polycount and simplifying UVs. Despite the simplicity of the original model, the UVs were a bit of a pain to deal with. I'm hoping with this next iteration it will be a bit easier to wrangle.

Also, here is some redesigning of my persona's clothes!

This is still very early, and not at all finished, but it's a start! The main focus for this redesign in particular is to focus on the silhouette, even more so than the Navi model. What I intend on doing is eventually redoing all of the clothes to make a bigger focus on the bottom half of the model. On top of making the model look more interesting, it's also just because I severely neglected the clothes during the making of the model. That isn't to say that I didn't put effort in! Just more that I had the mentality of focusing on the body primarily and the other parts second. I'm also considering changing the colour scheme of the clothes as well. Right now, the clothes have very basic colours. Red shirt, blue pants. Kind of bland. What I plan on doing is trying to get more oranges and blacks to not only make it more interesting, but to also get it closer to the colours that are on the model itself. Orange, yellow, and purple are the main colours that I've picked for the model, and the clothes didn't really reflect that at the moment.

I think that after the debacle that was the animation test, I might take a break from 3D for the rest of the week. Simply to collect my thoughts and to depressurise after everything that went on. I'm sure that I'm going to work on stuff regardless because I'm like that, but I think I'll stick to having a break for the most part. This would more than likely mean that I won't post next week. I hope this is understandable.

Thank you and good-bye for today!

As stated in the title, I tinkered around with trying out different ways to model! For my test subject, I've used my old Navi model as a baseline to try and recreate with cleaner topology and fewer polygons.

The first program that I tried to use for this experiment was Zbrush.

I did initially have a good time using the boolean operations that Zbrush had. The live boolean button is very useful for previewing what the end mesh is going to look like. However, I started to run into problems when attempting to use ZRemesher to retopologise the model. I was getting really ugly five-star points that I wasn't liking the look of. There was also the problem of the inside of the drill holes coming out really gross. I think that if I gave myself the time to really get in depth with how Zbrush can retopologise a model, I probably would have gotten a good outcome. However, it just wasn't working well enough for what I needed and the time, so I've ditched it for the time being.

What I tried next was a fairly new program called MagicaCSG.

This program didn't feel too bad to model with, despite my inexperience with it. There was a few problems I had with the UI and how some shortcuts worked, but not too bad. Problems started to arise when I tried to make the spherical part of the model that's smaller than the outer shell. I couldn't get it looking how I wanted to, regardless of how much resolution increases I was doing. It simply didn't look as sharp as I wanted. This program is really fun and can be used to make some interesting shapes. However, I don't think that it's a program that I should be using for this task. This much more of a free-form program than what I'm used to. There's also the fact that this is still pretty early in development. It's still only around version 0.4. There's also the fact that the free version of the software isn't the most up to date version of it. That's on the creator's Patreon. To be fair, though, their asking price is very cheap for a monthly subscription of an a program that is in active development.

All in all, I don't think that these programs are useful to be for the current task I've got in my hands. They're both very fun to use in their own right, but they just aren't what I'm looking for right now. I will more than likely just stick to Maya and figure out something in there instead. This doesn't mean that I'm giving up on making a better Navi model! In fact, I've got a little bit of a redesign in my head that I want to try modelling to see how it pairs up with the original one. Nothing is final, but I've got a few ideas that I'm willing to try.

This is a bit of a shorter post, but that's just because I didn't really do much this past week. I do hope there's some cooler stuff that I'll be able to post next time, though!

Thank you and good-bye for today!

Finished up my Horse animation that I had been working on for a little bit! It isn't perfect, but I would say it's passable at least!

Here it is! I reckon for a first go at an animal animation, it looks not bad! I'm not quite sure why the eyes vanished, but it doesn't really matter.

Something that I can never get right with animations is loops. I always I manage to get the end frame looking wonky, so it never lines up well. It's not really that big of a deal, but it just annoys me a little bit.

Now that I've finished up the animation, I want to try and get some of my other models textured and rigged for my other plans. I've already started to texture the Star Slipper, but I think that I might try and remodel it anyway. The way that reflects look on the model look a bit weird. That would more than likely be because of the topology of the model. It wouldn't be too hard to remodel it since it's a fairly simple model, but more so getting the topology right. The Navi model is very simple, for both texturing and rigging, so it's going to be simple to get that model ready. I will try to balance the rigging for the models and doing animation. It would be a good idea to keep the momentum going on the animation so I can keep improving.

