Class Hours: 10:05 – 2:40
Mr. Cronin
Notes
- Today is our final RED day of the week.
10:05 Attendance and Article (longer article split in 2)
10:10 Blender
- Unwrapping practice
- Roughness maps
- Normal maps
- Poly Haven review and advanced materials with Node Wrangler
10:50 Morning Break
11:00 Critiques
Each week we will upload our work on Monday. I will then present your work to the class. Each project I will pick a student to practice giving constructive criticism. Constructive criticism is a type of feedback that offers specific and actionable advice to help employees to improve. In the professional setting we need to be to talk professionally about the work, even if you don’t “love” the person who created it.
If selected, you will pick 1 thing that works, and 1 thing to improve upon next time. Remember we are separating the Design from the Designer. We are looking for actionable input.
11:30 Isometric Render / Room Setup
Isometric rendering is a way to show a 3D object or scene from an angled view where the width, height, and depth are all visible at the same time. Unlike a normal perspective camera, objects do not appear smaller as they get farther away, so parallel lines stay parallel. This creates a clean, organized look commonly used in video games, architectural drawings, room designs, and technical illustrations. In Blender, isometric scenes are typically created using an Orthographic camera positioned at an angle above the scene.
Setting up our GAWD project for the week
This morning we are going to tinker and do much of the setup for our GAWD project. What we do together today can be the starting point for your weekly work.
- Default Cube editing – this is our world.
- Solidify
- Thickness and applying the modifier- we will all have the SAME setup.
- Overlays
- Locking elements in our project we don’t want to change.
- Perspective vs. Orthographic rendering
- Dear lord we are changing the size of the human? What is the madness?
- In the grand scheme of things for THIS PROJECT – this will allow us to change the smallest number of variables to get the desired result.
- We will all agree and change our character uniformly for this project, so we still are keeping accurate scales of the human vs the walls. Then lock everything.
- We are doing this with eyes wide open. We are aware of the risks. With great power…
11:50 Isometric Room
This week we are working on our Isometric Rooms. This will continue our work on:
- Practice of more advanced materials and UV placement
- Normal maps
- Roughness maps
- Learn about cloth simulations
- Learn about 2D assets for cables and ropes
- Perspective vs Orthographic rendering
- Appending
- Using online texture warehouses like Poly Haven to bring in assets
- etc
For this project we are going to have a single render from the location / angle that we have all chosen. A single render to rule them all.
When complete you will save your file as lastNameIsoRoom.jpg.
Remember that your Concept Art will be presented FIRST during our Critique Session, and your render needs to “feel like” it spawned from your Concept Art. Make it feel like 1 complete “project”, not 2 disparate assignments.
11:55 Lunch
- No food in the room / eat in the Cafe.
- You are welcome to return to the room when you have finished eating and work / hang out.
12:25 Attendance and Article (longer article split in 2)
12:30 Blender
- 2D Assets / Bezier Curves
- Ropes / Cables / making renderable with by thickness
- Converting to mesh / polygons if you wish – you don’t have to most of the time!
12:50 A Gentleman in Moscow
Imagine being sentenced to spend your life inside a luxury hotel. In A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, Count Alexander Rostov faces exactly that. Trapped in Moscow’s Metropol Hotel after the Russian Revolution, he builds unexpected friendships and watches history unfold outside. The novel asks an important question: Can you still build a meaningful life when your freedom is taken away?
A class read-along gives us a chance to slow down, disconnect from screens, and get lost in a great book together. As we read, you’ll naturally build your vocabulary, strengthen your reading skills, and experience a story.
1:10 Afternoon Break
1:25 Speed Design
Speed Designs are 10 minute sprints in GAWD where we practice. It could be any medium – 3D, 2D, video, programming, etc.
1:40 Afternoon Practice & Production
Isometric Room
- lastNameIsoRoom.jpg
Design Homework 3: Concept Art for Isometric Room
- lastNameDH_3.jpg
Week 3 Agency
- lastNameAgency_1.jpg through lastNameAgency_3.jpg
2:15 Dailies
2:20 “19 Minutes”
Every day in GAWD will end with “19 Minutes” of silent reading. Closing down our day with silent reading provides many benefits:
- Improve Literacy Skills / Reading Stamina
- Create space for a small reading meditation where we can disconnect from the world and get lost in a story
- Unplug
At the end I will 3 students and ask for a 1 sentence explanation of what happened.
2:40 Dismissal
