Blog End

Remember that this Blog was created purely to showcase my progression over a period of about three years. This Blog will most likely not be updated again unless the forums at Studio Dink become active again, in which case I would keep this updated at the same time as posting on the forum as it appears to be a much safer form of archiving.

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Ricky Thomas

Copyright © Ricky Thomas 2007 - 2012

If you wish to keep up-to-date with my work, there are two other Blogs you should know about.

This Blog fills in the gap of my final year at University, showing the full development of my Final Major Group Project from start to finish; a whole years work.

http://catburglarsgame.blogspot.co.uk

After University ended, I had a downtime of about two months, and then started up this new Blog that will be my main, active Blog from now on. Follow it if you wish :)

http://rickythomas3dartist.blogspot.co.uk

My Linkedin - http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickyct

My personal Portfolio Site - http://www.rickythomas.co.uk

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to e-mail me.
Thanks for viewing,
- Ricky Thomas

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Part 9

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This last post will show some videos I created over the years, not all of which were posted on Studio Dink, but are relevant to the projects shown on here.

This video was a test to learn how to key-frame lights, movement, colours, fog distances, fog colours, and so on. Its very poor otherwise, but serves its purpose.





This was a fan-based video I made using the 'X1-Alpha' model I created from 'Future Cop: LAPD'.





This video was made when I leant how to rig and key-frame joints. Its very random, and uses both the Mental Ray renderer, and Maya Vector renderer. (The jittering arm joint at the end is supposed to match the music, not be a mistake ^^).





This was the video to preview the game demo created during my second year of my degree at university. This was the project with 'Mr. Muffiane' in as the playable character. This was created by three people including myself in about 2 months in Unreal Development Kit. Software used includes:
• Maya 2011                       
• ZBrush 3                           
• Photoshop CS5 Extended  
• Crazy Bump                      
• X-Normal                         
• UDK (Jan 2011)               
• Mudbox                            
• 3Ds Max                           

Part 8

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"'Mr.Muffiane', an original character designed for a group project in the second year at University."

In my second year of my degree at University, we were required to work in many groups. One of the longest groups I worked in were tasked with designing a game concept and coming up with an environment and character cast for it. This was the main playable character, 'Mr. Muffiane', which was designed by the group as a whole, and the modelled in Maya 2011 by me. He was later sculpted in ZBrush for Normal Maps, and textured in Photoshop CS5. The end results can be found on my current Blog, listed in the last post to this Blog. 

"Rendered in Maya 2011 with Mental Ray."

"Modelled in Maya 2011."

He was fully rigged, and animated using a combination of motion capture and layered key-frame animation. Later, he was used as a dummy character in my groups future project in the final year of my degree, where we tested out new motion capture on him using the Kinect.

It was around this time that a project I had been lightly helping on, 'Streets of Rage Remake' came out as a final version.

After the second year of my degree was over, I had some down-time and did few productive activities. Thus, nothing was posted. However I was still learning. I went to life-drawing with some friends every other week over the summer holidays, and also began to learn 3Ds Max.

Eventually, my third and final year began at University. It involved doing a dissertation, various small group business projects, and of course, a 'Final Major Project'. This project was executed in the same group I worked with to create out game with the above 'Mr. Muffinae', because we each felt that we all worked very well and efficiently together. During this time, I had little or no time to do my own artistic thing, and every ounce of artistic flow I had left in me was always put towards out final project, receiving a 1st grade in the end.

Part 7

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"Drawn to the computer using Photoshop CS4 and an Intuos 4 Wacom Tablet."

"Showing how I do my rendering."

I had a few people asking me what my technique was for rendering, so I made the .GIF to illustrate it.

"Showing the base of one of my characters (Never finished)."

I also had people asking me how I start my works, so again, I created this to show. However this piece was never finished despite my intentions.

"Playing with 32bit images (saved as 8bit)."

"The 32bit screenshot version."

I started messing around with 16bit and 32bit images in Photoshop. I decided to try and create something in 32bit, but only ran into problems when it came to saving. Windows Fax Viewer could not view the image correctly (showing as black and white with scan-lines and colour artifaction.

"Drawn to the computer using Corel Painter 11 and an Intuos 4 Wacom Tablet."

Another program I enjoyed to use but found more messy than Photoshop (and so preferred Photoshop still), was Corel Painter. It had so many brushed to choose from, all of which emulated real-life. This was done using Gauche Paints and then the 'Just Add Water' blender to blend it together. 

"Drawn to the computer with Photoshop CS4 and Wacom Tablet."

"Custom brush created for the rain drops on him. Noise used with motion blur for the rain in general, then scaled up and down to give a sense of depth."

