Jigglypuff's adventures

This is going to be a short post. I know I say that every time, but this time I don't have much to talk about, so it will be brief.

As I hinted last time, I decided to go through the Hard Surface Modeling course at CG Cookie. Jonathan Williamson makes the modeling look simple and the course was easy to follow. It did take me most of the week to finish, though. Just watching the videos took a little over 4 hours. Then I had to do the steps myself, that's at least as much time. And then I got stuck on details or needed to re-watch some parts, which gets us to roughly 12 hours already spent on the project. Since this is the usual time I spend on a *full* project, I was seriously panicking when I finished the model on Saturday.

Luckily, I had thought of a simple scene to go with it so it was only a matter of bringing it to life. Since the plane is fairly cartoonish, I didn't think that realistic materials would suit it. And because I already had some models that fit the style I was after, I decided to use them. If I can't make something astonishing in a week, let's make it at least mildly funny.

The materials I created are very simple, just Principled shader with metallic or non-metallic settings. The only more complex material is glass on the windscreen. I've created glass before so the node setup wasn't much of an issue but lighting it... that was a nightmare. For one, I would consistently get a huge pure-white reflection on the side of the window that completely covered Charmander's face. Finding the right angle then consisted of rotating the plane (and everything in it) against the HDRI background. Fun.

I also tried adding a key light to bring Charmander into focus but the only thing it accomplished was adding more distracting highlights on the windscreen. "Rotating things around, part two". In the end I kept the lamp because I found a reflection I liked but it didn't much improve the lighting of the cabin. So I thought: I'll fix it in post. Now add another hour or two spent playing with colour management. And the worst part is that I'm not even sure the image benefited from it at all. But since I'm not going to have a gif progression or Sketchfab scene this week, I can as well include both images for comparison.

Rendered image

With post-processing

And that concludes the post for this week. Or at least its project part. Now I'd like to talk a bit about where I see myself in five years. Eh. Brrr. Let's try avoiding clichés for the time being and talk about the areas of CGI that I'd like to specialize in. (Phew, much better.) Doing this course showed me that even though I like modeling and I need to be able to do it well, I enjoy sculpting more. Which puts me on the path of creating organic life. 

I also found out that when browsing through other people's art I most often admire natural environments. This could go well together with the sculpted creatures. And lastly, I want to be able to tell stories. I always thought that the best medium for me would be games but now I'm starting to think that short movies might be better. Which means that I need to learn animation (and rigging). 

So there you have it, three areas for me to get better at: sculpting creatures, creating nature scenes and animating. I might still occasionally take courses that develop other skills, but these three should be my primary goal from now on.