Here's my first attempt at recording a Tutorial. I made it for Simon Watts, and it is explaining/briefly showing how to set up a Driven Key. Excuse the ermming and arring, I recorded the audio at the same time as the video. I'll have to look into changing that next time. One things for certain, I sound like a retard. So please feel free to use the oppurtunity to mock me for it! :) Any feedback is welcome, I want to improve next time.
I've experimented with quite a few different ways of achieving a crisp corner in my meshes. From using a diamond in the corners and stuff like that. I recently landed upon this technique of using 3 edges in there and by altering the 2 outer edges you can adjust the tightness of the corner.
So following on from my "Obtaining distant goals through small, easily obtainable ones" I decided to look more into a state of mind that I had heard about a few times in the past. That state of mind is referred too as "Abundance Mentality." It's a state of mind that I thought I could never achieve, ironically that was through my own scarcity mentality.
I've become quite fascinated with this stuff, and it's really quite interesting to see how everyone is walking around with a scarcity mentality, even myself. But part of my aim to overcome my shortcomings, includes changing myself to an abundance mentality. Please read more about it here:
This post is really for the purposes of myself, to reflect on my Second year and really too get how I achieved what I did out of my head. This may be interesting to some that are like me, and become very distracted from their work easy. To quote a Frankie Boyle, I could be sitting here modelling something, and my eye catches something on my screen, or in my room and I'm away "Oooh, look at the shiny shiny." So this is how I overcame that and managed to progress so fast in my second year.
Let's rewind back to mid second year, Soundscape has just been handed in and I am once again disappointed by what could have been, but wasn't. Phil pulls me to one side and asks me what is going on, I could be so much more... He's right I thought, but why can't I manage it? What is stopping me from managing it? Phil speaking to me about it was a big wake up call, and it instantly started sparking off these questions in my head, I had to resolve it.
I went home, and I thought deeply about what was stopping me from achieving anything, and instead forcing me to be the bottom of the class and just muddle through with basic passes. I found these reasons to be :
-Low self confidence with my work (and in general) -Extremely defeatist -Could only see the end goal in life (and this is the basis of this post actually)
- Low Self Confidence in my Work I found that I was constantly seeking approval. Everything I produced I had to get someones input on it. It was driving me mad, and it's something I had to work on, fast. I did just this, and began to realise that in actual fact I could actually do a lot more than I had thought, and actually, I was pretty good at what I could do. I slowly started producing basic things, getting very happy that I could produce stuff and then slowly building myself up. This helped me progress at an extremely fast rate.
-Extremely Defeatist So I am a defeatist. There, I said it. A massive defeatist. If something doesn't work, I become very frustrated, very moody and for the most part I give up. At least that was me in the middle of the second year. For the most part, I'd like to think I have overcome this. Instead of getting frustrated I go splash water on my face, I come back, calm and collected and I resolve the issue. I am no longer the person that is getting in the way of my own progress, forever stopping myself from learning anything or succeeding. That was a huge step for me.
-Could only see the end goal in life This is perhaps the most important for me, this really helped me to learn and progress fast. All I could see at the end of Uni was that I wanted to be a CG Artist. That was all, very vague I know. I was so naive to think that was all it took. I wasn't progressing fast enough, I became very frustrated and defeated and that goal slipped away from me. Thus my efforts at Uni dropped. Bad move, because there was a simple way of tricking my brain into progressing and enjoying myself at the same time. This is by setting myself easily obtainable short term goals, each and every day, and eventually you see huge progression in your work. Okay, take this for example. It's a Sunday and you say "By next Sunday I want a full human body modelled." Next Sunday rolls around and in the case of me, the aforementioned body is not finished... I become very frustrated at myself, "WHY DIDN'T YOU FINISH IT? YOU ARE SO USELESS!!" Okay.. So self discipline is important too, however, I found a method that I use that really helps. It goes like this. Sunday : "Today I shall model a head"- I achieve said goal, I feel very happy about it, and the following day I jump back on Maya and say "Today I shall do a hand." This goal is a smaller one than the previous days, but I do it, I achieve it and I feel euphoric that I achieved both goals each day. So again, the next day "Hmmm, okay, let's make the torso." I model the torso, and become so happy by it that I instantly model the arms also... That means I achieved my goal for that day and then some. So I do that for the week, and on Sunday I am looking at a fully finished human model.
