Playing with stupidly tiny textures....

Yep as the title implies today I have been mostly playing textures between 16 and 32 pixles. This also let me experiment with 2D objects as 3D, so for instance the tree's are 2D however they follow the camera using a look-at constraint so that you never see that they are just plains. Its a little baisic at the moment and the design is heavily borrowed from an exsisting series of portable games, However now that I am comfortable working with smaller textures my next job is to create an original scene in a similar style.

Boy_Wire frame

This is my 3D version so far. He is 1,925 Tris and has enough loops around his mouth for some very basic lip synch. I have also given him Mitten hands where only his Index finger and Thumb are pose able Next step is to unwrap.

I’m not very good when it comes to naming characters so I’m open to any suggestions that you may have. Also I’m having trouble with choosing a colour for his hat... this is only a first draft for colours so again if you think I need my eyes tested just holler. Any who I want to make a character that is reminiscent of the PS2 and PSP games. So I have opted for a fairly simple design where I can then add detail via textures. I don’t think that I will be using normal maps for this character and relying on painting and photo manipulation.
After a bit of digging I found that characters for a PSP game are between 1,500 and 3,000 tris with a texture map of 256x256 so I am aiming for 2000 tris at the end of the build.

Kazu and Ikiki Phone chain

Meet Kazu and Ikiki, two little critters that I originally toyed with during my time at university. Originally they started as doodles, but were added to a character as a toy that they would have attached to their bag / belt.
So while I was rummaging through drawings and ideas for things to make I came across the original drawing and decided draw it up properly and make alongside the character and environments that I’m currently working on.
I was inspired by the "watchover voodoo dolls" (see here) and Dixie demon in the Persona series of games.

Sewer Concept

Like many of my peers it was mentioned that my end of year show reel from university lacked dirty, urban and realistic things whether they be an environment or props.
I have already begun to build some props that could be used in a realistic environment and have now decided to begin building an environment to accompany them.
This afternoon I threw this litttle concept together. After looking at how some other people are tackling the situation they are going for similar urban alley approaches something that even I had contemplated, but instead I decided it best to try something else and came up with a sort of sewer environment.

Began a quick refresher project with Maya today, this is it so far all built and ready to texture. It will be used in a scene at a later date but at the moment I’m just using it to jog my memory as to what does what, will post the finished thing later in the week. Whilst I’m thinking of it does anyone have a good suggestion as to how I can get a decent wireframe render in Maya?

This week I have been learning a new piece of software, Autodesk Softimage or Softimage XSI as it used to be called. It has taken me a day or so to get used to the interface and today I was following a tutorial on how to use the Texture editor (see picture). It is a really nice piece of software to use as well which was a suprise because I had a hard time adjusting to Maya from 3DsMax. Both me and friends who have used both Max and Maya often joked that there should be an Autodesk MAYAX that incorporated the good bits of each and I have to say that Softimage seems to be just that. Once you get over the initial shock of buttons being completeley different (i.e instead of alt and a mouse button to navigate viewports it's S and Mouse buttons) everything else is second nature. The ability to create your own shelves, a Biped that actually works and a built in Interactive Creative Environment that makes using particle systems easy and manageable (ICE for short). You can even directly render in the viwport!! oooo and ahhh. The only downside I have found so far is the UV editor which like 3DSmax requires you to set the UV's up youre self but I wont hold that against it... If you have time to spare then I would urge people to give Softimage a go it's very nice.