Hey all, just wanted to pop in and say 'hi'. There doesn't appear to be a thread\sticky for introductions, so I figured I'd just put this here instead. I've been lurking around here for some time now, and it is high time that I announce my presence. To give some background, I joined the Planetside 2 community almost a year ago. I wasn't aware of the presence of the Player Studio until probably around 6 months ago, though. I've been visiting these forums on and off since then, just to see what's been in the works. Currently, I'm actively visiting on a daily basis, and you can expect to see me active around here fairly frequently for the time being. As far as artistic background goes, I've fiddled with 3D modeling for virtually my entire life, and I've recently begun to dive in seriously\professionally. I have some experience with traditional art forms, but most of my expertise lies in the digital realm. In all the threads I've looked through, there's been plenty of mention of the different tools out there to model with, but you'll always find me partial to Blender: it's such a powerful tool that can do so many different things, and free on top of it all. I have some experience with Maya, but nothing that could possibly be very helpful to anyone else that needed to know something about how it works. Still haven't touched ZBrush after all this time; that's a goal for the near future. The GNU IMP (not sure how touchy the filter is, lol) is my go-to for 2D stuff. No (easy) access to Photoshop, unfortunately. I'm already working on some asset concepts to throw around for critiquing, but I'll save that for another day and another thread. Hopefully I won't ask too many noob questions, as I've managed to dig extremely deeply through all of this forum's history for any and all simple questions\answers, including back when T-ray used to be around. Still working on watching all of his "Inside the Player Studio" videos, though: so much runtime to slog through for things that I probably already know the answer to. The last bit of informational stuff I have yet to 100% finish digesting is binary's guide to the PlayerStudio app. There's also a few other small odds and ends, but most of the acclimating has been taken care of. It is time to create, not read! That's all I can think of for now, at any rate. Hopefully an "introduction" thread isn't inappropriate; this community seems to be fairly close-knit as best I can tell, and I figured I'd just let you know there's another person around here that's been wanting to dive in. Otherwise, I'm gonna get a big 'ol "Locked Thread" from Syrah and that'll be the end of that Assuming that doesn't happen, though, feel free to ask me (almost) anything! I'll certainly be watching this thread like a hawk. PMs are fine, too, if that's your jive, although I would personally prefer questions in this thread so that we can keep a more open discussion instead of just 1-on-1.
Hey Ewbr! Welcome to the forum. Cool to "see" some new faces here every once in a while, it's been kinda slow here lately! A fresh perspective is always welcomed! Can't wait to see what you come up with. Feel free to ask me anything, zBrush is probably my strongest side tho and I can talk about it for hours
Good to hear from you, Shotgun. Yeah I'll probably be learning more about ZBrush by the end of the year. It's definitely become a more popular tool as of late, and it has a lot of uses. I'll definitely hit you up if I have a question that I can't figure out on my own. Thanks!
Thanks, Faven! I've kept my eye on your work for some time, and I hope to be able to succeed in making content for PS2 that players enjoy just as much as the work that you've put out in the past (or are still putting out because of staggered release dates, you have a hefty portfolio in Player Studio).
