IT'S HERE. FINALLY. No, I'm not talking about the Senators uniform (coming late August!). I'm referring to Maya, my 3D nemesis. The Photopea of 3D modeling, if you will. I sat down for a few hours and decided to make a tire, and then a wheel, and then a unicycle. After a few 'happy accidents' reminding me to save (catastrophic crashes), I completed a simple unicycle. I experimented with bump maps, editing meshes, and new texturing. It's pretty hard to see the tire details in the render on my gallery page, so here's an exclusive look. You can see the grooves in the tire as well as extra detail on the unicycle itself. But finally making something in Maya isn't the only thing I did. I researched alternatives to Photopea and, after trying a few out, I found Pixlr to be a useful site for editing pictures. I liquified a picture of myself onto celebrities using Pixlr because it has less lag than Photopea. Then, I used Photopea to overlay the layers to blend myself more effectively. You can see the results on my gallery page. I also worked on another thing this month: hand drawing. I'll admit that it's VERY far from my favorite thing, but I still came back to it. I'm certainly not great, I'll say that. Check out my gallery page for the sketch. I'm posting it in a couple days, so if you're reading this, there's a good chance it's already up. I'm nervous and excited for the online school year and my opportunities to expand my skill set in digital art. I can't wait to get into creating basic games and learning new techniques. This is ciao for now, but don't worry, I'll be back.
0 Comments
Ok. I lied. I didn't do a lot of work with Maya this month. I was frustrated with the program and decided to try something novel. Schoolwork usually feels like a chore to me, but research doesn't necessarily go hand-in-hand with homework. I was curious about a couple subjects that I couldn't get off my mind. Why didn't I learn anything about the Etruscans but I learned a lot about Romans? What the heck is the Christian concept of the Trinity? I was brainstorming a unique way to make more art, and I landed on infographics. I had never really done infographics before outside of school, and I think they turned out pretty well. I learned a lot about the subjects, and it was refreshing to do research without doing homework. Etruscan Culture Infographic It was cool to experiment with a new art medium, but I also went back to something I promised in my previous blog post. Well, I kinda did.
I was planning to make jersey concepts for the Washington Senators, but I was exhausted from making infographics and unsuccessfully making something in Maya, so I settled on a helmet for starters. I was working in Photopea, so, naturally, I became pretty annoyed in roughly twenty minutes. Photopea's quick select tool isn't the best to say the least, but I eventually finished up the helmet concept. You can see it by visiting the Gallery page in the top right of your screen. When I finally finished it, I was fatigued enough that I didn't even try to make a uniform. Although this month was disappointing, August will bring the long-awaited Senators jersey concept and, if all goes well, a piece or two in Maya. Summary
This month, I left the 8 year old laptop I had finished the school year with. With the COVID situation continuing, I was in desperate need for sports, so I continued making jersey concepts. I had already finished a Chicago Bulls concept city jersey and began a Detroit Pistons concept on the ancient machine. Then, it was time to take the helm of the family desktop computer that doesn't melt in half an hour. Chicago Bulls Concept City Jersey I discovered that it wasn't all sunshine with my new computer. The flash drive with all my work on it wasn't big enough, the keyboard was messed up, the iCloud account was messed up (I have a Mac), it was hard to download Maya, but most importantly, Adobe Photoshop ended their free student service.
