Reid Price : Student of 3d video game design and production

Second scene under way

2006-07-04T15:46:00.000-07:00

Here is a start to my second project. Gonna really focus on textures here. Peeling paint, dirty debree ridden floor ect. Should be fun!

The end and beginning are nigh

2006-07-04T15:34:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty much done my first environment. It took a lot longer then I would have liked. A broken computer then a new computer that broke had a lot to do with that, but here is pretty much a final render of it. It is still being tweaked though, especially in the lighting department. Here is what she looks like.

Last Semester well under way

2006-06-07T18:53:00.000-07:00

Well here we are, I know school is gonna be done before I know it, so Im busting my ass tryin to create some quality work for my demo reel. Im feeling pretty good about the work I've done so far, Uv Mapping and texturing is next. Here is a look at my first environment work in progress. Also I don't think i mentioned, the short film, "Office Space" that I was doing some modelling work for was picked up my a production company. Pretty cool to see an independant project go professional that I had a small part of. I finished the photocopier for them and then soon after I got the news. Good part is got word from the director that the photocopier will most likely be used in the film I will still get credit, and it'll be great to see my little guy ( photocopier :P ) in the final film. Cool stuff. Anyway, here is the latest.

Some ideas for environments

2006-05-15T21:58:00.000-07:00

Here is my first sketch of an environment I'd possibly like to do. Would be fun to model and texture. The plan is to have some completed beautiful environments done by the end of the semester for my demo reel. I don't even know how many I'd think I could have done by the end, but the idea is to have the work I complete be top notch whether it be one environment or 51, don't matter as long as it is good!

Final Semester!! (Time to seperate the men from the boys)

2006-05-15T21:46:00.000-07:00

Well, third semester has begun and so far so good. it is much like my final year of fine art was where we would show up to class in the morning and work our asses off as long as possible and the profs would help and guide us. we all had individual meetings with the profs Terry Posthumus and Paul Neale. Paul is new too us this year and he is not a bullshitter, he let's you know if your stuff sucks or not with no strings attached and that it great! In my meeting I said I would like to persue being an environment artist. So the first thing they got me doin is texturing rooms. No modellin whatsoever, not allowed, just plain as say rooms. Six sides. so here is what I came up with. (It is really annoying not to be able to model at all, but it was a texturing assignment so I guess it's ok)The rooms are not very polished at all but were at least a decent start.

Kila Rig and Pose

2006-05-05T13:28:00.000-07:00

Wow, rigging. What the hell can I say about that. It's such a technical, endless process. Rigging is the process of setting up your character to be animated in an easy way so that an animator can pick up your character start animating easily. I like it and I don't. But I must say and I suppose this is true for everything but it is sure good when it finally starts working right. Here is what the rig looks like in Maya and also here is an image of Kila in a pose.

First go at texturing a character

2006-05-05T13:17:00.000-07:00

Here is Kila all textured up. Not not too bad I suppose. I know it could of been taken quite a bit further, but it was sufficient for my first try. The idea is to improve as I go, so my next one I will make a lot better. Im getting ready to start my 3rd and final semester. It is mostly independent work with the aid of teachers to guide you. It is exactly like my third and final year of fine art was and I loved that, so I am really excited. But the point I was getting to was that it is 3rd semester now, crunch time, demo real time, time for me to make good 3d content and not just sufficient for class content. It's time to make get my ass a job content! lol

Sculpty Dudes!

2006-05-05T13:07:00.000-07:00

Here is what I did for my Character concept development class. We had to create a couple characters out of sculpty, a type of clay. First you make a wire frame of your character then you build that up with tinfoil then you clue your character to a wood base then you begin really sculpting your character with the sculpty. This sculpty stuff doesn't get hard until you bake it, unlike most clays.
I must say this class was a tone of fun but in this tight schedule and short amout of time to learn ( only 3 semesters which is actually a semester longer than most gaming and 3d animation courses ) I made the decision not to focus too much on this class. My goal was to get some experience in it and get er done! So thats what I did, and here are the little dudes I came up with. P.S I must say some of my classmates stuff was amazing. They definately chose to go all out and it showed!

