Unity Lighting

:,(

Unity lighting is hard. It was supposed to be easy. UNITY WAS SUPPOSED TO BE EASY.

The good news is I've been learning A LOT. The bad news is that every time I can't figure something out I feel like I've some how failed. This is the same feelings I've had learning Arnold, and it's a lot like Arnold in that I need to wait for lighting to bake anyway. Still, I don't have to mess around with sampling and trying to get grain out of pictures. And normal maps and metal maps just work. Thank goodness.

But I've just been feeling pretty discouraged because of it. I've also been taking more breaks from working than I usually do because I haven't been stretching enough and it's hurt my back and shoulders, but every hour I don't work I feel worse and worse. It just feels like I need to be working every day and taking advantage of my summer to catch up on learning and developing skills, since I haven't done that in the past and regretted it.

My professor also told me I should work like I have a 9-5 job and really put in the effort to get a really nice portfolio. And everything is pretty much there, or almost there, and now that I know how to texture correctly I feel way more confident in finishing the projects, but it's still very stressful. I thought I would have a perfect portfolio and reel ready by the end of May, but I'm not even CLOSE to done with rendering, let alone editing all the renders together. I want to start working on my thesis, but that might need to be pushed back. With that comes a whole host of other stresses! I'm already putting insane expectations on myself.

And it's not even the first day of June (it's tomorrow, but still.)

I really should stop doing that now, or next year is going to kill me. It won't matter if I get a job if I'm dead!

I don't know what I want to work on next, but I think learning the world building assets is important. Unfortunately, it's not as easy as having a dedicated instructor with a structured course like I've been doing. It's more like watching tutorials and then figuring out the rest on my own. Once I look more into what I'm dealing with, I'll feel better knowing the work I have ahead of me. I'm most hopeful about Aura 2 volumetric lighting. I don't even know the technical differences between volumetric and regular lighting, I just know it looks really pretty and it SEEMS like you don't need to bake the lights to see the final outcome. The whole reason I came over to Unity in the first place is because I wanted to see the real-time outcome instead of messing around with Arnold. Ugh. I can't catch a break with these programs. Maybe it's time to start learning Unreal. . . I'm just not ready to betray Unity like that. It's called loyalty! >:( !!!!

Anyway, enough of that. Let's talk about what IS working! Because there's a lot of it!

I'm not COMPLETELY satisfied with the lighting, but at least I've learned some post processing, which is what was missing with my film. If I had known it was so easy, I would have learned it myself. Once I learn particles and perhaps some camera animation, maybe I can go back into my film and find a scene or two that I like and render that out. I don't know. It's still so confusing to me.

But it looks so good! I'm so proud of how the texturing came out, even if I'm not able to properly show it off. I spent so many hours and days and years in high school (which was four years ago now. And in a year I'm going to be moving out of Rochester and starting - hopefully - a REAL job. What the hell. Where did the time go.) learning traditional art mediums, and now I'm seeing it start to all come back to me. I was always really good at translating what I saw in real life onto a 2D drawing/painting, and now it's just a little more technical. I'm really lucky I found my calling and we had a great arts program at my HS.

I'm not quite finished with the Substance Painter course yet, but the modules I have left to do are about rendering in Substance and learning Substance Designer, which I am SO excited about. I can't wait to be able to teach and help my students with that stuff, especially because there are so few people who know how to do it in SOFA and even less people who know how to do it properly. That's not a slight on them! I just wish we were taught it; it's a huge set back for everyone to have to try and teach it to themselves.

I want to say sorry to my non-existent readers. I've been slacking with posting on my blog and I was doing so well! I'm not going to beat myself up over it too much, but I'm determined to get back to my schedule!!

Thanks for reading non-existent people! I'll be back soon with more updates!