Monday Morning Polyhacker -- Jan. 16

posted by Scott Hsu-Storaker at 12:00 AM

Welcome back. It's been a busy busy week for me here at the coop. Most of the work was concentrated on the grunt work of creating uvmaps for existing models -- I think I must have done over 30 uvmaps this week. It's something that is kind of invisible to all of you, but, when done well, it makes the job a texturing so much easier. Here, though, are a couple of examples of work that has progressed to either complete or almost complete stages.



Download the file and have some fun with it.



Almost done. I'll hopefully be posting the WIP file for the pack that includes this concrete pipe during the week.

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Being so "out there" in the public eye is still a pretty new thing to me and I am never certain who will show up at my doorstep. So far, everyone who has stopped by and commented or made a request or offered to contribute has been amazingly responsive and enthusiastic. All of the interest in this project really inspires me to push hard on expanding the work that we are doing. This sort of inspirational involvement is exemplified by one team that stopped by this week and offered some encouragment. The Daggerfall Art Remake project aims to bring the fantasy world of Daggerfall to life using modern graphical hardware and techniques to be used in freeware Daggerfall remake projects or any other fantasy worlds. They put in a number of requests on the request line and may even throw some of their models into the mix. I love being able to meet and work with people who are as passionate about creating work that will benefit the whole community.

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Thousander Club Update
The first week of the year for me was one of vacations and holidays. This past week, starting Monday evening, the quest for 1000 hours on art began in earnest. I didn't quite make my weekly quota of 20 hours, topping out at 12, but I did learn a few things about how to better achieve my goal. First, after accounting honestly for my time down to the minute, I am clearer on exactly how much time I waste doing things not directly related to art. I think I only spent about 60% of my coop time on art. This excess of time-eaters needs to change if I am going to hit my mark. Another interesting thing I learned was just an accidental side effect of something I arbitrarily did. I set up a simple spreadsheet to count up my hours and the way I did the calculations made it such that I had to start counting a new day at midnight. If you have been reading the blog, you may know that I work late, very late, well past midnight. Counting my hours this way caused a slight shift in perception for me. I started to think of this time as jump-starting a new day instead of as me limping across the finish line at the end of a long day. It is a positive feeling for me. I'm going to extend this another step and shift from staying up so late and getting up earlier to do work in the quiet time of early morning. There will be fewer distractions and I won't be fighting off sleep. So, I called off the late nights for this weekend in order to get some regular sleep and a leg up on the week. I'll let you know how it goes.

Scott's 1000 hours -- 13.77
1000 models -- 83
1000 visitors -- 551 in Jan
1000 downloads -- 167

I think that the 1000 visitors per month goal is going to be blown out of the water in the first month. The challenge will most likely be in trying to sustain that level of interest. I know I will often thank the people who comment or contribute, but I would also like to take a moment to express my heartfelt thanks to all of you who have visited recently. Knowing that my work is being seen and used delights me to no end.

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See you with my usual jibber-jabber on Thursday, with maybe something little in between. I also have some plans for later in the month for something a little different.

Stay free.

~shs~