Character Concept

I'm taking Concept Art (Art233), and it just so happens that we finished our first project last week (character concepts). I was planning on modeling the character I came up with in that class.

Sky Island

character

here are some images for my character.

Dulce

(Semi) Final renders

Here are the renders for my scene as it now stands. Hopefully this serves its purpose. I will still be doing a lot more work on this but its at least in a passable state now.

ITS DONE!!!

here is my mid term screens, i decided to actually start over from scratch because i didnt like where the old level was going, i hope you guys like it. :) I also hope to have my character done before the night is over as well.

Finished (for the most part)

So after going in and cleaning up the height map a little bit, there aren't as much seams. (They're still there, I couldn't get rid of all of them, but there's not nearly as much). I also went in and fixed the skymap, so now there isn't a really quick transition from light to dark.

I wanted to fix the water, but the shells are down so I couldn't see the video.

Overall I really like the far away shots, I think those look nice, and I like my textures (especially my ground texture). I think the individual height map doesn't look too bad. What I don't like though is the close ups (like in Picture 2). They just seem, I don't know, boring? I think everything looks good individually but when put together something's just a little off.

This was definitely the biggest project I've done so far though as far as modeling goes and overall I had fun doing it (even if max gave me headaches, I didn't run into nearly as many problems as I was with maya).

update

here are some new screens, i managed to get my trees into the scene, everything seems to work ok, progress is slow and painful but progress is progress.

Scene Render Update

So, Max was giving me quite a few technical difficulties, things which either had no fix besides restarting the program or things that were so basic there were no Google results up front for an easy fix.

At that point I decided to port everything over to Maya for good.  While I want to learn Max, doing so in a grade- and deadline-based environment is not the place to do so and has been a major inhibition with my work flow and efficiency.

I slapped together the remainder of my scene in a few hours.  I prettied up the shadows and scattered some foliage around my desert scene.  I still have to make the water ripple during the camera fly-through but besides that, my scene is almost complete.

After showing my render to Aby, she suggested having more of a sunset effect with the sun.  I did try this, however the angle of the cast shadows reduced the visual appeal.  I decided to keep it with more of an afternoon time setting despite the sky box being orange as during sunset.

Below is frame 41 of 362 of my fly-through.  It shows a good portion of the main area and its details.

Edit: Here's the full video.  I had some trouble putting it together due to software incompatibilities.

Here's my character concept:

game world

Scene

Afflicted Level

Afflicted Prototype Level

Mid-Term Critique Format & a TIP

Click on "Comments" below each students' mid-term critique post:

Leave one affirmation and one constructive comment.

Format:

I like __________because______________.

You may consider changing___________by doing_________________.

Critique is how we develop our artist's eye and grow our talents. Welcome all comments and consider them for at least 5 minutes before deciding whether they are not valid or valid enough to be applied to your work.

TIP: Many artists use a mirror to see their work from a different perspective as many times we cannot see our own work objectively.

Checklist for Mid-Term Presentation:

Checklist for Mid-Term Presentation:

Visual & Verbal Presentation

Content (Textured & Populated):
Height Terrain LODs
Ecosystem LODs
Architecture Module LODs
Sky Dome

Dulce Base Level

the scene

Here is my scene with my trees and buildings

Desert Oasis

Mine is pretty much an old excavation site that's been abandoned for whatever reason. The sand is starting to bury the buildings. The only problem I really ran into (besides the view somehow changing from perspective to orthographic and me taking an hour and a half to figure out what was wrong) is that when we started, I didn't realize the height maps needed to be seamless. I tried to go back and fix it, but didn't have to much luck. You can't tell from these renders, but there's definitely some problems with the maps lining up.

Scene & LOD Renders

Max was casting some odd shadows.  WAY too dark for the amount of light in the scene.  I'll have to re-tweak something to fix these blasted shadows.

Renders, Scene

Some work in progress Renders. C/C