Summer Bootcamp - Week 1

JacqueChoi

Week 1: Make A Critter
Make a small creature that should be based on something real and existing, not something made up, or fantastical. It should look as if it belongs in the same world as the reference images we have provided below.

Specifications:
500 Triangles - 256x256 texture - Diffuse/Color Map ONLY

Images that need submitting for review:
• Reference Sheets from Various Angles
• Anatomy Study (If Possible)
• Wireframe Orthographic Front/Back/Side
• Wireframe ¾ Perspective Front/Back
• UV Unwrap Layout
• Front/Side/Back Geometry with 20x20 Checkerboard
• ¾ Front/Back of Ambient Occlusion
• PSD Layer Setup
• ¾ Front/Back Final Render

Additional Notes:
• Shader Setup:
•100% Self Illumination -
• No Filtering
• Ambient Occlusion:
• Maya

http://www.game-artist.net/forums/spotlight-articles/1317-tutorial-ambient-occlusion-maya-alchemist101.html

• 3DS Max
http://www.eddybrown.co.uk/blog/baking-ambient-occlusion/
• PSD Layer Setup:
- Ambient Occlusion Layer – Normal
- Shadow Layer – Normal
- Highlight Layer – Normal
- Base Colours – Normal

Final Rendering should include (bare minimum):
Ground plane
Gradient Background


Examples:
More Examples: http://pioroberson.com/modelpages/info_spellborn2.htm

freakmean16

Cool...gonna do some crab!!!!

Torch

Can't wait to get involved with this, looks like fun

Tigerfeet

Hey nice! Thanks for posting the lessons so that the rest of us can follow along

nkonstantino

I'll get started on this right away!

JacqueChoi

Some of the others might cross post in here ^_^

dii

Would you mind explaining the PSD setup? Unless you're somehow rendering a transparent AO isn't it just going to block the layers below it by setting it to normal instead of multiply?

JacqueChoi

If you toss it into the alpha channel, then use the 'select' tool then paste that into a new layer with the black fill will do it.

dii

Ahh I see, thanks. You could also just paste the AO into the quickmask and fill it I guess..

Tigerfeet

Do you mind progress shots, or would you prefer everything lumped together once we're finished?

If progress then, here have a monkey

He's not welded yet because I'm still sorting out the UVs. He's at 492 tris right now.

BrendtheCow

Looking forward to seeing more progress shots!

nkonstantino

Well since progress pictures may or may not be the thing to post:

I made an Otter! Rocking 492 tris.

gilesruscoe

Here's what i did for the first week of the course, it's been a good learning experience so far and we're only just getting into the 3rd week!

BrendtheCow

gilesruscoe wrote: »

Here's what i did for the first week of the course, it's been a good learning experience so far and we're only just getting into the 3rd week!

Mr. Squidle is adorable! More of your classmates should post too!

Starting this weekend I'm going to follow along with week one (in between 2d figure studies for Haz's course) by making a frog.

nkonstantino

gilesruscoe wrote: »

Here's what i did for the first week of the course, it's been a good learning experience so far and we're only just getting into the 3rd week!

Looks awesome!

Definitely want more of the students to post.

Sarankan

Hey guys this was my first week stuff, the whole process, WIPS,with crits and stuff is here:-
http://sarankanart.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/act-1-bootcamp.html

Dylan Brady

you guys both did some pretty great work.

Alemja

Another student from bootcamp here, I did a leafy sea dragon

nkonstantino

My Otter is "done", but I think I messed something up setting up the presentation of it in photoshop. I was definitely confused between the maya tutorial telling me to bake it and the use of the layers and alpha channels and masks and whatnot.

If someone wouldn't mind posting/messaging me a good guide for those sorts of things then I invite them to please do so! I've looked on the Wiki and searched a bit on the forums but considering the amount of times people mention "renders" there is a lot to dig through. :P

FractaL

Is there a due date? I want to do this but I have no time because my exams are nearing!

So far, these all look really cool. I don't know what I want to do yet.

