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FidgetWidget posted:Does anyone have an opinion of RIT's 3D Digital Graphics course? Friends and professors alike have been practically throwing me at them for some time, but it can't hurt to hear a little more. I'm the exact same person as you, and you would market yourself as a Modeler/Texture Artist. If you're just interested in character stuff, you could call yourself a Character Artist. In a company, your official title would become something like "3D Artist" or something unless you go to a film studio where jobs are much more specific where you'd be "Modeler" or some such. That said, and as cubicle gangster said, the more you have experience with, the better. I'm an intern this summer and the only way I landed the position, which is a strictly modeling/texturing position on the Everquest 2 character art team (hey, a job's a job, right?), is because I had rigging in my reel. My boss told me that that put me above other applicants since I had experience rigging and could build models with that in mind. Emphasize in something you love, but dabble your way through as much of the entire production process so you can understand the common problems people in other departments run into so you can integrate their solutions into your end of the pipeline wherever possible. That is one thing that will help make you much more marketable than your average "Bachelors in Modeling for Games" 2-year grads who are floating around the market wondering why everyone else is getting jobs.
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Jul 1, 2010 19:06
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FidgetWidget posted:Does anyone have an opinion of RIT's 3D Digital Graphics course? Friends and professors alike have been practically throwing me at them for some time, but it can't hurt to hear a little more. The more you know about cross discipline stuff, the better off you'll be, but typically Animation, Environment Art, Character Art, and Technical Animation/Rigging are all separate disciplines. I do not animate (I know how to in Max, but I have poo poo for animation skills). I don't do characters (they don't interest me as much and my anatomy is piss poor). I model guns and robots all day on video games. Having said that, I've built characters, I've rigged characters, I've animated, and I've built a variety of environments, done effects work, etc. When you do a bit of everything you find out your strengths and weaknesses, find out what you enjoy, and find out what pitfalls you'll find that will cause you to need to rework assets (ie, if you've rigged a character, you'll know what you need to do with the character model to ensure good deformation during animation, etc). I graduated from RIT but I have a business/multi-disciplinary studies degree from there. Back at the time I was there (2001-2006ish) they hadn't started up their video game program, and their 3d animation classes were film/TV focused. I was never really impressed with any of the student work on display, either, it was average but nothing outstanding (compare to VFS and Gnomon, which put out very impressive student showcase reels). Having said that, they have a ton of equipment there, competent professors, and if you hang out in the Entertainment Technology lab in the GCCIS building (the building that died for your sins) where the IT and CS majors hang out, you can probably make some friends with which to make videogames (this is what I did it worked for me).
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Jul 1, 2010 19:26
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It seems most are specialists in their job and generalists in the pipeline. Which makes sense because the more you know about what's going to happen to the model after you hand it off to the next guy it'll be easier for him. I just learned about rigging in 3dsmax last semester and it helped me a lot with doing concept art because I think more about the movements of the character or prop and where joints are going to be and how its going to be weighted. Understanding other parts of what goes into the final product will make your contribution that much better. I don't know if that makes sense, but I guess I'm just reiterating what everyone else said.
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Jul 1, 2010 20:12
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I'm on funemployment now, so I decided to teach myself Blender the hard way (along with ZBrush, but that's another project for another week), by rendering a car. I've been working with it for about a week and a half now and this is what I've got:  Considering my last experience with 3D was with Infini-D 4.5 (a program for Mac OS9 (that should tell you how old it is) that was basically just primitives and lathes), I don't think I'm doing too horribly. I suck at materials in Blender right now, so pardon the incredible gloss and terrible lighting. And yes, there's still a lot to go/fix (like the window trim dents/smoothing, fixing some panel gaps, door handles, wheels, etc etc etc).
