My Journey on the NextGen Games, Animation & VFX Course

  Final Major Project 2022 (Evaluation) I've made this blog to specifically to evaluate and reflect on how I think the Final Major Project went.  Personally, I think it went alright. Not good, but not bad either. I've encountered a lot of errors & techincal difficulties along the way and it got me drained mentally. If it weren't for that and if I was a lot more resilient, I would've gotten a lot more done, I would've gotten the animation done, one which I wasn't able to do. On the miro board, I've set "Managing my time better" as one of my targets and I'm ashamed to say that I've failed.  There was going to be much more in this project than what I've done, for example, in my storyboard, my CG Character would come to life and make me a cup of coffee the old-fashioned way. And I would've used fluid simulations to animate him pouring the coffee into the cup. I've encountered a lot of technical difficulties along the way. One of...

  Non-Lethal Weapon  Project Our teacher has instructed us to make a non-lethal weapon. It can be anything we can think of, as long as it doesn't cause harm. I've decided to go with a gun which dispenses milkshakes.  Task 1: My Ideas & Inspiration (Concept Art, Moodboards etc.,) When beginning this project, I've had several ideas before but they didn't feel generic to me. But, I've found my idea whilst browsing through Sketchfab. I saw a post of a 3d model called "The Espresso Gun".  The user made it for a very similar project, but it was a challenge instead of an actual assignment. Never the less, I took inspiration of that model & began thinking about a potential "Hot Chocolate Gun". However, I recognised that hot drinks can cause harm because of the high temperatures, it can burn on the skin & such. So, I decided to go with a Milkshake Gun instead.  Another form of inspiration which enabled me to go forward with the "Milkshak...

Sculpting in Blender In Blender, our teacher showed us the sculpting tab. The Sculpting Tab in Blender is used to sculpt meshes, mainly for making realistic human models or for adding details to food models like odd crevices to a doughnut. Before getting used to Blender's Sculpting Tab, we messed around with many of the sculpting tools such as the inflate, etc., And then, for a little task, we had to have two cube meshes in the viewport. Then, I renamed both meshes, one naming "cube_low" and the other "cube_high". Then I selected mesh "cube_high", added in a Sub-Surf Modifier, and added loop cuts and brought them right to the original edges of the cube mesh. The reason why this was done is because, when applying a Sub-Surf modifier to a cube, it deforms it, making it look like an odd cylinder. So, adding loop cuts and bringing them, really tight to the original edges of the cube, can bring back it's shape. Once all that's done, I applied the su...

  Diffuse Is the most common type of texture and is a raw colour channel for a 3d model. Diffuse maps defines the colour and pattern of the object. Specular Is a texture map which defines the shininess of an object or how much light reflects. Specular maps are usually greyscale.  White = the most reflective Black = the most absorbent. Gloss A gloss map can aid in defining the roughness of a surface, the lower the value, the darker areas get more rough. The higher the value the lighter areas of a 3d model are smoother.  Albedo/Base Colour An albedo/base colour map usually doesn't consist of any shadow and highlights. An albedo map usually consists of just the base color. Though an albedo map is known as a diffuse map, it has no ambient occlusion or directional light.  Roughness Roughness map & gloss map are similar. Roughness works when the dark areas of a texture will have a glossy look. And, the light areas having a matte look.  Metalness A metalness map te...

  Toy Melee Weapon (Mini Project) For this project, I was assigned by my tutor to design a Toy Melee Weapon. This project is aimed to test out knowledge on what we've learnt so far in modelling, UV Unwrapping & texturing.  So, for starters I set up a moodboard in Powerpoint and posted images of various toy melee weapons such as hammers, nunchucks, swords, sickle etc., Initially, I was going with a custom hammer but, then I realised that it would be a bit more difficult so, I went with a sword as it's much more suitable for what I've in mind.  Since I decided to go with designing a toy sword, I, then, looked up images of both toy swords & actual swords. Both in real life & in the world of fiction.  In the world of fictional swords, I grabbed photos of the "Star Saber" from Transformers: Prime. To me, it had a pretty impressive sword design so I might base my sword on that. However, I'll be adding my own detail & characteristics so, it doesn'...

 The Dawn of the DOOR! This blogpost will be about posting my journey, working on the "Door" Project from the NextGen Level 3 Games, VFX & Animation Curriculum. Firstly we had to grasp during induction week, we had to take inspirations by searching some themed doors & posting them on a moodboard. I went with a combination of Sci-fi & medieval & Church doors.  In that moodboard, I've also discussed the likes & dislikes about each one.  In order to make our own door design, we had to draw some concept art for the doors; as you can see, I drew various design ideas & changes (apologies for the unclear copies, the printer couldn't pick up the pencil outlines!)     From the snippets of my moodboard, I've decided to combine both elements of medieval/church doors & Sci-Fi doors for my Door Project. My final design I went with is the design on the 2nd image on the bottom left. I felt that had perfectly combined elements of both Sci-Fi & Me...