Sparr

Can anyone jump into this? I've always like low-poly stuff, but could never figure out UV wrapping etc. This finally spurred me on to finish something, and although I had little idea what I was doing (and apparently my model only has 100 triangles) I had a lot of fun. I made a coelecanth.

Dylan Brady

Make Sure your using all the UV space you have there Sparr.
the shadow on the bottom seems a bit strong, but I love the head. well done

Torch

I think what Sparr was trying to do was make sure every part had the same texture res. You can scale up the UV islands a little just to get some more details on the fins, etc. In general really cool result!

nkonstantino

Sparr's post reminded me that I had taken the time to make a little Betta Fish model in the likeness of my buddy Pockets [a betta fish], who kept me company all year until his death in the early spring. So I fixed the model up and textured him.

The original critter I made for this assignment was this otter, who after messing with some render settings I think I got it to come out right.

gilesruscoe

hey nconstantino, you should render him using 100% self illumination and just print screen the viewport. All of your lighting should be painted into the texture instead of using lighting.

nkonstantino

I'm using Maya so there doesn't appear to be a "self illumination" option by that name. Google searching for the solution only seems to show how to create neon lights/tron-looking objects, which I don't think is what I'm looking for.

So with some experimenting I've set its ambient color to white, which seems to have a similar effect (Get rid of any shadows not painted/AO'd on).

I can't just screenshot the viewport because for some reason the viewport renderer makes the fins or body fully transparent unless I render them.

From that point I followed the AO tutorial that was posted in the thread, setting the AO map in photoshop the way Jacque said to do it and this was my result:

gilesruscoe

In maya you can go into your shader options and turn up incandescence to 100 The transparency error your getting is a problem i get in mayaviewport whenever i'm using alpha, its annoying and i don't think there's a fix

Tigerfeet

I think you want the Ambient Color to be pulled all the way to the right and the Diffuse to 0, as far as Maya goes. That's what I've been doing anyway.

BrendtheCow

You don't have to bother messing with it shader-side. In the Maya viewport go to Lighting > Use No Lights.

Torch

BrendtheCow wrote: »

You don't have to bother messing with it shader-side. In the Maya viewport go to Lighting > Use No Lights.

I think they're talking about rendering it out, rather than a screengrab of the viewport.

nkonstantino

gilesruscoe wrote: »

In maya you can go into your shader options and turn up incandescence to 100 The transparency error your getting is a problem i get in mayaviewport whenever i'm using alpha, its annoying and i don't think there's a fix

Thanks, but this just seems to make my model/texture pure white and glowing.
So I loaded the texture into the incandescence field instead, and that seemed to work except that it doesn't allow the alphas to work properly.

Tigerfeet wrote: »

I think you want the Ambient Color to be pulled all the way to the right and the Diffuse to 0, as far as Maya goes. That's what I've been doing anyway.

Yeah, this is what I ended up doing.

Yay for learning the hard way! :P

Tigerfeet

Finished my monkey

ZacD

WIP turtle, 270 tri, 256^2 texture

http://p3d.in/qnXB6/shadeless

Zamite

gilesruscoe wrote: »

Here's what i did for the first week of the course, it's been a good learning experience so far and we're only just getting into the 3rd week!

Ahah, looks great. Just one thing to point out:
Squid, like cuttlefish, have eight arms arranged in pairs and two, usually longer, tentacles.

And that's why they are Decapodiformes ("10 feet/arms")

gilesruscoe

Didn't have enough polys to add all those tentacles haha :P just had to stick with 4:(

Zamite

Ahhh, that explains it. Its just a bit "alien" this way :P

But remember only 2 are large and the other 8 are shorter (could save some polys there - probably not enough though).

Cheers

GenericGoodGuy

JacqueChoi wrote: »

Week 1: Make A Critter
Make a small creature that should be based on something real and existing, not something made up, or fantastical. It should look as if it belongs in the same world as the reference images we have provided below.

Can you tell me what this "Summer Bootcamp" is? can anyone join it? do you just give us challenges to help us improve or what?