back to blogging

Hello!

It's been a while and a lot has happened since I last made a post.  I've been mainly posting my works on my new portfolio site jonphancg.cgsociety.org .  My demo reel is also complete, make sure to watch it in HD here! vimeo.com/jonphancg/demoreel2014

 I'm still here in Rochester taking some classes to finish up my degree.  I walked for graduation last spring but I was still short a 3D credit so I decided to come back and take a single class which is called advanced object and character creation which takes place in the animation department of my school.  I'm also taking a figure drawing class to be considered a part-time student which has proven to be useful in improving my gesture, proportion, and form.  The 3D class is pretty easy but I'm still working hard, The first project was to recreate something you have and animate it,  for this project I started experimenting in Keyshot.

While I'm taking these two classes I've also been doing free lance work making Zbrush digital sculptures for 3D print which I have also been doing all summer.  Another freelance project I've been working on has been a logo design for my one friend who works as in technology management.

this is a slightly modified sea urchin

 here is the rooster I created to be made into a glass paper weight

it was challenging to make it flat 

Here is also my senior thesis that I completed last spring.

Thesis update, hard surface projects... hyper crunch mode

So week 12 is about to end and it's time to crank it up to the next level and go into hyper crunch mode if I want to finish my thesis on time.  During this entire thesis process one can learn a lot about themselves, their level of passion, intrinsic motivation, and just using personal force of will to continue one.  I guess that is the nature of such a project when you set out on a year long journey to create your magnum opus.  The entire time I felt as though I was taking two steps forward and one step back but looking back it was a lot more like falling off a mountain and trudging back up.  I've only been doing computer graphics for almost three years now and I believe I can say that I've been accelerating my skills on a very steep tangent, so working on a project for an entire year I would often keep going back to improve thing which became a huge time hole.  Luckily for myself, I can learn new software on the fly; being patient for a few hours of tutorials can really let you fly through some processes such as UV mapping, retopology, or smarter ways to texture.  

So progress wise, I made a huge decision after an interview with a game studio; I decided to make my thesis game geometry.  I realized that non of my current work included any game assets and well I want to follow my childhood dreams and work for a game studio someday hopefully soon.  So as you see I really am climbing back up the mountain; I don't know how I do it but I pull all nighters on a weekly basis sometimes even two days in a row while still trying to hit the gym at least 5 times a week.  A funny thing I've been doing when working on my 3D projects is play netflix in the background and just yesterday I finished 8 seasons of "how i met your mother" (24 episodes per season) in i think in a span of 3 or 4 weeks

So the heads pretty much almost done, came out to be 12,000 triangles.  just gotta do a few extra texture things and little tweaks

here's the high poly sculpt that I made and painted a texture on

I changed up the suit to fix some of the proportions and improve the silhouette 

I created a rig over last summer based on a tutorial and fitted it to be ready to attach, and pulled a quadruped rig from a tutorial to pose my model  

these are used just to get an idea of what kinda shots I will produce

an underling narrative of the hero coming down to fight the beast 

I finally got my normal mapping down pat 

this is a space jet I designed for my hard surface modeling class, this project was to create a vehicle 

I tried to make it interesting by making it transform from landing to flight and into fighter mode as well as include some force field looking parts

For my 3rd hard surface modeling project, I had to make an environment so I decided to create a modern loft. I'm not much of an environment guy since I don't really find them interesting but creating my dream apartment was kinda fun.

spring weeks 1-8

Hey here's a gigantic update now that I have some time.  I've been really busy building my portfolio with some work I've been revisiting and trying to balance out my seven classes that I'm currently enrolled in to graduate in the spring.  You can check out my portfolio page at JonPhan.Tumblr.com

So for the first thing I'll show off, its a toon steam punk steam boat I designed for my particles class.  The objective was to create a visual that included machinery so I thought it would be cool to have a fun looking boat push some water particles around.  I did some research and learned how to create a toon shader which was kinda interesting.  To create it I looked at a bunch of steam punk looking things and just created simple objects, from there I just kit bashed it into what you see here.  The complex looking gear setup was actually a lot simpler that I thought, having them drive each other as the wheels turned.  I had some steam pump through the pipes, and the cannon shoot out a cannonball that had some sprite smoke I created in Illustrator and After effects.  It wasn't until after the project when I learned about the ocean setup they have in Maya and the automatic floating system they had.

This is actually my second project for hard surface modeling.  I designed a space Jet, the idea is that its a jet that can fly into space and have some cool transforming parts and an interesting shield looking component.  Since we can't use shaders or anything special, I found out how much emphasis I have to put into the silhouette so when designing it I did a bunch of different silhouette paintings until I got what you see below.  There is an interesting balance I've been trying to keep with form/function, deciding if I should think of what my models should include first or design it and then add some functionality.  Either way they this is coming out pretty well and should be done by next week. 

So I've been re-rendering some of my work and adding some post processing which I found adds a whole ton to the final result and should be done to everything I do from now on, now that I know the importance of it and how much it can add.  

I've been leaving my computer on these last couple days while I work on my laptop to render out some motion but the thing is, these frames are taking about an hour each even after some optimization so it might be a while until I finally have a demo reel.  

This is the first project for my hard surface modeling class, the assignment was to take two completely different animals and put their attributes into a robot.  For mine I went through lot until I got to this final result.  The animals I chose was a gorilla and a T-rex since they both have strong like gigantic attributes.  The catch though with this model was that we had to do it all in NURBS modeling which was probably one of the most painful modeling experiences I've ever had but at least I came out with a ton of knowledge on NURBS and a few techniques that I can use while I model normally.  

I went back to my werewolf sculpture and I'm currently in a figure sculpting class with real physical clay and live models so my zbrush sculptures consequentially got a lot better so getting this to be more anatomically correct and lively was something I put into it.  

For my senior thesis, I've been making strides but I really want to put a ton of more work into it.  So same deal as the werewolf, I keep getting better so I have to keep redoing things heh... my self portrait is almost complete, I just have to texture it with the ultra high def images my photo friend got me and finish some of the other parts I started.  I learned a lot about how the eye works and how to make it, I still need to create the veins for it, for the hair, I got all the guides down and I'm currently trying to make it with the new Xgen thats in maya 2014 which came from disney I think and add some eye lashes and eye brows as well.  I'm planning on donating this to this other project that some people are working on with heads as well.  

I really have to say that zRemesher is amazing along with UV master in zbrush, it's saved me so much time to let me work on other things.  

for the suit, I still have to UV it and rig with all the transforming parts, from the last time, I just adjusted the proportions. I plan on scaling a few of the parts to bring some of the silhouette back out without making it look to bulky. For texturing I might try out dDo since it's free but I'm not sure yet. 

I'm still pretty satisfied with the tiger head I made that long while ago but I started fitting the endo skeleton into the tiger flesh and so far it's a mess but I plan on making it muscular and furry.  I brought the machine parts into maya to refine the hard surfaces and from there I will procedural texture it with a metal texture and rig it