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Jul 1, 2010 20:30
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Jul 1, 2010 20:42
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Messing around with some volume techniques and stuff on this (HD quality), or Vimeo . Same deal as before, particle system with volumes, already have color working on this, but I didn't update it yet. This has given me an idea to make an aerial dog fight scene with a F-15 and MiG, so I might start working on that on my spare time. Should be fun.
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Jul 1, 2010 20:43
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So Here's my progress with that zombie I was making before. I just started messing around with poly paint. Click here for the full 1008x828 image.
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Jul 1, 2010 20:59
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Octopus Magic posted:I'm on funemployment now, so I decided to teach myself Blender the hard way (along with ZBrush, but that's another project for another week), by rendering a car. I've been working with it for about a week and a half now and this is what I've got: Woah dude that's really great. Still working on my car. Here are some baller rear end wheels I made for it:   Having a lot of fun. I really enjoy making details on stuff. I just really suck at key surfaces that are no comprised of simple shapes. Sorry about the lovely background thing I'm using, it's just default, so doesn't show off curves within the spokes etc very well at all. Just noticed there's some weird artefacts going on on the outer edge of the rim. Also I don't know how to do tyres 
Bape Culture fucked around with this message at 21:13 on Jul 1, 2010 |
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Jul 1, 2010 21:11
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FidgetWidget posted:Does anyone have an opinion of RIT's 3D Digital Graphics course? Friends and professors alike have been practically throwing me at them for some time, but it can't hurt to hear a little more. I graduated at the time they were making some fairly major changes to the program, but I have serious regrets about not going to a different school. Actually... that's not completely fair. The school itself is good in a lot of ways, but the Film & Animation program was in a "we will make independent generalist animators" phase, and I had to constantly fight against that to focus on what I wanted. Oh, and they didn't push for internships during summer months and after graduation, probably the worst mistake of the entire program. That's another thing that was changing during my last year. At the time I was leaving, the program was supposed to be revamped to reflect our issues - sure, give knowledge on everything, but eventually allow actual focus instead of forcing all aspects of animation, all the way through to the end of a thesis project. I don't know how successful they were, but at least the program has its own name, instead of being considered part of the film department  . A lot can change in five years.The weather and the city are loving depressing as hell, by the way.
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Jul 1, 2010 23:05
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mutata posted:I'm sure many here will have a lot of advice, but I'll just say that you'd be surprised who will return your emails. Start digging and actively emailing HR people and artists at companies. Before you email, research the company and watch/play/look at their work, form opinions about it, and express them in your emails, and generally strike up communication. Robin is great.
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Jul 1, 2010 23:07
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Sigma-X posted:I graduated from RIT but I have a business/multi-disciplinary studies degree from there. Ho poo poo, just found out that I played and critiqued your top-down shooter when you posted it on the LiveJournal RIT community.
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Jul 1, 2010 23:16
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ThreeHams posted:Ho poo poo, just found out that I played and critiqued your top-down shooter when you posted it on the LiveJournal RIT community. Yeah I think Alex posted it there, I don't have a livejournal. When we released it we spammed a bunch of stuff to drum up some interest. Everyone from that project got pretty decent jobs in the industry. It was good times and remains some of my most fond memories of college.
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Jul 1, 2010 23:51
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A5H posted:Also I don't know how to do tyres Simple, it's all a pattern, just grab one section and model the groove, then copy them over. This is sort of the idea. http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials/fiat500/fiat500_w1.php
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Jul 1, 2010 23:55
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Entered this into the latest Gnomon monthly contest. Click here for the full 1220x841 image. Low-poly. About 35,000 tris for the scene (most of it in the polearms, which aren't well-optimized... hey, I ran out of time). Spear is around 7,000, part of it off-screen. Great practice, but most of it could have been done a lot better - especially the lighting, which drove me loving crazy, and some really painful mistakes that would have been caught if I had some time away from it. Spent a couple days on the spear, and a couple near-sleepless days on the environment. I'm probably going to scrap everything except the spear and recreate it with a lot more attention, which isn't too big of a loss. The spear looks better in Marmoset, anyway. I just couldn't get a decent metal texture with any lighting setup in Mental Ray. Guess it's not my expertise.
