Snickers Peanut butter brownie ice cream cake.

Did some more lecturing on my house for Bones of Essmieror however the hell you spell it

Getting there. Ugh.

Chocolate chip cookie dough pizza.

Texturing for Falafael's Odyssey

Spent most of today working on texturing the Den (first environment) for FO.

Looks kinda gross and simple at the moment, but I've got the basic necessities in the scene- the two doors and the pile of pillows that Falafael is going to be sitting on. I'll add some more mats and miscellaneous stuff to the walls. Also did some fluffing around with the cabinets/pictureframes/and plaques.

And he lives in a burrow, hence the earthy hues and dirt texture and the fairly rickety doors.

Funfetti Cake Batter Cookie Dough Brownie Layer Cake

Background concepts for FO

So the backgrounds for Falafael's Odyssey (in the game and shrub lands) are gonna be mainly in Vue though I'll probably use my space one since I like it so much.

Some ideas for my backgrounds...eeergh, they're kinda getting there. Probably use my space one from Digital Illustration as well, since I really like it;

All in photoshop this one! and I love it

Water Fall; re-rendered.

So my original try the water looked like this-

As may notice, the lighting is extreme and overblasted. The water does look okay, it's just the default lighting is complete outrageous. I had toned it down before, but Maya had crashed repeatedly and I had forgotten to change it.

So I deleted out the sky (since it kept on being extreme) and just added a direction light with a golden hue.

I like it now :) Water is pretty, it's just a painfully slow progress to render it out.

Background experiments.

So I've been working on some bits and bobs and attempting to create some backgrounds for Bones, so I've been googlingpost-apocalypse backgrounds and nuclear testing sights to try and get an idea for it. Brandon doesn't really know what the colour palette is going to be for the film so I'm just going to use a variety of hues and see how they turn out.

1. First test. Used a default sky and a ugly ground plain. Looks alright.

2. Made the sky a bit darker and added some more clouding to the scene.

 

3. Tried a different material upon the ground scape and added a denser cloud blanket.

 4. More yellow tint, the ground texture is a lot more arid and dead, also less rocky.

5. Added some haze which...didn't look so good. I think it's the yellowness of the sky in the background.

6. More sickly green. Did attempt to put a global ecosystem on, but they just showed up as random dots. Also changed the material to sandy.

7. Used a pre-made pyramid and some different skies. Stuffed about with the clouds and added some longer clouds, also took down the tints, fog and haze.

8. Brandon told me that colour pallets have a pinkish tint, so I'm going to turn it into 'Magical elf land'. It's beautiful, I demand all of our backgrounds are this. Needs more godrays.

9. More sandy and mountainous terrain.

Backgrounds

Did some rough sketches of the Background levels for Falafael. I wanted to make them kinda diverse, but not having so many that they're overwhelming.

Little thumb nails to get the gist of the idea.

Made a concept of Air and Lava.

The Air level is, naturally, done all up at a great height. Falafael will make his way across small clouds (screw natural laws)  blimps and balloons. Falling kills him, obviously.

The Lava level is based near volcanic activity. Most of the ground is lava and touching it kills Falafael instantly. He's able to use his glider a lot more often, since the hot air from the lava can propel him upwards. A lot of the platforms are metal or cold lava.

The Sea, where the entire level is depicted on a flat ocean, with nothing in the background. It's night and auroras are in the sky. Falafael scampers over the slewn remains of a shipwreck. Auroras are in the sky and it's night. The sea is also all glittery and pretty.

The Fall the majority of the level is a fall, which Falafael using his glider to navigate the spiky chasm he's falling down. In the background is gigantic, weird ice sculptures on a pale landscape.

The Toxic is a level based upon industrialized and toxic waste. The ground is a thick bubbly mess of green pulsing sludge. Mutated animals lurk in the waste and Falafael gets his slime satchels here, which he can throw at enemies to temporally seal their mouths shut. He can jump on them during that time. Most of the ledges are old pipes and machinery.

The Ice is a level that is, obviously, icy. The sky is a cold blue, while the moon is very white and starkly lights everything. The platforms are made from glass and large glass pyramids are embedded in the dunes.

I may play around with the designs but on the whole I currently like them.

Water Simulation.

Found more issues, notably more of the crashing. Though apparently this was due to me attempting to move the camera while the water particle mesh was simulating in Maya and the software would pack a rage and crash everything.

However I fixed the issue by hiding the water while moving the camera, then switched the visibility back on and rendering it back out. I'll need to see the renders to see how pretty it became.

The particles do look pretty meshed up- and you also get a better feel for it.

I just added some glass texturing and a basic background when I imported it to Maya.

Makes it look reasonably pretty. It will no doubt look quite a bit better rendered fully out, where it has more particles and reactions to the environment.

Maya keeps on telling me there is a 'fatal error' because of the ram memory so Maya keeps on crashing when all I want to do is animate the camera so I can render out the water simulation.

Chinese Checkers Game Board progress (forgot to post this)

So I've largely finished my clock, so I've decided to start on my Chinese checkers board game design.

Just doing a fairly crappy draft of my current design, such as figuring out where everything would be, how much space would be taken up and the colour designs. I've decided to segment the parts up, both for the dragons and the background design i.e flaming fire balls for the dragon, plates of copper for the metal, galaxies for the space.

The center of the board will hold a large pearl, which Chinese dragons are commonly seen with.

Going to start on the backgrounds now...everbuying

Started on metal first, since I think it'll be the easiest. I'm going to do basic 'blocks' of the effects and add more details after I have the basics down.

Made it akin to steel, since the whole metal motif. Will add some stains and scratches later on.

Worked on earth, water and fire.

Trying some more water simulations-

The water is still hovering like the last time.

Though apparently its because I haven't made the end bowl a shell as well- even though they both got imported in at the same time, the bowl didn't turn into a shell when I did it to the stream. Ugh, well I'll try changing the bowl into a lake and see how the water reacts with that- at the moment the water is reacting to the shell.

Water simulations

Been looking up water simulations for my water report.

Found some pretty ones involving water simulations and how it can apply with different effects, such as lava.

Since lava behaves like water in games/movies (despite it really not acting like it in real life) water simulations can come in handy when trying to create lava effects.

I also spent some time researching different engines that animation and digital media companies use for their animation techniques and one of the games I focused on was Far Cry 2, mainly because it was based on a tropical island so water everywhere.

However it is quite a pain trying to find information on the individual engines- I've found it's easier to just study the games and find out their engine through than then specific searching.

Decadent Chocolate Truffles

The best cherry & chocolate cheesecake