The First Post

First Post and My Environment Project

Alex Jamerson

Hey all. So, I wanted the first post to be a sort of introductory into what we want this 'blogger' to be. I may not completely understand what it is just yet, but I do understand that it's not a traditional blog that would be on blogger.

I see this as a shared community bulletin board between a few of us artists that all met up at T10. Look, we're all at or were at the bottom of the barrel at T10. We want to dig ourselves out. Sometimes it can be hard to motivate yourself to do that. But I've always found great motivation in seeing the work that my colleagues were doing on their free time when they were home from work. That pushed me to get my ass in gear so many times, and I don't want to lose that once one or two people find a better opportunity or... Other circumstances.

Anyway, to me, this blogger is a place for each of us, on our own time, to be able to come on and post updates on our projects. It can be anything from the standard 3D environment or prop, to real life model building, or some other creative endeavor you're getting into. In fact, I'm not even going to set a limit on what you really should or should not be posting here in terms of relevancy. However, I would suggest sticking to the creative topics, particularly ones pertaining to your own life and what you're doing.

Did you design a bunch of logos for a company? Sweet; post about it here, maybe show some of the results and share your mindset and techniques for getting that project done.

Working on a new environment and maybe want some critique? Post some screenshots here and wait for the comments.

Likewise, I'd like to see us to be active in commenting on each other's posts. Setup notification e-mails so that you are notified whenever one of us posts on here. The point to this project is for us to continue our motivated communication even after we're no longer working together.

I think it's pretty fitting considering the only 3 people who are authors on this blogger at the moment are 3 people who are no longer working together: Myself (Alex), Joshua Crandall, and Marvin Washington.

Let's keep this motivation train going!!!

So now onto my environment project. I actually had already typed out this whole section already, but the Blogger editor bugged out and didn't save that version. I hope that's the last instance of that happening if we're going to continue to use this platform for this.

My Environment

This is a screenshot of the environment so far in Modo. I do have a Unity version of this environment where some of the props have materials and all that. The reason why I setup the Unity scene was to play with cameras, to see how all the materials work together, but most of all to play with the lighting and find a right setup for that. I'm really hoping to do some good mood lighting in this project.

Again though, here's the Modo screenshot:

You may have heard me speak about this environment before, and of course Marvin has already seen this screenshot, but for the sake of posterity, I'll give a description of the scene.

The environment is of a Starship Bridge, which also serves as a sort of Throne Room. The ship is led and directed by this royal family. The setting for this scene is heavily inspired by DUNE, and partly inspired by Destiny from Bungie and by Star Wars.

Marvin, you may notice the redesigned kiosks on the main walkway. I've modified them slightly since this screenshot, but I definitely feel your suggestion was an elegant solution to the problem I was looking to solve, and I'm really liking the direction they're going. I'm hoping I can do some more modeling on that bottom half (that's in contact with the floor) to make it seem more realistic and that it actually contains something the Kiosk is actively utilizing, like powering or computing.

(The kiosk on the right has the older support design clipping with the new support because of the instancing I have setup there right now. This will be fixed once I've finalized the new design.)

When I actually get to dressing the scene, I'll have things like hanging flags and insignia to help drive the point of an Imperial driven space-fairing race of people in this Starship.

Anyway, that's the best I can do at rewriting the description of the scene since the blogger website trashed my first iteration.

Please comment, guys!!! Let me know what you think or if you have any questions.