Kinda looks like a peach...

I spent a little more time messing around with PSD networks in Maya, and now I have a new object

Instead of manually painting in the transparency, I instead made two black/white gradients, which made the transparency change as you moved around the sphere (ignore the blue lines, they're just rulers I used to snap things to the center without overlapping).

I also used an orange/red gradient for the color instead of making it a solid color, and then duplicated it four times and rotated it (similar to the transparency gradient) so that it didn't abruptly switch to another color.

Jumping Around

You may have noticed that I haven't updated this blog very frequently. This is mostly attributed to having to switch computers a few times now. Worst part is, the computer that I'm using right now doesn't yet have my drive (basically a "cloud" that stores my stuff) just yet, so I won't be able to update the blog today either. Sorry about that.

Adobe Illustrator and New Website

I apologize for not posting here Wednessday and Monday. Monday I literally couldn't get on, and Wednesday I simply forgot. That aside...

I have started a new project as of Wednesday, being the creation of a simple robot using Adobe Illustrator, and I also returned to a two year old project; making a robot in Maya. The Illustrator robot will be updated here, but for the robot in Maya, I will be updating it on a new website: http://phantompdb.blogspot.com/. I've got some editing on that website to do before I begin posting, but I should be done with that by next class. While you wait for that to be updated, I'll give you a look into the robot in Illustrator.

As stated earlier, the robot is fairly simple. That said, learning how Illustrator works while making this is a bit interesting,  as it functions differently from photoshop despite having similar digital art tools.

PSD Network Testing

I finally got to figuring out how to use the PSD network today, and I made some semi decent progress with it.

I basically colored in letters on the cube, made holes using transparency (basically placing white circles on the transparency layer, and gave it texture by messing with the noise on the bump map. To be honest, I don't like the result, but I'll likely go back and test other things in the PSD network as well.

Things I was working on last week

As previously mentioned, I had personal projects that I was working on last class while the rest of the class was working on a project I had already done. Below are those projects

These were made using a combination of skills I had learned freshman year, as well as a few skills that I had to learn along the way. The second was is still incomplete, but I won't be working on that one for a while.

Maya and PSD Network Issues

Sorry about the lack of posts last week. I was doing side projects since a lesson I had already done was being taught again. Unfortunately, I  did not bring a flash drive to show what I did exactly. I'll be sure to bring that next class. I also don't have anything to show for today, as I was trying to learn how to use Maya's PSD network function without any sort of guide. Huge failure. I'll be watching a video tutorial on that next time around. Sounds like a lot of posting for next class, doesn't it?

Fixed It!

If you look at my "Levitating Man" post, there is now an image to go with it. Woot!

Sorry about that delay. Something weird was going on.