Since writing my last post, the 3 months in between have been a flurry of activity. I was, somewhat unexpectedly, forced wayyy out of my rut and into the stratosphere. Literally. That is to say work sent me on multiple reference gathering trips across the country. Fort Walton Beach, FL. Tuscon, AZ. Columbus, GA. 

And boy, what an experience. Played with the IR camera on a military plane at night. Sat in the cockpit of an A-10 and giggled with glee as they turned on the instruments. Had lunch on top of an Abrams tank. Wanged my head on the inside of said tank. Had way too much fun doing all of the above and had to pinch myself to think that I get to do all this as a work-from-home 3D artist. Batshit crazy.

And then, in the midst of all of this, I have been transitioning to a Lead Artist role within the company after realizing that's where I see myself heading. I happen to greatly enjoy logistics, document-writing, managing, and big picture stuff just as much as I love modeling. Has been interesting times.

Also during all of this, I had taken up mentoring a prior 3D artist who applied for a job with us. He didn't quite make the cut but we gave him feedback on his portfolio. And wouldn't you know it, he made changes to his portfolio based on that feedback and reapplied a couple weeks later! We liked his determination. But he still wasn't good enough. I took it upon myself (with my boss's approval) to give in-depth feedback and eventually mentor the guy in my free time. After 3 months of that, the team agreed he was good enough and he is now a new member of the Vertex Art Team! :D (can't say who yet, for reasons)

So as a result of all of that, it allowed my brain to think of non-modeling tasks which then led me to be able to make a push on 3D personal projects. Like the robot arm thinger. Made progress last night, with a lot more work left to do. But it's work I am now excited to be doing again. 

My only lament is that I no longer have time to work on my trunk restoration project :( Life of a scatterbrain...

And it happens. This is the first time In... 7 years. And while it wasn't even work-induced, it has affected my work. Just life being overly chaotic/stressful. So even while the burnout wasn't a result of modeling too much, I have taken a break to work on some more analog projects. 

Story time!

About 20 years ago (I was 15 at the time), I found this old beat up steamer trunk someone was throwing away in my parent's neighborhood. I dragged it a few blocks back home expecting to do amazing things with it. Of course, other than using it to pretend to be a pirate on various occasions, it mostly ended up sitting alone stored in my parent's shed. 

Eventually I had moved out and every once in awhile, my parents would ask if I still wanted the chest, and every time I would insist they keep it. Now finally, 20 years later, I feel like I have the experience, funds, and am in the best point in my life to do something about it. So I hit up Harbor Freight, got a ton of tools for super cheap, and am restoring this sucker.

 I used a utility knife, putty scraper and chisel the got the rock hard leather off the top. Didn't want to remove the ribbing just yet. Not until I'm sure I can fill the gaps that removing the leather underneath would create.

I am going to be removing the rust off the metal bits with a softer wire brush. But I don't want to polish out the patina or pitting.

I did some sleuthing with a magnifying glass and discovered this chest was made in 1836. It's also missing the internal shelf, so I might try to test my carpentry skills with that when I finish.

The best way to deal with burnout is to just start doing things. Doesn't matter what, just that you do it.

It's been awhile since I posted an update. Work has been completely busy and awesome, but it takes a toll, mentally. So here I am trying to keep myself accountable to my personal work and posting what I have. Troubleshooting some MeshFusion bugs can also be aggravating. I think I know what the issue is, and fixing it is another can of worms. But progress is progress.

I had a very short amount of free time to work on this project over the weekend, but managed to crank out the low, UVs, and a quick bake in about 2 hours. Also, I love Marmoset Toolbag for baking. One click, first try, didn't mess with settings other than resolution and sample size. 

Bake:

Wires:

VS the High poly:

Will do the same thing as last time. Very basic material assignments and then on to the next part.

Adding an addendum to my blog post since apparently I typed too much for ArtStation to handle in the comments. Tobias Simon asked what the pros and cons are for Marmoset Toolbag:

There are 3 major pros that I can see to baking in Marmoset Toolbag over Substance Painter. 

