MOBU v.3

Last week, I finished up my color map, output a normal map and rendered a few frames in maya to make sure they looked half way decent. Lighting was setup, though, not finalized. I worked at home mostly the entire Thursday finishing the map. I am getting more efficient with layout of maps. Still need to improve technique though. My normal was output of Zbrush 3.1 at school. I was going to use displacement but the workflow changed the very next day since the classrooms installed 3.5 r3 and I believe the process has changed. I will need to get on that soon.

Motion Builder 02

I've got my project going for class. I decided to sync a quote that I extracted from an episode of It's always sunny in Philadelphia.
My character is reciting lines by Charlie Kelly. It is really just something I whipped up rather quickly in zbrush from a generic base mesh from Maya. It had been a minute since I had used zbrush so I spend a day or so troubleshooting problems between file exports. I came to the conclusion that my versions I was saving out at home were scaled to some insane degree and I had to sculpt everything over with zbrush 3.0 in class. Not that big of a deal. Anyway, so at this point in the game, I have my final mesh and blend shapes back into maya. I am currently working on my color map for my character. I hope to have that finished by this weekend but there are a few other things going on. This coming week, I plan to get started with the lip sync and onto the full animation thereafter. I have a bunch assets already made from previous projects so I shouldn't need to be modeling too much, maybe a few tweaks but we'll see.

balcony

I love the views from our balcony, it seems that there are new colors at sunset every night. Here are a few recents. The first, a photo of pretty big hail that fell about a week ago.

MotionBuilder

I am now in term 6 of my classes, which means I am that much closer to graduation. That in itself is a bit scary. Loan repayment is fast approaching. I am currently in Motion Builder class, which consists of animation, both motion capture and manually keyed. It is always a balancing act trying to stay creatively motivated when learning new programs. Luckily the ins and outs of Motion Builder are relatively similar to Maya since it is developed by autodesk (bought out).

The first two weeks of class have consisted of learning the technical aspect of the program. I am happy with the teaching method, it had a practical approach which is hands on. Three more weeks, then on to rendering and lighting which should be very cool as well. I will talk more about my plans for our final project in the next installment.

I am not even gonna comment on how long it's been...oh wait.
Yeah, Yeah the camera work is TURBLE but I will tidy that up later on in the graph editor. Class is over, on to dynamics tomorrow!
No snide remarks please.

Benny the barback. from James Eggleston on Vimeo.

In a bit of a lull.
Everyone besides me is sick in our apartment. Mary's car broke down completely and is in the shop, who knows at this point whether it is gonna be totaled or not. My grants are not coming through until basically December at the earliest. I may need to get my resume tailored up pretty soon. My computer blows. My windshield is now on its was to caving in cause the new crack I got keeps spreading. School work is sketchy, I missed yesterday feeling sick and now I am lost. I am one whiny bitch right now hahaha. Oh well, tomorrow is my birthday... I guess that is cool, maybe I'll win the lotto or something.

This weekend, I don't really have anything to do, other than cleaning a bit. I am finished editing my last project for my digital video class. I am not totally excited about the end result but I think our group did pretty well with the cards we were dealt. I am really appreciative of Kurt for coming out last weekend and sacrificing his pride to aid us with the project. Thanks again buddy! I think video is fun, although not the avenue I will be pursuing. In the future, I will be equipped to shoot and edit some mean home videos though... Next up for school is all that is 3D. I start off with a character creation course which will be fun I think, as I look forward to starting that this coming tuesday. School has been good for the most part, just dealing with the loans and grants is beyond stressful at this point. Cal grant is guaranteed to me, yet I have not received a dime and I am over 3 months into my term. I will be prepping myself to sell a kidney off pretty soon. Anyway, I will end with some photos taken over the past week. The cat's were fighting up on the windowsill which was funny and dangerous at the same time. I found out that they are both southpaw fighters.