Back in December 2009 I came across a piece of software called Sculptris. It's still in the beta stage but is gathering speed in functionality and usability.
Simply put, it's like ZBrush and Mudbox though it is not limited to pre-defined vertices on the basemesh; Sculptris will subdivide on-the-fly during sculpting. To achieve a similar result in ZBrush one has to mask and subdivide a localised area of the mesh. There are some pros and cons to this method of increasing mesh density and DrPetter, the sole developer behind this project is working to stabalise both sides.
Check out the beta at: http://www.sculptris.com/
Sunday 23 May 2010
EvolveCG - 15th/16th May
I attended the recent EvolveCG conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida a week ago. The event was aimed at students in the South Florida area and included a job fair with many developers including Blizzard and Naughty Dog. Also critique sessions were available.
Featured speakers included many of the guys from Naughty Dog: Teagan Morrison (Lead Technical Artist), Hanno Hagedorn (Lead Character Artist) and Ryan Trowbridge (Character TD). Also featured were Fausto de Martini (Art Director for the film cinematic department at Blizzard), Ted Davis (Senior texture artist at DreamWorks Animation Studios) and Jason Ryan (Supervising Animator at DreamWorks Animation Studios), Kekai Kotaki (Lead Concept Artist at NCSoft).
Teagan Morisson gave an in-depth talk on the Uncharted 2 environment pipeline, from blockmesh to in-game results. There included many hints and tips to make quick iterations, consideration of composition of the environment and also to debug at runtime.
Hanno Hagedorn presented a 3 hour sculpt he made and talked through the many tools he used and some of the processes which worked for him - surprisingly he stated he prefered the creation of textures via the Naughty Dog way (slightly hand-painted) as opposed to his previous appointments (presumably Crysis while at Crytek).
I did have a brief chat with Ryan Trowbridge before his presentation - which I missed in favour of Hanno's. Ryan confirmed he is still working on a MayaPython book with Adam Mechtley (A2M) and will focus primarily on the MayaPython and MayaPythonAPI implementations, plus a tiny bit on PyMEL. I'm really looking forward to this one. http://www.rtrowbridge.com/blog/
It was a very positive experience to see developers encouraging students through such events. More than anything it gave me insights on many developer's production pipelines and potential teaching methodologies.
The plan is to run EvolveCG at least once a year. You can find out more by visiting: http://evolve3d.net/
Featured speakers included many of the guys from Naughty Dog: Teagan Morrison (Lead Technical Artist), Hanno Hagedorn (Lead Character Artist) and Ryan Trowbridge (Character TD). Also featured were Fausto de Martini (Art Director for the film cinematic department at Blizzard), Ted Davis (Senior texture artist at DreamWorks Animation Studios) and Jason Ryan (Supervising Animator at DreamWorks Animation Studios), Kekai Kotaki (Lead Concept Artist at NCSoft).
Teagan Morisson gave an in-depth talk on the Uncharted 2 environment pipeline, from blockmesh to in-game results. There included many hints and tips to make quick iterations, consideration of composition of the environment and also to debug at runtime.
Hanno Hagedorn presented a 3 hour sculpt he made and talked through the many tools he used and some of the processes which worked for him - surprisingly he stated he prefered the creation of textures via the Naughty Dog way (slightly hand-painted) as opposed to his previous appointments (presumably Crysis while at Crytek).
I did have a brief chat with Ryan Trowbridge before his presentation - which I missed in favour of Hanno's. Ryan confirmed he is still working on a MayaPython book with Adam Mechtley (A2M) and will focus primarily on the MayaPython and MayaPythonAPI implementations, plus a tiny bit on PyMEL. I'm really looking forward to this one. http://www.rtrowbridge.com/blog/
It was a very positive experience to see developers encouraging students through such events. More than anything it gave me insights on many developer's production pipelines and potential teaching methodologies.
The plan is to run EvolveCG at least once a year. You can find out more by visiting: http://evolve3d.net/
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