Creepy Hospital: This is Madness.. THIS IS MENTAL RAY!

Apparently the price I have to pay for quality is my sanity! I feel my hair turning gray with every mind numbingly slow... slow... slow render. I even spent 1hour 15mins on a render and I didn't even keep it because of some f#%^#!'n crap happening with my lights at the very last block of rendering. AGGGGGHHHH!!!

Waiting For Renders

I've decided to stick with Mental ray for my renders as it is very cool indeed. Unfortunely it takes a long time to render out scenes, so I made this picture collage.

Creepy Hospital: Mental Ray Being Mental

Messed around with Mental Ray and lighting.. I like the realistic options it has but rendering really sucks. It applys a stupid filter which I can't turn off and makes my output all splotchy, ugh. Gonna try my lighting with Maya software render instead. Here's some screens of Mental Ray renders, which I had to sharpen a bit in Photoshop cause the originals are kinda blurry.

Creepy Hospital: Lights 'N Stuff

Did alot of stuff. Still can't get the lighting right, which is okay because thats why I made this scene, so I can practice. Heres a screeny with specular and normal map applyed. Some weird things during render that will be fixed on my texture.

Creepy Hospital: Start

Modeled a simple room at the end of a hospital hallway yesterday. UV'd and started texturing today. Need to practice setting mood with lighting later on.

Abandoned Gas Station: Done and Done!

So unless there is some major things I need to fix or change, my gas station is done! Not only that, but I finished my html on my portfolio site which is located at www.alexkam.com.

Here are some pics of my gasstation, more pics on my portfolio site.

Abandoned Gas Station: Better Lighting & Tweaks

Aha! Did some tweaking, and messed around with the lights. I took out all shadows since this is more of an "game asset" than a full scene. Me likes.

Stickin' It To The Man!

I purchased an Xbox360 Arcade edition (the cheap one) during the boxing day week sale at Best Buy. I figure I'd be happy playing on my crappy non-HD TV, but I was not. Then I got a good kick in the nuts when I saw how expensive the wires cost at retailers. After doing some research, I found out a cheap way to play my Xbox360 in HD and in 5.1 sound by hooking up to my LCD computer monitor and my Logitec X540 speakers. Much thanks to Monoprice for selling wires at reasonable prices AND able to ship to Canada AND wihout drastically marking up the shipping costs. Also thanks to Chad's guide on "fixing" the basic AV cables which Microsoft "accidently" made to block the HDMI port on the Xbox360. Well, today the cables arrived, and I am definetly a happy camper! Happy enough to write my own guide, lol.. here it is.


Alex's Connect XBox 360 to LCD Computer Monitor Tutorial

1. Playing Xbox360 on my sad, small non-HD tv really sucks, let's hook it up to my LCD computer monitor



2. "Fix" the AV cable that comes with Xbxo360. Basically, take a screwdriver, wedge it in and twist to seperate the grey plastic housing. See Chad's animated gif for more detail.



3. Purchase an HDMI cable from Monoprice, and depending on your inputs/outputs of your LCD monitor, you may also need a HDMI to DVI converter like I did.



4. Connect both "modified" Xbox AV cable and HDMI to the back of the Xbox360. Connect other end to your LCD computer monitor





5. For sound, connect the red and white RCA ends to your desired sound source. For me, I have a Logitec x540 which happened to come with an adapter :)



6. Play Xbox360! Do extensive research on 3D graphics

Abandoned Gas Station: Lighting & Other Stuff

Today, I made specular and normal maps for my gas station. I'm not sure if it turned out okay. I had to reduce the amount Maya uses the normal map cause at full strength it didn't look too good, I wonder if I even really need one for this scene. I also fiddled around with lighting for quite a bit. Oh, I also removed the terrain because it sucked and I need to practice doing them more. Here's a screeny..

I'm Allergic To What Exactly?

So I've been having this real nagging cough since mid December (which relapsed into another cold in early January) which has been very frustrating to deal with. Then I realised, I may not be still sick, I may have a light allergy caused by my previous cold. It's happened before when I was younger. I went and grabbed some Claritan, and today I actually feel better! The question now is, what am I actually allergic to? My guess, is COLD AIR.. yes thats right. I notice my coughs flare up whenever it snows, and also whenever I go outside and breathe the air. Okay, so I don't want to jinx it too much, but I'm gonna continue taking Claritan and see how I feel in the next few days.

On the 3D front... its not too shabby. I met and grabbed a business card from an art director whose company is currently seeking artists like myself. So, I'm gonna take a long shot and email him my portfolio with my 1 (one) scene, the gas station lol. I've also taken the last few days doing the html code for my portfolio site. I've also found an MMORPG that's seeking volunteer artists to make a few assets, so I think I will volunteer for that, it'll be nice to add some kind of 3d related experience on my barron resume :)

Life

2008 off to a rough start, thats all I will say.

Abandoned Gas Station: Back At It

Restarted work on my gas station, the holiday seasons were not kind to my 3d improvement. Today, I struggled trying to make convincing deadgrass and shrubs, blech... there's always tommorow I guess.

2008, Year of the Alex

Hello 2008! Just like a light switch, my brain finally clicked back to serious mode today, lol. I had a relaxing December, had some good food, had a lousy cold, went to Best Buy on boxing day, which was not that great of an idea, haha. But anyways, if my 1 year plan works out, that means I'll be employed sometime September of this year (gasp!)

I'm looking to finish off my gas station, then I move onto doing some props for a bit, and then onto another full scene. I really underestimated how overwhelming the gas station was to do as my very first attempt. So far, I had to stop at every major section of the workflow to learn the techniques associated with it. Which is not too bad, since I'm learning everything in one project, but bad because I'm getting some burn out from working on the same scene for so long.

Nevertheless, onward and forward, gonna make 2008 the year of the Alex!