Hello good people.  This is not a directly art-related post, but I hope it makes things a tiny bit more efficient for someone so you can focus more on the art.  It's a windows batch script to setup a simple file structure for your projects. Link to script  (use at your own risk): 

Part One: What the script does...

Part Two: How to customize the script...

I know almost nothing about batch programming in Windows.   If I've made a mistake here, or you have some wisdom to offer for improvements, please share, and thanks for having a look.  

Testing a bunch of stuff in this video.  

• Nvidia Broadcaster  for real-time virtual greenscreen/bg removal  (https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/broadcasting/broadcast-app/)
• Testing OBS as my recorder with the Nvidia Broadcaster doing a real-time comp of my dumb head. (https://obsproject.com/)
• Grasswald Pro Blender Add On: (https://www.graswald3d.com/about/graswald-pro)
• Testing with the SP LIVELINK addon.  (https://gumroad.com/l/fTRFN)

 I continue to be impressed as  long time Maya user with the ease with which Blender can achieve some things.  I tried to middle mouse the other day to rotate the viewport in Maya....  

Last week I was asked to do a demonstration for the organization Diverse Toons.  This group promotes diversity in the arts among young people learning to create using digital tools.  The efforts of this group can lead to many careers in the entertainment industry in the future, simply because young people will get a chance to understand it's possible for them to make a living in the arts.   Here are two snippets of videos I made to prepare for the demonstration:

Some 2D sketching...

Some 3D sketching...

After Gathering reference, I blocked out the skull in Oculus Medium.  You can see a short timelapse of this process here:

Once the primary forms were blocked out, I started to add rudimentary details to the skull as shown here:

Next, I exported the skull to Zbrush, where I did a quick Zremesh, UV master, projection and surface Noise treatment.  Here is what the skull looked like at the end of that process:

Next, I dropped the new geometry off to Substance Painter, where I did a quick texture bake, and added some bone-line materials to make skull feel older.  From there, I dropped the low-res model and textures in to Marmoset Tool bag where I lit and did the final shading for this study.  Here is a turntable from marmoset:

Finally, I exported a GTTF file from Marmoset Toolbag to import in to my Oculus home.  This method allows for an export of the model and textures at a reasonable resolution for real-time display in your Oculus Home.

A method for utilizing 2D or 3D material in Oculus Medium (or any Oculus Application!). Thanks to Sasha Menscikova and Natasha Murray for showing me this! Follow them at: instagram.com/sasha.me_/ and instagram.com/natasham911/ 

A tutorial showing one way to approach theatrical lighting in Marmoset tool bag.  Each video is a minute or less, and the entire setup can be done in about 10 minutes.  You can use these exact steps in a lot of different programs, but since I used Marmoset for this project, it's what I made the tutorial in.   Thanks for checking it out...

There are lots of things about creating characters for games and film that are creative and fun, retopology is usually not one of them.  So, when I have to retopo, I try to make things go as quickly as possible.  

For me, retopo is more simple when I think about it in two stages 

1: Edge-flow first.

2: density and distribution of topology second. 

 I've found this really speeds things up when I separate these two ideas.  

Below are some videos to show how I go about retopo in Maya.  The base topology was retopoed in under 3 hours, and this shows the whole process from start to finish.  Hopefully it helps atleast one person out there struggling with this technical nonsense.  

The model I am using as a base for this tutorial is by Nick Zuccarello, and ships with Zbrush.  You can check out Nick's amazing work on his instagram here:  

Quick disclaimer -- this is the way I best know how to deal with this process today.  I may know better ways to accomplish things tomorrow.  So this is by no means the "right" way to do things, but it's a way the currently works well for me.  If you have better ideas about how to approach this stuff, please share, as I have shared with you.  :-)   Be well.

More Coming Soon...