It's the final blogpost! (do do do do!)

"The final countdown~!"

These are my final combined renders:






It's been an intresting semester... Well, til next year! :)

- Ceren

The YuseiGo

Yes, the "YuseiGo" duel-wheel is finished! Some lovely final renders:





It's finally coming to an end! I'll be uploading my combined images soon. Still trying to find the best way to place them all. The end product is suppose to be an image that conveys a story...

YUUUUSEIIIII!

In all his textured glory!!

It's true what they say though; the better your UV map, the easier and more precise your textures will be.

Overdue Concept Sketches

Just as the title says, here are some really late concept sketches I'd done awhile ago for my environment and character:Going to try work on my character today, and hopefully get back to that bike afterwards!

Character Modelling - Modelled!

Someone put up on facebook there's only 18 days left until Maya submissions (why is it a week earlier than everything else?! In the pun-loving words of me and Eilis: KEN you FEEEEl the tension!?") so that sort of put things back in perspective. Going to try and focus on UV Mapping Yusei here then jump back to the abandoned motorbike model I started back in early February. Eep.

Some finished shots of him:






Here's some personal favourites from the Eilis/Ceren Ken Fee-pun bank:

"Haha I'm sorry your a total Feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelure."
"I KEN the FEE who don't know how to Maya!"
"I get the FEEling you might be confused. You KEN?"
"Pass 3D production or FEEL the wrath of the HadouKEEEEN"
"Your so FEEble minded Ceren. When you see my 3D stuff your going to be awestruKEN."

Hi Ken! :)

Environment - Done!

Yesss, I've finally finished it. I won't lie, had abit of fun making, finding and editing textures. As for the UV's, I really gave it my best shot, but I think they're really fragile or flimsy, too scared to even merge all the seperate objects incase something goes wrong. Floating windows and doors it is then. Had problems with the lighting on it so the plan was to put in an ambient light to act as a sun, buuut, it wasn't enough so there are two imaginary suns now.




I think I've stayed pretty true to my original concept. I know I'm doing it in the wrong order, but I'll post up some more finalish environment concept pieces as soon as I can, I've just not had time to scan them in.

Character modelling, gogogo!

I Heart Alpha Mapping

Haven't updated in a long time just cause I'm struggling through Mayayayaing. I've left my character for alittle to try and finish off my environment. It's not super fancy, but I'm hoping the textures will bring it to life and add abit of story in there.

I hit the poly count far too easily with this one just because I made a really (unnesseary but cool) fence pattern, which boosted my measley 1000 poly environment to a whooping 6000. I spent so much time and effort into making it I didn't want to delete it all, so I only deleted one face, and alpha mapped the pattern on a face, bringing me down under 5000 again.


I've grown really attached to idea of Alpha mapping and even used it on my windows. It's also gotten me used to multitasking between Photoshop and Maya. The window bars:


Hope to get all the UV's and Textures in for the environment today (I UV and Texture as I go along, just makes it easier to focus on one thing at a time) so it'll be one less thing on my mind.

Environment Doodle SMACKDOWN

Finally! The Rock has come...home.

No seriously, finally! I have uploaded some very quick doodles of how I want my environment. Like I said before was looking at islandy cities, but focused more on buildings and walls. Like the idea of areas being blocked off or views obscured with steel gates and fences, so I think I'll have the body of water behind the tall fences:

I need to look up some barbed-wire tutorials fast!!

Going back to the Slums...

I already covered how in Yusei's (the characters) world there is a city divided by a body of water and it's the Slums and the rich area, but that's ALOT to model (not to mention the Poly limit!!) so I started doing some sketch ups of alleys and closed spaces, with a prison sort of feel. Here is some of my investigation:

Scanner in WhiteSpace occupied at the moment, will post up my environment sketches soon!

Human Anatomy Renderings

I know this blog is all over the place and not very consistant, but really that's just how I work >.> Alittle of this, alittle of that, it's just kind of messy.

So briefly leaving the environment behind, I started working on my main character "Yusei". Started off with a very blocky block and started to slowly shape him, now he's looking less blocky.

Just a screenshot to see how I'm (trying) to match muscles and vertex's:

I can't find the original maya render I was working on but these images also helped me establish basic anatomy points:

Cities & Slums

Just some good examples of contrast in the environment. I like to make plenty of sketches before I start rendering in Maya...
I think the last image will be the most useful to me, since there's a body of water that seperates the "Neo Domino City" and "Satellite Slum" in my environment.

The slums in these images are from poorer countries though (with the exception of the 2nd image. That's Detroit, USA!) My slums will feature more run-down tall buildings than small slum houses.

Will try and get some sketches of environment work uploaded as soon as possible :)

Neo Domino City and Satelite Slums

In todays lecture, we were told about trying to convey a story within our environment and basically want to get the viewer intrested and curious, but at the same time familiar with where they are. Another intresting point was trying to avoid cliches and try to minimize the work load using good camara angles.

First, alittle back story for the "Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's" character "Yusei"; A boy who lives in a city torn between the rich and prosperous Neo Domino City and the filthy forgotten slums that are cut off from the main city, called Satellite. Yusei grew up in the Satellite with a keen eye for mechanics, and builds himself a "Duel Runner" (this worlds motorbikes; they play card games on them :) ) with dreams of one day crossing over to Neo Domino City.

Here are some official images of the two contrasting environments:-

Neo Domino City;

Satellite;

Will post another blog shortly looking at other contrasting slums and cities to get a better picture of what my environment should look like... :S

I need this...!

omg omg omg! Ahem, in all seriousness, I think I need this toy...

...you know, to study and stuff so I can model it better.

(This is true, it'll probably help :) )

YuseiGo!

Some clearer images of the "D-Wheel/Duel Runner" (motorbikes in the series) I'm going to render:

Fun Fact: This D-Wheel, which belongs to the protagonist Yusei Fudo, is called the "YuseiGo" in the Japanese version. The more you know~

Here are some photos of a REAL D-Wheel/Duel Runner (It was created to promote the series):

Will watch a couple of old episodes and cap afew screenshots for better referance. Also on the hunt for elusive production sketches for this Duel Runner.

4 hours of 3D production... Home time!

These titles are going to slowly turn into quotes...

So I've been doing alittle bit of snooping into what I want to do... Pretty set on doing a motorbike :P Something as epic as this:

But then the lecturer Ken told us it has to ACTUALLY function. So the awesome triangular bike was out of the question. Good news is I'm allowed to work from a fictional bike... I give you my final idea...:Yes, seriously! I'll be modelling this bad boy of a motorbike from the latest Yu-Gi-Oh franchise, "Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds" My flatmate (who hates this series) had a good laugh.

But in all seriousness I struggle alot with Maya and hearing we had to model a vechile had me worried, so it was great news that I'd be modelling something I like. Quite eager to start actually :)

But before any of the modelling starts, I have to pick apart this fictional bike and build it back up. For now, here's a clearer picture of the bike (in 2D):
Update tomorrow with a couple a more clear shots ;)

- Ceren