FMP Week 12 - Spines and search for a star finals.

   As you saw on my last post, I ended the week (and the start of the 5 day weekend) with some spine work. This took a lot longer than expected, maybe because its the first spline work I've done, or maybe because its just a long process anyway, as I've a lot to wire up. I tried to add a wire too and from every electrical asset I could. I don't know yet how this is going to effect performance, but to date I don't believe its don't anything really.

   I really feel this had added a certain grounded-ness to the environment, and looks brilliant too in my opinion.
   As you can also probably see, I added the floor in too, the tiles were made of the easter weekend and finished mid week. I also used the dirt which I'm using for the ship area blended in, to add a bit more to the texture and more grounding to the market. I intended to create a new lighter dirt for this purpose, but when I tried the darker version, it worked, so instead of using the time to make the additional dirt, I'll use it for another texture.

   Thursday came the finals of the Search for a star competition, held in Staffordshire. Jake Joel and I went down, as the even was for finalists and entry's who made it through to round 2. Although Jake and I dint make it the finals, we still wanted to attend for the industry talks and to meet the professionals. Its was a great event overall, and a brilliant networking opportunity. Joel came second overall and won the environment section, while Me and Jake met some of the pro's. We had a good chat to the global lead VFX artist and Lead vehicle artist at Cloud Imperium. Among others from Playground Game, Sumo Digital, Rare and Natural Motion. It was really nice to see what other universities are doing, and what the standard of work expected of us is needed to get our first job in the industry. It really puts things into perspective and give me that boost of energy I can use to push my work further.
   Along with the obvious networking opportunities and competition finals, the day also held talks from Pixel blast, Rare, Autodesk, Cloud Imperium and Unity. The day also offered talks form Helm Studios and Epic Games, but unfortunately they couldn't make it, but we did get to see some of the work they are currently showing via videos sent in. Overall a great day, all thanks to Grads in games and Ardvark swift.