Okay, so I've been cranking out a ton of new stuff but haven't updated my folio in like 4 months! So I'm composing a presentation shot of the foliage assets I created for my previous freelance project. I plan on replacing the skydome with a gray gradient material for presentation purposes, and I want to tweak the materials a bit. But here's how everything is arranged for the shot!

So I get 8 glorious days off work for the holidays (two 4-day weekends in a row essentially) and I want to challenge myself to make a current gen asset for my portfolio. I figured a single prop would be a realistic goal, and I've been itching to do something sci-fi related for a while to practice hard surface modeling and texturing. I found this awesome futuristic gun concept by Jim Svanberg that I want to tackle. I'd like to tweak the design a bit (thicker glowing hose, simplifying some forms, bolder colors). Oh, and I want to do it in 3ds Max to continue familiarizing myself with a second modeling package!

Fun with Alchemy!

Polishing this up!

Placing foliage and setting up the scene. I know the grass is way too bright, but at the time I was more worried about getting things into the scene and getting things going.

Tree variations!

Setting up the shaders for the tree and grass in UDK. I'm using the foliage tut from 3D Motive as a basis, but ultimately want to tweak it and utilize what I learned to apply to the current scene.

Tree is done. Sitting at about 2.3k tris. I had to trade some gaps in the canopy for a lower tri count and better silhouette. Now that I have a template tree, I can easily make about 2-3 more variations tomorrow. We get Monday off at work so I'm hoping to have the rock formations also done by Tuesday, then focus on in-engine stuff next weeked.

Working on trees.

shingles

ArenaNet test got cancelled for Environments, working on the enviro freelance project now.

Normal map has padding enabled, the stretchyness around the leaves shouldn't effect the final texture due to the alpha map. First image is just the diffuse and wires.

Applied the texture to the base. There are some stretching issues I will address.

Been a while!

Right now I'm still baking out the maps on that tree branch for my freelance project (yeah I know, seems like it's been forever)

But I am making solid progress with the ArenaNet art test. I FINALLY finished the rock wall texture. I have the normals baked out but have yet to test out the set up in engine or apply it to the model. Also need to create a spec map, and fix some seams when it tiles (damn you Zbrush!).

I'm going to reuse the grass I already made (maybe as a single 256 instead of a 512). So tonight I'll try to get started on sorting the wood beams out. I already have a really crappy photo source texture on there with the UV's laid out on it, but I'm thinking about sculpting a 256x512 tileable wood texture to work off of instead.

Branches done! Next, to bake out the maps...

Working on the branches...

Got all the UVs unwrapped! Just a bunch of pieces floating around right now, time to start building some textures to map these on. Texel density is a bit inconsistent at the moment, still trying to plan out the texture layout.

Done modeling, UVs about halfway done. Can't really lay the UVs out until I have my textures going, so I'm just unwrapping and stacking for the time being. Also need to figure out how the arrangement of the textures are going to fit into the 2048 x 1024 max texture allowance. I'm guessing that includes the normal/spec maps too. Not everything is going to be normal mapped, but mostly everything is going to have a spec map, and there's also alpha maps to think about... Going to be rough!

Started modeling. Still need to work on the base and some finer details, and also optimize it. Hopefully all the modeling will be done by Friday! It's starting to look like something now and I feel myself getting really excited.

Doing the ArenaNet internship environment art test! Started the blockout tonight.

Grass!

So, working on some grass for a freelance project.

Arranging the 3 different cluster textures into different sized patches in Max. Painted vertex colors (for wind animation) and adjusted the normals so it looks right in UDK when I get to that point.

Done sculpting the pillar

Got the pillar into zbrush, wish I could have done more but my painting final ate up most of my day.

Digitial Painting final, wanted it to feel painterly and like it had texture. On one hand I love that sloppy hand made style where you see the strokes, on the other hand I feel like I should at least attempt realism at some point. :P

About done with the zbrush base mesh of the pillar (need to bevel some edges), then going to take it into zbrush.

Blockout progress! Just need to fit the pieces a little bit better so there's no intersecting geo. Then I can start making Zbrush base meshes and begin sculpting. I'm probably going to start with a tileable brick sculpt to learn Zbrush a little better, and then I'll probably sculpt the pillars first. Getting excited, was starting to get discouraged/bored with this but I'm determined to make solid progress soon.

Started blocking out the interior. It's not much to look at but I spent a LOT of time setting up the grid and trying to make sure everything stays perfectly modular. Made some tiny progress on the desk; putting it on hold until I get the actual scene put together.

Color comps!

Final project thumbs, going for a deer in nature scene

Digital Painting project #2 final submission. Struggled a lot with it, need more practice drawing people!

Texture progress! (no spec)

Working on the texture... Maya 2012 HQ viewport errors galore up in here so turned off the normal map for now :<

Final submission for the first project in my Digital Painting class! Next project has to be done in Corel Painter, way outside my comfy Photoshop, and I'm going to poo my lederhosen.

Made a ton of progress today. Finished the low poly, UVs, and bakes... Put together the separate low poly pieces to make the low poly desk version. This is a current/next gen asset so the poly count is fairly high (around 5-7k I believe).

I have to merge some verts and fix some seams and then I can move on to the texture!

"Remastered" the tea garden. Redid the foliage shader so the bushes didn't have black shadows, fixed the little white flower lighting, rebaked the lighting for the whole scene to reflect the changes. And retook all the screenshots and edited them to replace the website images! I've been sending my portfolio to a lot of places this weekend and felt the foliage lighting was a major issue I should probably fix before they saw it.

Before

 After

Link to portfolio page: http://jbartwork.weebly.com/japanese-tea-garden.html

Almost donesies!

Almost done with the low poly pieces. Getting some baffling nasty artifacts on the center spike piece, I suspect the UV layout is to blame. (High on left, low on right)

Done with the test bakes of the low poly posts and desk feet. (high poly models in the middle)
 Next will be the desk top and modular side pieces and then onto the texture!!

Digital Painting Project 2 color comps

We don't talk about what happened to 3 and 4.

Wanted to keep it earthy/neutral.

Started to model and UV the lowpoly pieces of the desk. Read an article on the polycount wiki about baking normal maps that really opened my eyes to how they work. I did a test bake and I'm getting some artifacts on the normal map though.

Maya 2012 can't do transfer maps, something about imported preferences screwing it up. So I have to delete my preferences and redo copying my scripts and stuff over I guess before I can get much further with this.