Been having some fun working in the real world. Spyro was released recently and, although it didn't receive roaring ovations from a number of reviewers, I sure enjoyed sharing in the development process. Have a copy of this title sitting on my book shelf these days and I feel honoured to have shared the experience with such remarkably talented and committed developers.
Working a Wii title this time around and it's proving a little more difficult. Learning at a rapid rate, and happy for the challenge.
On other fronts I've followed up on one caffeine initiative and organised a Melbourne Blender meet-up. First meeting was successful, and I got to meet many of my long-standing Open Source heroes. Some videos and recordings up at Melbournebs.com. Next meeting is due to fall in February or March, weather permitting, and hopefully the AIE will have us back again. Had some guests visit from Sydney last time, while a few celebrities from Qld and WA have suggested that they'd been keen to attend the next meet. Watch that site if you're interested and, as always, feel free to shoot off an email if you want any additional information.
Re-working the portfolio layout atm and sizing up some alternative tentacles. Not going to bother posting any doodles this time around. If you lack nutrients go have a peek at the first-class work of Derek Yu. The man is a genius, and a friendly soul, too!
Site colours have had a reshuffle- the old blue/grey theme was poorly conceived. Hope the green is easier on your eyes, my fellow wayfaring internet wierdo.
Have had a few emails informing that my Vimeo-based Blender training videos have gone up on some of the big-time Blender sites. Groovy! Any requests please feel free to drop me a line.
Blender_Nation have been promoting a number of great tutorials recently detailing a number of different approaches to building a 3d humanoid. Anyone with an interest in creating quality 3d topology should definitely enjoy these Vimeo offerings from Quixotic7 and the tutorial offerings from Montage Studio.
Esteemed Blender-heads will probably already be aware of the amazing range of video tutorials registered at Blenderartists.org. Please don't forget the range of slightly more orthodox resources available on this site.
Seems that the brighter sparks from the old Lightwave possee broke from the pack and did something good for themselves a few years ago. Seems that their efforts are about to come to fruition.
Here's to hoping Modo delivers the 3d interface overhaul that it has promised.
Due appologies no noise on other fronts. I've been locked up.
Been busy bringing myself up to speed with Max this month, and wondering why I hadn't focused on the program previously. Max offers some amazing architectural modeling tools, while integration with Vray offers a host of suprises. The interface kicks the living shit out of Maya's menu mashing/ dropdown rummaging approach to workflow, so I'm relieved.
Completed the round of Z-Brush re-topology tests earlier this month and I'm satisfied that this method of building doesn't offer substantial shortcuts compared to standard box or point modeling techniques. Could be that my computer is getting a little old, or that my tablet's about to fall over, but it seems that difficulties selecting and realigning verts ensure that you have to triple-check every little impression that you make. I built a male biped rig in around 3 days, which is about the time you'd expect a box-modeling job to take, only I noticed that 3/4 of my time was spend correcting Z-Brush oriented drawing errors or attempting to convince neighbouring verts to weld. The frustration really wasn't worth it.
Plan for the upcoming month is to brush up on database coding: I'm getting a little sick of this site's 'blog til you pop' archiving format. More tales of frustration to come, methinks.
