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I'm goofing off in my free time...


JsARCLIGHT

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Hey gang,

Work has been slow in this post christmas period (as it always is at my office) so between the wining and dining of clients to try and eek some second quarter cash out of them I've been finally getting around to actually making that new CG valkyrie that I've been putting off for years.

I must say that I am not a pro CG person, my skills are in 2D layout and line work so my models are all very low poly and mainly rely on texture/shader/lighting to work... hence most of you CG pros will see these renders and think they were made by someone wil no CG skills. Because they basically are... I learned power animator back in the '90s in college and that was about it, in the mean time I have picked up rudimentary Maya skills due to the number of people at work that use the software.

I know my stuff is not that good compared to other people's things and what is out there on the market so I'm not looking for critiques or praise, I just want to post my renders and be counted as one of the several Macross World CG neophites building a valkyrie.

I'm also a retard... everyone else starts with the actual valkyrie, usually the cockpit... I started with the FAST packs. I just like FAST packs, what can I say? I'm also making my model to be fully rigged and animateable... and it is also being made in bizzarro JsARCLIGHT world, which means the looks may be similair but the end product will be very different... I'm basically "personalizing" the super Valkyrie to my own tastes, adding things and removing other things in the design.

Oh well, enough talk. Here is the first piece of the puzzle: the FAST pack booster pods. I'll keep building and adding to this thread if there is interest... if not then I'll just keep to myself because there are lots of other CGers on here that have much better skills than I.

post-5-1073440300_thumb.jpg

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If anyone actually reads this thread, I'll answer any questions you might have about the model. I'm fully "Maya fluent" so I can "speak geek" if need be. Some specifics about the model: it is less than 400 poly faces, it is modeled and textured in Maya 5... the textures are mainly 512x multimaps through Deep Paint (I can actually use that stylus for something other than page layouts!).

Here is a close-up of the booster frame. As you can see I'm trying to "grunge" the look to make it appear used and abused rather than showroom new like most model kits. I'm also personalizing a lot of the features to the way I think they should look rather than the way they actually look...

post-5-1073440701_thumb.jpg

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And lastly for today the forward nasalle missle pod...

I'll add more when more is done, this piece took me most of today to make and texture. I just wonder how much more free time I'll have to work on it this month as my only access to Maya and Deep Paint is at work. Oh well, here is the last image. And if the resident CG gods would please let me know if I'm doing anything wrong or screwing stuff up... the CG gurus at work are basically treating me like "the boss thinks he can do my job" sort of thing so they are not too helpful on things.

post-5-1073440946_thumb.jpg

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Nice! It may be low poly but it looks very good. Looks like the FAST Packs for a sophisticated Macross space simulator. I like your weathering and colors. Great job. Start small and simple and then build yourself up. Eventually you'll be better than the pros.

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I don't know much about 3D imaging, but low-polys or not, that looks great. The textures more than make up for the basic model!!!

One suggestion, and this is personal opinion: Less "scorch marks" around the vernier thrusters. I think it's a little too much.

But overall I want you to keep posting your updates. It looks damned nifty.

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When I started texturing the booster, I originally left it completely "clean"... but it looked -too clean- if you know what I mean... too "fake" and "CG-ish" (even thought it still looks fake and CG-ish). When I started adding wear and scorches to the boosters I started very light and small. They looked good from (what would be in the computer) five feet away but from a distance they got lost in the overall color and layout of the booster. I decided to make that sucker cooked like a chicken at that point and the look actually reads very well from a good distance away.

It's my plan to do up the rest of the armor and the valk in the same "worn and used" grungy fashion. I like the look of heavily used military things. I'm debating going back in and adding another layer to the mixmap shaders to add "chips, dings and scratches" to the armor pannels to give them an even more used and abused look... but first and foremost I need to get more of the actual model done before I keep upgrading one piece of it. :p

Edit: what the hell... half my post went missing! There, now it's back...

Edited by JsARCLIGHT
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Nice job, your textures are great, they more than compensate for the low polys. Are you building it as a fixed mode fighter or do you plan to make it transformable to all 3 modes?

You shouldn't put your work down so much, I've seen far worse stuff out there from people who seem think they have real talent.

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To update the thread and answer some questions:

1) I'm the boss so I get to goof off when I want :p

2) I didn't get much done today other than start on the leg armor... had some meetings to go to

3) I'm purposefully trying to go as low a polycount as possible (and I'll run the final model through a reducer to see how it looks) in the hopes that I might be able to use the model for something real-time in the future... but as for right now it is just a hobby on the side.

4) the Valkyrie is going to be built (I hope) to be three mode convertable. Seeing as this is being done in the computer I can get away with fudging some things and faking others. I plan to make multiple objects for certain things like the arms, legs and torso parts so the model can blendshape between geometry to achieve a more "correct" look in all it's modes. I even have the crazy idea to SDK the entire transformation sequence so all I need to do is "flip a switch" in Maya and it would automatically convert.

5) one of my friends in the office who is a Maya animator and fellow macross fan is going to make me a custom skeleton and IK rig for the battroid that will allow me to dump the mocap our office has from filmbox onto it. Someday I could have a valkyrie doing soccer goalie stuff! :p

6) the Valk I intend to make is my own warped version of Hikaru's Super VF-1A from DYRL, hence the flight number "11" on the booster... which means no strike cannon. If the model turns out well I'll go back and make a 1J and a 1S head and alter the map colors to make more units. Perhaps then I'll make a strike cannon for a possible future Focker unit... who knows.

I'd also like to say thanks for all the praise. It has been years since I sat down and hammered something out in something other than Photoshop or CADD and this has been a fun two days for me. I also intend to make the model, rigging and shader network for my final model available to anyone who asks for it... but it will be in Maya 5 and have write ability locked out on it (like we supply all our models to clients with) so if you want the model you can play with it and see how it is built and how it works but you cannot alter anything in the scene. Let me know ahead of time if anyone is interested.

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In a lot of ways I prefer better textures to high poly counts, which is probably I still prefer the look of 3 year old Dreamcast games to brand new Playstation games. That model looks great, I can't wait to see the rest. Are you making all those textures from scratch? That's some serious talent, glad you're sharing it with us. :)

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The textures are all 100% scratch, with the only elements that are pre-exsisting are the skull and crossed sabers emblem and the raw materials used to sample to paint the textures with. I'm using Deep Paint to paint the textures, if you are familiar with that software it basically allows you to "paint" your models using a wacom or tablet just as you would draw them by hand.

The way I made the textures was to start with oblique angle views of the model (perfect front, top, sides, etc.) and map the model so the major parts all use the same texture map file. Then in Deep Paint you can paint bump maps, specularity, reflectivity, transmissivity of light and other crazy things that Maya/Mental Ray use to render the polys. The texture maps are handled like photoshop files in that they have "layers", I started with the base blue metal layer and added pannel lines, weathering, chips, scorch marks, insignias and other details on top. When you finish with the map in Deep Paint it exports it back to Maya as six special mixmaps (color, transparentcy, diffusion, bump, specularity and reflectivity) which it automaps to the polys you painted.

If you ask me the power is in the software not in the skills of the user... you should see some of the stuff our real Maya monkeys turn out around here. Their stuff will turn you white, man. :ph34r:

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Less talk, more kick-ass pictures.

AMEN

J.J.

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