Well I've been buried with uni work, as always, and this is going to be like this until at least the end of August. It's all good though, keeps me busy and keeps me learning so much. It's rather funny that before starting this course I had only knowledge or 3D studio max, and I liked to think I was quite good with it; but for this course I have had to learn how to use Maya for our game, which was something I was a bit sceptical about because I did not want to learn something new when there was already something I could do and could improve with. That's not to say it was a bad idea, in fact I actually love it now; besides random crashes and battling with it on a daily basis, it's actually such a powerful software with such an intuitive UI, you can tell that this was designed by an artist where Max most probably by a programmer. So as I was saying, what's funny is that now I feel I am pretty efficient with Maya, but when I try to go back into Max it all feels so alien and I feel uneasy with it. Ah pretty ironic that my views have totally turned 180 degrees.
Anyway back to this post... As you saw in my last post I am doing some side projects to boost up my portfolio. That last one still needs a lot of work as I feel it is not particularly inspiring, but nonetheless I've had to get going on this next one, so it is something I will go back to on a later date.
This current project is based on the theme 'The Old Earth'; in fact I was given a choice of 3 to go with, with the other two being 'The Alchemist' and 'The forgotten realm'. So what I decided to model is an old carrack (old sailing ship back from the days of the pirates), with most of my references coming from a particular ship named 'Roter Lowe', a Dutch vessel which was big and mighty in its day. Working this kind of project is great, and references are not only good for helping you with you models, but the research also allows you to understand what you are modelling and learn about it; and at the end of the day the reason I love to travel is because I love to learn new and exciting things, so this is a way for me to do that during those times I cannot travel...fantastic :D
So this is still a work in progress but I figured I would treat you to a couple of images to show you where this is going.
The ship is actual size and is something which could be used as an environment piece in a game as it is quite low poly [under 7000 poly at the moment], but I plan to stick it in a bottle [which I will also show you the image of so you can see how pretty it is]. Which eventually will go onto a desk full of other well detailed models, which will eventually turn out to be a desk in a captain's cabin [which the idea is that it is the cabin inside the ship which is in the bottle which is on the desk within said cabin; aaaah craaaazy, it's like inception....but with ships]
Viewport screenshot of the Roter Lowe |
Render of the view of from the previous image |
The Roter Lowe inside its bottle |