Technical Artist

It was brought to my recent attention that our friends over at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have a site dedicated to offering free lecture notes, exams, and videos – yes, free – without any registration. You can check it out here.

Pythons is one of the more popular programming languages, with a huge support base. A very effective tool for technical artists looking to maximize what they can get out of Maya (now supported), rather than just using MEL, and also be able to transition to other areas of expertise. Python is a relatively easy program to learn, especially for those with a scripting/programming background (for me on the other hand, just a little while longer).

I’ve currently taken a liking to their Introduction to Computer Science and Programming course, which uses Python as the programming medium. This is great because I can develop a better methodology for figuring out how to utilize better programming practices when creating Python tools/scripts in Maya, troubleshoot them for effectiveness/efficiency, and at the same time, improve my skill and knowledge in Python.

Win win.

I’ve recently started some new 3D work for use with the Unreal Development Kit (UDK) to keep my skills in check, and express some creative juices.

Here are some screen grabs of a character I modeled in Maya with some minor Zbrush enhancement, I’m calling it an orc for now.

I’m going to develop more efficient, effective, and advanced rigging features after insuring that it imports into Unreal OK.

Update: Couldn’t get UDK to install correctly, I spent more than my fair share of hours over a few days, multiple downloads, error checking, and testing to finally be satisfied. The latest May Beta still errors out & auto shuts down on startup of the Editor, however, the March and April packages work well enough. By the way, asset integration is a success, yay!

Also, I will be working on a tutorial that will show some of the do’s and don’ts about skeleton asset integration, among other videos of my progress, so stay tuned!