More Blender stuff

I've been working in blender some more, creating assets that I'll use in The Battle for Axis Mundi. I don't feel like giving away everything as I make it, so I'm not going to post pictures of any of these models. Just thought I'd let you know that I was making something. As far as the Warrior of Light goes, I'll work on him some more when these new models start to become boring to work on. But for now, since I've got something new to work on, the newer models are more exciting.

Texturing

I made a little bit of progress texturing the warrior of light today. I'd say I'm almost halfway finished with his shirt; I got his back and the sides of his chest done. Now I need to do his sleeves.

I don't want to over do it with the screenshots, so just picture it in your head.

2 year anniversary!

The title says it all! My blog is now 2 years old. I think it has been all that I've wanted it to be. I know I don't exactly have a huge audience, but I still feel like I have done a consistent job with updates on my projects. Hopefully it will be more of the same going forward. Thank you everyone for your support!

SCAD Film Challenge results

So they finally managed to post the results of the SCAD contest. Unfortunately, I was not one of the top 3, nor was I one of the top 20. And neither were either of the videos in my previous post. It seems that the judges must have very different cinematic preferences than me. Either that, or they did not pick the finalists based on actual merit, and instead chose the films which best suited the genre that they wish to promote at their film festival. The truth is probably somewhere in between.

To give an example, they chose this atrocity to be a part of their top 20. Now, I honestly can't see why they would choose this film over Caleb Diaddigo's "A Bigger Picture."

Another example is this film, which seems of markedly lower quality than the brilliant stop-motion animation "Being," by Isabela Dos Santos.

A final point of confusion for me is that not only are many of the top 20 films of lower quality than their non-placing counterparts, but a good portion of them also use copyrighted music! I don't understand. The way I see it, they are punishing originality, and rewarding cheap, lazy behavior. Well, some of the judges were from apple.

\rant

SCAD Film Challenge Update

It turns out that it didn't matter that I was gone for a few days, as they have decided to push the announcements back until Monday. So, tomorrow I'll post again with the results. For your entertainment, here are the other 2 videos (besides mine, of course!) that I would choose if I were one of the judges:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg10Fi17GOs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flMKfOTr55g

Not surprisingly, both of my picks are animation. For some reason, live action is almost always inferior to animation, unless the live action is done by professionals. At least that's my view.

So, yeah. Waiting till tomorrow.....

Good news, and bad news.

The good news is: tomorrow I find out if I placed in the SCAD Film challenge. The bad news is: I won't be here to tell you the second that I find out the results. I'm going to visit a college over the weekend, so I won't definitely be able to announce it until Sunday or something like that. There's always the possibility that I will use a foreign computer, though.

Texturing

I've started to texture the model. It's definitely a learning experience for me, because I really haven't done texturing as serious as this before. Not that this is anything close to professional. It's just more complex than what I've done previously.

Here's a screenshot from blender:

There are still a few kinks to work out with the bit that you see here. This process is going to involve a lot of tweaking.

Oh, and yesterday when I said that it was the last day that they were accepting entries for the SCAD contest, I meant today.

Another update bites the dust.

Latest Model Update

Good news! The importation of the Warrior of Light model into RCT3 has been an absolutely smashing success!! I would say that the model is 90% accurate to the original. In most shots, the peep looks identical to it's CSO doppelganger:

It is only in shots where the two are juxtaposed that you can see any real differences:

This means that I should be able to switch the "stunt double" for the actual peep, and you really shouldn't notice a difference.

Another great thing is that UV mapping works properly. In order to test UV mapping compatibility in RCT3 without going to the trouble of actually texturing the model how it is supposed to be, I rendered an Ambient Occlusion pass to a UV image of the model's unwrapped mesh. I then used that texture as the model texture. This meant that if the model looked like AO was applied to it in RCT3, then UV mapping works. If the texture looked like a garbled mess, that would mean that UV mapping wouldn't work. 

As it turns out the texture mapped properly. As you can see, there are indirect shadows on the model below, which was rendered in RCT3. Notice the area on his forehead behind the right eyebrow. See how it is dark right behind his eyebrow, and gets lighter farther away? This is the effect that Ambient Occlusion has when rendering. Since the UV texture was mapped properly, these "indirect shadows" show up in the correct places.

As for the SCAD Film Festival: today is the last day that people can submit their films. Then on the 15th the winners will be notified and the online voting for the "viewers choice" will begin.  So......... yeah. Still waiting.

That's all for this update.