Trekking progress

Lots of progress on the Monterey, I've been making progress renders since the early modelling phase, so here's a series of images from then up to what i got done today.

I'm currently bout half-way through applying the windows and escape pods to the hull texture. My texturing method is very different from what I usually do for my models. Since I'm designing this as an 'in-game' model, the texture is relatively low-res, as is the mesh in general. Most of the work is being done in arranging the UV's to maximize the use of the hull texture I'm using. The main texture is extracted from the game, for learning/reference purposes. I've already modified it and I'll be replacing it entirely once I've got all the UV's laid out. I'm using layered textures, the hull texture is the base, bottom layer, there's an additional texture layer for the 'hangar' deck, then another for the windows/escape pods. There will be one more layer of 'trim' colors, which will allow me to quickly alter the paint job. Aside from texturing, I have yet to set-up the animation for the opening and closing of the hangar bay doors. The doors and the door housing around them curves with the hull, so simply bringing them straight up and down won't work. I'm thinking attaching the doors to a curve, and using that as a motion path may be the best appraoch. i'll let you know!

Star Trek and Renders

Here's a little 2-fold project, I've been playing a lot of Star Trek Online, I got into 3D modelling partly because of my love of Star Trek ships and wanting good games to fly them in. Star Trek Online is easily the biggest gaming title for Star Trek right now, and overall they've done a pretty good job. One thing that's been lacking, and is absent from most Trek games is a space 'carrier'. On the ocean carriers are used because planes have a lot more range than guns and more versatility than missiles alone. In space this would more or less be the same, and there are carriers in Star Trek Online, but there's only an alien carrier and a small carrier for the Federation, while the Kingon's have an all-out space supercarrier. So I decided to try my hand at designing a Federation carrier, and this is the design I decided to refine. I'm planning on making a 3D model of it, probably starting this week. I've called it the 'Monterey Class', in honor of Monterey, California where I spent 2 fantastic weeks boosting my animation skills back in July.
I drew the design while my computer was rendering. I realized I needed a re-render, with the addition of ambient occlusion passes, and a wireframe pass of my best models to bring my modelling portfolio up to speed. So you may have seen these before, but now they have those additional passes composited in. I still have to do this for my models of Mantel, Avalon and my old Goaticorn model, but those models are lighter so they shouldn't take as long. The airship Ecclesia also has it's AO and wire passes done, I just have to redo the 'beauty' pass (that's the regular color one for the non-3D inclined)

So as mentioned, content is coming back! The deadline for various internships at Disney is this Friday, which is the main reason for this push. I'm glad I started these renders last week, with just my lil' ol' computer for rendering power, it's taking quite a while to pump these out. I have one or two new model projects, but there's no way either of them will be done by Friday, so I'm focusing on refining what I already have.

This is still a blog

Yes I am still alive, now that image above is a painting I did over a photo. Just something I did out of the blue (or, red) and decided "Hey, the blog needs some love, so let's throw this up there".

So I've been looking for some sort of 3D job for a few months now, a couple leads have come up but nothing's clicked yet. I've started a few model projects to boost my portfolio, none of which are quite far enough yet to put up some progress shots, but their getting there.

So as might be apparent, I've definitely been in a massive art rut. I've done plenty of art between now and, well April, but not half as much as I could have done. Anyways, I think I'm starting to restart my engines, going to be doing a re-render of my train model, with wireframe and an AO pass so hopefully, if that works and doesn't take all of tomorrow, that should be up tomorrow.

Anyways, reviving this blog!

Really flowing

Well I'm in the middle of blitzing the rest of my animation, and at the same time finally simulating the lava for the scenes that really need proper liquid lava. I'm saving a lot of time by using a simple lumpy plane in a few scenes with the lava texture, and then just moving that through a lattice to make it warp a bit.

I'm using Next Limit's RealFlow 5 to simulate the lava particles, and then generate a mesh from them. The money shot, the main scene that really needs a realistic simulation, is the lava-fall sequence, and this is what the simulation looks like so far:

The film is technically due on Monday, not sure if I'll have 100% animation for that hand-in, but I'll be pretty close. I'll put up the version I do hand-in afterwards, and after getting some sleep. After the hand-in I'll be finishing any animation left over, and rendering the final version for industry day at Sheridan. Hand-in for that is the 23rd, so I'll be linking the 'final' version of the film here on that day.

Portfolio Update

As busy as I am with my film, for various reasons I needed to update my portfolio this weekend. It'll get updated again at the end of the year, but there's the new look for now:

Stephen Good Demo Reel 2012 01 from Stephen Good on Vimeo.
EDIT: re-uploaded a new, trimmed down version.

Flipbook

Well this is FOR this year's flipbook, but I'm late so it might not get in. So I figured I'd put it up somewhere so that at least someone would see it! :)

For those not in the know, I dropped of the planet for 3 weeks, because my Dad passed away. I wasn't able to work at all, and honestly for good reason, but regardless this has put me in a tough spot now. I'm doing all I can to get this done, I fully intend to finish this film, but it ain't gonna be easy.
This week I really neeed to jump on the animation, we'll see how that goes. I have one landscape that still needs painting, might enlist help for that. The future is uncertain except for one thing, it's gonna be BUSY. Here goes!

Charon Textures

Very close to having the model for the Acheron city done, but today I decided to wrap up the textures for the lava-ship Charon:

There's a little bit of detail-modelling left for the Ecclesia, as well as it's textures. Once the Ecclesia and Acheron are out of the way I'll finally feel comfortable jumping into animation.

and some more Texturing...

And more texturing to come! Thanks for the feedback on Avalon everyone! But for today I decided to get Caldera out of the way, I'll be tweaking Avalon probably tomorrow. For now, here is our favourite pompous and short-sighted dictator!

Might be adjusting the shiny-ness of his shoes and cuffs, but other than that this is probably how he's going to look in the end.
Jan 29 EDIT: Just gonna edit this post with the tweaks to these texures:

Texturing!

Nearly done the character's textures. Which I was hoping to have done much earlier, but I don't feel it's too bad of a set back, yet.
Anyways, I showed Mantel before, working on Caldera right now, but here's Avalon. After some mentor and peer feedback, I've decided to fiddle with her colors a bit, the first image is the original textures. It was suggested to maybe change her skin color entirely, so I gave that a whirl, a little undecided on this, but it's not hard to fiddle with. Let me know what you think!

Animatic Update

A few updates, this version has the animated scene 2 cut in (still not done) as well as several key changes to the ending. I'm trying out this panning of the cannons rolling out instead of the big long shot of the ships floating in as the big finale shot. The old shot was too fast and too far away, ambiguous etc. I feel the shot works but I'm not sure if it works well enough as the very last shot, so let me hear your ideas!

Heartburn Animatic 18 01 2012 from Stephen Good on Vimeo.
Also, finally dove into mudbox and got with the sculpting of the landscapes, well one of them. I've also finalized Mantel's textures. So here's one shot of each of those, I'll take another landscape shot sometime when I've got the real lava effect in there, that should (fingers-crossed) look real nice.

PS: actually I made a change to Mantel's texture but forgot that I hadn't fixed it for this render. His clothes aren't gonna be that 'bumpy'