hey welcome the fourms, dont be discouraged if it takes ages to get something right, take your time, listen to feedback and eventurally youll get something in game. does it take a while? sure, is it discouraging to have stuff knocked back for silly reasons? sure. but hey its cool AF to see people in game wearing stuff *you* made, so have fun! @faven youll never be tired of my handsome face eh? ;p
Welcome aboard man! If you need a hand with anything Maya-related, gimme a shout, there's not many of us Maya people around here, so we have to stick together
Sorry about the late replies: thought I could reply to posts from my phone, but I can only view them x_x @Lobstrex: Awesome, thanks. I have definitely made it a long-term goal to eventually make a solid transition entirely into using Maya, but at the moment it's just too much a commitment to dedicate myself to. My guess is that a formal education with Maya\3DMax would be far more beneficial than just the know-how alone of a tool. I know enough about it to make it do the things I absolutely need it to, but not much else. Thankfully in the realm of 3D modeling and the like, many skills are universal and aren't application-specific. I'm used to a little different of a workflow when it comes to 3D stuff, and it's a huge relief to not have to worry about quite as many aspects of the entire work pipeline (specifically when it comes to animating) when we just work with hard-surface stuff and it never has to move\distort\be animated. The closest we have to worry about that kind of stuff here are minor things like making sure the neck joints on helmets have enough edge loops to not look incredibly ridiculous when a soldier rotates their head. Biggest thing I'm still keeping an eye on is trying to make weighting work in Blender if at all possible, even though binary's guide (and other threads) explicitly state that it is impossible\near-impossible. That's a few steps down the line, though, and I'll do more research on that specific topic before I bother anyone with questions about it here. @Fuzz: Thanks for the feedback, although I'm certainly not concerned with how fast a project gets completed. Biggest thing I'll be looking for is critique and criticism from you all, be it from a design standpoint, topology, color theory, whatever. As long as I can keep input coming in at a steady pace, I'll be able to iterate my ideas effectively instead of getting stuck on an idea that might just not be worth the time to iterate at all. Only thing I've developed possible uncertainty thus far about is the backend of all this Player Studio, on Daybreak's side: I've read a few too many threads discussing (unreasonably) long turnaround times. Don't get me wrong, I'm certain that there's plenty of cleaning up to do after everything we do as creators is done, but after reading about all of that recently, I've definitely developed a mindset of, "What can I do to not only make this piece of content great, but also help out DBG down the line?" Again, though, in the same vein as my response to Lobstrex, that's a bit further down the production line than the time being. From the things that I've looked through so far, I've found a few small things that can help out the DBG artists to not have to fiddle with as much on their end after they receive our submissions. Thanks for the warm welcome thus far, everyone. Really appreciate it Hoping to get some prototype designs thrown together in a thread for tomorrow or maybe Monday, at the latest. Still trying to decide if I want to post up my crappy handdrawn stuff taken by an even crappier camera (no scanner and no drawing tablet[BIG SADFACE]) or if I should just quickly mock it up roughly in 3D instead. I have a P3D account, so I'll just use that for 3D previews and maybe some basic rendered images to embed so that it's easy to see at a glance. Any preferences for P3D vs static images in a thread, or are they just both equally preferred?
Welcome! Looks like you're pretty well prepared Looking forward to seeing what you come up with. As far as the pictures, that'll be fine. If you want you could post both too, like a final sketch and your WIP model.
"What can I do to not only make this piece of content great, but also help out DBG down the line?" rigging, making sure its without glareing issues and using smooth groups should help, but ive not noticed a time diffrence with the stuff ive done that to, and the stuff i havent.
Thanks for the input, binary. I'll figure something out when I wind up posting my work and go from there based on feedback. @Fuzz: Okay, so about smooth groups. I've always used Mark Sharp\Smooth (and a non-applied Edge Split mod, when needed) for internal viewing purposes, which works just fine. However, this isn't optimal for exporting the model at the end of the creation process. Splitting edges in Blender to achieve the "hard" edge look creates extra verts\edges (not extra faces, but still data that will inevitably be rendered in-engine) in the mesh, and therefore makes the render heavier. After doing a little digging, I came across this extremely insightful thread. It solves the mystery of being able to export as .obj and maintain shading data. Unfortunately, during my hunt for information about this, I answered one question only to create a new question in its place. I'm seeing numerous posts about smooth groups being frowned upon because they also create a heavier render, and many have suggested just using bevels to mimic the hardness of edges instead of actually altering the shading data to be what we want it to be. The only issue I see with beveling as opposed to using smooth groups is the fact that it is flat-out creating extra geo, as opposed to internal data that has to be calculated. Does anyone have any (current) input about this? Some of the threads I looked through were... well-aged. tl;dr do I use smooth groups or just bevel the edges instead? Also, I'm aware that this post has gone astray from the "Hi, I'm new here" original post. If we're going to get into a technical discussion about optimization woes, I'm apt to just start a new thread for it instead of bloating this thread further with off-topic discussion. It certainly isn't helping that I am quickly discovering that I'm an expert of creating walls of text
dont use edge split mod. the only mod i use is triangulate, than a tri->quad (use UV data too) to keep the FBx's fine making eververthing with sharps is a pain, but its worth it. and is less of a chore the more you learn using bevels for edges does look MUCH nicer, but also does impact your tri count, and trust me, by the time your used to PS youll be doing some weird stuff to save tris