I solved all of the problems listed above except one. Photoshop. I returned to the nemesis I made last summer: Photopea. It was a little laggy and took some getting used to, but I polished off the Pistons concept. With mounting controversy over the Washington Redskins who had just started practices, I made a logo for the Washington Senators, a proposed name for the football team. It was nice to get back into Photopea, although it isn't my favorite program. I used a lot of quick select, creating objects, blending options, and hellishly aggravating minute brush movements. I barely touched Maya, due to a little of trouble downloading it and needing a break. Next month, I'm planning to make more advanced concepts with Photopea and work more in Maya, as I didn't do a lot this month. I can't wait to make more art. Summary
In August, I have continued to work almost exclusively in Blender. One day I was making 3-D modeled vegetables and decided it would be cool to try out working with textures. I was wrong: It was a nightmare. Placing textures on customized shapes proved to be futile, and the textures wouldn't even show up when I rendered the final product. Eventually, after watching a couple tutorials on YouTube and searching the internet diligently for solutions, I gave up. I chose instead to make my own corn kernels if Blender wouldn't let me do it the other way. I prayed my computer wouldn't crash while I made over a thousand kernels, slowing down Blender dramatically. After half an hour of copy and paste, adjusting materials, and adding effects, my prayers were answered. As you can see below, each kernel is unique, as well as each pea in the pod. Many of the kernels were unique, but I did some copy pasting to speed up the process. The peas, unlike the corn, were easily manipulated because there were only six. Also, I used icospheres, which are the same shape as the peas are in the image above, to create the ear of the corn and the pea pod. I really wanted to try my hand at changing basic shapes and creating new forms of them. After countless hours of practice, I'm starting to get accustomed to Blender, but I still prefer 3DS Max, which is missing a lot of the tedious and confusing aspects of Blender. This school year ought to be very exciting. I want to learn more about 3DS Max and make better artwork. Overall, I can't wait to get back to working with 3DS Max and get back on a more enjoyable road of 3D Modeling.
Summary
For the second part of my Digital Design and Animation II summer assignment, I started out messing around with Photopea, the free browser equivalent of Adobe Photoshop. However, during a few hours of working, there were many bugs. Being unable to deselect a picture, the quick select tool selecting the wrong thing, things moving in the wrong directions, and other instances raised my anger. I decided to give it a break and come back to it the next day. I was hopeful, but it brought no avail: The same problems happened. Therefore, I decided to just focus on Blender, which is a Mac-friendly 3DS Max-like program. I decided to try my hand at editing faces, vertices, and edges to make art. I don't like Blender very much, because it's tedious to do things and often leads to me searching Google for things like "How to select in Blender" and "How to redo in Blender." But, after several hours of work, I got into the rhythm of pressing tab, pressing a, pressing b, selecting vertices, etc. I pushed through the long, monotonous art creation in Blender to create four art pieces (one of which is shown below). I tried to make edit polys and edit modifiers to mold my 3D creations like I would in 3DS Max, but I couldn't figure out how, so I just stuck with Blender's version of edit poly's, which was hard. Eventually I learned how to manipulate edges, vertices, and faces, as well as learning new ways to edit simple shapes. I was more or less satisfied with my work when I finished, although I couldn't figure out animations or modifiers.
Summary
The school year is over and it's summertime. I have used two free applications on a computer to work on my summer assignment for next year's digital design course so far. Interspersed between other assignments and activities, I've worked on Photopea and Blender. Photopea, a browser option that doesn't require downloading, is an Adobe Photoshop-esque website. It offers masks, overlays, brush tools, and other things Photoshop also has. However, it isn't as easy to navigate and doesn't have all of the tools Photoshop offers. The reason I used it was to have a free version of Photoshop I can use at home. I learned how to mask and duplicate items in Photopea and that although it is quick to load and fairly straightforward, Photoshop is better. Let's move on to Blender, a free downloadable application available on Mac and Window operating systems. I downloaded it to have a program comparable to 3DS Max without having to get Windows 10 on my family's Apple computer. It's definitely more tedious and harder to find things than 3DS Max. I messed around with Blender for a few hours before really starting to make art, which turned out to be very difficult. I consulted an online manual, which helped me to some extent, but there were still problems. I couldn't find certain tabs and options in the program, and the manual wasn't written for people unfamiliar with it. In Blender, I explored and learned about grouping objects, camera and lamp positioning, and mapping techniques. I learned a lot about Blender's interface and that I prefer 3DS Max to Blender because it's so much easier to navigate and make complex artwork. To sum it all up, the alternative programs I've used so far this summer aren't as good as the applications they imitate.
Summary
|
AuthorHI! I'm a 12th grader and on this page, I will blog about me and what I'm going through, both in Game Design class and in life. There are a mix of required blog posts and personal reflections, which you can sort, among other things, below the disclaimer and archives. DISCLAIMER
The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools. Archives
May 2022
Categories
All
|