Indie-Resource.com

Hey guys, creating a little thread of progress for the contest. I'm going to start by writing my ideas down here.
It is a little difficult for me since I focus mainly on 3D but I will be entering, and I will be trying to shove as much knowledge down your throat as I can about creating some cover art or something along that line.

My ideas:
-mrSun and mrSky tutorial (3DSMax features)
-8 'Pass' Rendering (zDepth, ambient occlusion, shade maps,diffuse,refining diffuse, creating normal map, specular color/level map) and scultping tut
-complete sculpting tutorial (mixed with some normal map or specular passes)

The middle one so far is what I am thinking of doing. Each pass will be about 2 minutes, leaving 4 minutes to explain the sculpting for normal map and some sculpting If there is extra time I will also include emissive maps. The purpose of the tutorial will teach you how to create nearly every map needed for next-gen creation for video games, while also showing some techniques for sculpting to create a strong normal map. This tutorial will include 1 model, 5 Max setup scenes as example, and final composition picture.

Technology used: zBrush, 3DSMax, Mentalray, and Photoshop

sounds real good just make it where a noob can understand

Yeah I will be, wish we had more time for the video, understandable that there isn't since there will be a good amount of entries.

i updated the time length this morning.

Holy hannah! With that amount of time I might be able to fit much more into than I thought!! I am gonna have to get working. I want that Elite version

**EDIT** Decided to go with my original idea, it includes the 8 pass and sculpting, but will also include final composition into photoshop, and making of some cover art. will try to make it as short as I can as long as I am not skipping information. 3-4 mins tops for each pass (7), 7-8 mins for diffuse tops, 10 mins for sculpting, 10 for putting it together and that leaves a max of 11 minutes for anything else I forget to mention. Even those numbers may be shorter.

Well I had gotten started on the sculpting/normal map part of my tutorial only to find out that Adobe Captivate only captures SLIDES and not full screen capture... *sigh* will have to get started later or tomorow with other software..

Hmmm...I don't think I have ever heard of Adobe Captivate. Of course, I am not much of a graphics person

It's pretty neat for making a slideshow, I got it with my computer along with other Adobe things, very professional looking. You can make it interactive where the person has to click a certain spot, you can practically walk a person through using a program. It's just not what I needed for this

Started making the tutorial about 45 minutes ago, I have 30 minutes of video for sculpting / normal map creation. I am gonna cut the stuff where I am not doing anything so that'll be about 5 minutes. Then some parts I might speed up because watching someone sculpt gets boring, and I really only need enough sculpting video time for explaining what I do, why I do it and how useful it is. So I am hoping for about 20 minutes or less for those 2 parts overall. Will be doing diffuse next, which features shade mapping and ambient occlusion to refine it and make it look more realistic.

Basically I am about 1/4 done (rounding up). Will keep updating until this thing is %110 of my capability.

I have finished recording the video, tomorow after an exam I will be putting it together, then doing he voice over for explaining.