June 16, 2013 01:17
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June 9, 2013 03:12
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Texturing Sci Fi Environment
I'm trying to mimic the visual style of Borderlands 2 in this environment, so I'll try to get some critique from some of my old class mates from the U on our Facebook group.
Here is the render:
I plan to take some time doing this crate, so that once I have the look I want I can then move on to the other pieces in the environment without having to stumble so much looking to see what works and what doesn't.
That's all for now, thanks for reading!
May 13, 2013 01:54
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Breaking In My New Cintiq
For the mean time, I've decided that I need to start doing more 2D art and I saw a drawing on the web and I decided to do a trace and a little of my own work. I'm not happy with some areas and I think that I need to add a little more detail in others, but for now I think its the beginning of something good. Once I'm done with it I plan to take it into Illustrator and make it a vector image and then paint it on Photoshop.
Here is the image of what I have so far:
May 9, 2013 13:25
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Sailboat Model
I still have a lot stuff left to catch up on, but this is the beginning. Thanks for reading!
May 3, 2013 20:04
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Master of Fine Arts Achieved!
Now we just have to put the final touches on our game, an it will soon be published on Desura. I also have to make up a lot of hours on my Internship, but more on that later. Thanks for reading!
April 29, 2013 19:11
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The End Is Nigh
First off, I have to admit that I wasn't really ready to present my game. I don't mean that I hadn't prepared something to say, I mean that I didn't really know what to expect when presenting your thesis and going to your formal defense of it. My team created a movie instead of a PowerPoint presentation, this made sure that we were only going to have 4 minutes to talk about what we each did on the game, and to stay brief and to the point. I have to admit that I get really anxious when I have to talk in front of people, but I think I did ok.
After the presentation, I had to wait about 2 hours for my turn to go into a room with the Chairman and the rest of my committee evaluating my contribution to the thesis game and my thesis paper that I finished last week (which is why I haven't been posting much lately). For the first part I knew what I needed to say for those 4 minutes, but for this part I didn't really know what they were going to ask me about my paper or the presentation. So I really had nothing ready, I was just ready to answer questions truthfully and hope that it would be enough.
The first thing the Chairman asked me was, "What does the title of your thesis paper mean?". I had titled my paper "Development of an Artist", FYI. And from there a conversation started about how I had started two years ago and where I was now as a game artist. I honestly can't remember everything about the conversation, but I'm really sure that it lasted about 20-25 minutes going back and forth between the five other people in the room and myself. I even had the pleasure of having an old teacher from my undergraduate degree in my committee and she knew that I had really improved since I took classes with her almost 4 years ago.
Then they had me step outside for a few minutes, until they called me back into the room and congratulated me on the completion of my thesis game and paper. Now all that is left is presenting my Sci Fi environment on Thursday for my hard surface modeling class and one more short paper to write. And if all goes well, I will be walking across the stage on Friday receiving my MFA along with my peers.
Its all kind of surreal actually, thinking that I'm about to graduate. I've been going to school every year since I was like 5 (or whatever the age is when you go to pre-school and all that good stuff) and now in less than a week it will all be over. I'm actually one of the weird kids that like school, not only because I'm kind of a nerd, but because I like what I do and I like talking to all my friends in the MGS lab. I will really miss my computer, and all the really late nights some of us stayed up playing games of League of Legends (its a team building exercise) yelling at each other to stop feeding the other team. Those were the good old days, and now they will be nothing but memories.
I'm going to miss everyone in my cohort, and while I can't really call them family, at different levels, they are all my friends. I will try to stay in touch with all of them, and who knows, one of them might end up being a really famous game developer one day. I may even have the chance to say, "I know that guy/girl, he/she is a friend of mine from grad school." I know that every single one of us has the potential to work at a AAA game studio, and I know that we will all get there one day. Some have already achieved it, I have a few friends that have accepted positions at EA, some in Orlando and some right here in Salt Lake. I can't help but feel a little jealous that they have jobs lined up after graduation, but at the same time I'm proud of their accomplishments and I hope to catch up to them soon.
