My First Victory against Normal Maps!!!

I finally got a result that did not display those horrible black edges!!!  It was a combination of setting up a cage in XNormal, finding out that max uses X+Y-Z+ swizzle in the tangent space (although I was fixing the green channel in PS anyways before I knew this), and that the low-poly cage had to be pushed to the point where the high-poly is covered.

This is the result I baked straight out of XNormal, I didn't edit anything in PS.

Dumpster High-Poly Sculpt Test

Did a quick little test of the dumpster again in mudbox (just to get a better idea of the final result, I plan on resculpting most of the parts and spend more time on them).  I will probably have to alter the low-poly to include some of the dent geometry from the high-poly.  I overdid the wear and tear on the side attachment pieces, so I'll probably hold back a bit when I work on the next version (though I'd imagine that those pieces would contain the most wear and tear based on their outer location and the fact that those pieces are what the trucks grab onto).

Dumpster High-Poly

Working on the high-poly version of the dumpster.  I had a few problems with the side attachments (where the truck grabs the dumpster to lift it up), in that I had to separate the triangle supports from the main side piece.  It look weird, I may have to go back and fix it if the baking doesn't work out too well.

Dumpster Low-Poly Practice

I wanted to try making an entire video game asset from low-poly to high-poly, to baking and texturing.  Dumpsters seem to be the typical beginner exercise for these sorts of things.  Here's a low-poly.  I think I might be able to optimize it more as I think the tri count is a little high right now.

Fail Fern

So I've been working on this fern plant for a little over a day now, and somehow the normals on the leaves went weird and I don't know how to fix it.  I had to flip the model 180 degrees to fix this while transfer mapping but it doesn't have the same look that I wanted.  So I'm scrapping this for now until I have a better idea of what I am doing with normal maps, maybe try something simpler for next time.  I didn't do any work on the diffuse map, it's simply one colour for contrast purposes.

The high-res version of the leaf:

The low-res version of the plant:

Life Drawing

I haven't done any real nude model life drawing in a while.  I went to the Emily Carr hosted life drawing session last Monday to get some practice in.

Also did some sketching with friends at the Aberdeen Mall Food Court a few weeks ago.

MiniComi Update

I had my very first artists' alley table last week-end at UBC's MiniComi event.  It was a lot of fun even though I would have liked to sell more (at least to break even) and actually go out and look at other artists' displays.  Regardless, I would definitely try out the artists' alley again in the future since it is a good networking opportunity.

Here's the main print I was working on for my artists' alley "debut," a Princess Mononoke (Studio Ghibli) fanart featuring San and her wolf, and of course, the little kodamas in the corner of the image.  It didn't sell very well but I received lots of compliments.  I have a better idea of what people are looking for at these events now.