First and foremost is the real-time feedback/adjustment. You can visualize and edit the cage in real-time without creating a custom cage to begin with, though you can use a custom if you choose. I rarely do. But with that real-time editing, it can also quickly update your normal maps after every adjustment without needing to rebake every time. Makes it very easy to get rid of artifacts without going through the whole process. 

Secondly, the skew map. This will get rid of skewed normals due to tangent averages on the low poly mesh. So if you have a hole in the high poly, but just decide to put a flat plane over it in the low with uneven control loops on either side of the hole, you'll get funky looking normals. The skew map lets you "paint" on the mesh directly in the viewport to correct those issues without the need to make a separate subdivided low poly mesh. And much like the cage, you can visualize the affects of the skew map in quick real-time updates. This feature alone is worth every penny.

And lastly, everything about Toolbag baking is centered around improving iteration times. It will auto-load your meshes if it detects a change. If you have auto-bake turned on, it'll do a quick rebake without any user input. Change your models, switch over to Toolbag, and enjoy the glory with none of the work. Also, it's worth noting that Toolbag also uses mesh name grouping much like Painter (as in, no need for manually exploding your meshes). You can also independently alter the cage/skew of each group. 

As for Cons.. um. Honestly, the only thing that I could consider a con that I've experienced so far is it doesn't have the ability to bake the round edge shader stuff, but that is seriously nitpicking for me. 

I hope that answers your questions :)

New week, new part. Moving on to the S-axis. Started with the servo motors first since the part is used twice on this axis (the block on the left side). Will do the big frame next since it'll be easier to place the cables and stuff once that's done.

MeshFusion was kind of a bitch this time. Tons of intersections and it was getting really twitchy. Still managed to get it looking nice, though! The flat cylinders facing out are placement for where the cable plugs will go.

Progress!

Progress is a nice feeling. I've found when doing big projects like this to break it up into parts and bring those parts to completion before moving on to the next. It helps keep the project moving and reduce the risk of boredom. On the flipside, the texturing can become inconsistent over time so doing a base pass at first and a final detail pass at the end all at once is ideal. No point in obsessing over texture details this early in the project.

So this is me throwing basic materials on the model and moving on to the next part.

Was on vacation all last week, but I'm back on the modeling train for this weekend. Just about done with the Base axis. Need to add some cables, but calling the high poly done otherwise.

Almost done with the base now :)

Yay progress! And zip ties!

Soooo, about that last blog post on starting a new gun. Yeah, that didn't happen. A few weeks after posting that we started on a slew of new weapons at work and have been working on those since December. I have had no desire to work on another weapon after all that. 

I figured I should try to finally learn animating and rigging in MODO. I also want to treat this as if it was a project for work. That means going into more modeled detail that I would normally do, with the exception that I wouldn't model the internals. I expect the low poly to be around 300k tris. Maybe more if I include a weld/grip tool. A secondary goal would be to get it in engine and try my hand at VFX/lighting/cinematics.  

Here's the current state of affairs. The blockout is in blue while the in-progress detail pass is in grey:

And here's the reference I'm basing it off of. Might have the big grey cylinder thing in the bottom left be an "if I have the time and feel like it" addition:

I've also decided I won't be messing with the fabric cable wraps. I don't have the time/sanity to learn Marvelous Designer right now. I'll have to come up with some other kind of sheathing that isn't such a pain in the ass. 

Oh, and this will naturally be made primarily with MeshFusion in MODO, because it's the tits. Speaking of which, I also have a couple weapons made entirely with MeshFusion in the upcoming Predator: Hunting Grounds game :)

I've modeled tons of weapons lately but none have been of the "heavy" variety yet. So I'm looking to change that for my latest project with this amazing concept by Weiyi Qin:

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/zB52d

Naturally, I will be doing this with the same fidelity, if not more so, as my tactical caulking gun. For those who don't know, I model detailed weapon and machine assemblies for a living. High detail is my bread and butter.

I have also officially transitioned to using Modo's MeshFusion tool set as my primary modeling method. I was more or less "beta testing" the workflow with the caulking gun, and after using it extensively in a game dev production setting over the past 6-8 months, I've now adopted it full time with no regrets. Maybe one of these days I'll get off my bum and make a crash course tutorial for MeshFusion. 

I don't have any more to say so here we go!