Time to kill and nothing to do

[David T.]

Well, seeing as how stopping my WoW addiction is leaving me with countless hours of time to be spent either watching sports, doing homework, talking to people or picking my nose I think it's time that I pick up modeling again.

I believe I'll start taking a look at maya. The only 2 modeling programs I've used are max and lightwave. I didn't like lightwave and we all know I love max. However, our attempts at porting models into formats in max has not worked.

So, uh... hi again. Welcome to the learning process version 2.0.

[Karl G.]

Woot!!!! Hey again

[David T.]

Maya sucks. Hard.

No, I'm serious.

[Karl G.]

That's unfortunate

It's not a big deal to model in MAX anyway, as long as you're doing static stuff. I think I'm going to yoink EJ's content ::evil grin::

[Joe M.]

that is unfortunate. oh, well. onward, ever onward.

[David T.]

So I installed 3ds and I'm working on creating my first actual piece of artwork to relearn some skills. We'll see how it turns out.

[Karl G.]

Great! Have you tried out the map-maker? We need to replace all of the items in there (and the more shared textures, the better--I remember you were really good at reusing textures with the weapons models from ages ago). You don't have to worry about the number of textures you use either--just keep them smallish

[David T.]

Blech, reused textures.

Anyway, when I say piece of art, I mean actual art - like usable as a background. Probably going to have to send it to Rhino to render it up. Again, we'll see.

No, I haven't used the map maker.

[David T.]

This is proving to be pretty interesting. Trying my hand at architecture and it's a challenge. I'm going to have to redetail a lot of this stuff when I'm done. So far I'm getting the positions of the objects I have created set up. Some are dummy parts, some aren't. Lighting is something I've never had to worry about before and it's proving difficult to control also. I'll post something when I have it.

[David T.]

Of course, my copy of max with mental ray (the rendering plugin that is now standard with max) is on my desktop and I can't access it (bjdfjafjfdjklfdjklfdjkl).

Anywho here's my return to modeling:


Slum Stacker 1 - A shack for a slums scene I am creating.

As you can see this is visibly high polygon, this is not intended for a game environment. It isn't textured (as photoshop is also on my desktop bhdfakjfakdfjafdfafdfjkdafdj*2) but I'm getting my ability back.

[Karl G.]

That's great looking!

Hey if you need *anything* let me know, and I can mail you a CD with it (or DVD with ISO images or install kits, etc). Just PM me.

[Joe M.]

wow. that does look great!

[David T.]

Here's what I have for the scene so far:



A lot more detail needs to be done. More trash, rubble, and probably a couple more buildings (not including the background change, adding in lesser-detail, taller buildings). Maybe I'll stick the camera in an alleyway between 2 buildings, might be interesting.

I want to see if I can do water effects also but that would be a dream scenario.

Anyway, that's it for today, I did enough work on that for now.

[David T.]

I'm getting the hang of this a little bit...



Oh yeah baby. This is the way it's meant to be.

Finishing touches will be a lot more trash along with random widgets around the buildings. Maybe some torn up cloth and such hanging off buildings. I want a busier foreground also.

So there we go.

[Karl G.]

Sweet!!! Can you make a big render for my background?

[David T.]

It's a WIP... needs to have touchups. When I'm done I'll render them in several different sizes.

[David T.]

Slums Streets - David Thomas 2007



other sizes:
Slums Streets 1280 x 800 (Widescreen)
Slums Streets 1280 x 1024
Slums Streets 1600 x 1200

I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. I should've unified the terrain but I figure what the heck, good enough.

[David T.]

My next project is my second character.

Codename: George (Homo Erectus)



Laying out the face at the moment.

This is also going to be a high polygon piece. Maybe I'll try some voice synching with this character, that would be ideal though.

[Joe M.]

Wow, David. That slum scene looks great. Stolen for my desktop, that's for sure...

[David T.]

Codename: George has a head.

[Joe M.]

that's one ugly motherf**ker.

but a well-modeled one, even though he won't win any beauty pageants.

[David T.]

Nope, haha. Just a character with what I hope will be a personality. We'll see.

[Karl G.]

he's ready to chomp some face