Low Poly Environment

Made a quick low poly modeling and texturing exercise using Blender last week. The environment was based on a rough conceptual drawing found via Pinterest. It's actually a work in progress still, trying to finish it in the coming weeks.

I modeled the assets quickly using as much duplication as much as possible. Then I painted all the textures by hand. The bricks were made using a tileable texture while everything else had unique UVs. The scene was rendered with simple diffuse materials lit by a HDRI map. I should make more of these video game type pieces in the future. It was fun.

Closeup

shaded

wireframe

New CG Books

Got two new CG books from Amazon this week. The other is about 3D package Modo and the other about After Effects CS6. Good stuff!

Ok, so the first one is called Building 3D Models with Modo 701. It's not a thorough guide into everything about Modo and not even about the most recent version but a good starter nonetheless. It covers things such as navigating the interface + basic modeling, shading and lighting tools. Little over 214 pages it was the best one I found for the price. 

I have also been watching Modo tutorials at Digital Tutors recently. The workflow is obviously same as in every other modeling app but it takes time to convert hotkeys/menus and old habits from one to the other. However, I do think I'm starting to get a hang of it.

The second book is a couple of years old book called Adobe After Effects CS6 Classroom in a book. It's an official Adobe release and seems pretty informative. I've been thinking for such a long time to get a grasp on After Effects. It seems that AE knowledge is pretty valuable these days and it could be helpful in my own projects too. The book's just over 375 pages so there's a lot to find out about.

Now I just need to find the time to read both of these actually!