MAY 2016
Ah. the black hole that is 3D...
May's challenge was a long time in waiting.
I was never really that into video games growing up, comics were always more interesting as well as accessible. As such I was a really late bloomer when it came to 3D.
I first started learning it in college, but in a mismatch of non consecutive bursts of work as well as a bitter dichotomy of either very knowledgeable but in demand instructors, or woefully out of touch frauds, I was never really that satisfied with my work. Not to mention that I was raised in a household of Mac users, which suddenly became a pretty substantial handicap as I was learning Windows based 3dsMax. These lead me to explore alternative options such as Maya- and especially Maxon's Cinema 4D.
At any rate, I knew I wanted to return to exploring 3D- especially in Cinema- and this month was perfectly suited. I had found myself approaching a very "Koyaanisqatsi-esque" theme of producing symmetrical images using nature, man made and finally mind made.
The initial challenges were basically getting over the hump of a learning curve since I hadn't really done any 3D work at all in a very long time. Many extra hours were allotted to allow for training (especially Greyscalegorilla & Cineversity) as well as research/development. I explored the myriad of free plugins and scripts that were now available. Some of my favorites included microfloaties, voronoi generator and greebler.
The biggest challenges ended up not only became a major headache, but very nearly ended the entire project. Once again being an Apple user bit me in the ass, and after my go-to MacBook was bricked I found myself scrambling for solutions. Luckily I still had an old iMac desktop that I used to finish out the month.
The biggest thing I learned from this month was that there was no doubt about it- if I wanted to progress with 3d/CG art, I was going to have to say goodbye to the clean cut safety of Apple products and jump the fence to the other side and build a PC...