On a downer.

Spent a lot of time over the last couple of days working in 3ds Max and UDK on my scene. Here it is so far;

There is still a lot I want to do with this, which mainly involves creating new assets and textures such as rocks and grass, and trying to make the sun work (which it isn’t, as I found out today). I’ve been doing a lot more 3D than I’m used to so decided today, after some UDK stressing, that I’d do some painting. I started a master study last night and I intended on finishing it today, but I got annoyed with working on the sea and stopped;

SO then I tried a 30 minute spitpaint. Don’t go there. I’m starting to get all down on my work again. It seems like everyone around me is improving amazingly and I’m still here being a bit shit. I guess it’s just a phase, but I feel like I’ll never be good enough to get in the industry because I have no idea how to make myself better. I feel like I’m a really slow improver in comparison to everyone else and I’m going to be left behind. It doesn’t help that I’m friends with the likes of Darek Zabrocki and Ruan Jia on Facebook and have to watch there amazing work scroll by. Gah.

Maybe I’ll feel better tomorrow.

UDK and Visual Design Update

It’s the Easter holidays now but that doesn’t mean I get three weeks to sit around and eat chocolate, which is basically what I did all weekend. Well. There’ll be a decent amount of sitting and chocolate eating.

I’m taking a bit of a break from visual design (although I still have my Guild Hall final to finish), but hopefully I’ll be throwing some personal work into the mix, and maybe re-doing one or two more finals if I can bring myself to. So far for the Guild Hall project I’ve completed some thumbs on location, and a digipaint;

I’m hoping the weather will improve at some point in Easter when I’m not back home so I can do an on-location watercolour piece. I would like that.

Moving on to my 3D work, I’ve managed to finish my dynamic UDK skybox. It involved a lot of tutorial following so I don’t quite understand the theory of all the shaders yet but I have a vague idea. I’m pretty happy with the final result though, considering it’s my first skybox. I just need to work on little things like Photoshopping the sky image better and choosing more suitable images; the current skybox looks a little odd because the clouds are too big.

Today I’ve been making another tree to accompany my old old ones from a past project (it’s currently running through NormalThief to make it look pretty), which should hopefully make my scene look more diverse. There’s still a helluva lot of assets to make though if I want to make it look how I imagine it. I’m really enjoying it so far. Very rewarding.