I Decided To Run

I Decided To Run

By Sean Tindell

I decided to run, I don’t know why, but I did. I ran and ran for what felt like forever. Then I hit a wall. I fell. It hurt, but I got back up and looked at the wall. It looked impossibly tall, but it was there and telling me to climb. So without hesitation I began to climb, and climb, and climb. Higher and higher until my hands hurt and I felt I couldn’t climb anymore, I couldn’t see the top and the ground seemed so far away but something inside me told me to keep climbing. So I did I kept climbing, I was so tired and in pain my hands would barely grip the wall, and many times my hand seemed to slip and I would nearly fall but I kept going and going and going. I don’t know how I had made it that far or how I was even pushing through the pain I only knew if I didn’t keep climbing I would fall and fall into what seemed like a bottomless world of clouds. Finally so very tired and wondering if there even was a world above me I saw it upon the horizon of my site behind the red glow of the brilliant sunset. Tears began to fall from my eyes and I began to climb. Almost to the top …….I slipped…….and began to fall…..I don’t know how far I fell I just know I fell and landed on a ledge. I still couldn’t see the bottom and could no longer see the top. Lying beaten and bruised I wondered and was sad for a short time  but now I knew there was a top a place at the end a place to go and a new journey to go to. Once I remembered that I stood up and began climbing again, faster, harder, and with more vigor for I knew the path I had climbed it before. I found myself wondering if it was as hard as I was think before or if I just knew where I was going but before too long I saw the top again, I wanted to know what was there if there was just another side to the wall if there was something on top or if it was just a wall and if so what was it keeping there I had to know. I reach the top of the wall and I looked all around, saw many things felt as though I could truly do anything and for the first time I knew I was finally free.

*one day I will create a nice animated short for this. Until then I hope you enjoy this story.

2 Schools of thought

There seems to be 2 main forms of thought when it comes to creating environments. One is simply create each prop individually with there own unique texture texture creating the texture after the model. The second is to create the texture first then create the model based off of that. Each of these has its own advantages and disadvantages the second method seems to be the best for quickly blocking out and creating a scene and depending on what software used may be extremely useful, also very diverse however certain engines will not allow for this technique in such a way as to create high quality assets and can create issues when lighting. This is from my own personal experience.

The first technique on the other hand can be used in all engines and can usually take advantage of the same software the second uses creating a greater variety. Although this technique takes longer it tends to create much more interesting areas and realism for shadows, norm, spec and other basic maps can be created for greater quality all through this technique tends to take much longer as you must focus on each individual asset.

A combination of these 2 techniques seems to be the best choice for setting up the scene with the 2nd and then defining and cleaning up the scene with the first.

These are my opinions and observations, feel free to add to this or correct me.

In Reference to Reference

This is so obvious everyone forgets I know I do.

Always have reference even if you've made it a 1000 times. Mainly because if something looks wrong and you can not tell why there is little chance it will look correct.

Even when you think it looks right it may also be way of because you only think you know the correct athletics of stone, wood, brick, metal, etc... but you may be using the wrong type of wood stone etc for whatever your working on.

This is one of the reasons reference is extremely important.

This goes for all programs and disciplines and forms of art.

Notes z-brush rockwall

These are my own personal notes results will vary on your own.

First use Clay tubes on a High Z intensity.
    -100 last used
    - Build Up a large pile for planing
    - Build Up you can also use trim dynamic trails to smooth it first

Then use Planar
 -leave settings at default
Creates a hard solid rock face with the needed imperfections

Embellish as needed.

This method seems to work best on a rounded surface.

Flat surface does not seem to work to well but may be possible with this method

Trim Adaptive seems to work well with flat surfaces but is much more organic (must use a light touch for this.) If using planar after using trim adaptive or trails creates a nice solid rockface.

When using planar be careful not to either cut to deep or leave the ledge of polygons they are very annoying to get rid of. Light touch seems to work best.

In my opinion it seems to work best on individual bricks.

Here is an example of this method in use.