What are you working on right now?

karnyde · Nov 27, 2024

something malicious is being cooked rn

Terminal Phase · Nov 27, 2024

Lesdeux said:
Got a few things I'm currently workin' on. When I get stuck on one, I move to a different project. Some context stuff: This is my first dive into low-poly, lots to improve on. I haven't put together the face rig for the doctor yet, lotta mouths and eyes to be had. The burlap creature is named Rhine and I'm currently in the process of coming up with her room (it's gonna be what you see in that black viewport in the doctor's room). I got rid of the zipper part of the model and I'm gonna draw them onto her mouth textures instead.

View attachment 1475 View attachment 1478

If you don't mind me asking, do you have any tips for making textures like the ones you made in your room scene? I've been experimenting with low-poly stuff and the process I currently use is downscaling image textures via GIMP to about 128x128 or 256x256 then adding some dithering to them. It's not a bad look but it ends up pretty pixelated which isn't always something I'm going after. I really like how your textures look smoother (if that's the right term) while also still feeling low poly.

Speaking of low poly I've got an idea for a dock scene at sunset since:

The modelling for it shouldn't be too intense.
I want to try mixing low poly stuff with GooEngine lighting
Stacks of randomly selected container models would be good geometry nodes practice.

I've finished a large Crane, which took a lot longer than I expected, though I think that's mainly due to me being pretty new at modeling stuff.

Next up is going to be making 4-5 containers with textures, a pretty simple large boat for the cranes to unload from, and trucks for the containers to be loaded onto.

If anyone has any tips or advice for rigging ropes/cable I'd love to hear it. I've got the crane cab/container grabber set up so I can move it freely back and forth, but I'll need to have cable that raises and lowers the container grabber. I'm almost tempted to just make some thin cylinders and keyframe their vertical scale or something, but I'd also like to have it swing a bit with momentum if that isn't a huge undertaking. Lmk if you guys have any thoughts/suggestions/pointers.

Lesdeux · Nov 27, 2024

Terminal Phase said:
If you don't mind me asking, do you have any tips for making textures like the ones you made in your room scene? I've been experimenting with low-poly stuff and the process I currently use is downscaling image textures via GIMP to about 128x128 or 256x256 then adding some dithering to them. It's not a bad look but it ends up pretty pixelated which isn't always something I'm going after. I really like how your textures look smoother (if that's the right term) while also still feeling low poly.

No problem! For certain textures that I want to preserve legibility for, I just don't scale them down to 128x128 or 256x256. I keep the original resolution and play around with how near/far the face I'm projecting it onto is. That part is more of a feel rather than a hard cap so unfortunately, I can't give you exact numbers. Especially since not all textures are the same resolution to begin with. I do periodic test rendering to see if everything looks good to me personally.

I also cheat a little bit by adding a 10-15% noise filter in Photoshop after a render is complete. Unsure if it'll work with animations as well, I haven't tried yet. I'm thinking it will but maybe not as smoothly as just applying a filter.

As for the cables/rope, I found this video and it seems in line with what you are asking. It is a couple years old at this point so updates might've changed around where certain things are, but the functionality should still work. Satisfactory for a quick and easy solution anyway.

Terminal Phase · Nov 27, 2024

Lesdeux said:
No problem! For certain textures that I want to preserve legibility for, I just don't scale them down to 128x128 or 256x256. I keep the original resolution and play around with how near/far the face I'm projecting it onto is. That part is more of a feel rather than a hard cap so unfortunately, I can't give you exact numbers. Especially since not all textures are the same resolution to begin with. I do periodic test rendering to see if everything looks good to me personally.

I also cheat a little bit by adding a 10-15% noise filter in Photoshop after a render is complete. Unsure if it'll work with animations as well, I haven't tried yet. I'm thinking it will but maybe not as smoothly as just applying a filter.

As for the cables/rope, I found this video and it seems in line with what you are asking. It is a couple years old at this point so updates might've changed around where certain things are, but the functionality should still work. Satisfactory for a quick and easy solution anyway.

Thanks for the tips! I'll give original resolution textures a shot for sure. Noise filters are great too. If you use AfterEffects I know that they have built in animated noise you can apply as a filter over footage that I like a lot, the Noise HLS especially gives you some pretty good control over the look and feel of the noise. I've also played around with film grain overlays in the past, though that might not be the same feel that you're going for.

Definitely appreciate the video, it looks exactly like what I was looking for!

Lesdeux · Dec 27, 2024

Here are some sneak peeks at the current projects I'm bouncing between:

As you can see, I still got a ways to go for both. Yes, I will eventually give the fridge a glass panel, so it actually looks more like a fridge! Right now, it kinda just looks like a fancy cabinet. I currently don't have more to show for the drawing cause unfortunately I spent a good 4-5 hours after the sketch just testing out different brushes.

karnyde · Dec 30, 2024

just a little more...

Andrew · Jan 7, 2025

Been a minute.

karnyde · Jan 27, 2025

something green, sort of

terashimansh · Jan 28, 2025

some cover design for my video.

KeplerElectronics · Jan 28, 2025

Working on the thumbnail for my next combat robotics video. It's not YouTube Meta, but I think it looks cool? I've got a few large renders to do before I can publish, so I'll probably be tweaking this for a few more days. This is a still frame from one of the renders with some overlays added to juice it up. Any feedback is welcome :)

PTC Creo (robot model) + Blender (Environment) + Procreate (Text) + Affinity Photo (General Photoshoppery)