Hello,
My name is Matthew Mihalik, I am 30 years old and a 3rd year student in Media Arts & Animation at The Art Institute of Indianapolis. I am currently enrolled in a class titled Special Topics in Animation. This class is basically an 11 week independent study in which each student chooses a single aspect of the pipeline that interests them as a career path and focuses heavily on it. Since each student will be studying a topic that the instructor, Zeb Wood, may not be fully versed in we are strongly urged to find professional mentors for the duration.
I have chosen to focus my 11 weeks on photo realistic advanced procedural texturing, and would like to include some work into layered shaders (something I have barely touched at this point).
What I would like from a mentor(s) is simply guidance towards different aspects that I should be focusing on learning/fine tuning, and occasional critiques of my progress.
As for python, this is tentative at this point. I have some scripting experience in the past (C++ and C in high school [12 years ago] and some minor work in AS2 and MySQL) and used to study engineering, so learning scripting does not frighten me. I have been loaned a Python book, but at this point I have no idea as to how scripting may be used in procedural texturing (I’ve heard that it can be) so have no reference as to where I should begin learning the language.
I’d like to thank you all for your time and consideration, and I will be posting examples of my painted texturing work tomorrow morning so you may get a better feel of what level I am at, but at the moment I must leave for work.
Matthew Mihalik