Here is a WIP of the photocopier I am modelling for the short film

2006-03-05T20:58:00.000-08:00

I dunno what they'll think of the photocopier for the film 'Office Game' but I hope the director likes it. I am really looking foward to seeing how this project turns out. Awsome script and great quality of work so far. I can't say enough about how valuable the community at CGtalk is. www.cgtalk.com. It's where I got hooked up with the crew puttin together this ambitious short. Here is the link again to the Office Game webbie. http://eammon.endysis.org/officegame/
Until next time.

My first 3d character Model

2006-03-03T18:56:00.001-08:00

I created this model while following a book tutorial, 'Game Character Development with Maya". This being the first character model that I've ever personally done in the history of the universe i think it turned out pretty decent. Looks not too bad, however some more work could of went into making the wire frame a little more effecient. Less polys, cleaner mesh, less tris, that sort of stuff. But for a first go it turned out okay. I look foward to UV mapping and texturing the lovely lady which is our next assignment. Ninja Vanish.

3d Compositing Assignment

2006-01-31T21:27:00.000-08:00

Here is my product for our intro to compositing assignment. This was pretty cool stuff. It is incorporating a 3d element into a 2d photo and of course making it look convincing. I chose to make my 3d object a minor object in the final scene because, well, being my first time I'm not gonna be too... great at compositing. So I incorporated an old beat up stool and placed it in the back of my photo.
On another note, first semester is over, and it went really well. I got some good grades and learned a billion, kajillion, fofillion things. ( yes i know its crazy, but I actually learned that much stuff... fofillions)Learned alot about myself, being away from home for the first time. I only got homesick a few times but things are rolling well. Being home for christmas really made me realise how much I miss home. So now I gotta work twice as hard to get a job at Digital Extremes, an awsome game studio right in my home town of London Ont. I am also now doing some modeling work for an animated short called Office Game. Looks like an awsome project.http://eammon.endysis.org/officegame/ Bottom line, things are going really well.

Lighting Assignment

2005-12-14T06:01:00.000-08:00

If there is one thing I've learned from messing in 3d over the years it is that lighting can make or break your work. Lighting in so key, possibly the most important element in a 3d scene. In this assignment we had to create a simple room and light it three different ways. Here is what I came up with.

UV Mapping

2005-12-14T05:18:00.000-08:00

For this assignment we had to UV map two of our own models. We could use one model that we already created (I used my Boeing)and we had to create a new model also. I created my digi camera as my new model. I modelled this simple cam since creating something too complicated would take way to much time and time is definately a factor in this course. I have never been comfortable with UV mapping since we were first taught it, and I'm not the best at creating textures so this assignment was indeed scary for me. I put a lot of extra time into getting comfy with UV mapping and although the mapping could use a little work I think it went rather smoothly considering my mapping fear. The quality of the texture was not as important as having a clean UV map. Definately got no sleep while doin this assignment. Speed is a concern of mine, but with practice it will come.

Gun for use in Game

2005-12-14T01:29:00.000-08:00

Hey all. This gun I created is ready for use in a 3d game engine. In this case it will be used in the Unreal engine. All we had to do was create a low poly gun in Maya. We could create whatever kind of gun we wanted. Obviously so, as you can see I got a little silly and based my model off of the oh so classic Nintendo gun. We also prepared the gun with trigger and handle bones, necessary for importation into the Unreal game engine for use in Unreal tournament 2004. Also created a firing recoil animation as well as a standard bobbing animation. Very simple. Hopefully it will be in game by this friday and I'll capture some screen shots. On a side note, I really miss Duck Hunt!