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Jul 2, 2010 00:38
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Not speaking as an artist myself, I think the spear actually looks pretty decent, but one thing that screamed CGI to me was how all the polearms are fitted into their rack like they're structural elements or something. Normally there'd be a tolerance of maybe 1-2cm (maybe more, I dunno) for every hole so you could slide them in or out without having to pull them straight up.
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Jul 2, 2010 01:15
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isochronous posted:Not speaking as an artist myself, I think the spear actually looks pretty decent, but one thing that screamed CGI to me was how all the polearms are fitted into their rack like they're structural elements or something. Normally there'd be a tolerance of maybe 1-2cm (maybe more, I dunno) for every hole so you could slide them in or out without having to pull them straight up. You don't have to be an artist to critique. I've gotten some of the best comments from people who've never drawn anything in their life. Now that you mention it, I gave all the polearms a small bit of random and hand-placed rotation and movement, but was worried about giving it too much. Now I realize it barely even shows up at this angle once it's rendered out.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to completely redesign the racks - they really started bothering me once I shifted around the polearms and got to the texturing phase, but I ran out of time to do anything about it. :/
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Jul 2, 2010 01:26
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What do you guys think of the Animation Mentor program?
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Jul 2, 2010 05:47
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Yasha From Russia posted:What do you guys think of the Animation Mentor program? I haven't heard a whole lot, but what I have heard has been good.
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Jul 2, 2010 06:03
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Yasha From Russia posted:What do you guys think of the Animation Mentor program? I have heard good things. Mostly because it was started by (and still run by?) PIXAR employees.
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Jul 2, 2010 06:59
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Lots of awesome industry mentors in AM, so that's great. Only real downside is probably that its very cookie-cutter these days. I'm so sick of AM reels and that loving AM rig doing the same goddamn "opening a locked door" test.
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Jul 2, 2010 08:11
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tuna posted:Lots of awesome industry mentors in AM, so that's great. Only real downside is probably that its very cookie-cutter these days. I'm so sick of AM reels and that loving AM rig doing the same goddamn "opening a locked door" test. Industry people that I've talked to have been very positive on AM (these are people from Dreamworks and Pixar), but I agree with the above. For the love of god, get some other rigs. Hell, Team Fortress 2 has their rigged characters available for free download, use THEM; anything. Anything but those "Oh, this is an Animation Mentor Reel(tm)" rigs.
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Jul 2, 2010 08:32
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I started a model of the Cheshire Cat from American McGee's version of Alice about seven years ago and I just dug it out again. I could use some critique on the general topology of the head, I don't know if it should be done in a different way. Click here for the full 1920x1080 image.  Click here for the full 1062x770 image.  Click here for the full 984x758 image. I plan on finishing this one day, I swear.
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Jul 2, 2010 14:24
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It's coming along   
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Jul 2, 2010 18:46
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Man, you guys are making me want to start the car project that's been floating around in my head for the past few months... THERE GO MY FREE NIGHTS, THANKS A LOT
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Jul 2, 2010 18:53
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mutata posted:Hell, Team Fortress 2 has their rigged characters available for free download, use THEM; anything. Where would someone find these?
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Jul 3, 2010 08:27
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Hello again to everyone, I haven't posted in this thread in a while because 3d had to take a back seat to other things. I have been diligently lurking in this thread though. Anyway, I recently really wanted to model something and went ahead and did it. Here's the plan -  And then the model:   The hands and arms are pretty much placeholders because I screwed them up and have a new idea how to make them. The whole thing took around 3-5 days, give or take.
