If you check in the archives, you'll see my animation of a pianist playing a piano. You don't really see said piano in great detail because of the quality of the video, so here's a render of the piano in all it's glory!
I regard this as one of my best models to date. It was fun, challenging and it turned out great.
As a side note, here are some pictures of some other forgotten models:
These are: a 1950's fire extinguisher for my team's Half Life 2 Modification, an MP3008 also for the mod, a pair of German hand grenades and just for fun, a Guitar Hero Xplorer guitar controller.
Rock Band is awesome. Some nights I go to my mates house to play it in band quickplay and we usually do well. Both of us are able to score high nineties percent-wise. This time was different. We chose the awesome song More Than A Feeling by Boston and rocked out on expert.
Double 100%, yeah! With my mate on singing, no less.
Another map project, this time a recreation of my village. It's going to be a zombie survival map to be played co-operatively over the internet with up to 4 people (probably through Garry's Mod or something).
It's quite a large map, probably about 1/3 of a mile square. These preview pictures are only of the street I live on.
Obviously set at night, the map should be creepy and full of zombies. Think of it as a very poor man's Left 4 Dead.
I saw the E3 demo level for Mirror's Edge and I was blown away by it. I thought it would be a fun idea to try and recreate the level in Hammer using the Portal configuration.
I got about halfway finished with it and posted a video of it on Youtube:
Much to my surprise it got featured on Kotaku, which then helped it spread to other games websites. A week after posting the video it had about 200 views. As soon as Kotaku picked it up, it went up by 60,000 views in a couple of days.
This new-found popularity spurred me to complete the first section of the map, which I duly did and posted another video to Youtube:
This one's not as popular, but still good to have it there. The video says stage 1/3 which is wrong, there will only be two stages.
WWII was an extremely interesting period in history, which brought about many great machines. One such machine was the Spitfire. An icon of aviation which helped win the Battle of Britain for the Allies, huzzah!
Well, I thought it would be fun to model this gorgeous aeroplane in 3D Studio Max.
Holy quick texture Batman!
Anyway, with this model I was aiming for a low poly version and it ended up at around the 3000 poly mark, which isn't too bad.
The Thompson submachine gun is on of my favourite weapons and a sexy one at that. I've not modelled a gun since I made some for a mod for Half Life 2 called Decay that I worked on with some guys from my University (more info on that in a later post). Anyway, for that mod I had to make a few World War II era weapons, so I thought "why not continue with this trend?".
Well I started this weapon and promptly finished a few hours later. Time sure does fly when you're modelling.
I love space. I love space travel. So when I was told I would have to animate something using 3D Studio Max I chose the greatest venture ever undertaken by mankind. Putting a man on the moon.
After I realised that I didn't have enough time to recreate the entire mission, I decided that the launch would be sufficient.
Criteria for this module included using kinematics and particle effects.
There are a couple of mishaps in the video. The first is that the second stage of the Saturn V rocket actually had 5 engines, not 4. The other is I forgot to chop the end off the scene where the first stage is ejected and it goes on for far too long. So long in fact that you can see the Earth stops rotating in the background (whoops).
Call this little spat a YouTube dump because I'm getting all these out of the way early.
Here's another Uni module, which called for us to animate a character in any scene of our choice. I chose a piano recital, but one with a twist. You'll see what happens in this video:
As you can see the character fails miserably (as I did trying to animate walking, eh). I'm no animator as you can plainly tell, but what I am proud of is that Grand Piano. Genuinely fun to model and texture, which is surprising.
Also, the music is "Truman Sleeps" by Philip Glass and it's a beautiful piece.
Another Uni module for me was 3D Facial Modelling. Simply make a 3D model of your own face and texture it using ZBrush.
My video this time, here's how it turned out. Overall I think the face part of the model is good, but the hair is abysmal. It looks like it's made of wood, heh. That was before my hair was long enough to tie back, which is why it's floppy like that.
Made using 3D Studio Max 7 (lousy "we're not updating because we suck blah blah" Uni), textured using ZBrush and Photoshop.
Uni work is usually a bitch, but sometimes you get a module that is fun throughout. One such module is Optical Motion Capture using the Vicon 8 system set up at the University by RARE. Yes that RARE.
Tip o' the flying barrel to my teammate Binnsy01 for the video.
For the module we were given two keywords that gave us our inspiration. We got "Anxious" and "Donkey Kong". Not the best combination but we went with it. What we decided on in the end was our good friend Donkey throwing a barrel, going to throw another and have it explode above him. The next time he goes for a barrel he's anxious in case it explodes like the last one. Simple right?
Anyway, I chose to be the actor and donned the Lycra. It has to be one of the strangest and most fun moments of my Uni course. Seeing myself as white dots on a monitor moving in real time was awesome.
After recording all the takes it was time to clean the data. This was a bitch, but after getting the hang of it I couldn't stop. We divided the takes up between the three of us but I ended up cleaning all of them just for jollies and that's how it ended up. I think it looks pretty good.
Damn, I think I might have made the smart choice in saving myself £35.
Sod having all that "Welcome to my blog :P" nonsense. You're here and you'll probably be gone soon.
What this blog IS for is to showcase some of my work in the 3D modelling, mapping and modding fields. Anyway, a bit about me:
My name is Phil Goddard, I'm 21 years of age and I am currently on a year out from Staffordshire University where I am studying BSc (Hons) Computer Game Design. What you'll see in this profile is various work I have done for the course and other works I have done or am in the process of doing in my spare time.
