Cool new 3D background

I'm still at it with the backgrounds thing, which has really become more of a personal exercise as I try to match the official Capcom backgrounds in terms of quality.

Anyways, this time I played with Illustrator CS5's perspective grid tool. Its also one of those cool, relatively new 3D tools which I see seldom get used. So this time instead of trying to make 3D backgrounds in Photoshop (and its 3D tools do not get the job done here) I tried Illustrator for a clean vector approach. Here is what I came up with.

The trick is similar to the previous backgrounds with this pattern. I made 3 more patterns and recycled 3 old ones and made 2 layers of different arrangements. Then I took those and layed them across the "walls" of the 3D grid so as to give the impression that one is looking up at it. Another important part I wanted to focus on was the top squares part. One time when I woke up at night, I noticed my AT&T U-verse box was lit and created a neat receding pattern on the wall through the vents. I knew that had to be a key feature I had to achieve through 3D tools. Finally, taking advantage of the 3D space, I created this glowing center similar to one of the Star Force backgrounds used by Capcom. I really like how it seems to glow and neutralize the center colors and where the shapes intersect.

This is only just practice. For next time, I would take into consideration how the square patterns are made and placed. The glowing wireframes above and below should be further expanded so as to keep a consistent perspective appearance. They should also be directly above and below each other and not just slid across sloppily. Finally, how about some protruding beams? It would truly give it a grand, dynamic look.

But in the end, I've gotten familiar with tricks few people are familiar with which just puts me at an advantage I really need. I think no other tool could have done this better. The flexibility is all there and I'm ready to go further with it!

A strong new affiliate!

I don't know when this happened exactly, but finally TREZ acquires a most worthy affiliate: Sprite INC. The button must have appeared recently and so completes the circle of most influential, legendary Megaman-related websites. So thank you, Ace Spark, for finally accepting the offer. The community will surely grow with the 2 sites this united!

How to waste time for a week

I'm finding that to waste time between now and the portfolio show, I can revisit old games for the nostalgia factor. A couple days ago I uploaded that Paperboy video which is a huge throwback since I got the game with my N64 back in 1999. All thanks to GM for bringing it up.

Today he brought up that old copy of Sim City 4 he had lying around. Huge throwback to the days when I first got that HP Pavillion, but it ran like crap at 1024x768 back then. I'm no PC gamer and I can probably count on one hand how many PC games I've played, so that's what makes Sim City 4 so special. This game, especially, is one that is much more enjoyable with more knowledge and it's been almost 10 years since I last played it so I'm having fun. This is just how to waste time.

A look ahead

So I'm getting my Associate's Degree this Wednesday. After that I get a much-deserved break.

But as I'll have some free time, I start to prepare the new TREZ homepage. Sorry its taken so long but it seems the back-end part may all be settled now. I said I would rewrite all the BN custom battle guides to fit the format of the recent BN4 re-write for the site. That and re-upload the entire TREZ Gallery as the old one online now seems to have been wiped. Fortunately in this case, it seems archive.org has a couple backups in case I didn't already have them all. And finally, I wanted to organize a TREZ Dropbox for the image gallery. I haven't really worked out all the details but hopefully there can be a file-sharing service for pictures to help the collection grow.

I hope to catch up on this so don't give up yet!