Life in 3D

Busier than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest.

I’ve been busy, busy, and FREAKING BUSY!!!

Three classes, which you think wouldn’t be so bad, but it’s not that classes really it’s the projects.   Now, I don’t blame my instructors at all because all they did was give us some basic parameters to work with, I’m the one that decided what I was going to do with those parameters and set myself up for this major league work load.

For example.  In my environments class we had to do an interior.  Could be any interior we wanted; kitchen, bedroom, heck we could have even done the inside of a closet as long as we did it REALLY well (to justify the small space).  Me, I chose a warehouse.  An old rundown warehouse.  And not content with just that, I decided to put an old truck in their too.  Why?  Because I’m an idiot and I like cars.

It’s still not done, not really.  There are lots of things that I can (and will) do to improve this.  So, I have that one plus I’m still working on my thesis project of Penn Station.

I love Penn Station.  I wish to God it was still around but unfortunately they tore it down three years before I was born and we will never see another place like it again.

Finally, if I haven’t had enough interior spaces yet, there is my final one – the Altar room project.  Once again, I could have done something easy like a sword in the stone, a suit of armor, or even some sci-fi thing, but NOOOOOOOO…. I had to decide to do an altar room that represents the United States.  A Greco-Roman tribute to what our founding fathers crafted.  So now I have to deal with Grecian sculpture forms and modeling draped cloth as well as FOUR figures!

Three figures to represent the three branches of government; thirteen pillars for the colonies;  ten wall spaces for the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights; and finally, in the center of the altar, a Nike figure representing the American spirit which can only be defeated when we give up on ourselves.  The four braziers in the hall represent the four armed forces.  When it is done there will be a fire burning in them.

Love the idea, but man is it kicking my ass.  here’s a long shot of the altar room.  The coffered ceiling is referencing the Capitol Dome as well as the Pantheon.

And a close up of the figures

I have so much freakin work to do.  I need a drink.

After School Special

With school being out and me needing to get my reel up to speed so that I can acquire gainful employment upon release from this institution of higher learning, I have been spending my time tweaking an old model from a few semesters ago so that it will be the quality I require.

I pulled out the old Camaro, and while there wasn’t really all that much wrong with it I knew that I could improve it with some tweaks here and there and also by approaching the paint job in a different way.  So, here’s how it stands so far without anything but the basic Lambert shader assigned to it.

Made some of the metal creases a bit sharper and more defined, changed the bucket seats out for ones I thought looked better, and generally just tucked things up a bit.

Here’s the wire framing on it

Personally, I’m still surprised that it came in at around 172,000 polygons with all the detail that had to go into building the tires out.

And finally, the very, VERY basic beginings of a texture job.

I’m hoping it will all be done by around Sunday.  I still have a steam locomotive to finish before school starts up again, and there’s also a train station that needs a lot of work too.

Done… for now.

Well the semester has ended and the wife and I get something of a break before the next one begins in February.  It hasn’t been a great semester though, we lost a very special member of our family, our cat Quazo; we both got the flu – TWICE; we have both been slammed by work and by school, plus the holidays are coming up again and, once again, we can’t afford to go home to visit either of our families.

This isn’t a post to whine, it’s just stating the facts.  I really wish I could go and see my family.  I have a nephew who is five that I have never met and a niece I haven’t seen since she was small enough that I was able to carry her on my shoulders.  I miss them.  I miss my brothers, my sister and my parents.  They are the only family I have next to my wife and every year I don’t see them is another year lost.  Sure, we keep in touch but it’s different than actually being there.

I can’t complain though, this is the path I chose.  I’ve always been wandering.  Out of high school I went into the Navy and traveled the world.  After that I moved from California back to New Mexico, then I moved to Seattle, then Ohio and now California again.  Something has always kept me moving around and looking over the next hill to see what is there.  It’s not a bad thing, but there are times I do wonder how things would have been different if I had stayed home in the first place, but as my wife likes to remind me “If you didn’t do the things you did, then you wouldn’t be who you are and you probably wouldn’t have met me.”

She’s smart that way.

You would think that with the end of the semester I would have some down time but, sadly, no.  I have some freelance work coming up, I have thesis project stuff to work on, and I have work at the bookstore as well.  So, not a lot of rest going to be happening around here but that’s OK as long as it eventually leads to getting a job doing what I’m in college in the first place for.

Speaking of which, here’s a shot of what I have been spending my time on.  There’s a HECK of a lot more to do on it, but I think I can have most of the modeling that needs to be done wrapped up by the end of January.

Cars and Time

The semester has just ended and even though I most certainly didn’t do my best this time around I think I managed to come out of there with two B+ and a C.  The C would be in my Art and Ideology of the 20th Century class (which I really had no interest or respect in)

Problem with the class for me is that it turned out that the only ideology they talked about was the socialist ideology, which I could really give a shit less about.  If I was a wanna-be communist, then I might care about all the “workers murals” and other crap like that, but I’m not and I don’t.  If it wasn’t a required class I would have never wasted my money on it.

God damn required classes.

Anyway, I have gotten further along with some of the features on the Camaro.  We now have studio lighting, and new tires.  Even worked on the focal length for the camera to bring it into better focus.

So now we have a few version of ‘the car’ – the first computer modeled car I have ever made:

We have the original grey model

Then we follow that up with the first color version

And now we have the studio colored version with newer, and better tires

One day I may even be finished with it.