Maybe Time to Mix It Up – July 19, 2016

Posted on July 19, 2016 by SusanG

I think it might be about time to get out the pencils and find something interesting to draw. It’s not that I don’t have art projects to work on but there is something about working in pencil for me. It scratches some sort of mental itch. It’s much different from working on the computer or ink. I realized that I kind of miss that. I guess when I finish up this post I’ll see about fixing that situation.

I’m also thinking about drawing on at least one wall in the music room. I am thinking about repainting it first. It’s a sort of dark sand color, which is nice that it’s not white. But I’m a little over it. I’m thinking a light tropical sort of blue. It would lighten up the room. Then I’ll draw/paint some sort of embellishment over that. I have some time off from the day job at the end of next month, that might be a good time to start that. If I wait that long.

Of course, I have lots of other things I really need to get worked on and finished. The Worm Guy, or is he more of a Caterpillar, for one. Oh and that Halloween card. And can’t forget, it’s already July, I need to get to working on this year’s Holiday card. Wow. So 20160715_170219_c_sm_wmmuch to do and that doesn’t include the stuff I want to do with Sticks and who knows what else.

It was not a busy week in the studio. I managed to get very little done. I do have a new W.I.P. (work in progress) of the head stock painting. I’m not sure the photo shows it really well, and it is fairly subtle. Still I like the way that by just using a small point I get a different texture than using a large point and adding the smaller dots in between. It’s about time to start tackling the chrome and thinking about how I want to handle the background. The tuning keys still need a little work and I might try to punch up the gold lettering.

This week’s computer art was limited to just messing around a bit. The squid was hanging out in my head sort of knocking on the brain wanting to be let out. And it wanted out in the form of a ZBrush sculpt. How about that. I started with a sphere and used the move tool mostly, and dynamesh. I had to use the smooth and inflate tools some too before starting a bit of sculpting on the head. I think it’s coming along pretty nicely. I’ve got no time frame for when I want this done so I will probably work on it off and on for a while until I get it the way I want.

zsquid_07152016a_c_sm_wm  zsquid_07152016b_sm_wm

Moving along to thinking about what I need and want to work on next. With a little bit of luck and good planning, I think I might start rigging the Worm Guy. That could take either a really long time or turn out to be fairly quick. It’s really a toss up. It’s the first thing I’ll be rigging that I don’t have a direct reference for. I’m going to be winging it to a great extent. That’s usually how I really learn something though. I will have a need for something that doesn’t quite exist and so I find something close and then adapt it to fit what I need. Now that I think about it that way, I’m getting kind of excited to give this a try. Hmm…

Oh, I know there are other things to think about but the rigging thing is starting to really grow on me. Excuse me while I wander off for a while. I’ll get back to you.

Posted in 3D Sculpting, Weekly Updates | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Maybe Time to Mix It Up – July 19, 2016

Changing Expectations, Again – July 12, 2016

Posted on July 12, 2016 by SusanG

Have you ever noticed how short work weeks seem to warp the time continuum? At least they do for me. I’ve had a series of short weeks back to back to back and this is the first week that will be relatively normal. I think. But it’s early so that could change for sure. Still, now that I’ve adjusted something that I didn’t realize was not right, I think I might have a chance of getting back into some sort of groove. I’m hoping for it to be a creative and productive groove.

I want to touch on the texturing thing a bit more. I noted in the last post that I need to re-think or re-evaluate some things. What I realized I needed to re-evaluate is my expectations when it comes to using programs designed for texturing 3d models. For
some reason I expected it to be very plug and play, one click, easy. I didn’t expect to need to learn a whole new layout, and a new methodology. Silly, I know. But I just didn’t expect that. What I have come to realize or accept, is that, to get really good custom textures, regardless of the method, I am going to need to put as much effort into understanding which ever tool I use for that, as I have had to put into learning and understanding the tools I use to create 3d models.

Keeping that in mind, I am still evaluating Substance Painter. It seems that this is rapidly becoming an industry standard for textures in games. This is because of the PBR shaders that can be created with it and can be used in the game engines, Unreal and Unity. PBR is physically based rendering (I think). I have only a vague grasp of the particulars of this and the significance. What I can share is that it means that the graphics in games will look even better and even more realistic. There are some other more technical things that make this important but I haven’t read enough to share all that. Let’s just say, it is considered a real game changer. No pun intended.

Keeping in mind the coolness of Substance Painter, I would still really like to try out Mari from The Foundry. I don’t know if it does PBR shaders too. It might. The Foundry seems to put out some pretty impressive tools so it probably does. What has kept me from trying Mari is the price and that it only had a 15 day trial. Thus the reason for checking out Substance Painter. So as I was scanning my Twitter feed last week I saw a mention of a non-commercial version of Mari which I had to look into, and, sure enough. The Foundry have created a non-commercial version of Mari for personal learning use. Nice. This might be the answer for me. I can spend some time learning it and deciding if it’s going to be worth it before I spend a big chunk of money on it. I may give that a shot soon. First, I will spend a bit more time getting comfortable with Substance Painter to give it a really fair evaluation. I already have it installed, and given what it can do, as well as it being very budget friendly it’s a good option. Add to that, Allegorithmic are having a sale until the 22nd, it becomes an even more appealing option. I just don’t want to rush to get it if it turns out I’m not going to even start to get comfortable with it.