Creating weather effects was fun. The original piece was supposed to be set in an overcast day, but this seemed to work well too, so I made both versions.

"Drawn to the computer using Photoshop CS4 and Wacom Tablet."

I stayed with this style for a while once I got into it. It was during my first year of my degree at University, so I often didn't have loads of free time on my hands. This style starts from the base that I always created, but then just keep refining it until you get a clean image. It was much faster, and also felt much more free to edit contours and tones than my old full colour, 'inked' artwork, so in the long run I think doing these helped a lot with allowing me to develop my skills while still sticking to boring old University reports and dissertations.

"Camera Fog."

"Camera Depth perception Fog."

In University to show we understood the basics of Maya, we were told to make a small city scene. I later wanted to add in the distance fog you see in games in 'Grand Theft Auto IV', so looked into ways of doing this. The first way I found looked pretty bad, and more or less just overlaid a colour over the camera lens to simulate fog. After some more searching, I found proper fog. It takes into account its' distance from the camera, and increases in volume the further away it is; perfect for what I wanted!

".TGA file format."

This image represents the start of a long realisation of the difference between Alpha and Transparency, and how they apply themselves different to models. This was a .TGA diffuse map. Maya was picking up it's internal Alpha map, and auto-applying it to the 'Transparency' node in the shader. The way I got around this at the time was to lock that attribute before applying this texture map.

"Project 'Cindy Aramov' - Concept and reference boards."

The concept was drawn to my sketchbook, scanned, cleaned and coloured in Photoshop CS4. The reference boards were drawn to the computer in Photoshop CS4 also. 

"Final Renders."

She turned out to be one of the scariest looking things to ever be created :O She looked constantly surprised  and I didn't even notice until I had her finished! Still, she brings together more knowledge; the use of Alpha maps, more Normal maps from ZBrush, new ways to use Specular maps (on her dress to make its pattern shiny and her dress itself, not), and so on. She also had parts of photos used to texture her such as her hands.

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The Forum Comments:

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More kind words from SDink that keep me going <3

Part 6

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"Maya Vector Render"

"Maya Vector Render"

Messing around with Maya's Vector renderer to see what sort of results it can produce. 

"Ramp Shader"

"Ramp Shader"

"Ramp Shader"

I started playing with Ramp Shaders and coming up with new idea for what I could use them for.

"'Half-Life' inspired alien scene."

I have no idea what this alien was supposed to be.... it was just a design that randomly came out as I pushed and pulled vertices around.

I also learnt how to do light-linking during this project. Its not that obvious, but many of the objects in the scene are set up to link with only certain lights. The boxes for example, do not accept shadows being cast on them, but do cast shadows on the floor.

"Maya nCloth physics."

I had also been messing around with physics in Maya, and thought this to be a good opportunity to throw some cloth over some boxes :)

"Vector Render."

Yes, I was still in the "ooo, shiny" stage of using Maya Vector renderer, so many projects I did around this time came free with a vector render!

"Modelled in Maya 2010, sculpted in ZBrush, Rendered with Mental Ray."

And that weird alien thing itself. Base-mesh was made in Maya, sculpted in ZBrush for high-res detail, and textured in Photoshop CS4 with an Intuos 4 Wacom Tablet.

"'Kagami' from 'Tenchu 2: Birth of the Stealth Assassins'"

I started a small project to model 'Kagami' from one of my favourite games, 'Tenchu 2: Birth of the Stealth Assassins'. I wanted to have her standing in the place she stands during the opening sequence for the game; her alter on the 'Fire Demon' warship.

"Modelled in Maya 2010"

Do I see nCloth being used for her cape? :O

"A problem with the Normal Map generation in ZBrush 2"

Unfortunately I don't remember what the problem was here, but I managed to fix it for the final render it seems. ZBrush's method of creating Normal Maps with ZMapper back then was a pain -.-

"Boat Area"

"Boat Area"

Low-poly, untextured, using Maya's default fire system for the fire in the candles. I wasn't happy with this default system and did look into making realistic fire using fluid effects.

"A Final Render of 'Kagami'"

The final, weird looking result :)

"Maya 2010 Fluid Effects for realistic flame."

This is a short, 10 frame animation of a more realistic flame effect created using Maya's Fluid Effects.

"Low-Res and High-Res pillars with details transferred over to the Low-Res model."

"From top left: Diffuse, Normal, Specular, Displacement maps."

It was trying to learn how to make low-res models look like their high-res counterparts more accurately. One way I found help with this was to use Displacement Maps, but it seems most game engines do not support these. Still, nice effect :)

"'Kagura' from 'Tenchu 3: Wrath of Heaven'"

"The checker map applied to see where the UV's stretch."