I've also sent over my reel with the horse animation right at the front (so the client sees it immediately!) over to the recruitment agency. I'm not sure if I'm too late with updating my reel, but I'm still happy that I've been given the opportunity. A bonus with doing all of this recruitment thing is that, even if I don't get this job, they can still tell me about other jobs that are available! The woman I've spoken to is also very nice, so that's a good thing as well!

That's all for this post! It's a bit of a quick one, but that's just because I was focusing on a single thing for the past few weeks.

Thank you and good-bye for today!

Managed to get a decent amount of animation done for this week! I'm getting close to finishing it, and I would say I'm confident that I can finish it by the end of the week.

Here's what I've gotten done of the quadruped animation! I've still got a little bit to go, but I think it's looking good so far!

Obviously, it isn't perfect and I'm sure that there's parts that I can improve on. However, for a junior animation reel, I think it's not that bad! When starting out, I figured that it was going to be different to how animating a humanoid character is. It turned out to be fairly simple! Though that could be because it's a walk cycle and not something complicated. Something that I've also noticed is that I've been having a lot more fun animating this compared to following along with a set of tutorials. I shouldn't be surprised that doing my own thing is more fulfilling than doing tutorials, but I think I've been in a mindset of having to know the ins and outs of the animation principles before I can do my own stuff. Obviously that isn't the case, but it's something that's been in the back of my mind. I will get better if I focus on learning the principles, but if I'm not enjoying it, then clearly something is wrong with how I'm learning it. I might try to just animate stuff when I want, how I want, regardless of my skill or knowledge about animation. Thinking about it, it's probably going to be the best way of going about it. Maybe when I finish up this walk cycle, I might have a go at animating something more complicated with more body mechanics.

Next up, is a little sneak peak on for the intro animation I'm making!

I haven't really done much of the animation because my laptop has a hard time running the rig when I'm trying to move it around. It probably has something to do with how optimised the model is, so I'll have to get around to fixing that up. So instead of doing that, I've been transferring my materials over to Maya's Arnold renderer. I figured that I wouldn't have to since Maya has it's own built in renderer. However, after looking online for a little bit, people seemed to be in agreement that the in built renderer is only for pre-visualisation and isn't intended for a final product. Judging from my ZX8000 post from last year, I'm not surprised that people say that. Through looking at the standard surface node that Arnold has, it doesn't seem to dissimilar to something like Renderman. I've been slowly figuring out how to plug my textures into the node to make something that I like. Every render engine has the same inputs, but they just name them differently, it's just a matter of looking up the documentation to see what the inputs are. A problem that I ran into early was noticing that Arnold wasn't a big fan of the Normal map that I had made. This could be plenty of things, including it having the wrong UVs or being a type of Normal map that Arnold isn't made for. Something that I really like about Arnold is that it actually allows you to preview textures without having to render out a frame (unlike some OTHER render engine mentioned in this post). It isn't perfect, for example the shader I have for the model's body doesn't show up properly but I already know how that one looks so that isn't a problem for me.

Speaking of textures, I also had a little experiment using a low resolution gradient atlas to texture the model. While I am content with how it looks at the current moment, I feel as though it could be better. This is the video that I found on it. While it isn't guaranteed to work on my model (since I didn't model it with the intent of using this technique, and is for low poly models), I still want to give it a go to give the textures on my model a little bit of an extra panache.

That's all for this post! I'm happy with the progress I'm making, and I reckon I could have some cool stuff to show again next week!

Thank you and good-bye for today!

Finally got a goal for myself in regards to animation!

I had an online meeting with a woman from a recruitment firm for VFX artists (Not sure how to go about saying names, so I'm keeping it vague). She was incredibly nice and she was incredibly friendly through out the whole thing. I was very nervous about the meeting, but it was very relaxed, and I calmed down pretty quick. We had a talk about who she is, what the firm does, and who I am and what I do. She did say that as it stands, my folio wouldn't be enough for the client since a requirement is someone who can animate quadrupeds. However, she did make it clear that if I added some quadruped animation to my folio, she could send it over to them. I did plan on animating a cow, but after a little bit searching, I found that a lot of good cow rigs are fairly expensive, and I don't have that kind of cash. I settled on a stylised horse. It's not realistic, but it should be good enough that it can show my abilities.

And so, that's my goal for the week! It doesn't have to be completely perfect (she also made note that they have a grad in house, so it's fine not being perfect.

I also told her about my enrollment in my postgrad class. She told me that it's a good class to upgrade your skills, and that more than half of the students get hired when it's finished. This is giving me a lot of reassurance for before I do the class. I did have a friend who did a postgrad by the same people, but I was a bit scared of it not leading to anything afterwards. But after hearing good things about it from two people, I'm very confident that I'll get something out of it.