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Jul 3, 2010 20:31
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My last post in this thread was my zbrush brock samson model. SInce then I've learned alot more about zbrush and even made it part of my school thesis. So yeah here's the new stuff. First up is a batman model I made for fun as a demo at this years megacon. Ringling college rented out a booth and chose some students to do work to entice people to come to the school. So since I had a big screen set up with a laptop to do live sculpting I thought what better to draw a crowd of nerds than batman. Plus I love batman.   This next one was the villain for my thesis. He's just a really fat man that controls giant mechs through his neuro-mechanical, bio-tech connections or whatever. I was just focusing mostly on the look. this was his concept art.  And this is how he ended up, pretty close but not 100% due to time.     Also if anyone's interested I have a blog and a portfolio.
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Jul 3, 2010 23:38
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poo poo, those are awesome  Not a fan of the mech bits on the fat guy though - it'd be a lot better with a more natural divide than a straight cut, they dont really sit together at the moment. Chunks of mech sits coming back up, bits of flesh hanging over etc.
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Jul 4, 2010 17:17
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Awesome stuff suarez. How many subdivisions do you have there? Usually I can't get past 6-7 or it just crashes. Here's what I got so far on my zombie.  I'd say its almost done, I will add a few more details. Then I have to make the feet and hands and I plan to animate the low poly later.
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Jul 4, 2010 21:11
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cubicle gangster - Yeah, sadly the mech parts were rushed and it wasn't exactly how I planned. I was working on a mac so i had to deal with version 3.2, once I upgrade my PC I'll be working with 3.5 and I'll update the mech parts to look how I wanted. Once I add all the cables connecting the meat to the metal, they'll blend in a lot more. Hackuma - The models are all level 6 max. The trick, especially for the fat guy, are using plenty of subtools and keeping big parts separate. The head is it's own subtool since I knew I was gonna put a lot of detail on that. Then the body is another subtool and all the mechanical parts too. Another trick is using the pinch tool when the model is on a really low level to concentrate the pixels in spots you know you're gonna be adding a lot of detail in later. I like the zombie too, those colors are coming out real good.
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Jul 5, 2010 19:43
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Presenting this tomorrow, so this is it done for now:
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Jul 5, 2010 21:58
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Thats come along really well. Have you considered putting a grill on the back or some random detail? Looks a little flat as a slab of black compared to all the nice lines in the rest of it.
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Jul 5, 2010 22:15
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Thanks man. Yeah I want to make it mesh. Gonna work into it for a while after it gets marked tomorrow as just a portfolio piece. Do full interior, shut lines etc etc. Basically just practice like gently caress on it until I can have something that's getting towards photo realism. Also does anyone know how surland and the like add shadows to their stuff on a backplate? It's really thrown me off.
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Jul 5, 2010 22:18
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in vray you can throw a plane underneath and put a vraymtl wrapper on, check on matte surface, -1 affect alpha and shadows checked on - the backplate renders in the background and the shadow get rendered over the top of it. You can do this with passes and lay it over in post using other methods (mental ray & others included) but I cant think of it off the top of my head.
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Jul 5, 2010 22:29
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Ah drat, I'm using Vray. I wish I'd known that earlier hahaha. Ah well, it shouldn't look too bad on a projector so I should get away with it. Cheers buddy.
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Jul 5, 2010 22:33
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Yasha From Russia posted:Where would someone find these? I haven't been at home all weekend, I'll find out tomorrow and post. You MAY have to download the Source SDK, but I'll check.
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Jul 5, 2010 23:41
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A5H posted:Presenting this tomorrow, so this is it done for now: This looks great! No doors, though? Also, do you have a front shot?
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Jul 6, 2010 21:39
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TheSpook posted:This looks great! No doors, though? Obviously it's for aerodynamic reasons. Doors add drag. 
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Jul 6, 2010 22:26
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Cheers dude   Got torn apart at uni  Got marked literally the minimum grade possible before a fail
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Jul 7, 2010 11:37
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I think it looks really nice mate. What did they say about it?
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Jul 7, 2010 11:41
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