New week, new start, new washing machine

 Week beginning 6th July.

I had a moderately successful night of sleep, waking, as I do, just before dawn. Porridge and coffee has powered me through getting the boys off to school and, just now, overseeing the installation of our new Hisense WF3S1043BW3_WH -- they need to stop using codes and switch to a pleasing mnemonic system, making it something like "Hisense Washer-Starfish-Indigo-Square-3"

Wifi Washing?!

This unit is Wi-Fi-connected because, of course, you need to control it using an app.

Start of Week (6-July-26)

Last week's big fail was making no progress on the city model. I just found other things to do, mostly Gaea-related. I made a start on a personal project without first forming a proper idea. I installed and played with the latest version of Random Flow. No big changes to my workflow.

This week:

• Team meeting with the new head Env Artist, Brannan. Exactly when is still to be decided. It sounds like there is to be a discussion of the viewpoints of my terrain scenes. I hope this is just a refresher on what was previously agreed and not some kind of very late-in-the-day change that will greatly impact the scenes. That said, shot002 is so hard because it's taken from such a high altitude. 
• Get that city finished.
• Finish a personal project. Something small!
• I need a refresh of my environmental design skills. It could be timely to redo the training course I bought this time last year. (Efficient Environmental Design - Piotr Kryski) Also, finish installing and evaluating a whole slew of add-ons that I bought in bundles but hardly touched.

Grassy

Blender School: Ultimate 3D Environment Animation Course - Blender

It's time to start learning more about 3d Environment design, this time from Cov Phillips.

1. References

Great computer-generated imagery captures qualities from reality, even if you are not striving for photorealism.  You can't store all these details of the world in your head, so it's really important to use references. In most cases, this means reference photos. Use them for modelling, to explore the qualities of materials and patterns, such as the way grass grows or the way rocks scatter.

Cov uses Google Maps to explore the world for visual references. Amazing idea! 

Also Getty Images, the photo site.

Any such site, such as Pinterest or Flickr, will offer a wealth of example images of almost anything out there.

Obligatory plug for PureRef. It seems like everyone recognises how good it is for the way you gather and arrange your reference images.

2. Blocking Out

"You really can't go wrong in this part. Except you can."  

True! When you draw and paint, going wrong usually results in a restart of the work. In 3D, there's no situation where a mistake can't be remedied without throwing your work away. However, this misses something important. Your most precious resource is often time. If you go wrong in a 3D project and need to backtrack, you will typically waste a significant amount of effort.

Start a project by getting the big, simple forms right. There's no point in getting the details if you turn around later and realise it wasn't the correct scale or didn't fit your design.

 Building the house

Cov takes the next few lessons to complete the build of the scene's main point of focus, an old American house.

The house that Cov built