Flu Season and Dirty Dancing

Blech.. feeling kinda nasty. I was hoping to get a good solid week of modeling, but feeling under the weather today, guess I'll take a break. I went over to gametrailers.com to see whats new and decided to view the trailer for the Dirty Dancing game. It does not rock, check it out lol

Abandoned Gas Station: Start

Doing a new model this week, of an environment. I've decided on an abandoned gas station. Here's screens of my reference and what I've started :)

My reference


What I've done so far today

Normal Maps.. I Will Have My Revenge

Okay, spent more time trying to get Normal Maps generated. I even downgraded to ZBrush 2 to use the Zmapper plugin. Still not coming out right. Anyways, I've spent way too much time obsessing over this, I need to move on and I'm sure I'll have my revenge!

Celebrated Too Early

Bah! Fix one problem and another one pops up with my normal map generation. Things are flipped properly, but now I'm getting lines where my polygon edges are in my low res model.. very lame and frustrating.

My Normal Map Problems, Solved!

Finally I figured out why my normal mapping keeps getting flipped. It's because ZBrush, by default, flips my model whenever I import and export, how lame! All I had to do was turn those off... I have to say, out of all the techniques, this particular process was the most difficult to find. I would get some bits here and there but never the complete process. So, I think I may make a tutorial for any other noobies like myself..

End of Week Retrospective

This week, I've learned lots. My main goal was to learn the basics of lighting in Maya which I accomplished.. although I almost fell asleep watching the tutorials because of the narrators voice :) I also learned layered projection textures. I still don't have an answer to my normal map problem, but I guess that can wait. The thing I haven't learned yet is Specular Maps, which I'll probably get into when I texture my next project... a real environment! So, I'm gonna relax for the weekend and maybe do some brainstorming on what type of environment I want to do... it'll probably be something simple but with enough detail to keep me busy next week. I'm excited! I feel I have enough knowledge to make something of good quality

The Game Plan, Update #3

Well I posted my Normal Map problems on CGtalk.com so hope I can get an answer.. while I wait, I learned layered projection textures. Luckily it was covered in the Environment tutorial DVD I had.. still kinda confusing with all the connection stuff in the hypergraph window, but the result is very cool. I applied a graffiti projection texture to the underground parking lot. I also smoothed out some edges on my pipe and the pillar, duh! I totally forgot about that option in maya..... check it out!

The Game Plan, Update #2

Just updating my game plan this week..

1) Found lighting and basic rendering tutorials, will go through it this week
2) Got answers to my UV question as well as another one I had regarding snapping, thank you CGtalk.com forums
3) Still gotta try getting my Normal Map to export/import/work properly
4) Hopefully have some extra time to look over layered textures

Here's a little render of a parking lot... my brother showed me some texturing techniques. He did the floor, I did the uglier quality stuff heh.. I also messed around with lights while I was going through some lighting tutorials

The Game Plan, Update

Alright, heres a better game plan for this week. I need to learn/do these things:

1) Lighting in Maya
2) Need to get an answer on a UV thingy in Maya
3) Figure out the proper way to do my normal map, proper Maya to ZBrush to Maya pipeline

And then after those, I think I'm going to model a basic environment and from there, I'll learn to make a specular map for it. See.. told you my brain can sort these things out :)

The Game Plan Thus Far

I know my learning habits is very strange! I like to pack all different types of information at once and my brain just sorts it out after a while :) There are a few areas that bug me still, which I'm going to tackle in the next weeks, these include:

- Specular Maps (what is this? and then learn how to make it)
- Diffuse Maps (same deal, learn what these are, and make one)
- Displacement Map (kinda know what this is, need to learn to make one)
- Still want to get my Normal Maps working properly
- Create a texture with an Alpha transparency
- Finish off my ZBrush Tutorial DVD
- Model something that uses all these cool maps... or at least is considered "current-gen" (xbox360, ps3)
- Layered textures in Maya

Velociraptor: Messed Up Normal Map

After going through DVD 1 of my ZBrush Tutorial I realise I'm not even going to remember a quarter of all this info, so I decided to try making a normal map from my Velociraptor model. I import it into ZBrush, pushed and pulled a few things and then baked it in Maya. For some strange reason, the normal map comes out inverted.. fine, I'll invert it in photoshop.. but then the normals are inside out, bah! I need to get more info on this before proceeding further.. . I think I might as well just starting making environments and learn a few organic modeling later on.

Oh velociraptor, why do you get more and more ugly?

Learning ZBrush

Okay, I decided to get acquainted with ZBrush. I bought some eye drops and read up on relieving eye strain, so hopefully I won't get these darn headaches.

What To Do, Hmm...

I'm not sure what I should do, hmmm... I'm learning all this graphics stuff by myself and I can't decide what to learn next. I want to paint and texture my Velociraptor, but I also want to add a normal map which means I will need to learn ZBrush, luckily I have a great introductory DVD to help me with that. On the other hand... I eventually want to specialize in environment modeling, so maybe I should just start modeling environments. I may need some advice from my brother on this, I'm kinda leaning toward learning ZBrush though.

Environment DVD Done

Finished the introductory environment DVD. It was really helpful and I learned some modelling tricks too. Things are starting to gel for me as far as Maya is concerned. Still lots to learn though... I also need to continue my velociraptor. Will probably do that this week.

Learning Stuff

Been going through the environment modeling DVD, learning lots of nice things in there. I also learned some basic normal map stuff using the Transfer Map tool in Maya. Maybe later will put my velociraptor into Zbrush and make a cool normal map. I know, I still haven't completed my velociraptor yet but I am having fun learning lots of different things... all the peices of the puzzle will fit, I'm sure of that :)

Velociraptor: Why You So Ugly?

I finally got my leg and arm duplicated with the UV's. Now I'm stuck on the teeth, trying to think how to stack their UV's so I only paint them once. Anyways, I pasted a rock texture to see how my velociraptor is turning out.. damn its ugly! I think maybe I need more polygons next time, or maybe it has to do with my texture, but we'll see! Onto the texture painting!

Not gonna be winning any beauty contests soon! lol

Velociraptor: In The Meantime...

Okay I can't figure out how to duplicate both UV's and geometry for my arms and legs... gonna ask my brother when he's free. In the meantime, gonna view my intro Zbrush and environment modeling DVD's.

These specific DVD's are:

Introduction to ZBrush 3 by Meats MEIER, from Gnomon, located here

and

Urban Environment Creation in Maya, from Digital Tutors, located here

Velociraptor: UV Mapping My Anger, the Trilogy

Sooooo.... the pelting plugin helped a lot. And now I'm stuck on how to duplicate my UV's properly for the other side of my legs and arms. I tryed going back and just mapping it out with the plugin again but it likes to erase all my UV's when I do that. Needless to say, I have a headache again and need to take a break.