rah

Well, we are into the final week of the term now. Ive been spending the past few days working on my contextual essay, but now that thats out of the way, ive been able to really dig my teeth into the texturing in my scene. I got through texturing the guitar stands and spent alot of time working on the bass today, but i think it looks pretty good now that its all done... I used just some basic textures with images for most of the pieces, nad the body is the mental ray car paint texture but ive been tweaking it around and seeing what it can do as id like to use it for the acoustic guitars when i texture them tomorrow. Maya on the computers ive been working on has been seriously acting up and when i render, i occasionally get fatal errors due to a lack of memory, hopefully this is resolved by using the render farm later in the week. Anyway, heres an image of the bass, im off home now to finish off a bit more work. x

yes!

Well, today was a pretty good day in terms of maya... I finished getting all my models into one scene, and then worked the whole afternoon on sorting out the wires coming out of the various speakers and instruments, using just poly cylinders and a simple joint structure, then smoothing out the cylinder twice once the shape is right . I think that it looks pretty good now, this is just a AO render, this weekend will be consumed with texturing everything. Alright!

beginning the compiling!

Well, after my mullings last night, it meant i could get down and gritty with getting everything together on the set now. I got most of the things that Ive modelled already, i still need to rig up a decent cable which is provign tricky, i cnat remeber how i did the first one from the ceiling vocal mic. Other than that, it looks pretty good, i couldnt find the guitar or drumset models on the school pcs, and im praying i hvent acidentally deleted them at home, which would be a real kick in the teeth as i spent a good week modelling the drum set. anyway, fingers crossed....

Rethinking the final presentation

Well, Ive been doing some thinking. Yesterday we had a lecture from Frontier games, which I thought was pretty good, and there was a litlte segment at the end about what companies are looking for in new graduates and their showreels. The point was made pretty heavily about you only being as strong as your weakest piece on the showreel, and that companies are looking for more specialized individuals that a kind of 'well rounded' worker. Last night while I was trying to toil with some animation tests, I realised that I was in a way wasting my time. I rushed through the texturing of the models to get started on the things I felt were neccesery for a 'good' project. Looking at them now, Im going to scrap the animated section, and instead stick to what I enjoy and feel better at, enviroment modelling and texturing. This means that the final piece I submit wont have the animated charecters in there, instead will be a more polished flythrough/look at the set I built. I do plan on spending the summer months working on the animation to submit to the Musion Awards that Oliver told me about, but for now Im going to go back and really refine my texturing and set, and get some lovely shots for a litlte compilation to submit. I think that this is a much better use of my time as I do feel paticularly strong in teh animation department, adn that Id be doing it just for the sake of doing it in this project...

Bass

The finished model of the bass guitar, looks pretty fresh I think... Tomorrows going to have to be spent working on contextual studies, and then back on it....

Fannnnnnntastic

Well, In a wonderful turn of events, I got an email back from Oliver this morning informing me that Musion wouldnt have a set up at ROA... While it is a bit of a downer, it could be worse as he told me about the 'Musion Acadamy Media Awards' which will take place in November, and he invited me to enter into. One of the categorys included in this is a performace and music piece, so it looks like ill have a place to showcase my work after all on the Musion screen. In terms of for rave on air, I dont think Ill be presenting my work, but Ill just hand it in on the submission date and then go back and work on it for this coming November. I am slightly dissapointed not to have been informed, as now it loooks like I havnet done any work, but my showreel will hopefully be on display and so at least Ill have something there.