Perspective, vanishing points, lights, shadows, colors, shades, proportions, details. These are just a handful of words that I keep in mind (even 'til now) whenever I would draw architectural plans, sections, elevations, and render architectural perspective drawings during my academic days in the halls (I was literally in the hallways, and next to stairwells on some occasions, doing a lot of drafting during my spare time while other students walks by) of
College of Architecture and Fine Arts of
University of Santo Tomas armed with a t-square, a 30/60 triangle, 45/45 triangle, compass, metric scale ruler, hard pencils, technical pens, a handful of templates, and soft brushes. Ah, those were the days of painfully lugging around all those drafting implements from home to school and vise versa. But with all that crap, there's got to be an easier way. I wanted to find out...
During the summer of 1986, myself and a group of classmates decided to learn
AutoCAD. It was version 2.18 at that time. I was blown with the idea of productivity when it comes to laying out plans. But I started questioning it being flat. Two dimensional. It was pretty much good when it comes to drafting and all that, but it still looked like any other layout plan on most architectural drawing document. Then someone typed
"VPOINT" in the command line, and presented me a 3-Dimensional view of a 2-dimensional plan. Wow! First was a drawing on the X and Y axis, but now I was able to see the Z-axis. Height. This could work. I wanted to know more...
In 1993, I was able to work as an Architectural CAD Draftsman for one of the oldest architectural companies in Hong Kong. During that time, a colleague introduced a software that he was specifically trained for:
3D Studio (Release 4).
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| 3D Studio R4 modelling interface (left) and materials interface (right). |
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I was completely amazed that the working space is now completely 3-dimensional. Plus the fact that it exports animation files (such as AVI, MOV, and FLC). Later on, I discovered
Photoshop and
Premiere. This would do. I started to learn more.
Just before the release of Windows 97, 3D Studio shifted from DOS mode to the Windows' desktop. It was called
3D Studio MAX. From this point on, I was immersed on 3D. As each software iteration comes, I'd dabble a lot just to catch up with what is new.
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| Work-in-progress model of a Great White Shark in 3DS MAX. |
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| A sample of a test render of the same Great White Shark. |
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| Work-in-progress model of a Deinonychus in 3DS MAX. |
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| Diffuse texture of Deinonychus created in Adobe Photoshop. |
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There are still a lot of stuff that needs keeping up as well as improvement. New things to learn. New apps to get familiar with. New techniques that needs to be found out. Ah, what have I got myself into? Mind you though that I still do traditional drawings. That means pencil and/or ink.
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| Sketch of a barbaric female warrior done with ink. |
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| Rendition of H.R. Giger's Alien (also known as Xenomorph) done on pencil. |
You can browse around this blog to check out other stuff such as I go along expanding it.
