Team Fortress 2 Hat Modeling

For our final project in Maya modeling, we made hats for Team Fortress 2.  Steam has a workshop where users can make and submit items to the workshop for consideration in the game.  My hat was a last-minute-conceived angler fish hat.  All the modeling, mapping, and texturing was done without instruction [the only advice that I asked for was how to use the nCloth function].  I'm quite proud of it actually.

 

Here is the model without texture applied.  In these, I forgot to soften the center seam since the piece was mirrored.  The Pyro head model was provided by Valve.

The first run in TF2's itemtest.  Steam's Source SDK was initially tough to work with and miraculously I was able to get it to export.  I wanted to test out how it looked with the low-poly version [the first image] and how it would display in-game.

 After a few tweaks in Photoshop, I rendered the final hat that I would turn in.  TF2 tends to make objects super shiny in the itemtest, so it seems like my spec map didn't do much.  I also finished painting both the RED and BLU versions.

I also tried the hat on the other classes just to see how it would look.  The Sniper was the only other class that the hat fit decently on, besides the teeth clipping into his ears.

I plan to continue with this project so I can submit it to the Steam Workshop and if luck is on my side, get it published.  I received some good constructive critique and positive reactions via players on reddit and tumblr, which is useful to see what the TF2 community wants to buy.  The hat itself is one still object, so I'm going to try some things to that the lure and fins can move corresponding to how the character moves.  Also I am going to add a glow effect on the bulb.

Maya Projects

I signed up for this class last-minute after the faculty opened up a new section, which pushed me to take 3 studios in a semester.  Initially I disliked Maya because it was giving me a lot of problems and I was a Photoshop newbie.  Gradually, I found myself liking it more and more, and now I really do miss the class.  I've learned quite a lot from it, and my professor Dave Gustlin is awesome.  

Here are the renders of my projects.

Our first real project, a Native American shield.  We learned how to make UV maps and color maps.

A Civil War-era belt buckle.  This project taught us how to paint bump maps in Photoshop.

An old trade knife.  We applied a specular map [for shininess] plus the color maps and bump maps.  Probably one of my favorites of the class projects.

A bullet and cartridge.  Taught us how to use AO maps and reflections.  

A Native American war club.  This was a last-minute-proposed project when my professor, Dave, decided we should learn how to model using NURBS [Non-uniform Rational B-Splines].  Yeah, I don't know what that means.  The feather was just an image that was fixed up in Photoshop.

Next Step

So I ended up passing the portfolio review!  I got the news last Thursday and I was extremely giddy the rest of the day.

The next step is to fill a sketchbook which the faculty was very strict about.  Every page has to be dated, and the sketchbook must be a 6"x9" spiral-bound.

Me and Claudia nabbed the last two Aquabee sketchbooks at University Art this afternoon.

Gonna fill this up starting... now.

Portfolio, Go!

I guess what's left to do is hope for the best.

BW Rendering Complete!

Whew, finally done.  Acrylic paint is very fussy.

8"x8"

Figure Drawing Portfolio 2...

The second portfolio required for Sheldon's class, and this time, he wanted construction.  The day we turned them in, he gave us a lecture on how much time we should devote to drawing, and how much free time we won't have.  Three studio classes were a bad idea in hindsight.  I pretty much curled up into a ball on top of one of the wooden blocks lying around the room and almost cried.  Anyways...

Bleah.

Still Life Rendering Progress

Here's the original image:

Here's what I have so far: 

All done in a lot of layers of acrylic paint.  I tend to use it as a wash, building on a lot of layers.  I think it's a habit carried over from years of painting watercolours.

Colin Fix

This pretty awesome dude came to give a short guest lecture this afternoon.  Most of what he covered was his process on creating an illustration, and how to develop characters.  His sketchbooks were passed around and they were pretty thick and messy and rad.  After the lecture he was mobbed by a lot of students since he was doing unique little paintings in their sketchbooks or Bioshock 2 art books.  Unfortunately I had to take off quickly, but he didn't want me to leave empty-handed so I got a quick funny face.  Yay!

Check out his work HERE.