Willy Jeep (pretty much finished.)

Blog Update, life of modularity

Hi and welcome to all blog followers far and wide,
Things have got pretty hectic with the holidays and job opportunities being thrown down, and around at the least expectant moments. I have had to do a few proving projects so have had to drop most of my usual things to do them. Unfortunately I wont be able to post them up due to confidentiality but I can say they looked pretty good at the end. In between all this juxtaposition I have finally just about finished my jeep (that seems to have been going on forever). I have a few little changes to do to the textures getting parts to blend with the rest and then I will start posting up some test renders to finally add the jeep to my portfolio site. I have also started a modular building that I posted up on the work in progress segment in my portfolio. (www.danielrohde.crevado.com)As you can see I have been pretty busy with getting this all together plus other projects. The above images are my current project that I have in progress. It is all designed in a modular style to fit in a 2k texture. one set for the outside and one for the interior. Here is the interior diffuse texture pretty much finished (the texture is used on the test render to see how the pieces slotted together along with spec, occ and normal maps).

Its not long now till I begin my work experience with Undrawn Reality (previously called Raw Games) so I'm excited for that to begin. I can then start absorbing infomation and useful tips in the form of osmosis as I am willing to guess there is a lot to learn.

I have a visit also over this weekend to go see Lucian Freud 's life work that's exhibited in London so I will post us things that I can from that.

That's all I can think of for now, chow! =)

Dry spell of posting... the return of the life drawing

Things on my blog have ground to a halt. I have recently been doing a proving project for Undrawn. Hopefully I will get clearance at some point (due to a N.D.A.) to put my work up that I have done but it looked good after a week and a half's worth of work. Moving on from that I have my life drawing to post up that I said that I would so here they are. a mixture of 5 and 10 min drawings.

Needless to say they aren't brilliant but I think I realise now how important it is to keep drawing and keeping creative.
Here is a follow up drawing I did in my spare time. I will post up more once I am further into my jeep but as its getting close to being finished that should hopefully be soon.

Willie Jeep (Work In Progress) 9

This is the interior texture applied after yesterdays tinkering. Finally I'm starting to see the massive change in the Jeep from naked to fully textured. The early stages of the interior texture are looking good already. I may have encountered a problem in not leaving enough UVW space for the seats to add stitching to the fabric. This was a first attempt at lynching a stitching texture from a picture to apply it. It could be the picture resolution or layout, but what ever happens the stitches definitely look wrong and need some revision. The dash board is starting to look good as I concentrated on getting that part right yesterday, although im not sure if I have over done it? Maybe a polycount post to see what people think.

Sorry for not posting last week, more posts will come this week.

Hi all! Its been a good week since I have last posted up here but a lot has happened since then. I managed to get my first interview for a company based in Bournemouth. I also had some life drawing in Nottingham (meeting lots of great guys from Crytek that were great to chat to. Check these guys blog to see their quality of work they produce (http://pixelherding.blogspot.com/ http://jakegumbleton.blogspot.com/) at the Dr.Sketchy event. I would personally advise any avid life drawer to check this event out if you are based in Nottingham, Birmingham or London as its a twist upon the normal outlook upon life drawing sessions. These events provide a great variety of models and themes to interest the practitioner, all for a reasonable price.

Last week as you can probably imagine was pretty busy doing research, trying to do background on the company and its employees. However through all my searches the only person I couldn't find was the guy that Interviewed me. This guy was a games designer who developed Tomb Raider (massive one to miss out on my search I know). I got some good feed back on my portfolio, especially on my Jeep which seemed to be doing its job attracting people to see my potential as a environmental artist/3D modeller. It was good to hear from a guy as prestigious as the Tomb Raider designer saying my portfolio was good was quite flattering. He mentioned however I needed more environments to support my portfolio, which was great because that's what I planned to do next to work my keep into a scene.

I realise now how important it is to go to a life drawing session regularly as a professional artist. I am very out of sync with my drawing skills as it was about a year since my last session (until my recent venture to Dr.Sketchy Nottingham). I have met so many 3D artist that just have no skill with a pencil it makes me wonder about how they visualise their projects. This was definitely present in my course at University among my lower and higher skilled piers. I will post up my pictures from the session at a later date as I currently don't have them uploaded onto my PC yet so watch this space for them. As I go regularly I should hopefully be able to see a good change in them quality wise similar to what has happened with my 3D work over the course of my development as a practitioner (check the early posts to see what I mean).

Back to my Jeep of late. With the first texture pretty much done apart from a few last tweek's, I moved eagerly to my second texture of the interior. I had already UVW unwrapped the inside so all that was remaining was to texture it to the best of my ability. Its still early days with it but here it is in all its naked glory.

Texture update for jeep: details, details and more details details

Further workings on edges and the windows. a few extra decals and writing on bumpers.

Texture update for jeep: finishing the under carriage,window masking and body dust

Today I ended up finishing the rest of the under carriage blending and texturing. I them moved on to the top side paintwork covering the shell of the jeep. This of course ment that I would have to be extra careful in my approach to texturing it as players would see this more than the undercarriage. The paint as it stood for the topside looked pretty bland and needed some dirt to add to its believability. Using some decaled textures, I screened over the top to give a dusted look with the aid of the smudge and eraser tools. I created a mask layer for the wind screen to give the opacity and to gain the illusion of the existence of glass in the windscreen. I still haven't got that quite right just yet but this will, as normal, change in time. Another thing I'm not quite happy with at the moment is the wheel colour and the dirt upon it. For the mean time the textiring for the tyres will stay as it is but when the model is more complete I will come back to finish them off a bit more. Further more I have had some good comments off polycount.com following the jeeps progression that has been quite encouraging. Working so hard in my room to get employed can be a bit disheartening so getting gems off proactive practitioners is golden for your motivation.