Holiday Slowdown

No updates lately...but that's what happens sometimes.

So what's the news, both good and bad? Well, the work project that felt like a mini Bataan Death March is in a much better place now. It didn't air on the 26th as it was originally meant to but I think the pressure from Discovery has lessened a bit and we should be able to finish it working only "normal" hours. When this sucker does finally hit the teevee, I'll post an update.

Holidays were great with two sets of folks in town. One set's still here but all the hoopla's died down enough that I've been able to start laying out UV's on the first building. w00t!

With Borders gift card in hand, I went book shopping the other day. I had a long list of books I wanted, but on a whim decided to check the computer section for a book on mental ray. I didn't really want a book on mental ray but I knew that I needed to learn more about it. I only know what half (a third?, quarter?) of the mental ray shaders do and I'm far from being able to optimize renders in any way. Well, I found a damn mental ray book and forced myself to buy it.

mental ray, an artist's guide to rendering is one hell of a book and it's already making my brain hurt. a lot. I'm giving it a first read-through with a highlighter and without sitting in front of the computer. After going through it once, my plan is to go back through and crank out test renders, to see if I learned anything. Cross yer fingers.

The last bit of good news for now is that in a couple weeks I'll be starting a MEL scripting workshop offered by CGSociety. I'm excited to dig in to a little code. It will probably slow down the project some but I don't think it'll grind to a total halt. Hah! Of course it will, but I can dream, can't I?

No pics to post now, because there's nothing remotely interesting about UV layouts. I'll post painted texture maps but that's still a little ways away.

Cheers.

Two Weeks, One Building

Now that is one hell of an achievement!!!

Or something.

It's the same old story, work is kicking my ass. On top of that I picked up a small page-layout gig that's been taking a bite out of what little free-time I've got. Having said all that, here's one little update. This is the end of the modeling for now and it's time for some UV layout and some basic texturing. My UV layout skills are not great so here's a chance for them to get better.

Cheers.

Some messed-up normals in that new building, fixed in the subsequent pics.

Off The Face Of The Earth

So I actually have a few days of decent posts and then it all goes to hell. Arrrrghhhh!!!!!!

The last week, nearly two weeks now, just about killed me @ work. Lots and lots of styleframes to make in very little time with constantly changing goals. I canceled a few vacation days, including today which I worked from home while some plumbers tried to fix a leaking pipe somewhere in the bowels of my foundation.

Along with all that, James and I had a sort of "come to Jesus" conversation where we started talking about how the project was working and where it was going now that we're in different cities and both working hard.

This is all a ways of saying that I've done jack on the scene, or the project or the models - whatever scale you care to look at, it's been on hold. Today was supposed to be a big modeling day for me. Alas but no.

I should be back on the horse starting tomorrow evening - I hope, I hope, I hope.

Cheers.