TAG: With the introduction of XP and Quests into the Maclab with TAG, I felt it was tedious, and somewhat excessive as a veteran, I just wanted to work. The XP gaining does provide people a feeling of “leveling up, so I can do or use ___.” like with modern video games, which causes players to keep on playing in this case working on projects. I do feel it somewhat slows down, veteran students who would just like to work. For example, in the beginning in the year, I was expecting to start working right off that bat after the first several weeks, but I had to wait a month or two, due to gaining enough XP to start on my 3d projects. I suggest reducing the limiting factor to veterans, and let them get started as soon as possible, thus providing more working time. Other than that, TAG is an interesting concept to have in a classroom.

AMP: Autonomy, mastery, and purpose helped me keep focus on trying to extend a project life’s span. Exploring new tools and playing around with material settings, attempting to master the program, lead to multiple projects I am quite satisfied with. Compared to other years, I would start a project and leave it after a few weeks, but with the introduction of AMP this year, I felt I needed to take my projects and break into a whole new horizon. For example, modeling the buggy with turret on top of it, I felt taking still images wasn’t enough, and in the last couples of weeks, I have been rendering out animations that shows how this vehicle was developed. With my robot project that had the tubes and wires connected to it, everyday I looked at it and I wasn’t satisfied with the look. So I took it and kept trying new concepts, deleting and reapplying new textures, and adding new objects to the scenes, until it reached a point where it has shown me that I learned something new, or at least attempted.

ZIM: I benefited from Skocko’s ulterior motives, in all 4 years I’d been in the Maclab. Without the encouragement, I got from freshman year to push my projects to their limits and keep on getting better, I would have not have achieved as much as I did. I never really saw myself winning a district art show or gaining multiple awards for digital arts. After seeing how much I achieved through out these 4 years, it seems like theirs nothing stopping me from achieving my dreams in life. Now, I’m considering on getting a degree in 3D Game Art & Design right after getting my computer engineering degree.

The code of honor will affect my plans for the next few weeks and the future, by doing what I can in life and in each every project I do. Strive for excellence, and get closer and closer to reaching my goals ahead of me. Maybe even explore new avenues, and see what else life has in store. By believing in myself, I know that anything is possible.

I have been exploring new lighting schemes, (Day, Night, and etc.) and texturing using photoshop to create specific items I need in my scene(s). For example, the schemactics in this image. In the next month, I plan on polishing projects and starting new exciting and challenging projects. I hope to master, lighting schemes and texturing using photoshop.

AMP has enabled me to explore more options with Cinema 4D. It has lead me to learn and attempt to master a whole new mechanic of the program, in which is animation. Since being in the MacLab, I have only played around with modeling static objects, learning to animate will open up many ideas in my head for future projects. I have discovered new ways of modeling, in the past I have learned point modeling and currently plane modeling. Recently, my cousin has told me about taking a shape and sculpting it through extrusion and point & polygon manipulation. This method of modeling would help me expand my skills, and lead me towards a whole new skill tree within the program such, cleaner unwrapping of UV’s for UV Mapping (Superior Texturing Method Over The Default Textures), less useless polygons (Faster Render Times), and overall increase efficiency of the workflow.

If AMP is extended, I plan on adapting to this type of 3d modeling and explore animation as much as I can.

Wireframe Renders Of My Current Project:

Texturing is nearing completion, most likely will be done, sometime next week. I plan to start animating the construction of this vehicle, next Thursday or Friday.

To Do List:

-Finish Up Texturing.

-Polishing The Overall Model

-Stage Setup and Lighting.

-Animation

I plan on continuing to work on mastering Cinema 4D. In the next few weeks, I plan on finishing up texturing a car, that i’d been working on for a few weeks. Hopefully by then, i’ll be available to start animate a scene, that will show how it was constructed.

Started to texture out this scene, the debris as of right now are place holders. I am quite pleased with this, but it is far from finalization.

My original logo idea looked like this.

I began with simply putting my initials together, and kept toying with it. I capitalized the P and lowered cased the B, and reminded me of the element, Pb Lead. Since I mostly 3d art, I decided to put the 3 in between Pb and the design. The number 3 sparked an idea of molecules, thats why I lowered the 3. The hexes began as nucleus’s and electrons, the overall design didn’t seem that interesting, so I started over. Lead is a solid and matter is pack tightly together, I decided to use the same size hexes and pack them together to represent that, then additionally added the fade. This logo project this year taught me, that you are able to take any idea and expand it, to a whole new horizon.

Here is the current 3d revision.

Plans For The Year:

-Continue To Expand My Cinema 4D Knowledge.

-Learn more about alpha textures and discover new advance ways of texturing objects.

-Continue with modeling more and more complex objects.

Ideas For TAG:

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