I went through a phase of colouring the checker map when UV unwrapping to give a better representation of how it might look in the end. I don't do this so much any more for two reasons: 1. The shader will most likely have more than just one type of colour and material on it now, and 2. Its largely a waste of time unless really required for testing of some kind.

"Fully rigged"

She was fully rigged, although her geometry didn't allow for her to be posed very well. I learnt from models such as these where to put more detailed edge-loops in in the future.

"A Final Render"

She was fully textured using Photoshop CS4 Extended and an Intuos 4 Wacom Tablet. I tried to use Photoshop's new capabilities to bring in the .OBJ, and paint directly too it, however I couldn't get used to Photoshop clunky navigation and weird distortion it was casting with it's perspective. I feel these problems were by-enlarge fixed in the later CS5. Instead, I just painted on the UV maps exported from Maya as normal for this project.

"Another Final Render of 'Kagura'"

Part 5

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"'Nora' from 'Streets of Rage 1'. Created in Maya 2010, then taken into ZBrush for a high-res sculpt."

This model had a very simple, low res base-mesh created in Maya, which was then brought into ZBrush where I subdivided it several times while sculpting it into this piece.

"The mesh brought back into Maya for shader application."

Not understanding that ZBrush can texture things or unwrap things, I felt I had to bring the ridiculously high-res sculpt back into Maya to apply different shaders on the model for rendering. Yes, this took forever and gave extremely poor results.

"'Shiva' from 'Streets of Rage 3'. Modelled in Maya 2010, Textured in Photoshop CS4 Extended with an Intuos 4 Wacom Tablet."

A latter character model I made; a vast improvement, but still had much to be desired. The difference this time was that I knew what I was doing wrong, and how I might change it for my next character.

"Fully rigged with joints."

He was fully rigged and poseable, my first one ever! I learn't how to do it properly in University that day.

"Messing around with Blend Shapes to make his facial expressions."

I also learnt how to create Blend Shapes for facial animation, so made a small set of expressions for this guy to use; nothing special.

"Modelled in Maya 2010, Normal Mapped in ZBrush, and rendered in Mental Ray."

"Normal Map created from ZBrush."

I finally got how to get Normal Maps out of ZBrush for use in Maya (and in turn, how to apply a Normal Map in Maya). This was created from a very simple, fast base-mesh in Maya, which was UV unwrapped. I then brought it into ZBrush, had a high-res sculpt made, and extracted a Normal Map from it. This was then applied to the low-res model back in Maya, and rendered with Mental Ray. I got very excited at the prospects of what I could use this for now :D

"X1-Alpha' from 'Future Cop: LAPD'. Modelled in Maya 2010, rendered with Mental Ray."

A simple model, simple shapes, not much effort required, but looks quite cool in the end I though :D

Lovely dramatic lights! I learnt how to use Area Lights with this model (as seen above).

"Rendered with Vector Render as verticies with strokes and fills as a .SVG file."

I also found another renderer hiding from me in the plug-in's box; a vector renderer. It is surprisingly slow but can give completely editable renders for programs such as Illustrator to use, which is cool.

"Character project Concept. Drawn to the computer using Photoshop CS4 Extended and an Intuos 4 Wacom Tablet."

A new character project in the works to try and bring together a bunch of different things I had now learnt.

"Model 99% complete."

"Mesh"

Probably considered to be my first actual 'clean' mesh of a character, but still far from perfect.

"ZBrush high-res sculpt."

Sculpted in ZBrush from an exported .OBJ file from the Maya model; everything seemed to be going well.

"Test render (Normal Maps not 100% working)."

And then this result. At this point, I QQed, and went to bed at 5am. I realised what the problem was while lying in bed; the UV map I had laid out for the model made various parts of the model share UV space to mirror eachother. For example, I had both arms on top of eachother in the UV map to save on texture space, as well as both legs, and even half of her face. This meant the Normal Map extracted from ZBrush was overlapping itself in the same areas in UV space, a big problem. Instead of completely re-doing the UV map, I edited the Normal Maps to hell the next day to make them work, and kept what went wrong in mind for future projects.

"Final Model and Render from Mental Ray."

All maps fixed. In the end she consisted of two shaders, each containing Diffuse, Specular and Normal maps.

"'Holiday', drawn to the computer using Photoshop CS4 and Intuos 4 Wacom Tablet."

As I said, every so often I got round to doing a quick drawing ;)

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The Forum Comments:

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"Wow! It's amazing how fast you have improved Ricky! Keep it up and good for you! I really like this last model a lot!"

SDink was always so inspiring to me! And comments like this just motivated me to carry on and improve more and more!

"So Cool! You are very dedicated, its just awesome how much you do! ^_^ Keep up the awesome stuff! The Photoshop piece is incredible!"