Update

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Well it's been a decent while since I posted last, like usual since the last time there has been some changes to the ole life.

For starters I am all graduated and edumicated.  I also now work for the University that I just graduated from as the Community Manager (it's a pretty fun fit if I do say so myself).  I will honestly say I wasn't sure how different it would be, transitioning from student to faculty and I must say it's been quite easy and smooth.  Slowly but surely I'm learning all the in's and outs of the work environment and it's hierarchy.

The transition means that I take on some more responsibilities and do a lot of the stuff I did as a student still, but in a more "professional" way...So our weekly study nights still continue (and this year have FLOURISHED with each week usually having 100+ students compared to our last years of 30-40 average) and I now also follow up with the new/current international students that are enrolled in DAE.

It does feel strange sometimes knowing that I'm no longer a student but faculty but I try to keep it to a minimum so that way I can still stay in tune with the community as much as possible.

Other than that there's obviously the whole "need to keep my skills up" portion of life which has started again as well (I did take a hiatus from all the stuff I was doing over the summer and Sept and most of Oct as well....mainly because I needed the break)

So one of the things I've been looking at and picking up is Substance Designer. I've had SD for probably 1-2 years now I think but I've never had the time to A) figure it out B ) have a chance to use it, so I figured I would correct that by doing some "research" aka messing around with a small goal in mind.
I originally was going to just try and make a hand painted texture for a model I'm working on (just something small at the moment to get back into the swing of things) and then figured instead of actually painting it all why don't I see if I can actually make use of Substance Designers proceduralness ...since you know...it is one of the reasons to use SD.

So after playing with it for a few days here and there I've come up with something that is (in my opinion) starting to get close to what I want which in the end is more of a stylized-normal map- texture. I do like the look of it so far and just want to try and add some more knots into it.

I have it now where the floor boards are procedural as well so you can control if it is few or more boards, spacing between, variance of the layout etc.

Originally it started out as a Stylized/PBR material but I ended up needing to be able to see it in Max 2015 (which as far as I can tell isn't quite up to the PBR stage yet.. :( ) so I grabbed my nodes and put it in a new file for Diff/Spec/Gloss/Norm and this is what I've got so far.  Granted I don't know much when it comes to hand painted so not only is the program new to me, the style is new too, but I think it's getting there. Thanks to my girlfriend Jessie Van Aelst who tells me when it sucks and helps me to understand when and why it sucks :P 

Anyway I have a game idea in mind as well but since I'm not sure on the style I want to make it in yet I'm just kind of messing around till something pops for me I think and we'll go from there :)

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