Now, on to some actual art for this week.

I made a flower for the scene with the Worm Guy. I started out just Flower_07052016b_sm_wmtrying some things to see how it was going to go.  The first thing I did was to create one petal. When I created the petal the pivot point and center point were at the center of the object, which is normal. I wanted to make a bunch of copies of the petal in a full circle. I can do that using the rotate tool to create my copies but that will create the copies around the pivot point. So I had to move the pivot so that it would be a little away from one of the ends of the petal. Then I was able to create the copies in a nice circle. Cool. I also created the center section and the stem. Next, I need some leaves for the stem.
Flower_07052016a_c_sm_wm

The other thing I spent some time working on was the Studio Sign. I know, it’s been a while since I worked on that. But I was on the phone and that’s always a good time to put dots on paper. I’m letting it sit a few days but I may have finished it. I’ll know after I spend some time looking at it. Sometimes, after a piece sits for a while I find that it needs just a little something else. So we’ll see. Here it is for now.

20160711_174005_c_sm_wm

And that’s the fun for now. I’m not quite sure what I’ll be getting into this week. I have so much that I can do. The big challenge may be choosing.

Posted in 3D Modeling, Weekly Updates | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Changing Expectations, Again – July 12, 2016

Takin’ a Small Break to Recover – July 5, 2016

Posted on July 5, 2016 by SusanG

I spent most of last week cleaning up and trying to recover from the trip to Florida. I went down to see my niece get married. It was quite an adventure and I returned with a gift from Florida. A nice allergic reaction to something. That, resulted in a short visit to an emergency room for some meds because there was no clinic open at 11:00 pm. It turns out that Prednisone and Benadryl are a really bad combination. Too jittery to sleep and too sleepy to concentrate.

So I did my best to keep busy but I didn’t really get to work on much. I built a few Lego kits. That was fun. I even ordered a set of just bricks to prototype something I want to build. I also put together a shuttle model from Meccano. It’s what I would call an
erector set but the brand on the box is Meccano. That turned out to be a bit of a pain. I think I may stick with Lego bricks.

Once I got past the meds and got some sleep so I could think again, I did a little work on that painting of the guitar head stock.  So I thought I would share some work in progress pictures.

20160630_174752_c_sm_wm 20160704_100529_c_sm_wm 20160704_111355_c_sm_wm

I even started working on the parts for the scene for the Worm Guy to sit in. I want him to sit on a leaf and I think I want a part of a flower to show. Originally, I was thinking I just needed to modelLeaf_07042016a_c_sm_wm the leaf but as I think more about it, I may need to model more of the plant that the leaf is a part of. I will also need to model the flower. Probably the whole thing. This might get tricky but there are a few things I think I can to do to make it look the way I want and yet not require a ton of really detailed work. I think. I guess we’ll find out. In the mean time, here’s what I got done on the leaf so far. I haven’t added any texture or anything, just some rough modeling.

Oh. Remember I was going to try out one of the programs for painting texture on models. I finally downloaded Substance Painter 2. I think it’s actually 2.1 for anyone keeping score. So, like a lot of people, I don’t always read directions for a program when I first start using it. I didn’t this time either. That didn’t work so well. I couldn’t figure out how to get my model into the program to paint on it. I had to go to the support documentation to figure that one out. It wasn’t really difficult, but certainly not drag and drop. It also took me a little bit to figure out how to move around wormguy_colortest_07042016a_c_sm_wmmy model so I could see what the painting looked like. I tried watching some of the tutorials but I wasn’t really into it. However, I was able to get enough out of them that I could figure out how to export the image/texture that I created and was then able to apply it back to my model in 3DS Max. I used the first version of the Worm Guy to test this out with so there isn’t all the cool detail to the model. I just wanted to play with the paint.

I’ve got the 30 day trial of Substance Painter. At the end I’ll decide if I want to purchase it full out or get the subscription which will get me a couple more things in addition to Substance Painter, or I could decide to try something else. I’m not sure yet. It looks like it will do what I want and need to do, possibly a little better than trying to do it with regular UV’s and Photoshop. But it may take as much work to really master it as it is taking to learn 3DS Max. The tutorials look like they are going to be helpful but so far they seem to get a little more technical with regards to the technology instead of just showing how to use it. Then again, getting the texture and materials right on a model can really make a difference. Perhaps I should expect it to take some work to get good textures for my models.

Well now, isn’t that interesting. I think I might need to do some re-evaluation of my expectations. Stay tuned.

Posted in 3D Modeling, Weekly Updates | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Takin’ a Small Break to Recover – July 5, 2016

Back to the Worm Guy – June 28, 2016

Posted on June 28, 2016 by SusanG

Remember when I said I was trying to think of all the parts I wanted for both sides of the
Worm Guy before I split him and then mirrored him? That didn’t work out quite as planned.