That's more or less it for this week. Considering that I've given myself a deadline until the end of the week to get the quadruped animation done, there should be something to show by the next blog post!

Thank you and good-bye for today!

Not much particularly done the past week (I've got potential work opportunity lined up, and it occupied for mind for a while!), but I've got some things lined up that I want to share!

The first thing is an introduction art piece that I'm planning on doing for my model!

Before I make any big animations with my persona in it, I would like to make a small little animation that showcases the model, and gives more backstory on the general setting that I would like to make. This would also include a little bit of backstory of the character themselves in universe. I reckon I will eventually make a little character sheet for Navi and the Star Slipper as well, but that's later down the line when I get back to those models. To make the render look how I want it to, I've been making the steady process of figuring out how to use Arnold for Maya. It doesn't seem to be too complicated, but it's still something to learn. As a tangent, during my college course we used a renderer called Renderman. It's created by Pixar and people can make great stuff with it. We, however, were students with absolutely no experience with the renderer. This could only lead to very good things happening. I have a complete and utter disdain for Renderman because of all the problems that I had with it. There were so many situations where I couldn't figure out why something didn't look how I wanted it to or just not working flat out. One of the things that I absolutely HATE is when a renderer doesn't have a live preview. Renderman kind of has one, but it was basically just a low resolution render of the finished product. It annoys be not being able to see my materials because I can't tell at a glance if something is wrong. Arnold at least tries to give a preview of the materials (not very well, but whatever...), so it's really annoying to see that Renderman doesn't at least show the albedo of a material. There could have been some sort of setting or checkbox that I didn't see when I used it, but it was annoying. Also, when I tried it at home, it made me install a virtual licensing program directly to my boot drive. In fact, it outright didn't work when I tried to place it on my other drive. Licensing software infuriates me to no end. I won't say anything absolute, but I tend to keep my eye-patch and tricorn hat handy when I use 3D programs.

Rant over!

One of the problems that I've stumbled across when trying to animate is that the laptop that I'm working on is very much not capable of using Maya for animation. It can differ between rigs, but the performance is relatively low. Maya's cached playback . This is understandable, as it's my brother's old one from when he went to Uni (about 4 or 5 years ago..). It might be a little silly, but this could very well have some sort of subconscious effect on my drive to animate. If your tools didn't work well, would you want to do the thing you love with those tools? I'm planning on trying to download Maya again on my desktop PC, though I really rather I wouldn't. I try to keep my gaming stuff and my 3D stuff separate. One of the ways I can do this is when I go to the library on Tuesdays, since it gives me a specific time frame to focus only on 3D. But if I can't do it on my laptop then I have to use my PC. But I can't bring my PC with me, so I need to bring the laptop. It's an annoying cycle that I can hopefully mitigate when I get a new laptop. When that will be, though, I'm, not too sure.

For the time being, I've also decided that I will use both the Mixamo rig and Arise rig (once the Arise one has good skinning.....). I figured that instead of trying to get a single rig that does everything that I want, I make a compromise and have a subdued rig (the Mixamo one) for less intensive scenes and a rig with more cartoon controls and exaggeration built in (the Arise rig). While this still means I need to do the Arise skinning, it at least lets me have some sort of rig available for the time being. It also allows me to setup for my:

Potential video essay series!

It's a very impromptu thing, but I reckon it would be really fun to at least try it out. I do have some ideas on what I want to talk about, but I would have to do some more research and take my own notes. I also had an interesting dilemma on my hands. I didn't actually know if people did video essays on Newgrounds. I figured it might've been the case, but the first thing that comes to my mind as a really early video essay was Arin Hanson's Sequelitis and that was released on Youtube. Luckily, there was a lot of helpful people on the NG forums that answered my question! A big thanks to all those people who gave me some info and suggested series that are similar to what I want to do! One of the main things that I was worried about was Newgrounds' policy on copyrighted content, but there's plenty of people that use copyrighted works on here in a transformative and artistic way. Two of the main inspirations that I want to use are Noodle and Doodley. Noodle for his style of humour and presentation (that being an animated character with segments of narration over footage) and Doodley for editing style and generally just for being in 3D as well. To preface the series, I plan on doing a teaser trailer, which will be my next project after I'm done with my introduction piece.

That's it for this week's post! Not much to show at the current moment, but it's a good glimpse into what I'm planning in the near to somewhat further off future!

Thank you and good-bye for today!