Dota 2 Polycount Contest - Windrunner, Golden Harvest, Bow

Progress report!  I reworked the model for the bow, fixing mirroring issues, changing a lot of triangles back into quads, and making the form more full.

Then I went into organizing a color set to work from.  The yellow turned out to be really ugly in-game.

Then worked on getting the proper UVs set up, with mirroring and all.  The UVs for the bow are my best yet!

I tried sculpting to get high detail but it just hasn't been working.  Level 5 detail in Blender didn't provide enough resolution for me to work with, so I brought it up a notch to level 6.  The sculpting tools just feel too foreign to me, like trying to hold a pencil with my toes.  I will give ZBrush a chance, perhaps next month.

sculpt attempt.

Dota 2 Polycount Contest - Windrunner, Successful Dota 2 Import!

I'm excited!  At the moment, not sure whether I should continue to work in Maya, or pick up Blender.  After a bit of toying around with the mesh I created, I was able to export it from Maya and into Blender, and then into Dota 2.  I definitely have a slightly better understanding of the workflow now ;D

Here's my progress so far on the modelling.

maya:

blender:

And this is the preview in the game, loaded with the original WR models.

Dagger Class Spaceship

 This is my final project for Intro to 3d Animation.  I am definitely more interested in modeling at the moment.  The whole 3d process is satisfying in that theres an incomprehensible amount of anticipation for the end product every step of the way.

I intended the dagger ship to be one part of a combinable set of spaceships for a top down schmup.  These fighter ships are small in scale and serve as a personal manned vehicle, and can also house a handful of passengers.

Gunbuster was definitely an inspiration for this project.  The idea was to create a dagger and sheath pair of spaceships, and the dagger design resulted in a similar silhouette as the space aliens from Gunbuster.  It is cool how the Gunbuster 1 and 2 combine to become a mecha, but I have not decided on what the combination of my two spaceships will become, yet.  Now that I think about it, a cool mecha would definitely change the pace.

I would watch Outlaw Star again for a bit of inspiration, but that's definitely going to end with grappling hooks.

Maya =X

OK, so I finally tested the murky waters of the 3D world.  6th semester out of 8 here at USC, it's a good time. I feel like I can comfortable learn the software, and that makes me happy.  For the past three years, I've only ever worked on drawings and 2D animations.

Taking this course is like dipping my toes into the 3D environment, making sure that the temperatures aren't too cold.  I'm so deep in my 2D work right now (it's only getting more and more exciting!) that my focus is still in that direction, but I'll be learning Maya steadily!

Modeling is pretty fun!  For my next step, I want to model a character.