Line Art to Illustration

Yet another Photoshop thing, took some orthographic line art and tried turning it into a realistic scene. The color on the lamp's body should probably vary a bit more from the background wallpaper, it tends to blend a little too much.

Just waiting on the Creation Kit to get released for Skyrim then hopefully I'll get back into the modeling thing.

Colorizing Black & White

Just spent around 90 minutes making this. Turning a grayscale photo into color. Came out pretty well but I think the roots on the right side of the photo are too large, and for some reason nothing I did would make the sky color satisfy me properly. Think its pretty good for my first attempt. Quick "fine art" at the bottom also.

More Photoshop - Abstract Art

My first assignment was due tonight for my Photoshop class, just abstract art that was supposed to give a feeling of depth and possibly motion. Here's my submission:

Decided to just put some little thing together too since I liked the multi-colored electric-light thingymajig too.

Starting off on Photoshop - Painting & Retouches

So the last few weeks I haven't done much modeling, too busy playing games so I can uninstall them before Battlefield 3 and Skyrim come out. I have been playing with Photoshop some though. In the process of making some abstract image for class which I'll post once it's done, but as for my own side project I retouched some old family photos and also tried painting over an image to replicate it.

Here is the original image of my little bro at the archery range, then the painted version of him, and finally the painted version on top of the original background. The hair could probably be redone, hard to get myself satisfied with it.

And some retouches of a black & white and a color photo. Gonna end up trying to make a black and white into a color image soon, whether for class or for myself.

 

Hoping to get some modeling done again soon.

B-25 Engines & Propellers

This morning the engines got finished as well as the proplellers, though I'll probably end up adding more details inside the engine cowl.

Not sure which part to do next. I guess either the belly/top gun turrets or start working on the nose/tail turrets.

B-25 Wings & Engines

Today I was working on getting the base shape of the engines done and getting it to smooth out with the wings. Also cut out the ailerons & flaps. Most of the work was all the cutting/bridging/chamfering to try and get the engine to smooth out to the shape of the wings and not appear as an entirely separate component. I realized I'm still operating in low-poly mode for some reason... sort of hesitant to use cylinders with more than 18 or so sides. I'll just TurboSmooth it at the end and add more details I guess.

B-25B Mitchell Started

Started on the B-25 yesterday, modeled in the rear elevators, rudder, and trim. Next up, either the engines or the elevators on the wings, not sure which order yet. Had some trouble getting some smoothing to work where the tail connects to the rudder (not shown in this picture), took a while to get it right.

Textured Artifact, Portfolio Start

Finished texturing and setting up the glow map for the Artifact today, came out pretty awesome! I might end up trying to add the portal above it also, not sure yet.

I found this great free model of the Chief also. Currently trying to figure out how to refine vertex assignments in the 3ds Max biped system so I can animate it without some vertices stretching out improperly.

Also I figured I should start working on / organizing a small portfolio of sorts, in case I want to try and join a mod or indie team sometime for some more practice. Most of the stuff I have done is scattered in multiple places. Started working on a list of things to model and texture, including refining a few things I've already done:

• AIM-54 Phoenix dolley
• Mk82 bomb racks
• Military laptop & radio
• B-25 Mitchell
• Some stylized melee weapon, like a sword, axe or hammer
• A scene of an alley with a bunch of dirty props
• A scene of some fictional setting, perhaps medical labs or a dock

And eventually... I'm going to have to model try modeling a character and some organic stuff. Don't know why I'm hesitant to do so, probably just because I haven't before. I'll stick to getting some of these hard-surface models done first.

Halo - The Artifact

Decided I'd do the Ark Portal (The Artifact) first as it would be the easiest in terms of modeling and would let me play with terrain sculpting in CE3 some more. Not being able to use a brush greater than 200m wide sucks when you're working with a 8x8km map. My "Artifact" is about 4.8 km in diameter... the "real" thing is 120km wide, supposedly. I think the scale looks pretty decent in-game. The only unfortunate bit of this... is that I don't think I'll be able to put in a glow effect for the molten rock on the edges of the artifact, where it should have been recently "glassed" by the Covenant. Because first, the Terrain.layer material type does not support emissive glows, and the material type that does support it seems to fade from view rather quickly when painted onto terrain (thankfully it seems it'll still work for the artifact, given its size).

What I've got so far, untextured artifact and mostly done terrain (will have to add some overhanging cliff ledges here and there). Will also end up having to model and texture the Forerunner Dreadnought.

