Work in progress V8 Supercar!

Wow. They are some fantastic models.

Furthering our education is nearly always a good idea. You seem to know quite a bit already, but some courses may still have something to teach you.

Have a look at all the educational institutions available (there is a list in the Education section of this forum), and see if there is anything that interests you.

Too old? Nah. I went to the AIE with people who were passing their mid 40s. If you love doing it, then who gives a crap how old you are. There is no expirery date :)

Thanks for the kind words Aven, what course's would you reccomend to help get my foot in the door making 3d models for someone?

Well. If you are after Educational Institutions Have a look at these two links.

The Education/Industry Forum
http://sumea.com.au/forum/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=17

A list of Educational Institutions
http://sumea.com.au/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=652

I went to the AIE and had a blast. There are many others here at Sumea that also went there. They are based in Canberra though. Not NSW.

If you are after a job, well you are off to a great start. What you are doing now is fantastic. High quality work that is presented in a great manner. My guess is that you would be after a gaming job where you can make car games? If so then when you have a portfolio to the level of your liking, send it in to games developers that mainly create racing games. I am not the largest fan of racing games (I do like some though - PGR for example), so I can't really help with Australian developers that make those games. I'm sure that if you did a search on here for 'racing' then something would turn up. Otherwise there are other people here who would know more about racing games :)

Good luck with whatever you decide to do :)

quote:Originally posted by Aven

Well. If you are after Educational Institutions Have a look at these two links.

The Education/Industry Forum
http://sumea.com.au/forum/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=17

A list of Educational Institutions
http://sumea.com.au/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=652

I went to the AIE and had a blast. There are many others here at Sumea that also went there. They are based in Canberra though. Not NSW.

If you are after a job, well you are off to a great start. What you are doing now is fantastic. High quality work that is presented in a great manner. My guess is that you would be after a gaming job where you can make car games? If so then when you have a portfolio to the level of your liking, send it in to games developers that mainly create racing games. I am not the largest fan of racing games (I do like some though - PGR for example), so I can't really help with Australian developers that make those games. I'm sure that if you did a search on here for 'racing' then something would turn up. Otherwise there are other people here who would know more about racing games :)

Good luck with whatever you decide to do :)

Thankyou very much for your comments, finding an institution is not so much of a problem, its finding the relevant course that would give me the best chance at getting my foot in the door of creating gaming models. I guess any course/s are better than none :)

yes i would love to be able to create cars and tracks for gaming use, it would be a dream come true. However i am passionate about 3d modelling in general so id by happy to model anything for a living :)
once again thank you for your time
regards
Danny

[img]http://users.bigpond.com/dgelston/images/tut2.jpg[/img]

[img]http://users.bigpond.com/dgelston/images/sbrfe.jpg[/img]

The new pic is quite nice, but there is just a little problem with it. As you haven't posted the specs for it, I may be completely wrong. If so I am sorry :)

If you are interested at getting into gaming, you may want to drop your specs just a little. It looks like you are pushing quite a few polys and using quite high/advanced textures/shaders.

Seeing as though it is a closeup of an engine that could be used in a menu system, you could get away with 5000 tris quite nicely. How many is it at the moment? Also, try not to use Brazil's(?) raytracing for gaming reflections. It is still too advanced for gaming engines. Stick to default Max raytracing with no ray bounce, falloff/fresnell, or autenuation on the rays. Otherwise just use an environmental map. Also try to fit all of your textures onto a few 1024^2 sheets.

Other than that it is quite nice :)

quote:Originally posted by Aven

The new pic is quite nice, but there is just a little problem with it. As you haven't posted the specs for it, I may be completely wrong. If so I am sorry :)
If you are interested at getting into gaming, you may want to drop your specs just a little. It looks like you are pushing quite a few polys and using quite high/advanced textures/shaders.
Seeing as though it is a closeup of an engine that could be used in a menu system, you could get away with 5000 tris quite nicely. How many is it at the moment? Also, try not to use Brazil's(?) raytracing for gaming reflections. It is still too advanced for gaming engines. Stick to default Max raytracing with no ray bounce, falloff/fresnell, or autenuation on the rays. Otherwise just use an environmental map. Also try to fit all of your textures onto a few 1024^2 sheets.