That is an example of how I trick my brain into achieving things, but I hope you get the picture. I always set myself small obtainable goals that lead me to a bigger goal in the long run, as opposed to just focusing on the end goal, of which you can't actually pin point in time.
Thanks for reading, at least I have this out of my head now.
The blog is alive again! I've been enjoying my Summer and really just not thinking a great deal about University and such. I know, quite bad of me, but i
t was well deserved. But now, I'm getting back into the flow of it, and what better way then to resurrect my Blogspot page, and to talk a short while about some research I have been doing.
I have become quite fascinated by clean edge loops and flows, and professional topology. I started this by opening up some of my models from the second year. I wanted to see where I was going wrong, and exactly how I can improve on that stuff. First and foremost my main concern was with edge loops and clean edge flow. I needed to learn how to control the loops cleanly and in a professional manner. Too many times this year I've been in a position where the edge flows just weren't right, and I knew it. I just lacked the knowledge I needed to fix it. Now is the time for me to learn where I was going wrong. I have nearly achieved that, and actually have learnt a lot these last couple of days.
I want to talk mainly about controlling edge flows, and what I have found out. I have been looking into what I like to call 'five edge' and 'three edge' poles. Here are two examples of both three edge and five edge poles: ^three edge pole^five edge pole
Okay, so this may not make much sense to you right now, but bare with me - I hope that I can explain what the importance of this is shortly.
So previously I was convinced that these were errors in my mesh, and I was always getting down on myself about them, forever trying to remove or hide them in places you won't see. But I had to find out the real meaning behind these, and after some reading around certain forums, I began to realise that these are a good thing if used right, and can be used to control edge flows. (Thanks CGSociety)
So here, goes, I'll try and explain!
Consider this basic mesh, I literally made a Polygon>Plane, selected some faces and hit extrude, raised them and it lead to this image.
You may be thinking, 'fine, so what about it?' Well, allow me to explain! The edge flow on this put simply, is wrong. Totally wrong. This is where I was going wrong for a long time, and it took me some time to understand it, but now I can see how it is wrong. Basically, the 'three edge pole' here is causing an issue. If you wanted to put an edge loop in here :It would not work. It simply would do this :
This is because the loops wrong, told you didn't I? This means that Extruding things willy nilly is actually a bad idea. It can be fine in many cases, but in things such as head and body models, it's something you have to be aware of. If you extrude you have to reroute geometry. Something like this :
This means the flow all around is correct. It also means that you can insert edge loops on the top of the extrusion, or around the extrusion and the edge loop will follow it correctly. As you can see in the next image :
So it might seem simple on this image, but actually on a complex model it's a little bit tougher. But let's look at it closely and try to understand why this works after a basic reroute of geometry. You've now moved the three edge pole to a more suitable place, and you've created a five edge pole which is controlling the flow. In the next image I have simply highlighted these poles.
So how does this translate into complex human models? Well, simply put, you can do this on a larger scale to control your loops in your models for realistic deformation and clean, professional topology.
Still not convinced? Onto further examples.
In this image you can see where I have used a five edge pole to control the loop so that when I insert an edge loop in to control the edge it will automatically follow the flow instead of carrying on up to the top of the model:
I really hope this is making sense, because In my excitement over beginning to understand this I might dribble on a bit.
Again, in this image I have used a 'five point pole' to make the flow in the breast area flow around and up into the arm. Way better for animation, flow and a realistic look:
I have used this technique in key places on this model I knocked up today. I hope you can see my reasoning for using the five edge poles in these places, and I hope you can see why they work the way they do.
