Keyshot4, games, Mash on Pad!

So it has been 3 month since my last post, I had a wild roller coaster ride of emotion and problem, but I did keep trotting on with my learning, no where near what I was aiming for tho, but alas, I need to write these to unwind, these blogs are the closes thing I have to a therapist.

lets start with this!

I have changed my logo slightly, in terms of colours at least, it use to be blue, purple, red, now its red, purple, blue. reason for that is because I wanted to use the emotion colours to convey a message, and "polygon" is something people are familiar with and trust, thus why it is now blue, and "playing" would convey my excitement, so that is why it is now red. ultimately I added a gradient of red to blue at low opacity over the text to make it less bland, and gave the text a corresponding "shell" like the logo, so an outline to better define it, the changed are subtle, but non the less important I think.

it also goes without saying that I've been learning HTML and CSS and have been building this site without spending a penny outside of purchasing the domain name, so this is something I'm happy about, it's nowhere near finished, but I've learned enough to be mildly proud of it.

The most notable stuff that happened since my last post was the discovery of Maxence Fleuret blog, Vaneese posted his blog on facebook, so I went to check it out. It goes without saying that his work is AMAZING! but there was a piece that was made more amazing by how he presented it, it was soo good that I emailed him, and he replied! while I predicted most of the effects and workflow to create it correctly, I learned something new from it, the program he used to render, Keyshot. so I investigated the program, and looked up other programs available in the market that were render focused, to my surprise, not only was keyshot the better of the lot, but it is the child of bunkspeed hypershot!, and old rendering program from 2008? there was a tutorial that ended in using hypershot. Anyway, the more I learned and used it, the more I could recognize professionals 3D artist work when rendered in keyshot, there were "tells" in terms of render quality you could say, I was kinda surprised at how many artist uses it to do their beauty render.

Not as important, but I played "Pikmin 3" recently, it was a good game with a ludicrously hard final level, the ability to use the wiimote+ and nunchuck along with the wiiU gamepad did make for the best micromanagement game in the series! shame that most who bought it will only play with the pad, there are some games in this world that is made better with the wiimote, not for its motion technology, but for its IR pointer, only thing that can top that is a mouse for the computer, but with a mouse comes keyboard, and that will forever lose to an analogue stick in IMO.

Ultimately, while I enjoyed Pikmin 3 greatly, it didn't offer much in the way of new to the series (outside of the amazing control scheme), unlike say from pikmin 1 to pikmin 2, there were new pikmins and several new gameplay mechanics, but with pikmin 3, all it did was add another character, and substituted 2 pikmins, and of course 1080p graphics, but aside from that, nothing new, don't get me wrong, this game is still a lot of fun, but I expected a bigger leap than what the final product delivered.

Another game that I played recently was "The Wonderful 101", it was an AMAZING game! I recommend this to any hardcore gamer who loves "Devil May Cry", "Bayonetta", or "Ninja Gaiden", this game is just TOO AWESOME! the combat mechanic will need you to learn something unconventional, but the gimmick adds to the tension, making it even more awesome. The writing in this game is brilliant, it is both humorous and epic, a lot like "Gurren Lagann", to the point that for the final battle final QTE (which doesn't suck) made me both tear up from the shear epicness of the moment and laugh hysterically from the ludicrousness of the situation, that was a first for me. it is a MUST OWN! despite being a full time carer, I managed to clock in just under 60 hours over the space of 3 weeks (I'm actually too busy to play something I love), the only reason I stopped was because hard mode was actually hard, and to unlock Bayonetta as a secret character I need to finish the game on both hard and very hard with ranking no lower than a gold, I don't see that happening anytime soon, as a full time carer, I need to save all my patience for the job, I can't afford to get frustrated at a game, unfortunately, sometime in the past few years, I had to grow up, adulthood is kinda depressing.

While making his 3D Logo, I discovered a bunch of short comings when it comes to Keyshot, it does not give you a material editor like in 3DS max, so mixing/blending materials is not an option! which made the glowing part tricky, and in the end, I found a compromise, it's not perfect, but it's acceptable.

So a friend of mine Andrew approached me to make a 3D rendition of his logo for Mash on Pad, Mash on Pad is this British fighting league community, where they do podcast, live streaming of tournaments etc, things I'm not personally into because I'm an anti-social bastard. being that I was already learning Keyshot, I thought this could be a cool little project that tests what I've learned so far. Originally we were doing the logo design together, but eventually, they decided on one and made a "professional" 2D logo for it, he still wanted me to make it in 3D and also animate it to be like an intro for them, I was aiming to model/animate to the level of GameTrailers short and sweet GT intro, 3-5 seconds, and really nice looking. so he sent me the logo that needs to translate, when I got it, at first I thought it was a mock/draft of their 2D logo, turns out it WAS their 2D logo! what more shocking was the price he had to pay for that picture on the left, he had to pay the artist £60! to me that seems a bit much considering the quality. so I decided to look into the rates for stuff like this, and i was SHOCKED! apparently, when making a 3D logo, the minimum you pay is $1000 for the scene (average was $4000), and if it's animated, it will cost an additional $100-$150 PER second! my mind was blown! that is A LOT OF MONEY! so I decided to venture my skills in that territory! and made him the logo.

Work in progress shots

as you can see, this is a close up of the almost finished model, Keyshot makes rendering so much easier with its library or per-determined material properties, I did made some materials myself, but for the most part, Keyshot did all the heavy lifting, just look at that surface detail!

so when I started this, I was working in 3ds Max 2012, but the physics simulator in it was half broken, so I upgraded to 2014, and while the physics simulator finally works, it also broke my animation! apparently 3ds max cannot handle carrying the data of the dummies when working on a different annual version, very annoying, but also good to know, it means if and when I sell 3D products online, using dummies will be a red flag, but since that mishap, I've been discouraged to go back and fix everything, but hopefully, I will finish this for my mate soon.

I will be going back to university this academic year, so hopefully I will finally finish university and get my degree and move on with my life, I just hope I can handle being a full time carer and student, this essentially means I wont be playing any games for the next soo many months, nor do I know when I will be working/finishing the Mash on Pad logo, only time will tell.