Looking at Shader

Shaders are your colors, texture and what will the camera pickup during render, they will decide how shiny( that's specular to you technical fella), reflectivity,  translucency ( aka opacity ) and what color ( also known as diffuse.

and not be confuse between texture artist and shader artist, in a more technical term and requirements THEY ARE NOT THE SAME, I'll be elaborating this more as i write down more stuff. a general idea is that:

-Texture painters are the ones doing the painting in Photoshop and Mari, using photos and brushes to create / manipulate how a CG thing will look

-Shader artist how ever will be the one grabbing the texture images from the Texture painters and give them the CG properties like specularity, reflectivity and etc in which will react accordingly to the light source . they will also be writing codes and command using programming language like mel script for maya user

http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?/topic/14360-shader-writing-and-why-is-so-important/

so below are the default shaders that is available as of maya 2010 they are from left : Hair Tube shader, Ocean shader, Anisotropic, Blinn, Lambert, Phong, Phong E, Ramp and the
bottom : Shading Map, Shading Surface

 Shaders with a singular light source

Shaders with multiple light source for this case 3 point lights

The importance of UV

 fig.1

If you don UV your objects, it might and most times turn out horrible like the above. how ever i do understand that UVing will take some time but is a necessary step, so when it comes down to a TEAM efford who does UVing ?

From my experience is the modelers part as they are well verse with their models ( does not apply to generalist as they are you all-in-1-guy after all ), and for some cases i have yet to see is a dedicated UV guy - skinning day in and day out and all day long.

fig.2

So is it hard to do UV?  Simple answer is no, its quite practically easy-ish (depends how complex the object is ) after going some practice its more or less getting the basic right.

Other then complex objects and/or complex objects, a simple UV can save you the horrible stretch and minimized the ugliness and seems in between 2 different sections.

Take the above picture for example, a non UV( or messy UV ) fig.1 and below a simple UVed character fig.2

So what do i need when i comes to UVing ?
a nice UV COLOR GRID, or the default checkered texture ( available in maya by default )

for this case the UV that i used, credit goes to http://www.pixelcg.com/blog/?p=146

and then next, slice them up!

still can do better , buy hey works like a charm for me ^^

Prepping that pipeline up!

So where i used to work a working structure/workflow is used and for this case is called a pipeline ( i believe other people are using this term as well ), so as for "my ( again modified for simpler used) pipeline" the hierarchy will be some thing like this :

sketch ( aka my noobish drawings ) > modeling > texture > lighting > render > compositing
:: This particualr phase is called LOOK DEVELOPMENT(lookdev) or PRE VISUALIZATION(pre viz) or CONCEPT ART

follow by

rigging > animation > dynamics ( animation related, like secondary animation bla bla bla ) > lighting > rendering > compositing
:: mostly an additional animation work flow to the existing pipeline above

More to come as i build up the pipeline, but more important i am focusing at the look development (im going to use lookdev so dont panic for what it means later just look up on google ) side of things, as i was half way there in my training


The Trifecta of look development 

Sometimes you be wondering who and how does the character workflow goes, answer is simple, either 1 person does it all aka generalist or he/she is really that good(i envy so much), or a bunch of specialized people does it,
which include:

a modeler - model the stuff and outputting them UV maps, remember those color grids ?
a texture painter - Add material, color, bumb, spec, and all those high res textures
a lighter - also a shader artist, we material property are tweak in detail to react to the vitual lights

well that is how i was though at that point of time, so there you have it. in case your wondering why sometimes a lighter can't answer some of your texturing question, ( because it happen to me before ) and some of the reason i'm brushing up my generalist skill to be able to tackle that question next time.

Back to Learning

Its been quite some time i practice some 3D stuff for a while, so starting in October... well why not today, so starting today i will be going back to learning stage, starting from basic, where actually most things happened by just applying the basics. its very simple to begin actually.

so how do i learn? by the power of the internet a bit of Google here and there, and at the same time writing out my journey, well for most case they are for me to remember, but if you wanted to used feel free, only remember that this is a my POV side. keep an open mind while you follow, most technique, tip and tricks are from experience and also there is no right or wrong in doing it.

Remember if you are reading it and want to follow, this is a guide and its from my side for working things out.

Where do i start?

For me, a good way to start, if your a first time, just pick up a software that are most used, its easier to find help that way. so for this case im going to be using Autodesk Maya and 3dMax.

who is this blabbering bugger ?

A little something about me just so that i know where i'm starting from, i'm a vfx lighting artist by profession for about 3 years or so specializing in Lighting, Rendering and Pre-compositing, or for a shorter line LIGHTING TD.

So what my usual coverage is picking up assets by other departments (like animation, modeling, match moved plates and a bunch more) then proceed lighting,rendering and compositing, some say another term for this is assembler, they are not wrong as my job i picking all the small pieces and assemble them, so more or less that's my job/profession description.

i do no consider myself good , as there are many things, skills and stuff to learn, so i just keep on learning it. feel free to check out my old works mainly i compile them here all in one spot http://freetimerender.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-0nes-and-thr33s.html

so for my case i will not stop learning, there are lots of things out there to learn, and at the same time writing it down. so this is where i'm starting...

so let me begin by throwing in out some basic and most case you have already know it, starting off with

3D generalist

so this is the go to guy for all things, jack of all trades as far as 3D is concern, modeling, rigging, animating, texturing, lighting, rendering, scripting and almost all 3D related stuff. awesome skill set to start learning, its all across the board.

Then moving on to a specialist

then there are people who will venture in to be a specialist, better at 1 things, and very good at doing it, do note that are lots of things to cover from a particular skill set, lets say animation alone, there are various technique to animate(think Disney on 3D and/or pixar and/or dreamworks and/or you get the point , those squash and stretch, secondary movement, expression poses) , and they are not even utilizing those fancy mocap things yet ( mostly grave curve cleaning , i might be wrong on this, so who wants to teach me on mocap ?), this people will darn cover their trade in detail.

How ever after some reading i stumble upon the valve employee handbook which i say its a nice read. you can get em here http://www.valvesoftware.com/jobs/   .There is once section im particular at which is the "T-shaped model:Employee". while maintaining some basic general know how and at the same time specializing in one, this might should extra hard since i have to cover all across the board and i might end up burn out, which might lead to a "unicorn 3D artist" yes i made that up , but here is another article sort of someway related http://www.usabilitycounts.com/2013/07/24/the-unicorn-designer-dilemma-and-how-to-avoid-it/ . But that is looking at the extreme part. so i will put it this way in point form of a simpler practice.

- To maintain a general basics and knowledge and fundamentals of a 3D generalist.

> which means i can do all the basic stuff like model a basic thing ( ok a cube, which is a no

brainer throw in some texture, animate it by moving it around and render em! ) yes i'm lowering the bar down to the point.

- At the same time strengthening up a particular area of interest, hence my expert area

> for this case i can animate the cube darn well that you love to see how it moves.

so by using my modified T shape model ( uber simplified structure and also thanks valve for sharing!), i will begin refresh my dormant long forgotten skill sets and start using them on average means and at the same time blasting them away in my specialty, digging deeper to the rabbit hole.

( gonna throw some 3d rendered pic soon )