I did the part where I got rid of the side that I hadn’t really worked on. Then I made a
mirror copy of the side I did work on. Then, I welded them together. This was a vertex by
vertex process. Once I did that I realized I hadn’t made his top teeth. No big deal. It’s
not like creating a whole mouth full of teeth. I just created the top teeth.

Of course I didn’t make them quite long enough so they were really stubby when I applied a smoothing modifier to them. When I tried to make them longer I found they were going to run into the bottom teeth. So the bottom teeth had to be angled back into the mouth a bit and then the top teeth had to be angled out a bit. Then I could make the top teeth longer and they didn’t look so stubby.

Ok, getting close to needing color or a rig. Oh! Wait. Eye balls. I want the eye to sort of
bulge out so it needs to be a little big and yet needs to basically fit the socket I’ve
created. So I created a sphere of a good size and then sat it in the socket. It fit but not
exactly. I needed to adjust the shape of the socket a bit so that it fit better around the
eyeball. I probably could compensate for that some if I were giving him eye lids but I have
decided not to do that. So adjustments had to be made. And then I needed to do the adjustments on the other side for the other eyeball. Well, shoot.

I didn’t want to try to duplicate the adjustments to the eyesocket. I knew they wouldn’t
look right. I’d end up with a psychotic looking worm. So afer all that work, and welding, I
decided to select one side and delete all the polygons and then do the mirror copy thing
again. No biggie, right?

WormGuy_v2a_06192016c_c_sm_wm

Well, it should have been no biggie. Apparently I didn’t get the selection of the polygons at the teeth right. I ended up with an extra one or two after the mirror. I found it as I was trying to weld things again. So I tried deleting the extras and really made a mess. I broke one of the teeth pretty good. With it all together I had some trouble trying to clean it up. I couldn’t seem to get some of the polygons out of the way so that I could really see what was going on. And since I’d managed to mangle the two teeth in the front, right next to each other, I had to fix both. Hmm.

Here’s some of what I broke.

WormGuy_v2a_06192016a_c_sm_wm WormGuy_v2a_06192016b_c_sm_wm

I figured out that if I deleted the new mirrored side and then just fixed the one side, I
would be able to get to the messed up polygons and I could just mirror over the fix. Then I
didn’t have to do the work twice. So that’s what I did. All better now.

WormGuy_v2a_06192016f_c_sm_wm     WormGuy_v2a_06212016b_c_sm_wmWormGuy_v2a_06212016A_c_sm_wm

As best I can figure, what’s left for the Worm Guy is color, a rig, and then pose. Unless,
of course, I decide he needs something else. I also need to build the scene I’m going to
sit him in. I think I’ve got something that will look really nice and cheery, I just need
to build it. Hopefully it will go smoothly.

WormGuy_v2a_06212016d_c_sm_wm

I am still planning on testing Substance Painter with the Worm Guy for his color. I like
that I can download a free 30 day trial for it. I was all set to do the download and decided that since I was going to spend the weekend in Florida for my niece’s wedding that maybe I would wait until I got back to do that. I don’t want to lose 4 days of my free 30 days. What can I say.

More to come on the Worm Guy, and who knows what else.

Posted in 3D Art, 3D Modeling, Weekly Updates | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Back to the Worm Guy – June 28, 2016

A Lego Distraction – June 26, 2016

Posted on June 26, 2016 by SusanG

I like putting things together. I like getting kits and putting them together to build things. It’s part of what I like about 3D modeling in the computer. It’s a similar concept for me. As much as I like building things in the computer, sometimes I like to put things together in the physical world.

Lately that’s taken the form of Lego kits. It started with the ‘Mixels’, and then a car and
a motorcycle. Just the small kits. More recently I’ve progressed to some of the Marvel
Universe kits like the Hulk Buster and the Crossbones fight.

For my Birthday I bought the Wall-E kit. This was the biggest kit I’d bought, over 650
pieces. Just this last week I finally decided to start on it. I thought I was doing great.
Working along step by step, until, I got to step 50 something and found that I put a piece
in wrong. I put the piece in wrong back at step 20 something. Grrr.

Fortunately I didn’t have to take everything completely apart all the way back to that
step. I was able to limit what had to be deconstructed so that I could go back and turn
this piece one quarter turn to fix it. And, then put it all back and move forward.

It could have been much worse. There are over 170 steps in this build, at least it happened
early and I found it before things got too far along. After that it really started coming
together. It gets pretty addictive seeing it start to fit together and look like the
expected end result.

It’s also cool when you are building a segement that you aren’t really sure what it’s going
to be and then you get done and suddenly you recognize it. That happened with the first eye for Wall-E. I was building it and got to the last bits and realized it was his eye and I
thought that was so cool. Little delights.

I didn’t think to take pictures of the build until I was almost done but here are some
picture at the end of the build as I added his eyes and arms.

20160619_201553_c_sm 20160619_203910_c_sm 20160619_203914_c_sm 20160619_205950_c_sm 20160619_212343_c_sm

And also a final shot.

20160619_213146_c_sm

This was a lot of fun to build. There are a few more kits that I have seen that I really
would like to build. I think they would be a lot of fun. Some are really big so they may
take a bit longer.

Posted in Other Stuff, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on A Lego Distraction – June 26, 2016