Beach Scene Fixed Up, Starting on Simple Environment

I played around with Time of Day settings a bit and more importantly now understand how the terrain texture layers work in CryENGINE 3. Was a little strange to me at first but now it makes sense. I tidied up the texture color and made it seamless, and scaled down the tiling as well for more detail. Also played with darkening the texture under the water instead of just painting it blue, def looks better. Here's 2 different versions:

Also, after watching 4 episodes of Halo: Legends last night, I've developed an interest it perhaps trying to make a few environments from the Halo universe in the engine as well, simply for rendering/artwork purposes. I think I'll do an interior first... probably the Control Room of Installation 04. Then try an outdoor scene.

Safe Textures Finished

So I got the textures done. Learned a few tricks doing this, though I'll have to learn to refine those tricks for use in game assets probably. First off, before this I'd only ever had normal/bump maps baked from a higher-poly model. This uses both a bake from a higher-poly safe, as well as a hand-crafted normal map texture for the paint chipping areas and such. The specular mapping wasn't too bad, though I had to contrast the image to some extremes and up the specular levels in max a little for it to really show. Still, came out fairly well. Not only that but this may be the most work I've ever done on a diffuse texture, starting off with baking and adding ambient occlusion onto the uv layout. I also ended up downloading a bunch of new brushes for GIMP to use, got tired of using a simple "dot" brush to make scratch effects. I'm happy with the way this came out in the end.

Top to bottom:
-Wireframe
-Shaded
-Normal Map
-Normal + Specular
-Normal + Specular + Diffuse

Thank god I didn't know how to add specular maps or detail bump maps like this when I was making the Nimitz... I think I'd still be working on textures. What to do now? Hmmm...

Texture practice and CryENGINE 3

I recently downloaded the CryENGINE 3 SDK to toy with and attempt to learn, which is what Crytek used to develop Crysis 2 with. Needless to say, it's very powerful and in my opinion a little more towards the bleeding edge than the Unreal Engine. Played around with terrain sculpting some, used voxels to make a small cave, but was mostly interested in trying to get my own assets incorporated. So for a test and to learn how to do it, I made a beach chair, umbrella, and cooler to import into the engine and make a scene with. Below is the result of that effort:

 

The terrain texture could use some work but I kinda rushed that with some basic sand I found, haven't really played with tweaking terrain textures yet, just know how to apply them. The color under the surface of the water is a bit of an abrupt change as well. One thing that would really improve this is if I new how to make specular maps for the chair and umbrella, like having highlights on the frame and such. I realized I needed more practice with textures, specifically specular maps and overall just adding detail to diffuse maps. Because of that, I started working on some simple model of a safe:

 

It's still WIP and I'll definitely post when finished. Right now it only has a mostly-completed diffuse and bump map. It's nothing more than a 6-sided cube (granted, chamfered edges) with some hinges and a knob modeled on.

Ordnance Storage

This is the most actual modeling I've done in a while. Usually it's small simple things here and there but these took a little while, especially the unwrapping for the Phoenix's dolley, jeez! So last night and today I've modeled out the interior of the storage room below decks, added some props like an intercom, doors, chair/table, whiteboard... most of those I had already used in the ship and am just re-placing them here as well. These Mk82 ammo carts and the Phonix dolley are new. Myke was generous enough to allow me to use his ordnance models as a base to work these containers off of, though I did all but redo the Phoenix as it had way more polys than required. So this'll all be part of the "Maintenance Upgrade" to the Nimitz at the end of the month. I'll probably eventually also make some more weapon containers and release them separately for people in the community to use as they will.

Note this screengrab is from Max, not the game :)

Mk82 racks and Phoenix in dolley in storage room

Weapons Room for the Nimitz

Most of this idle-blog time has been spent on scripting for ArmA 2, unfortunately, instead of modeling. Most of that scripting involved developing the targeting system (acquiring aircraft targets, filtering out friendly units, and prioritizing hostiles based on range & threat imminence) for the Sea Sparrow. Another community member has been very helpful and is getting the missile guidance done, which would probably have taken me a little longer than forever. Other than that, lots of bug fixes/improvements.

Hopefully I'll get that done and out by the end of the month, along with the newest sub-project for the Nimitz: an aircraft munitions storage room to be used in conjunction with rearming services to aircraft aboard the carrier. Along with this feature to resupply planes, I'll be scripting in areas for aircraft to be refueled and repaired. Others have done this with scripts but hopefully having to transport ordnance in this fashion will add a little more interactivity to it.

