Artist's Log Stardate 09192016

-


"If you can't join them, beat them." - Me


As I learn more, I also discover it's not only important to keep a record of your final work but also your process and specific settings. This metadata is not only useful for oneself, but also for others.

As my blog starts to develop and define my processes, interests, and artwork, I clearly need to set out a format to keep things together and relevant to what I'm doing.

Simply put, I will attempt to keep my blog going at least once a week and in this layout:

1. Quote
2. Updates and Industry news
3. Artbook Review (If any)
4. My Work (Process, results and software settings)
5. Lost Worlds (Progression)

Last week I posted some renderings of some finished modular spaceships I had made in Maya. I was pleased with the results as its was an organic experiment within a quick timeframe to see what sort of results I'd receive. I hadn't included any process notes or images to document my project. I will rectify that now.

All the individual pieces that make up my modules. Each piece has edge beveling for smoothing and a higher poly model.

Assembled spaceships with Arnold standard hypershade materials inside my custom made light box.

Render settings, nothing too insane. Took about 30 minutes to render on my system.

And finally a quick interactive photorealistic rendering (IPR) to check everything is working correctly before final shots.


Lost Worlds is a comic book I've been writing for the best part of 5 years (forever).  I have plans to make most of it in Maya and Zbrush, maybe using UE4 too. I am using this to practice and develop multiple skills simultaneously. I would also like to make some 2D Art and even a board / card game too. I will post my progress later in the week.


Andrew Out












Popular posts from this blog

Quick start guide to using Gaea

-
Image
If you are completely new to Gaea terrain software, start with watching the 6-minute video to create your first landscape terrain and to familiarize yourself with the Gaea Interface in the Getting around documentation. 3D Viewport, 2D viewport, the graph and properties panel: The Using Gaea section explains various concepts in detail, such as using Create with Primitives to build scenes, harnessing the power of Eroding Terrains to make realistic terrains, creating Procedural Textures , and outputting using the Build Manager . https://docs.quadspinner.com/Reference/ The Node Reference gives you access to details about every node and sculpting tool in Gaea. Use the top menu to navigate the different node type groups. In individual node pages, you will find detailed descriptions, usage advice, parameter reference, and usage examples. The Tutorials section contains complete tutorials that show you how to accomplish a complete project. The QuickStarts section has over 50 scenarios of di
Read more

Volumetric Fog and Lighting in Unreal Engine 4

-
Image
Volumetric lighting is something I've been using more and more in my projects and slowly, I'm starting to get the hang of it. With each new version of Unreal some interesting updates happen. Unreal Engine recently had a fantastic session at GDC 2018 covering this. Here are the main points. The first thing you'll need to create is a simple Directional Light. This represents the direction of the light from the sun. The Skylight is the indirect lighting that gets caught in the atmosphere. It comes from all directions back into the scene. The Skylight takes a cube map from the skydome image and gives precise richer colors and more light bounces. These can be configured in the World Settings under Num Sky Lighting Bounces. Volumetric lightmaps have replaced the sparse volume lightmap system and now has many more samples and a much larger density. This can be adjusted for larger scenes in the World Settings under Lightmass. Volumetric Lighting Detail Cell Size and Volumetr
Read more

Substance Painter 2019.3

-
Image
A few days ago the latest update of Substance painter was released. And man is it good! Substance Painter 2019.3 introduces Photoshop brush presets support and automatic UV unwrapping for your meshes. Yes, you read that right. SP can now automatically unwrap your mesh, and it's pretty good too! As well as delivers various quality of life improvements. Photoshop Brush Presets Support (ABR) You can now use your Photoshop brushes in Substance Painter. By simply exporting your presets as an ABR file, you can now import them as regular brush presets. Presets contained inside ABR files will appear in the Shelf as individual brush presets. If you don't have ABR files to import, you can find a lot of them online: Kyle's Brush Presets on Adobe Brush Presets on ArtStation Brush Presets on DeviantArt Brush Presets on Cubebrush Support for Roundness and Flip A new Substance Alpha named Brush Maker Photoshop has been added to support parameters such as Roundness (scale the height of the
Read more