Yay for me!!!

I got my grade back for my Art Deco Church. I got a 95%! W00T!!! He loved it but he said that some of the camera movement was jerky (which it was because I used angles insted of curves) and he felt that I needed to use more complex models. I am ok with that ... I still got a whopping 95! WoW!

Anyhoo ...I am now working on my character, and boy is that different. I am afraid that I might get something a lot lower than a 95 on him. It is much more complex than an object as you have preconceptions on how a character should look. If I told 10 people to envision a car, you would get 10 different pictures. Now ask them to envision Sonic the hedgehog, well, there is only one Sonic the Hedgehog. Even though I am making a unique character it is still trying to conform to my own imagination. Not very easy.

Well ... back to the grind.

Take care all.

And the verdict is in ...

So, I just got a new compurer and have been in the process of moving files over and such. I have just taken a break to try and rerender my project just to see how fast my new system is. Well, what took 26-27 hours to render on my old system now takes ... only 9 hours!!!! YAY!!! So ... once I have the time to put my old project back to the way it was before, I plan on doing so and getting it rendered.

Thank you Mom and Mike!

*sigh* Well, here it is ...

Herei s my first project forthis term for my Intermediate 3D Art class. I *sigh* because it is not as good as I wanted. I actualyl had it looking like something straight from a movie, with sharp crisp colors and detail, but ... when I went to go render my walk through (rendering being where I make a picture of each of the 600 steps it would take to walk around my church), the program crashed due to not enough memory (ram). The first thing I though was that the last item I had placed in my scene was what crashed it. It was some very nice atmospheric lighting coming down from the stained glass window up in the balcony, with shaded lights flowing down with it, but I decided to do some tweaking first to see if I could keep things together. Well ... I went to go renderit and it said it would take over 80 hours to render ... ACK!!! Well ... I decided that for the sake of a great project, I would let it go. I watched it render the first shot, and it went through, so I went to bed (did I mention it was 3 a.m.?). WHen I got up, I was very disappointed to find that it had crashed again ... on shot 2!!!. Arggggghhhh! 8hrs wasted! So ... I made a few more tweaks, this time taking out the beautiful atmospheric light I had, and it said it would render in about 70 hours. Not too bad ... but this time it crashed on shot 8! GGGGGRRRRRRRRRRR! Soooooo ... I had to tweak it even MORE, and finally ended up with this ... the colors are bland and washed out, and where it looked like a movie, it now looks like a video game.

The issue was that I have an older computer. Don't get me wrong ... it was great when I got it 3 years ago ... but computers become obselete in 2 years it seems. I have a Dell computer with an Athalon 2 processor, 225 gb hard drive, 256 mb video card, and 3 gigs of ram upgradable to 6. So ... as I really REALLY need a new computer to get my school work done, and get it done in a manner that is great and amazing ... my wife and I decided to get me a new computer. But (and there is ALWAYS a but ...) we do not get our bonuses until later on this month and at the end of May). Thankfully, my parents are loaning us the money (THANK YOU SO VERY VERY MUCH) so that I can get me a new computer. I will be ordering an ASUS system that has an Athalon 7 processor, 9 gigs of ram upgradable to 24 gigs, a 1 tb hard drive, and a video card that has 856mb. This is awesome, but (ANOTHER but ...) the down side is that I need to order all new software again, because my software will only load onto one system :-(. This will be a long process and I hope to have everything up to spec and ready to go by the time my next term starts.

Once I get my new system and everything up to snuff ... the very first thing that I will do is get everything back up to the way it was before I started tweaking and put that beautiful light back ... and I will then render it and dedicate it to Mom and Mike for their help with this. For the time being, I hope that you enjoy what I have here.

I love you all and I thank you immensely for all of your support!

So many changes ....

Well, I have gone back and looked at the starting blocks that I had laid for my church, and looked at a ton of screen shots that I had taken to where I have gotten myself to now, and I must say that modeling is not easy, especially if you are easily distracted by pretty colors and exciting designs. I have made so many changes to the walls, to the pews, to the textures, to the stylings, to the models, it just is not funny! I have found that if I make one change to the smallest of details, it can easily lead to me changing a whole lot more! It reminds me of a comis strip of Cathy I once saw ehre she bought some new placemats for her dining room, and then she needed new plates to match, and then new silverware, then a new table cloth, then a new table ... that is how it was with this. Well ... I now have some minor stuff to do, and then I can animate a walkthrough of it. Just adding 2 more doors, a few more pews, and the final lighting. WoW!

I'm sorry, Professor ... the program ate my homework.

ACCCKKKKK! When I went to bed last night, I had saved everything that I had worked on all day, and was very proud of what I had done. I had basically done steps 1 2 3 4 5 and had saved each step along the way. When I got up this morning, it was like I only had steps 1 2 and 5. WTH?!?!? It will take me about 2hrs to reconstruct what I had. Well, I at least have screenshots of what I had done. Enjoy!

*pew* *pew* *pew*

One of our cats, Pickles, like to sit in boxes whenever she can find one open. We always say that she isin her "spaceship" shooting down invaders and we often make "*pew* *pew* *pew*" noises when we see doing it.

Anyway, I wanted to post a close-up of the side of one of the pews I am working on so that you can see better the detail that I put on it. So, here it is!

Term 8

Well, here it is, term 8. Halfway through this term will mark the official halfway point of my college education. The term has started of great, and so far in the first two weeks I have 100% in two of my classes (intermediate 3d art and human resources). The third (science), I think I might be too old for. The first experiment was rolling a marble down a ramp off of the kitchen table and marking where it made its initial impact. Crawling around on the floor and chasing that dang marble made my knees ache. Thankfully I had Pickles (my cat) to help chase the marble down. Unfortunately, she felt it needed to be batted around some more before giving it back to me.

So, for my core class, Intermediate 3d art, I have to model an building for my first project, and then a character of my choosing for the second. So, for the first project, I am modeling a church, using the art deco church that we have here in Bloomington as a model. My mentor at State Farm, Erwin, said that he will take a look at it when I am done but before I turn it in to give me some feed back, so I am excited about that. I am still laying things out, and will then need to go back and texture everything, and then put in realistic lighting as well. Here are some screen shots that I have so far.

Anyway ... I am more comfortable using the programs that I am learning as I found a great website that I have purchased some tutorials for. School is all well and good, but it seems that at times I am only getting just enough information to by and that I need to do a lot of research on my own. Oh well. I am still proud of the work that I am producing. I feel that once I am done with this church, it might be my first real portfolio piece.