Games: Modeling & Texturing

This had to be one of my favorite classes! Not that I have any intention of joining the game industry, but I think it's a good idea to be well-rounded. The teacher of this class is definitely worth mentioning, because he's really *that* awesome! His name is Daniel Burwen, but he goes by Dabu. He's really passionate about what he does and very good at it! He setup this forum called GameStepper that's a great learning tool for his students and anyone else interested.

OK, so we had to build a desk, computer, monitor and keyboard for this class. Here's a close-up view of the top of my desk:

From Jedi's 3D Art

Keep in mind that one of the most important factors of this class is to keep a low polygon count; yet, make it as high quality as you can. That was the challenge. I was the only one who built all the cables that connect the computer and its peripherals together:

From Jedi's 3D Art

To keep a low tri (poly) count, I made the cables in a sort of V shape so they wouldn't disappear at certain angles. That is, I deleted one side of the faces because it wasn't important. You can't tell in silhouette view, which is all that mattered.

Then, we had to put this desk inside of a room. I decided to make a zen-styled bedroom with lots of windows and indirect lighting:

From Jedi's 3D Art

I used way less texture space than my classmates. I kept it really minimal. Keep in mind that these are not renders! They are real-time screenshots directly from Maya's viewport.

My favorite trick of Dabu's was what he liked to call god rays. Notice the atmospheric (volumetric lighting) effect you see coming from the windows:

From Jedi's 3D Art

The class isn't over! For the final, we had to make a character or a vehicle. I was *sick* of making characters, so I decided to make a Ferrari 328 GTS:

From Jedi's 3D Art

This was a really fun project! I went out of my way to make sure the car's side scoop was actual geometry instead of painting a flat surface. I knew it would increase the tri-count, but I'd rather sacrifice it elsewhere. I mean, side scoops are one of my favorite features in a car! I couldn't make it look stupid, right!?

From Jedi's 3D Art

I really spent a lot of time on the tail end of the car because the tail lights are my favorite feature in a Ferrari, for some reason. I wanted to make it look really nice. All my self-imposed experience with airbrushing in Corel PHOTO-PAINT prepared me for this job because, although it doesn't look like it, the tail is pretty flat with respect to geometry. Most of the depth you see is highlights and shadows on a flat surface plane. I'm really happy with the results. Also, notice the highlight I have going across the side of the car to make it look more glossy. Nobody else did that either ;)

Fundamentals of Texturing and Lighting

This class was pretty cool! I worked really hard to make sure my work was high quality. The most significant assignment for this class was to take an existing 3D model of a wall/pipe/door, texture it and light it. The trick was that we could only use our own photo references! Yeah, so I went on a few extreme photo shoots, taking hundreds of photos in downtown San Francisco, looking for the grungiest streets, walls and sidewalks. This is what I came up with:

From Jedi's 3D Art

The hardest part, to me, was stitching these hundreds of photos together to create a single, high-quality image of the sidewalk. I wanted it to look really good! I think I'm pretty happy with the results. This, actually, isn't the final render, but I'll replace it when I get home. The final version had a better marriage between the wall and the sidewalk, instead of that unnatural, straight line you can see.

I should note that there was a *lot* of post-production in Adobe Photoshop! We had to be very careful to make everything look right and proportionate. Also, we had to have a clean slate wall and put separate layers on top of it for the graffiti and grunge. It was pretty challenging, but I'm really comfortable doing stuff like this.

Organic Modeling

This is another class I wasn't too proud of, but hey! That's what school's for, right? Figuring out your strengths and weaknesses? This class confirmed my previous assessment that I shouldn't really be involved with the "organic" modeling aspect of the 3D workflow. Non-organic (hard surface) modeling, I predict, will be more up my alley.

Again, I don't have any examples with me, but I plan on posting some work on this post later.

Maya 1 – 3D Modeling and Animation

Maya 1: This is the class that taught me pretty quickly what I *didn't* want to do with my life. It was all about creating characters and animating them. I already knew that creating characters was a weakness of mine, but I discovered something in the class that would quite possibly change my life. Rigging!

In a process called rigging, the virtual marionette is given various controllers and handles for controlling movement (Wikipedia).

This is what my niche would be. 3D rigging – a perfect blend of art and logic for someone like me (half programmer, half artist).

Frankly, I'm quite embarrassed about the work I generated for this class, but I'll try to get some videos uploaded once I get back home.

CAPS – Computer Animation Production System

In the Fall of 2007, my animation class was called CAPS (Computer Animation Production System).

The final project for this class was to create and composite a 3D building into a photo background. We had to take all of the photos ourself too. Everyone was choosing relatively small buildings in San Francisco and all of them were in the daylight. I decided to do something different and chose a really large building to render at night time. My teacher warned me that I might be biting off more than I can chew, but I was up for the challenge! Here's what I came up with:

From Jedi's 3D Art

We also had to create a short video to illustrate how the render and compositing were put together. The video quality is pretty crappy, but at least you get the idea:

Adobe After Effects was used to put the video together.

Introduction to Computer Graphics for Animation

It wasn't until Spring of 2007 that I decided to change my computer science major, drop everything and move to San Francisco to attend the Academy of Art University's School of Animation and Visual Effects.

My first 3D class was called Introduction to Computer Graphics for Animation. Honestly, I think the class was a bit too basic for where I was coming from, but it was good to get a solid foundation. We had to make this 3D character out of primitive shapes (e.g. cylinders, spheres, cubes, etc.). I chose to make a dog:

From Jedi's 3D Art

Granted, I cheated a little bit by tweaking some of the primitive shapes like making the ears floppy, curving the tail and pinching his tummy, but I wasn't marked down for any of that. In fact, I got an A+!

This was all done using Maya. I used a fur effect for the grass. Yeah, I know there's much better ways to do grass, but this is a really basic class people! I was really happy with the results. The sky was created using a dome. That's why you see the grass curving like it's on a hill. It was a total happy accident! I also made the dog run, but I'll have to publish that video later because I don't have it on me.

The Beginning

I grew up taking art class after art class, but my interest in 3D all started with Toy Story. I wanted to somehow be a part of 3D, computer-generated films. A couple years later I became a quick fan of Kenneth Lehtinen's work. You can see his early One Man Show here. I even put together a website for him that is no longer published.

In 2001, I convinced Kenneth to give me a crash course in 3D. I paid him for a 3-day, one-on-one training at his house in Toronto, Ontario (Canada). At the time, I only lived 5 hours away in New York State. Using CINEMA 4D, he taught me the basics of 3D, which resulted in this anvil:

From Jedi's 3D Art

Kenneth said I learned really fast, so I asked him to teach me more about texturing and grunge! In my opinion, it's the grunge in 3D art that makes things truly look photo-real. Think about it. Anyway, here's what we came up with:

From Jedi's 3D Art

I didn't know at the time, but it wouldn't be until 6 years later (2007) that I would actually attend animation school.