Oh, it's YOU. It's been a loooooong time.

Yeah, I'm feeling a little bit like Glados at the beginning of Portal 2. Like I've been asleep for a while, and I'm just starting to wake up again. Kind of like an extended vacation. Or a coma.

I think this post warrants some explanation as to what the hell I've been doing for the past 3.5 months. Well, I surely haven't been laying on the couch eating Fritos if that's what you think. No, I've hit a pretty large milestone in my life. I have finally gotten out of the world of retail/customer service, and into the realm of having a 9-5 big boy job. Yep. I was hired up by a company by the name of Casting House in early March. They deal in custom jewelry CAD design, and I'm sort of a quality control guy. I make sure that the wax models of the jewelry come out okay. Well, that's the short version, anyway. And for the month before that happened, I had to learn some new tools and software to land the job. So that and also getting used to my new schedule has left me little time to work on game stuff. Until recently, that is. And because I've gotten the lead out, I now have these brand spankin' new pics of the bike to show you. This is what I like to call the "new pass", which is where you model out everything as if it's new, with no scratches or anything like that.


















It feels like I've kind of taken a big step in terms of what I can do now in Zbrush. I've really been diving into tutorials as of late, mainly on hard surface sculpting. I used to feel like I could only just take a model and carve into it, making some wear and tear, etc. But now I feel I'm capable of doing a little more, which is a good feeling to have. I've also learned that there's no shame in using high poly geometry made in maya for cases where it would be easier to do than in a high poly sculpting program. I always used to think that it should all be done in Zbrush, but that's really not the case.

You'll notice some artifacts and weird geometry on parts, but most of it won't show in the normal mapping that is actually applied to the low poly model. Also, Photoshop does a pretty good job in cloning out some of the undesirables. I might have to figure something out in terms of presenting the high poly models though. I'm thinking more and more that I may need a new computer. The one I have just can't handle the amount of polys I need it to any more. I've had it for about 6 years now, so it's been a long time coming. Part of the artifacting in the models is probably due to not having enough polys to begin with, which a new comp would fix, obviously.

Speaking of not having a good enough computer....

You're probably wondering where the sidecar pics are. Well, as it turns out, It was a mistake for me to put all of the parts of it into one Zbrush file. The file size got so huge that now, I can't open it on my system. There's just not enough memory to handle it. A friend of mine with a beefier computer might be able to help me with this today, actually. So, fingers are crossed.

Next up for me is to get the sidecar files operational again, and then finish the new pass for it and post pics. Hopefully, it'll be sometime this week. After that, it's what I like to call the "rough pass", where I add wear and tear to the parts that need it. Then, texturing and implementation into the unreal engine.

So we'll see.