Another Disappearing Act

So the last week managed to disappear before I knew I was in it practically.  Long days at work coupled with a few stresses at home left very little time for anything.  And the worse part is I am not done yet.  I need to study for a test in a little under a week, which I do not think I need a ton of review, but do want to anyway.  Also, there is a hurricane pointed in my direction which may strike havoc into any progress I may have made not going to work this week.  Hopefully it blows through, but I do not think this one will be that nice.

I did make a little progress, but I do not feel it is enough to show off, so I am holding it until I get more done.  Until next time,
~gunnah

A lot of Overtime; Work in Progress: Abandoned Building Scene (Part I)

I missed my post Friday because of a large amount of overtime I have been working.  On top of my normal hour commute each way and eight hours, I picked up overtime each day last week.  This means tat I was too tired to do much of anything last weekend.  In fact, I did not touch my computer for three days last week.  So I did not rush to put up  a post when I awoke Saturday because I really had nothing over the previous week.

Over the weekend, I started work on an interesting scene I stumbled across in my internet browsing.  It still has a lot to be desired, but I think it is coming along nicely.  It needs a decent amount of modeling to be done on the building to the left side.  I would like to made some objects to scatter around the floor, as well as some detail items which are not yet in - mostly barrels and palettes, I think, though I want an ivy growing over the back wall and barbed wire going around the top of the fence.  The lighting still has a bit to be desired, though I can work on that a bit more once everything is in place.  My only other complaint is I do not really like the camera angle, though I have been finding a hard time getting a better one.

Not sure how the next week is going to work, I may be getting more overtime and I have a lot going on personally.  Hopefully I can find time to do this though,
~gunnah

Work in Progress: Motor Pool Garage (Part II)

So here is the partial texturing.  This was mostly unwrapping the main structure and applying a concrete texture to it and then the front window which was a little more complex.  The frame was fairly simple, just a basic unwrap and then align the UV coordinates so they look nice on the texture.  Then there was the window, which I tried to make a little more interesting.  I am not sure if you can zoom in on that image and even if you could the render did not make do a very good job - I have it set to quick - on the glass portion.  Given enough time though, a texture that looks like water stains was applied to the pane.  The lights were just added to try to better illuminate the window to see how I like the water stains - one is inside the shop and the other is highlighting the outer shop area.  There is still quite a bit to be desired, but for now I do not think it looks bad.  Until next time,
~gunnah

Just another cog in the machine

I know I already did a cog once before, actually it was just under a year ago, but this one is much different.  The other cog used a generated material and was not very complex at all.  It was mostly an exercise in using metallic generated materials.  This cog, I think, has a bit more character.  Besides the fact the shape is much more complex then last time, which I think was a pair of loop cuts and an extrusion, this one has a smooth applied so the teeth look a little more worn.  Additionally, I UV-unwrapped it, applied an actual texture and used the texture with a color ramp and Black-and-White converter to generate a bump map.

Not much else done, but hopefully that changes in the near future.  Until next time,
~gunnah

Work in Progress: Motor Pool Garage (Part I)

I am not sure why, but after my last post, I felt inspired to make the garage for the motor pool.  I may use this as a generic garage and place it in spots around the map, since it would make more sense then some of the other ideas I had about reloading locations.  I apologize for the quality of the render, for some reason it would not render in the image but the object worked fine in the work area, so this is a screenshot of the work area set as close to render settings as possible.  The model itself is near done as after getting the shape I wanted, I cut the number of face on the main structure from over six-hundred to just under two-hundred, reducing the number of triangles by about one-thousand.  Most of the other parts will not reduce as nicely since their model is about as low poly count as possible already.  For the modeling part, I still need to add two more doors, a front door which will be mostly glass and a door between the shop and garage area which will be wooden.  I would also like to add a satellite dish to the roof and a small sign across the top of the shop and between the garage doors to show which team has control over the garage.  Additional items may include things inside the shop and garage - desk, computer, chairs in the shop and tools and a pair of car lifts in the garage - though these are detail and can be added much later, since they are really unnecessary polygons for the overall model itself..  Once those are in, work on the UV layouts can begin, though these show not take that much time as most objects are just cubes and the structure has been dramatically cut down in polygon count.  Then I can begin texturing the model, which will probably be a clean concrete face for the outside structure, though I may do one a little more broken down for an image render, and a little dirtier on the inside.  Window and door frames will be wood, not sure if I want to make it look painted or not though, and the glass will be dirty for both the image render and game model.  Once all the the texturing is done, all I need to do is make a handful of collision boxes and the object will be ready to export.

And I went and got ahead of myself again.  Hopefully, I will have the modeling end finished off by the end of the week and figure out why it did not render nicely.  So, until then,
~gunnah

Rusted I-Beam

I know it does not sound like much but the only thing I finished this week was the I-beam to the left.  I watched several interesting tutorials, particularly the last one on creating a post-apocalyptic effect, may prove fairly useful.As far as where I am headed from here, again, I would like to get some of those scenes finished before I begin the majority of work on this project.  I know that is a bit of a delay, but I feel they would be something useful for me to complete.  Once those are finished, or while I am working on them depending on how time flows, I would like to get several of the main buildings in my military base finished.  I will probably start with the hangar and garage.and then figure out where to focus on the rest of the map.

Now for me to pick apart the i-beam.  The model itself I feel came out very nice and at 78 faces should not break anyone's computer.  While I could construct an even lower polygon count i-beam - this one has some smoothing where the vertical piece meets each of the horizontal pieces - that is not a big worry at the moment, though might become one if my scenes get too detailed.  What real bugs me is the texturing.  Overall it is not awful, though would probably work nicer if the bump map was working as rust does not come off as flat as the model looks.  But what is broken is the UV layout, which I realize means that even the nicest texture will not come out that great.  For some reason the program insists on making each of the non-end-cap faces the same size on the UV map which causes the texture to stretch in tight spots, though it lays about how I want it to in the larger areas.  Once I get the UV map to lay right, I can fit the texture again and see if that also needs work.  Until next time,
~gunnah

Monday Again

Another incredibly short weekend.  Saturday was mostly spent on getting my computer working right.  I have a hard drive that something is wrong with, I am thinking it is the casing, and it is sometimes connected and sometimes disconnected.  When I access it when connected, when it disconnects Windows freaks and I cannot even shut down.  So I spent Saturday figuring out to restore full control to the computer for some reason I need to restart into Safe Mode and then restart again.

Now, ever since I put a router in my room, I have been the Network Administrator for my house.  I was doing things here and there before that, but since it is easier to connect to the router in my room, almost everything uses it.  Since everything uses it, it is now my responsibility when anything goes wrong to fix it - not sure this is completely fair, but life is not, so no use complaining.  For some reason the printer hooked up to the wireless router was not behaving and that is where most of my Sunday went.  Worst part was, by the end of the day it was still only working with a USB cable.

Besides all those distractions, I have been working on a genealogy project making charts.  Well, when my computer freaked Saturday, it corrupted four of my files and I do not back anything up - not really by choice, just no space - so Sunday was spent remaking most of those.  Hopefully this project will die down soon enough and I can go back to playing with 3d modeling and finding an engine to use for this game.  Well, until next time,
~gunnah