Visual Development

This class was immensely helpful in understanding the process of texturing and material building. Throughout this month we used MILA materials with the mental ray renderer to achieve real world textures, and then this combined with batch renders of different passes helped me understand how a proper foundation in the basics of a software can be the difference between a sub par render and a professional one.

The most useful techniques I learned this month are probably the use of the MILA material and advanced knowledge of the hypershade. Before this class, I was mostly using MIA materials for my textures, with minimal, if any, hypershade node editing. After this class, I'm confident in my abilities to use the hypershade (and with minimal to no crashing too).

Warm Light Layer 

Key Light Layer 

Master Layer (Key, Warm, IBL)

Over the course of this class I made my own little experimental scene to test out materials, different bumps, and mess with settings overall to see what I could do.

Test Scene

This is my tester scene. I'll be making changes to it, such as adding different materials, bumps, and props, but its a nice little start to an exploration in texturing.

Character Design and Creation

CDC was a very challenging and trying course. The first week of class I was in the process of moving, so I didn't do as well I would have liked, but the knowledge I gained from this class was invaluable. I found myself becoming more and more comfortable with ZBrush as the class progressed, and I now enjoy using the software for sculpting and detailing meshes I've made in Maya. The goal this class was to create characters, as the name suggests, and I ended up with two characters.

Original mesh made in Maya

Mesh detailed in ZBrush

Second character, second pass with reference

Second character, detailed in ZBrush

This class pushed my limits as far as modeling goes, and doing so increased my artistic skill set and tolerance for strong coffee. The Zspheres and modeling in Maya worked best for me, whereas I need some more practice with dynamesh when modeling large tools (I used dynamesh as a base for the hair on the models, which I found easy to use in that situation). My major issues were mostly the crashing of programs and losing some save data, and Maya's interface bugging out, of course. My experiences with Maya in the past prepared me for dealing with the bugging, but Zbrush's curveballs required some research and YouTube videos. Those are things I use a lot as a student: Google and YouTube. The end results of my models turned out pretty well in my opinion, especially since this was my first time modeling completely in ZBrush. However, I need to work on my skills with dynamesh, sculpting nuances like eyelids and eyes in general, facial features, hands and fingers, and boots or feet. I think I still need to develop my artistic eyes in drawing and sculpting what I see a little more as well. I think though, that for my first time, I did well.