Week Three of MCR

This week I was left a little unsatisfied. I felt my models were pretty subpar and not up to my full potential. I struggled a lot with ZBrush and had to restart a few things all over. Due to running short on time I did not get a chance to post completed object to Concept Share to get feedback so I'm not sure what needed fixing or improvement prior to turn in. I haven't gotten my grade back yet but hopefully it is not a big disappointment. 

We dipped our toes into ZBrush this week and I had a good amount of trouble. The interface is way different than Maya and will take a lot of getting used to. I am starting to catch onto the basics but there is a ton more to learn. I have been watching tutorials and the bonus videos provided by the instructor. I will also research any troubles I am having to try to find a solution or better way to get things done. As of right now I am not a huge fan of the program just because of the difficulty but I know it is a vital program to the industry and it has some awesome capabilities. I will learn more and improve my skills over time so I can better utilize the program. 

The main thing I learned this week was spotlight projection. This is extremely helpful in adding details to the props in a much easier way than trying to model or sculpt all of them into the object. This will be helpful in the Portfolio class to create models with nice tertiary details without having an absurd amount of geometry or time spent modeling all the tiny details. After we were finished in ZBrush we would export both our high res and low res objects back to Maya. Here we made normal maps, which was super confusing at first but now I can do it through memory. You have to know how to bake normal maps in order for your textures to show up on the low res model. This will also obviously be needed for the portfolio class. 

All three objects laid out, I did not really think through doing a larger
shield with two smaller objects. This made creating a composition showing
of the small details on the book and comb very difficult.

This week was full of information and very helpful videos. I have them all saved so that I can refer back to them whenever I need to. I am hoping to have better results this week and have gotten a head start, already completing one object and waiting for feedback on that to improve it. I am hopefully going to have time to model a guitar which will push my abilities like the pocket watch did. I will be working hard to create better models than last week so I can be proud of my work!

Shield after I bent it slightly.

Showing a book I did with a Normal Map on the far right.