Other than that it is quite nice :)

Thanks for the tips i really appreciate your time, and no need to apoligise :)

For actual gaming (driving the vehicle!) my cars are within 10000 triangles in total and most of those would never be rendered at any one time depending on the view the player is using and obviously the detail the machine can handle. Apparently this is well within the realms of this particular simulator! I have seen renders from the developers that would have to pushing 30-50k faces! The developers claim they can run these models at a decent frame rate, until i witness this for my own eyes i am some what sceptical.

As for materials, my gaming models dont really contain much more than 5 megs of total uncompressed memory ie: 512x512 and 1024x1024 .dds textures being used. Until this simulator is released i wont know what they will build into the rendering engine, i imagine it will be like every other game ive reversed engineered and they will use standard materials. Any reflections and the like will be a global coding thing, well thats what ive heard anyway :)

As for these renders here, you are correct, the first 3 are using brazil (with the sky light)and last one is using max raytracing with a basic 3 light setup. They were my first attempts at brazil and at the end of the day i may use the brazil renderer to make some textures for the car but besides that it has no use for what i do, as with max raytracing :) The comparison picture of the track is in fact in a game, this particular track uses approx 100k faces in total (it is over 6klms long)and plays at 30-50fps in an old gaming engine with a bad lod system.
Once again it is alledged that the new simulator can handle those figures for a track very easily.

It would be my opinion that the renders the developers are showing and alledging can be run in game would in actual fact be used in a garage scene where you can dismantle the cars and repair them, and not be used for the actual gaming (a some what scaled down version would be used the driving). The developers have modelled the internals of the engines down to every last nut, bolt, washer, springs, pistons etc etc in fact they have modelled complete cars leaving NOTHING unmodelled!! This would suggest to me that some where along the line such detailed models will be used, at what level i dont know (probably some canned video intro), but they are being used.
I have thrown 50k+ faces at this car, it is now completely modelled except for the engine and gear box internals, i guess they will contain a healthy budget as well lol I doubt i will drive this particular mesh, but im confident it will be able to be used in a workshop scenario (no advanced physics going on in a workshop!).
I am very much an amature, but im all ears and willing to learn. Im excited about the next generation of gaming and what it may offer to people like me :)

I hope this explains things a little clearer. :)
regards
Danny
ps, it is very quite around here, is that because its holiday time?

You got some really good modelling skills there Danny.
I dunno if you need to go to uni or not, just get a portfolio out there and see what happens, you seem to have a good skills at high poly stuff so you never know :)

Hey Danny, fancy seeing you here :) ...you already know me from another forum (RL)

Great work as usual Danny and don't dispair, you're never too old to get into the game industry... I'm living proof ;)
I was a little older than you when I began, also married with 3 kid's. I took a huge gamble, sold my established signwriting business and just went for it and fortunately it eventually payed off.
We had some very difficult years at first... moved the family from Newcastle down to Melbourne for a job opening and had to survive on relatively low game artist wages for a few years, but we hung in there and now have a successful business of our own... which I'm sure you'll find it interesting (from one car nut to another) ;)

www.virtual-mechanix.com

cheers,

Chris

quote:Originally posted by Red 5

Hey Danny, fancy seeing you here :) ...you already know me from another forum (RL)

Great work as usual Danny and don't dispair, you're never too old to get into the game industry... I'm living proof ;)
I was a little older than you when I began, also married with 3 kid's. I took a huge gamble, sold my established signwriting business and just went for it and fortunately it eventually payed off.
We had some very difficult years at first... moved the family from Newcastle down to Melbourne for a job opening and had to survive on relatively low game artist wages for a few years, but we hung in there and now have a successful business of our own... which I'm sure you'll find it interesting (from one car nut to another) ;)

www.virtual-mechanix.com

cheers,

Chris

LOL Thanks Chris
You are everywhere in cyberspace! I checked out your website, very nice :) Feel free to contact me if you ever get snowed under......im still communicating with the last lead you gave me :)
regards
Danny

LOL, yeah we seem to run into each other quite often, same interests I suppose :)
Thanks for the website compliment, and yes, I will contact you if I have too much on my plate.