 

Currently:
- Elevator & Shaft are done (need very minor tuning on textures)
- Storage room is modeled, no detailing or prop-work has been done yet.
- Any type of scripting has yet to be done, but that's the easy part.
- Plane is to just use the stock towing tractor, possibly later model/incorporate a weapons dolley

Sea Sparrow & Normal Mapping

After a tutorial and hassling to figure a few things out on my own, I finally got baking normal maps in 3ds Max under wraps. At least, as well as I need to for now. Added well over 100,000 polys just for the rivets all along the launcher tubes for the Mk29, baked into a normal map, and now in the game. Figuring out .rvmats and how to properly get the normal map into the game without making it look crazy took a few tries also.

Now I just need to make a actual texture/diffuse map for it. Definitely not taking the time to get the config and everything worked out so it can be used in the game yet though, gotta start on my dropship! It'll just have to be eye candy for a while.

Elevator Controls for Nimitz

Something that was asked for by no small amount of people when I first released the Nimitz for the ArmA II community, I finally got around to making panels that will allow access to raise/lower the elevators when you aren't on them (calling elevators to your level or sending it to another level). Simple models just to house the in-game actions, no real reference so just my own thing.

I reeeaaaally need to get started on that dropship I want to make... or work on that artillery piece some more...

Mk 29 Sea Sparrow Launcher

Today I got the urge to finally start modeling the defensive turrets for my Nimitz carrier, starting with the Sea Sparrow missiles and their launcher. Most of the modeling is done, a lot of the finer details (bolts/rivets and such) will just be put on with normal maps probably since it's for a game.

I'll probably get around to modeling the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile and launching system next.

Outdoor Slow-Down, Back to Work

Well, spent 12 nights with my little bro doing everything from my high school's 100th birthday weekend-long celebration, then a week out camping in Zion National Park, Utah... and then of course 4th of July celebrations. Time to get crackin' on modeling and stuff again.

No pictures to report, just been working on my ArmA II carrier's today, very little in the way of modeling, mostly config file editing, finally getting a few long-standing issues fixed. Next post will probably be some shots of new models, either the start of a custom dropship I want to make or some defensive turrets for the carrier - Sea Sparrows and the like.

Project Start - Gauss Artillery Cannon

So school ended last week, and the whole time I was learning and using Maya for everything from modeling to rendering a 20-second animation. Later on I'll have to post the end product but for now, back to this...

I figured this summer I'd start using 3ds Max again beside Maya, so that I could work on and release updates to the USS Nimitz and HMS Queen Elizabeth models I made for the ArmA II community. Upon entering Max I found my control of the camera and shortcuts were devastatingly corrupted after using so much Maya, thankfully someone in the ArmA forums pointed me to a plugin that makes it all like Maya, and I changed shortcuts to match too.

Anyway, so I decided to make some small object just to get used to modeling in Max again, but it turned into an entire artillery piece which I'm hoping to be the first model I really put a lot of detail into, both in terms of the geometry and the textures. I don't plan on personally realizing this model as a working piece in ArmA II but there seems to be some interest in sci-fi models so perhaps after it's all done I can give it up to someone who will see it through.

Here it is (playing with the Acrylic view in Max for these shots):

I've been told it looks like a sewage pipe in the first two but hopefully once it's done that'll change, still a lot of detail to add to it. My basic concept for it is that the blue objects are the magnetic plates, and when firing, they collapse back into the barrel of the cannon in rapid succession, attracting and shooting out the magnetic round (which by the way is 7 inches in diameter, its a big boy). The piece itself is about 18.5 feet in length.

Still to add:

- Power cables from each of the panels that run all the way down the cannon, into a generator or power source somewhere on the base

- Various other things as they come to mind, mostly props and stuff on the base

Digital Art Blog, More or Less for Personal Use

Creating this blog to chronicle the digital artwork I do, mostly as a personal journal than anything else, to look back on sometime and hopefully see improvements and just see a bunch of "today I did this" posts. Will mostly include 3D modeling and animation, but hopefully some video editing and image editing/compositions also in time. Guessing these will just be short posts when they are made, accompanied by some image of the day's work, whether good or bad.

Sometime over this summer I'll probably try to incorporate this blog into, or just link to it from, a personal website I'll make, which will be more expansive. Already have had www.daviddurston.com for a while now, mostly just as the url for my hosting space where I make/host other sites I've done. It'll be for both digital endeavors and all the outdoor stuff I do... speaking of which, I'll be camping in Zion 7 days from now!

Suppose I'll make a "starter" post right now with what I started modeling yesterday.