There is a lot I've learned from this program, and recently it was ranked as number 1 in the nation for the undergrad, and number 2 for the graduate degree. I hope that one day we will be able to claim #1 in both slots, and I'll be even more proud to say that I graduated from the U.
Now the real challenge starts, where I have to find a place where I can get my foot in the door. I've applied at a couple places, even had a couple interviews, but so far nothing. I hope that someone will be able to give me a chance and prove that I'm a good game artist and that I have what it takes to contribute to the studio and the project at hand. I know I will find a place, I just have to be patient and in the meantime continue to improve my skills as a game artist.
This was a really personal post, and I'm sorry to have made it so long. But for now, that is all I have to say. After all, I still have a project to finish and a paper to write. Thanks!
-Chris (soon to be Master Christian Munoz!)
April 28, 2013 14:03
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Baking Normal Maps
That is the render of a plane with my floor title, it went from being over 10,000 triangles to just 2. I love normal maps! I baked out an occlusion map and a normal map, here is the composite image of both maps:
April 23, 2013 18:09
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Scope of My Sci Fi Environment
I also decided to seal in my hallway, making adding a big door on either end of the hallway. Here is a render of my new door:
I will think of more items to place around the scene and I'll post updates when I have something to show.
Also, I have to start baking out the normals soon along with some light maps. I'm planning on taking this into unreal for my presentation, so maybe some real basic texture work might be in order. That's all for now, thanks for reading!
April 18, 2013 17:08
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Yet Another Sci Fi Pillar
My logic behind making this new pillar is that it wouldn't have to be up against the wall, so I can have it in places that makes the scene look a not as clean and not mirrored. I still have to figure out where I will place them so that they aren't in the way of someone walking around. That's all for now, thanks for reading!
April 16, 2013 18:06
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Hallway Done
April 15, 2013 01:18
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Sci Fi Door
This door is designed so that instead of opening vertically, it opens horizontally and then the bottom part slides down, and the top part goes up. I was trying to find a way to make the door interesting when I get to animating it and texturing it since I didn't want it to be a regular door.
With the completion of the door, the hallway leading to the bridge of the ship is now done. I still have to make a new floor tile, but for now its done. I will now move to adding all the detail to the bridge.
I finally feel like I'm making progress on my environment, at first it didn't feel like I was doing anything no matter how much time I had just spend on the model. I will also start to maybe use some AO passes on the models so that I don't have to look at them in the same boring grey color. I also have to bake it down, but I will do that at the end.
That's all for now, thanks for reading!
April 11, 2013 13:05
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Kite
The model was about 400 and I use one texture map. Now I have to create a few more texture that can be applied to the kite model. My team also wants me to create some new particle effects for some collision when the player is falling, so my weekend will be very busy. :(
That's all for now, thanks for reading!
April 10, 2013 17:52
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Wall Piece Finished
I basically took all the pieces that I've done so far, and put them all together and this is what I came up with. I'm very pleased with the look and I can't wait to see what everything will look like in the end.
Now that I'm done with the wall, I need to create a cool looking door and I will be completely done with the hallway leading to the bridge of the space ship.
That's all for now, thanks for reading!
April 9, 2013 14:37
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Sci Fi Floor Tile
This title is now ready to be baked down, but I think I will put off doing that for a little while.
Next I will work on creating some roof tiles. Thanks for reading!
April 8, 2013 21:48
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Confessions of a GameDev - A Discussion About Equality
The reason why I'm making this post about the podcast is that the episode we made last week (but is available today) talks about stuff that is very close to me. Its usually a bunch of students and other game devs that have a discussion about current events, but for this episode they invited a PhD student/teacher named Cindy Huynh to the podcast to discuss equality in media, specifically how we portray people in games.
A lot of what we discussed took me back to my freshman year in college since I had to take a few Ethnic Studies classes as part of my scholarship. I hope that if anyone actually reads my blog, you will give this episode a listen since I think that we touch on a lot of points that most of the time get overlooked in media or games.
That's all for now, thanks for reading!
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In the mean time, here are the new renders of my progress on this piece:
By my next update, I hope to have figured out how to do the inking correctly for the art style and get rid of the nasty seams in my texture. Thanks for reading!