Week 22

After a couple weeks off due to the presentation week and reading week we're back, jumping straight back into it. I started this week with my second programming session where we had a re-cap on the last session where i made a version of pong. This weeks programming session looked at how to use programming with in a 3D programming, the one we looked at was Maya. The programming inside Maya is done using a language called Python an old but very versatile language. Personally I haven't really enjoyed the programming sessions but this is just down to the fact i don't enjoy programming all that much. Yet i can see how impressive the knowledge can inside a program like Maya.
      Tuesday was our first workshop since coming back. This is where we were given the "Pillar Project". Which i basically we can do what ever type of pillar we want we just need to model it and texture it. Chris showed us how to make some basic texture's within ZBrush and how to correctly divide up an polygon so that when in ZBrush the polys are smooth when adding and taking away details. This is fairly daunting to me as I'm not particular great with ZBrush and still don't really understand the program in all honesty. During the session I had a go at making a simple block as shown by Chris with some very simple re-bar which in the long run worked out well. After the session i decided to have a think of some really creative solutions to the task at hand one i came up which I really liked is the quick painting below, the idea being the pillar would be a vintage ticket booth. I really liked the idea but having never really used ZBrush extensively I decided it's probably best to practice and try something a little easier.
       That was exactly what I did I started with some easy squares dividing them up so they sculpt correctly in ZBrush and did some research on YouTube on what brushes give the best results. The next day I then tried something a little more pillar like too see if i could divide that up correctly which seemed to work okay I then tried out this feature within ZBrush where it divides up any separate poly shapes so you can work on one and not all of them. For example with my work I used this feature to separate the re-bar from the concrete outside of the pillar. This is how i got my work to look so broken and decrepit below are some pictures of this pillar this is my first pillar I'm looking to do another and see how that turns out with a more artistic flair over the car park pillar like design below. This week has been fairly productive as I haven't really worked with ZBrush and was another program this unit I have had to learn and get to grips with. When considering where else I wanted to take this project I created the image below of the old fashioned ticket booth, I created this very quickly using my knowledge of Maya and applying it to Photoshop. I quickly made silhouettes using objects created in Maya screen capped the objects silhouette and opened the image in Photoshop and got to work. This was really simple and easy to do and will come in very helpful in the future.