The Cake is a LIE! (10 Minute Project is now called the Day Project)

The Cake is a LIE! If you have ever played Portal you should enjoy this one and if you haven't YOU BETTER DAMN SHOULD PLAY IT RIGHT NOW! Well when you have free time I guess... & of course actually wanting to purchase this very awesome game made by one of the best game developers in the whole WORLD! & If you have a person to play video games with, even more perfect cause Portal 2 has a co-op mode. A real good serious time awaits you and your co-op buddy. Probably one of the very few games that leave you smart & felt like you finished a well thought out puzzle rather then you feeling like you wasted your time shooting aliens, mutated creatures, demons, kitties or even worse other human beings! Well...

virtual human beings...

...that are being controlled by real human beings. WHAT KIND OF WORLD IS THIS?!...

Anyways, I'm tired.

Oh yeah this one is inspired by Portal if you haven't noticed.

The Legend of Zelda (10 Minute Project)

Everyone loves a little bit of "The Legend of Zelda," right? Well here is Link about to get the master sword and handle some shit.

Death from Above (10 Minute Project, Not really... Again)

Here is another 10 minute project that didn't last only 10 minutes, haha. I'm going to assume a lot of these aren't going to be only just 10 minutes.

I'm sure all of use that played Mario Kart growing up had a love/hate relationship with these guys. Probably more hate then love.

10 Minute Project ( Not Really )

I've always wanted to get started with these 10 minute projects & today I finally got to doing so with a little push by a particular podcast I happened to be listening on my daily commute. I started off with the first idea that came to my head, which was a Boba Fett from Star Wars and then it went all down hill from there & spent well over 10 minutes on this piece, haha. I think I ended going at it for over 1 1/2 hours. I guess that's what these projects are all about I suppose, to just jump start you into a fun idea to just get you into the project with out any hesitation.

I could have worked on more of the type but I guess it's off to a good start.

Thinking Particles

I definitely haven't posted for quite awhile yet again. Lots have happened, many projects have pasted, lots of things have been learned. But one thing in particular I'm kind of siked on lately is Thinking Particles in Cinema 4D. There is quite a huge deal about Thinking Particles and what it is capable of & since it works so well with Xpresso I knew I'd dig pretty deep into it one day. So finally that day came and I strapped in with a couple of tutorials to set away on this quite confusing journey to understand Thinking Particles & all it's glory. Simon Holmedal has a huge knowledge for Thinking Particles so I went straight to him first. Right off the bat I knew what I wanted to achieve, which was kind of a randomized growing circuit lines that would go off on it's own taking either 45 degree turns or 90 degree turns. There has been a lot of people that have gone to make their own type of tool similar to what I wanted to achieve but thought it too be a great start to learn from. It took a bit of iterations & different ways of going about it but eventually I got down to a stable system. Pretty much came down to the first TP system driving the second TP system when to rotate based on it's born/death event. It was quite fun getting over some of the obstacles and then quite rewarding getting to sit back & watch those particles act of their own. I'll throw up a video once I get something put together to go along with the TP system. In the mean time here is a screen capture.

Wendel & Astro Gaming

It's been, again, a bit since I've last posted anything. At least I'm back here with some awesome news, ha. Since the end of January I've been working with a small studio called Wendel based in Santa Monica. I was picked up for a 3D generalist position, mainly for animation/rigging, for a upcoming project for the company. The project was making two :45 second commercial for a video game headset company called Astro Gaming. I can't express enough how excited I was getting into this project. The two commercials consisted of two of there flagship headsets, the A40s & A30, building piece by piece starting from the inside parts of the headsets. Getting into the whole project was quite something & a bit overwhelming sometimes from all the technical difficulties but definitely that is pretty much any 3D projects for you. I worked with two other artist on both commercials, Ryan Smith & Philip Bowser, quite amazing artist I must say. It was definitely rewarding getting to seeing the final product. I can say I learned a lot & working with the Wendel team was quite awesome. Also a shout out to Lodewijk Vos for the awesome soundtrack!

Make sure to check out Astro Gaming's websites: http://www.astrogaming.com
As well as Wendel's website: http://www.wearewendel.com

Xpresso.

Lately I've been messing around with a lot of Xpresso in Cinema 4D. I got into a little project after awhile to challenge myself to learn more & different ways to use Xpresso in a "rigging" sense.

I'm sure everyone using a three-D program dreams of building a whole city from scratch (Well Nick Campbell & Chris Schmidt made that pretty easy to achieve). So I thought I'd try to full-fill that little dream a little bit with a tool that would help me do it faster with controls that easily manipulate the scale of the model with changing attributes pretty quickly. & most importantly make it run smoothly with tons & tons of buildings populating the scene.

The modeling itself isn't too complex but I wanted to concentrate more functionality then looks. Besides I wanted to more of a "toon" look for it.

Pretty much I've just a levels control to change the height, as well as depth & length. Pretty standard to making different shape & sized buildings. Then went on to having a control for windows & roofs. Building definitely always don't have the same windows & roofs so I made five variations that weren't too thought out but did the job. I can always swamp them out later. The fun thing about the windows & roofs is they generate accordingly with the height, length, & width of the building. That was a fun one setting up in Xpresso. I went on with a couple more details & then onto color schemes for the building & windows, cause you know, not all building are the same color. Pretty much there are five slots of colors to choose from & the slots of colors can be changed to different color as desired.

The last thing I added was the "Optimize" button. Naturally the poly count would get a bit high when making a block of buildings all looking different so I decided when you're done making the building you'd be able to swap it out with a "stand-in" that used less polys but the cool thing about it is that when you render it will maintain the original look of the building you picked. Your view-port is running fast & your render is looking good.

I plan to add some more to the rigg that will make it much better but thought for now I thought I'd share it. It was quite a fun challenge I must say.