In addition to our regular Gamedev: The Pipeline activities we have begun streaming on a semi-regular basis. When we sat down to talk about what kind of “stuff” to put on the stream we both came to the conclusion that there were some tools and activities that we weren’t doing, that we really wanted to be doing, and that’s going to be the focus of the daily streams for the foreseeable future.
There are a couple of very nice benefits from doing streams like this. The most important one is that because it’s a daily stream and the topic can change from day-to-day we are able to spend a little more time with a single subject and really explore all the ins-and-outs. Yesterday’s stream for instance saw Alex spending 45 minutes re-familiarizing himself with 3d Coat. It can be difficult when your daily work responsibilities take you away from tools like this that require muscle memory to use effectively and we saw a pretty good response to it.
Here are recordings of our most recent streams:
Come watch us LIVE every day at around 10am EST here:
We look forward to gaining more momentum and talking with you all about the sorts of topics you’d like to see covered in upcoming streams. We are having a lot of fun and it’s definitely helping us to maintain focus in our own work knowing that we’re maintaining a foundation in the tools we need to use to get those jobs done.
Gamedev: The Pipeline has been doing a series of daily live streams covering various topics. This week we focused on the fundamentals of drawing and sculpting. Thomas spent the first part of the week working on improving his draftsmanship (line art and form) while Alex showed us the ropes in 3d Coat creating a science fiction style loot crate.
On Thursday we took a chance at doing some live coding in Unreal Engine (using Blueprints) to create some logic for the loot crate that Alex is currently retopologizing. This is the process of making lower resolution geometry from a high-resolution sculpt; and then baking the higher level details onto texture maps.
Changing things up for the weekend we decided to work on some human anatomy in ZBrush. These videos focus on a male human head. We talk about tips and techniques, using the move and mask brushes before doing any “clay” sculpting to great effect. We hope that you’ll join us for future streams but if you can’t make it you can always watch the recordings on the GDP Youtube channel
If you like the work we’re doing or want to get help specifically with your own projects please consider supporting GDP on Patreon.
Don’t we all just look amazing this week? Our streaming initiative continues with more great topics. Here are the recorded videos from this week’s GDP streams to check out!
Design Exploration and Silhouette Sketches Stream: Alex explores concepts for a futuristic motorbike by combining basic shapes from found-footage in Photoshop.
My first day in Houdini Stream - Recently Alex discovered (with some urging from @polygonsandwich) Houdini and immediately fell in love with the procedural modeling tools. Not perfect in every case but definitely useful in the prototyping phase for hard surfaces.
Refining the head sculpt Stream - Tom continues working on his sculpting training in ZBrush while Alex absolutely rocks out the finer details and shows us a few tricks for adjusting high frequency details.
Using 3D Scans to Improve your Sculpting Part A Stream
Level Design for a Platformer game in UE4 Stream - Finally! We’re making a game in Unreal Engine. Alex is showing his process for building level blockouts using BSP while Tom starts breaking down the requirements to re-rig our main character for animation inside Blender.
Rigging a character in Blender + Level Design Stream - The rubber meets the road with rigging in Blender of “George Cooney” (the main character from our first prototype.) Alex continues pushing the level design concepts further in coordination with our short design doc.
Customize Your Zbrush Tutorial - A super helpful recorded video where Alex goes through the ins-and-outs of customizing ZBrush.
We’re still sorting out what kind of broadcast schedule makes the most sense for us. Doing a daily stream feels “right” but it doesn’t leave a lot of time for gathering new material and recording more in-depth tutorials. You’ll likely see us playing around with our schedule in the coming days and weeks but know that we’re super excited about using the live stream to grow our community and gather more information about the pain points that need better coverage.
Alex walks us through the process of taking a 2D Silhouette to a 3D Object in 3D-Coat.
After realizing that forward kinematics weren’t going to cut it for the number of animations the Bandit character needs, Tom doubles-back to add IK Controls to an existing FK rig in Blender.
Refining IK animation + Drawing tips from Alex
High frequency details using alphas in Zbrush Stream
Thomas making sense of Blendspaces and Animation Blueprints in UE4
Monday Night Doodling Stream
UE4 Building interactive “knock over” behavior + Drawing Stream
Sculpting a Stylized Rat Character in Zbrush + UE4 Vector Maths
Intro to Zmodeler + Level Design Stream
Concept painting and Special Guest Star Diana Van Damme
Character Thumbnail Sketching Stream
Sketching on top of Keyshot render + UE4 Stream
Rockety Skyman Project Overview Stream
We hope you guys find these useful!
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