Back from the grave!

well, well, I'm back. and using my Blog again. Why? because I need to document my work again. Lately I've been so sick of being stuck in low poly at work for the past 3 years that I really, REALLY, had to do something to sharpen my mind again. So I'm making this sewer tunnel as a warm up to other things. I'm trying out a slightly different system for this one then I normally do. Usually I model, texture, then light. Now I'm modeling, lighting (with bump maps), THEN texturing. The reason I'm trying it this way is that normally i go back and forth between lighting and texturing because the texture is affected by the light and the light affects the texture making the whole process long winded (at least for me anyway.) By lighting the image first I can direct the viewer to what I want before I add a drop of color. I guess this is just the CG way of doing what a oil painter would do. Working in monochrome then using those values to choose your colors. So far I'm happy.

Also, Doing this project has reminded me I need way more refence photos. Using google image search just ain't cutting it anymore. I need to invest in a good digital camera.