Tate's renders -- Now in college

More updates! This is my best animation to date. The assignment was to take a clip of audio from a movie, or show, or whatever. I chose one of Cr1TiKaL's videos, and animated this scenario to it. My teacher was impressed with my work, and I'm incredibly satisfied with it. If I could change anything, I'd stop the Norman rig from looking so static at the end, but that's minor compared to what I had to do to complete this.

In college we've moved onto lighting and compositing, so we're now making some detailed models to use in an upcoming assignment.

Can anyone tell me what I'm modelling here? If you can, you get a complimentary internet cookie, or something, idk.

...is it a roomba?

Not gonna lie, that was my guess too. >_>

Is it a health pack filled with medical nanobots that are secretly planing to bypass their programming and take over the world?

Well, no, it's not a roomba.

How about now?

It's a... cat scratching post?

Is it some kind of robot? you mentioned to me that you were thinking of remaking that robot dog you made so maybe it's that?

It looks like ROB

Yeah I think its ROB.

Or I suppose it could be some kind of space station core... Oh who am I kidding we all know its ROB.

Sean1M wrote:

Yeah I think its ROB.

Or I suppose it could be some kind of space station core... Oh who am I kidding we all know its ROB.

Biotch, I can believe it's a scratching post if I want to! >:U

Frostie is right! It is an R.O.B.

She gets the internet cookie, I guess.

Guys I made a thing with the R.O.B.

Compositing is hard when you don't know what to do.

I'm pretty proud of the modelling, though, since I did it all by eye and a lot of google images.

Progression video! Expect to see this as a suggestion next time you watch a Game of Thrones VFX breakdown.

Wow I haven't put anything here in ages. I guess I should be making more things. In the meantime, here's a thing.


This is a scene I've been working on for a few days when I had maybe two or three weeks to make a start on it? Either way I ended up perfecting it in the time I was given, so I probably won't learn to get a move on. I doodled the basic concept on a sheet of paper and modeled it pretty well. To my own credit here, all the textures I made by myself from scratch, and I learned several cool Photoshop skills like using layer masks, alpha channels, and lots and lots of clouds. Seriously, 9 out of 10 texture tutorials use clouds or difference clouds.

I'm also really proud of the shaders used, too. Notice how the terrain is primarily a dark rock texture, but blends into three other textures in certain areas (lava texture around the crystals, lighter rock around the lava channel, and a brown-ish rock around the volcano). That's all one shader and I used vertex painting to bring out the different textures in different areas. Here's the shader.


The crystals and the lava don't have anything impressive, just scrolling textures. The lava is especially good in this regard because I modelled it to follow the path, so the lava actually flows in the direction of the channel.

So I guess I can tick environment design on my list of skills I kinda-sorta have. Still want to achieve character artist, though.

So on the art thread I've posted a top-down sketch of an environment I'm making for college. That thread gets far more attention so the image is bound to be buried but I can't be stuffed putting it here too so I'm just going to assume you've seen it or something.

With that in mind, here's the current greybox of the level.


My teacher told me that, despite thinking that it was a good idea at first, using the scenery at the outer edges of the map as an actual part of the level used for platforming would be too ambitious and I wouldn't have time to put all the detail into it. So the island at the centre with the big grey crater will be the only playable area.

That blue smudge towards the left of the crater is a pair of towers, with one being modelled off something I built in Terraria (but only because I thought of it ages ago in high school). Now I'm making it. It's good to have this part of my game design career where what I make is entirely up to me, whereas in the actual industry, I'll be making hyper-realistic, super MLG guns for COD 29 or something. It's not that creativity-driven.

NEXT GEN CUBE, BEYOND NEXT GEN - CROSS-GEN

So we had this random pipeline today where we modelled these tiles, exported them to Zbrush, then put them through the ringer that is Xnormal and then finally Photoshop with dDo. The guy who came in to show us this described the finished result as 'boner-worthy'.

Alright, assignment completed. I can now do roleplay posts and work on finishing Vegas.


This is the flythrough for my game level. I ended up cutting a LOT of content from the original plan (huge, arching ice structures and the like) and settled for a flat, vast scene instead of a small, grand one. The tower changed, mostly in brick texture. This was the most work I've done in UE4 so next time I do a level I should have a pretty good handle on it. I also need to streamline my workflow, and I think improving my drawing skills and not knocking off to play Warframe late at night could really help.

Here is the image I used for the sky. It's important because I made it myself. If you want to use a royalty-free star field and don't want to go look for one, make your own why not just use one from someone you know? For the record I made many of the textures in this level, many of those from scratch. I'm just more proud of the star field.

I'm currently working on the character module for this year, which is like the one from last year but this time I know what I'm doing. In the meantime, I've created a Sketchfab account and I'm uploading some of my models there so I can build a portfolio. So far I've only uploaded the volcanic scene at I posted about on the previous page, but instead of viewing it in teeny-weeny-eyestrain-O-vision you can actually turn it around and look at it.

Here is the link to my account: https://sketchfab.com/brendanmicallef

There's an embed tool for BBcode, however it doesn't seem to work here so I can't stick the widget here.

WIP shot of my current college assignment, which is basically a repeat of the character module I did last year. This time we have a better workflow and know how to do more things, like not modelling detailed bodies that will be hidden behind clothes and skinning them anyway. I'm looking at you, me.



From thumbnail to concept to model with flat colours, this is Angelina, a character I have planned for the sequel to the Pokemon RP I've been hosting for over three years. The face in the concept image is really creepy because it's flat and looks like Marilyn Manson, but that's got nothing on the modelled face, which looks like it popped right out of the uncanny valley. I'm hoping against hope that with a textured face and eyebrows it will look better, because this is my first time doing a realistic human head; the characters I did last year were based off an anime aesthetic.

Now comes the part where I texture, rig, skin, animate and export the character to game engine.

Animating's a good job, mate! It's challenging work, indoors. I'll guarantee you won't go hungry. Because at the end of the day, as long as there's two people left in the games industry, someone is gonna want something moving.

"Dad? Dad, I'm a- Ye- Not a 'source film maker', dad, I'm an animator! ...Well, the difference bein' one is a job and the other's a bloody passtime!"

I'll be honest with ya: my parents do not know much about it.

Feelings? Look mate, you know who has a lot of feelings? Blokes that contort their models beyond recognition for a cheep laugh. Professionals have standards.

Be on time.

Be efficient.

And have a plan to rig anyone you meet.

im sorry but that reminded me of this:

Before and after.