Here are some head models I found online which show how they work in head models. (I do not take credit for the following head models, they are merely being used to explain what I'm getting at)
Head model 1
Head model 2
Head model 3
In these images you can see how the 'five edge pole' has been utilized to achieve the desired edge flow in the face.
So what does this mean? Well it means that when you're using complex head and body models with a lot of geometry in them for reference when producing your own models, you can simply jump straight to these three and five edge poles and replicate them on your own model. Then when you insert edge loops after that, you can achieve a high resolution model easily as the loops will instantly appear in the places you want them to.
I really hope that in my haste to write this people understand what I mean, and I really hope it's of some help to some of my peers. Because I find this stuff so fascinating, and it's really the stuff you simply have to know in order to penetrate the rookie bubble of modelling.
Also, on a side note i've been covering nCloth for mine and Pol's upcoming project. I've realised how cool it is. Here are a couple of quick playblasts just showing a couple of tests I did regarding attaching the nCloth objects Vertices to an objects vertices. Also been messing and testing nCloth Nucleus' wind and gravity. It's really interesting.
Okay, clearly these aren't the most complex of animations. But really, it doesn't matter. Through tests like these I have learnt a lot, and I know that we'll be fine with regards to nCloth in the project. At least I believe that will be the case. Let's hope so!
Here's a model I've been working on. Really trying to get the edge loops right. Though there are mistakes still. The crotch area is a problem for me right now, that I have to try and rectify. Also the top of the back has two Five edge poles on the same loop. That's bugging me a lot right now.
Thanks for reading!
I am currently having a lighting issue in Maya, and would be most grateful if anyone can enlighten me as to what the issue is.
Okay, so here are the renders :
As you can see, the light goes through the solid cloth back of the coat, and shines INSIDE the actual coat its self. Completely wrong, and I have no idea why it's doing that. It's operating as if the coat is transparent, but it is not! The odd thing is that if I hide the coat the rest of the body functions just fine. I really can't work out what is causing this, so if anyone can shed some light then please, by all means, comment away!
Okay, that problem is resolved... I must have been a bit too tired last night, because it was something really simple. I had simply forgotten to turn the shadows on on the rim light. What a muppet. Here's a render where it's resolved :
It has become more and more important for me to keep to modern day games polygon counts for characters. I want to become a video game character designer, and things such as polygon counts, proportions, silhouettes and such are extremely important for me. So with that said, I want to do it properly, it is extremely important in the industry to adhear to things such as polygon counts within a game project. So there is no better time then now to start learning about it.
I found some interesting statistics online with regard to polygon counts on video game characters here and it really provided useful knowledge on what I should be aiming for with my polycount. It lists a few popular games, and the confirmed polys used the main characters. One of which is Gears of War in which they used the following poly counts for three of the characters :
Gears of War, Xbox 360, 2006
Wretch - 10,000 polygons with diffuse, specular and normal maps
Boomer - 11,000 polygons with diffuse, specular and normal maps
Marcus - 15,000 polygons with diffuse, specular and normal maps
Also they provided poly counts for some of Half-Life 2's characters, as a big fan of the Half Life games, and an even bigger fan of VALVe It was really interesting. Their poly counts are extremely low, considering their characters are visually stunning. I thought it was way more, it just shows the power of textures over high poly counts!:
With that said, here is a screen shot of my character Hals' polygon count.
I am quite happy with what I achieved with that, and the model of Hal can be viewed at; ~Transcription - Sir Henry Courtney2~
I feel that his polygon count is spot on, not only that but his proportions are too. Something I strive for is good proportions and topology. I think I am beginning to produce both. So any way, I best sleep!:)
I am a video game artist at Dovetail games, working on Train Simulator 2014, 2015 and an unannounced title.
I also graduated from the CG Arts course at UCA in 2010 with a First Class.
www.jonstewart.co.uk
