Clear to proceed

I am tentatively proceeding with the animating and filming of the rest of the scenes for The Battle for Axis Muni. The model that I was texturing is presentable, so instead of spending hours agonizing over how I can't get it's texturing to look better, I am starting to animate it. After all, I can always fix the textures later if I feel like they absolutely need to be improved.

Your News, Sir

A while ago I mentioned how a machinimator named CD5 was coming out with an awesome looking machinima called Greenhouse: Retaliate. Well, it's out now and it turned out just as awesome as it looked. Watch it here.

In Axis Mundi News, I have finished unwrapping my model onto the UV plane, and now it's time to start texturing. To help me kick-start this process, I've baked an ambient occlusion pass onto the mesh to give some parts it more depth. Hopefully I can add enough to that so that it doesn't just look like a boring typical-3d-model thing.

Texturing Completed

Woo! The rest of the texturing went by at warp-speed! And I couldn't be happier with how it turned out!

Prepare for awesomeness in 3... 2... 1 AWESOMENESS:

It look so close to the original! I am extremely pleased. Now I just need to finish my other ...secret... assets, and I can start animating some action scenes!!! Yaaaaaaaayyyy!

Completion of the Upper Body

So it turns out that I was a lot closer to finishing the arms than I thought. Now The Warrior of Light's upper body is completely textured. Check it out!

Here's a look at the UV map:

Like I mentioned in my previous post, it's kinda like patchwork. And allow me to take a moment to emphasize the WORK in patchwork. This was definitely a challenge for me, because I had never done any UV mapping before this. There was a lot of editing in Photoshop, then looking back in Blender then editing in Photoshop then.... You kinda get the picture. Anyway, hopefully I'll get better at it and the whole process will speed up a bit.

Patches and Patchworking

Today's title is actually a little inspired compared to the usual, because I spent my afternoon texturing today. UV maps are kinda like patchwork, and I just so happen to be working on a UV map. Unfortunately, progress divided by time is definitely less than one today. I still haven't finished the arms. Once I get some noticeable progress, I might post an updated screenshot. Until then, rest assured that you're not missing much. Just look at the last picture I posted.

The "Patches" portion of today's post deals with Call of Duty: Black Ops. It's been a week since I bought COD 7 for the PC, and I still have not played through more than 10 minutes of the campaign. It's just no fun with the slide-show framerate. I hope that Treyarch will release a patch that ACTUALLY WORKS.

Soon.

Please.

Thank you.

Slow Texturing

I did some more texturing today. Very slow going. Perhaps it is because it is really hard work. Maybe it's because I'm not motivated. Who knows? What matters is that I did what I could today. Tomorrow I might try and work some more on it, but I'm also planning on picking up a copy of COD: Black Ops, so we'll see how things turn out.

Blender/Axis Mundi Update

So I got bored enough with making my new model that I started texturing the Warrior of Light again. It is slow going right now, because I am doing the most difficult part of his upper body: his arms. Since his arms are the least flat part of him, it is harder to take a picture and just use it without any editing. It was easier with the chest, for example, because the chest is relatively flat. Another thing that makes the arms more difficult is that they are the least cleanly unwrapped part of my UV texture. This also stems from them being less flat.

As for the fore mentioned "new model," I am still not ready to fully disclose my progress so far. I'm debating on whether or not I should keep it a secret until the final release.

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.

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.