Digital Media 3.0

Over the past few weeks I have spent time looking a 3D assets and so on for both film an games, stupidly I’ve not been practicing and the reason for this is that it’s kind of scared to try and potentially fail, I guess. Trying to learn a new skillset seemed like a good idea at the time but having seen how much work it takes has made me wonder if the plan of a single semester project will have to be made into a year-long project. However I aim to try my best, and should it all fail I can still say I tried, I had the same doubts around this time last year about the last project but managed it.

…Anyway…

So far I have decided on 3D work, it’s new and with the game and film industry getting closer and closer it makes sense to try and find an in point that both industries share. The plan is to create an asset library, I have yet to decide on a theme but it’s looking closer to sci-fi than post apocalyptic-fallout-styled-alternate-1950’s BUT I have to come up with an idea. So far I’m standing on the edge looking at the metaphorical learning curve wondering what tools to use.

So far I’m looking at using Blender to model the assets and perhaps Substance Painter to texture, however there is also the idea of using photoshop to create unwrapped textures however I need to look into this more.

My goal for this next week is to come up with an idea… A SIMPLE idea not this big notion of trying to create a game or whatever I have thought of, because there is only one of me and I doubt anyone ever went from beginner to expert overnight.

Hopefully  I can get my ideas on paper first and then modelled soon after.

Even though Blender looks pretty complicated I decided to have a play and see what happened and I managed to make something basic. So far the object is a pillar, however I just added basic shapes together and grouped the various objects.

To start with I created the base with a number of cubes and altered the scale of each of the axis until I was happy with each shape. Once the base was made I added a cylinder and as with the cubes altered the axis until I was happy with the look of the object, after I duplicated the base and rotated it so it was upside down and placed it at the top of the cylinder.

After this quick play with Blender, I think I should stick with this program as it is free to use and it may actually be slightly more user friendly once I get to understand the program more.

So after a surprise holiday to Greece for a couple of weeks and finally getting a replacement laptop, I’ve finally had chance to look at Blender… Oh dear. I think instead of a small learning curve I’d need to get the appropriate gear for mountain climbing. So instead of jumping in at the deep end I’m going to look over a number of tutorials and come up with some ideas on what I’d like to create in blender.

Not much more to say other than how what I assumed to be a moderate learning curve is starting to look more like a mountain…

Hopefully this is readable because my tab doesn’t seem to like this…

So it’s been more than a few weeks since my last post and I am still at my start point, to cut a long story short I’m currently moving back home, getting stuff sorted for a few weeks in Greece and to top it all off my laptop decided to join the other computers in the skybox where they can roam free… Basically it died *insert sad violin music here* so all my plans are on hold until my laptop is fixed or I can get a new one.

As per my plans I downloaded Blender and had a look until I saw the UI and thought it was quite scary. So I plan to look for tutorials in order to help me learn the basics once I am able to. Another program I downloaded was Sculptris I’ve only used this once whilst I played around and it seems quite interesting, possibly replacing blender if it comes to it as the UI is a bit friendlier.

When possible I will continue to search for other free to use software that will allow me to continue learning skills for my Level 3 project.

This post is to basically outline what I’m attempting to learn and tie into my first L3 Digital Media project. Hopefully my proposal (as bad as it was written… I struggle to write what I’m thinking down.) gets accepted as a viable project start point. So what do I want to learn–

“WAIT WAIT WAIT… It’s May… You’ve not long finished Level 2.”

Anyway…

The plan is to try learning two things. First is to attempt to learn how to create 3D models and second is to learn how to paint said models, before they are brought into either a composition ready for a video or have the models exported into an environment using Unity or the Unreal Game Engine. Now I’m not going to pretend it’s going to be an easy project, in fact I expect it’s going to be quite difficult as I have no experience at all with 3D modelling and/or texture painting… Well in this area anyway.

Over the next few weeks (maybe longer) I’m going to try looking at a variety of modelling programs and see which I find best to get on with… Currently I’m excluding software packages I have to pay for, as currently I don’t have the funds to spend large amounts of money on professional software packages.