First modeling assignment

2005-11-23T21:14:00.000-08:00

This was what I did for my first modeling assignment. We had to produce two models (didn't have to be textured). I did a Boeing 747 and a 1933 Cadillac ( we had to do a car or a plane from before 1950). Lots of work and lots of fun. I gotta get faster at producing this kind of stuff, very important in the industry. Incase you didn't know our main 3d program used is Maya 7.0. The images between the screenshots of my models are blueprints of the things I modeled. Their are a handful of places on the internet with good blueprints for all sorts of things. Make sure you get blueprints that are on model or you'll be messed!

A rendering I Did. Testing out bump mapping and Lighting

2005-11-23T20:08:00.000-08:00

I've also included the pucks UV mapped textures and the golf balls bump map. With the golf balls bump map being skewed the way it is it avoids me having to UV map the ball at all. If the holes were not deformed the way they are and were just left as perfect circles there would be pinching and incorrect looking concave shapes on the tops and bottoms of the golf ball. Just added a nike logo to go along with the ball, didn't bother modeling it as an exact nike ball. No time in this course! The puck is of a puck I have in my room. I scanned the top, bottom and did two scans of the sides and merged the two together and applied them to the UV map. It was my first time really uv mapping. Also added a bump map to the sides of the puck simply by desaturating the side of the puck image in photoshop.

Some Life drawings from...You guessed it... Life drawing class

2005-11-23T14:07:00.000-08:00

All drawings from live models except for the discuss thrower. Not bad I suppose, I dunno, I have a hard time judging my own drawings, never been a big fan. So help me out!

Some drawings for Character drawing class

2005-11-23T00:45:00.000-08:00

Here is some drawings. For the first three we had to do a face character drawing of a lunch lady, a hit man, a jock, a cheerleader, a truck driver, and a librarian. The teacher was looking obviously for characters that represented those titles and correctly drawn facial features. Got an 18/20 on it. Hmm, a l'il surprised but not bad eh. The second two of the cats was a character designed my teacher. We had to draw the character in a happy, sad, angry and scared look. It was very hard to keep the cat on model. I didn't do so well and got a 14/20. Apparently the 3d industry really appreciated and necessitates the ability to have good drawing skills. Life and character drawing classes have really helped in building these skills. Soon I will put up my life drawings as well as more character drawings. Right now we are working on character model sheets, set designs and storyboarding.

Posing a character in 3d

2005-11-22T22:32:00.000-08:00

For some of our first assignments in our 3d animation class we had to pose a character, that we were all givin, in a figure drawing type of pose. Here is what I came up with. Oh, the character is called Generi, he is available for anyone to use. Just google the name and you'll find him. There are also quite a few more free ones available out there, like Generick or IKman. I'll also include another assignment with Generi. We had to put him in a devistated pose. Had fun with these assignments. :)

How this blog and the course work

2005-11-22T21:40:00.000-08:00

Hey all. I'm currently about three quarters through my first semester of 3d for production: Gaming and Interactive entertainment @ Humber College. First semester of the course is broke down into 5 courses once a week each.

1. Animation art fundamentals (drawing for animation)
2. Figure Drawing fundamentals (usually a nude model to draw for every class)
3. Digital Cinematography (photoshop work, 3d lighting, texturing ext.)
4. 3d Wire Frames for games (3d modelling for gaming, UV, bump, specular, normal mapping etc.)
5. Animation Principals and Applications ( 3d animation taught from a traditional point of view)

I'm very pleased with the course so far. I graduated 3 year fine arts at Fanshawe College just to get into a program like this and I've wanted to do this since about grade 8 so yeah, very excited and happy to be where I am.

I will begin posting some work pretty much now. I will include info about it with the post so you can see first hand what the work is like in my course. Enjoy, and I encourage comments, questions and critique.

Pricey

Hello World!

2005-11-16T01:07:00.000-08:00

This is my first ever post! Yaaay! Now that the celebrating is over it's back to business as usual.
If you are interested in getting into computer animation or 3d work for video games then this is a great spot to see what it is like by following my journey. I attend Humber College in Toronto for 3d for Production: Gaming and Interactive entertainment.

If you are an industry professional or just anybody who has questions or comments I strongly encourage you to do so. Enjoy! :)

Pricey
reidprice@rogers.com