The new year is here and so is another quarter. Personal projects will have to wait until the end of it, I am afraid… Although, school work will be posted.

Want to render this awesome animation with all this awesome lighting, but the render time is so so that you could make an identical 2D animation of it in the time allowed?   Well then, consider texture baking.

“What is Texture Baking” you ask? Texture Baking is a way to render out multiple materials & shaders to a single texture, which can include scene lighting and shadows and complicated materials. If the scene is static, its an excellent way to get high quality lighting and texturing for real-time games.Why is this such a big deal?Baked in maps add a level of detail that comes closer to photo-real, plus it looks cool as hell!

Now, there are a few different ways to do this.  You can download the plugin for texture baking here, or go here for a tutorial.

I am posting this because I rendered an animation with mental ray, and it took a full day to render, then crashed on me right at the end.  So I looked up how to bake textures, and it took 6 hours instead of 26, and didn’t crash!  I hope that this will help you one of these days when facing the dreaded render button with a scene full of lights and other add-ons.

Just because there is a break, make sure you do not slack off!  As for me, I have been working the day away with both new and old projects, along with my own homework.  Make sure you don’t stuff yourselves sick with turkey and pie.  You’ll feel it in the morning when you go back to work.

To be honest with you, in this industry, I have no clue. I ask this because I used a wood texture for the walls of a concept piece, and I know of people who just cut and paste a scene together and call it finished.  But when does that cross into copywright?   Any thoughts?

Previously a $200 video game engine for PC and Xbox360, Unity Technologies has stated that since this version of Unity is only generating a small portion of its revenue, they have desired to release it for free.  The Pro version of Unity remains at $1,500.

Read the full article here.

So we started skinning our characters in 3ds Max today, and I think I’m getting the hang of this. Sure, we had to skin our characters in Low Poly Modeling & Animation, but this class is dedicated to the rigging process. I spend twenty minutes trying to fix the knee on my humanoid, and the instructor comes around comments on my knee, saying that it was ‘carry accurate’. Of course, that made me real happy, and here I am trying to get this all skinned for class next week. I don’t think that this will be a problem, since all I do is homework anyway, haha.

Yea, you read that right. Unreal. Engine. 3. Free.

Epic Games has announced a free PC edition of the Unreal Development Kit, also allowing non-commercial Unreal Engine 3 games to be released for free and detailing new royalty-based engine licensing.

The free tools, which Epic call the Unreal Development Kit, is available to anyone with interest in exploring 3D game technology, from professionals to students and hobbyists. Those users will also have access to documentation and resources on an official website — which also offers information on how to license UE3 commercially.

Developers can now release UE3-powered games for free, which will be particularly popular with non-commercial mod projects. (Link HERE)

Ok, so this site may not be 100% finished, but I don’t care. I’ve begun to get back into using my free time to work on my own projects, instead of reading all day and playing video games on my computer. I only have a year left of school and I need to get back into the habit.

So I started up a new project today, and have gotten pretty far. I am painting (in Photoshop of course) a male bust. I am learning muscles in my Anatomy class, so I am trying to see how much of it I have picked up and how knowing the muscle system can help ones work. So far, I am getting amazing results. As soon as I get my gallery working, I will post a WIP image.