Games Production - Spring Submission (M2/5)

For our second milestone in Games Production, the 'vertical slice' grey box had to have been constructed. As I had already modelled simple grey box elements for the first milestone, I set out detailing a major game component; the level's environment.

Before I started constructing the environment base, I tried to find tutorials on how to model and shape a natural landscape; our game being in a rural medieval country. However, I came across scarce content and without knowing it, began modelling inaccurately from a large plane.

After asking my lecturer around the issue, he suggested that I model the terrain in flow with the player's path and route to the end of the level. One way of doing this (saving time not starting from scratch again) was to use the Quad draw tool on top of the previous map using another feature that makes the surface 'live'.

Above is the result of going over my previous environment with the quad draw 'player's path' method. I was very pleased with the smooth results; although it took quite a fair amount of time adding in all the quads and edge loops. Overall the outcome was successful and I also had as a corollary effect, less of a polygon/tris count.

Here is the fixed final map in Maya. Beforehand, with older environments open and enclosed, there were issues surrounding the baking of navigation's around ray-casting (within the game engine Unity).

Nevertheless, I was happy to see that after the topology correction, the navigation mesh worked wonderfully and the player's character could walk up the elevations and across the bridges.

Above is a simple scene in Unity at Uni, testing the map. This basically involved running about the environment and trying the isometric perspective camera settings; while using scripts given to me by the game designers in our group.

The next step involved making DirectX11 Shaders in the Hypershade editor in Maya. To allow the Viewport 2.0 to function as it would look like in-game, I had to switch a few settings around in the Preferences, something of which I had not done in over a year! All that was left to do for the map, was to add attributes such as the TGA image files enabling the texture to be seen in the scene.

Here is a step by step of the progress of one of the trees in our game. I started off from an extended cylinder, adding edge loops and then extruding on the z axis. To give the trees more character, instead of just all perfectly edged branches, I moved some vertices slightly.

I had to create a wide range of trees for our game as the environment is in the country. Here are the nine models I made in a stylized medium topology design.

I scaled the trees as roughly as I could against the human height reference. I also made sure to alternate between different perspective views to give the unique characteristics of each tree.

There were many ways in which I could have created the leaves on the trees. As our game will have a stylized approach, I thought of several forms and shapes. After finding an image of a low poly geometry forest, I found a good example in the shape of a sphere.

Towards the elevated section at the end of the vertical slice, the trees scale up to convey the monumental and vast journey of the heroine/character. Above is the large oak tree I made to represent this.

As the season of our game is in autumn, I made sure to include some trees that have no leaves for authenticity.

Something that I learnt at the end of modelling the trees, was I had left the UV unwrapping to the last minute which was a major error in my work flow. This then led to hours and hours of sewing edges and unfolding after automatic unwrapping. This was a good lesson for the future to make sure I work alongside the sub-tasks while building that could crop up and cause trouble.

Above is a diagram of the trees I made together with the examples below them. Although this part of the modelling was very challenging I taught myself a lot from it for later constructing.

Games Art: 2D Pathway - Environment (M2/4)

For the second milestone in the 2D pathway, we had to create thumbnail sketches of primitive shapes and silhouettes.

Above and below are my thumbnail drawings, using just one tone to block out ideas and forms.

I created two thumbnail sheets. One for ships and the other for the environment setting. As my focus is on the future shipping industry, I wanted to convey both elements and explore alternate structures.

Above is my first sketchbook study in a series of four (using an array of mediums). I began to construct using 2B to 6B pencils, a level horizon with a ship above and a dockyard below; almost squeezing the sky to a strip in the center field of view.

In this second sketchbook study, I used both pencils and fineliner pens to bring the ships out in context. However, I feel the front view looks a little flat and if I was to go over this again, I would add more tone into the shading to bring more value and form overall.

I made this sketch using black biro pen and a ruler, copying from the mental ray render I did in Maya (second image down).

This is the last study I did on paper using a range of grey Letraset Pro Marker pens. I was fairly pleased with how the foreground turned out making the lighter grey values in the background fade out in distance and scale.

Here is one of the renders I did using mental ray in Maya. I blocked out some simple models of three different ships in two hours and then positioned them about; gathering ideas and compositions.

I quite liked setting up the ships hull antenna's and making different features on the normally smoothed surface.

The front of the anti-gravity ships (AGS) contain a modified bulbous bow fan. This allows air to vent the engines, enabling anti-gravity without over heating!

I also created a colour palette of nautical/shipping tones and OSHA colour combinations of hazard and caution warnings (often found around machinery). I will then use this to help me with my digital paintings and final piece later on.

Games Production - Spring Submission (M1/5)

For our Year 2 Spring Submission we were asked to get into a group (maximum of 8) and produce a 'vertical slice' of a game of our own design. Initially I was unsure of who to work with as several students in our group had already teamed up. Eventually the remaining class members combined, including me (in total six of us) to form a group. 

After several meetings and group discussions, we all had come to an agreement with creating a basic isometric Role Playing Game (RPG) set in an alternative medieval world. Here are some reference/mood boards of the medium topology style we all had in mind.

We all discussed our own strengths and weaknesses for our roles in the group and after some thought, I wished to try out as the environment artist (one I am less familiar with) rather than a concept artist; of which I am a bit too comfortable in.

It was then agreed that I would be the environment artist and so I set out creating simple elements such as the colour palette image above. The reason I made these were to show the mood and contrasts of what our game could display, in its stylised setting, later on.

One of my tasks was to create the map layout and the player's 'activity' path. Above are six concepts I did of variations of the 'vertical slice' map. The main focus was having a start and an end point (possibly a boss) to reach which we included in the style of castle ruins roughly in the centre of the map.

This is the final map design after some consideration of the player's story path. I also created a key/legend as a guide for certain objects and characters. In addition, I made some previews of certain locations such as the village and bridge spots.

Before I completed the final map layout, I made a simple grey box section of a corner of the map in Maya.

Here are some trees that I made very quickly but had an interesting style to them. As the setting is a rural one, I will have to put some more thought into several variations as well as shrubs which will then be scattered around the vertical slice.

I will also have to construct the collision meshes around areas of the map the player cannot get to, as well as the route; as demonstrated above in my environment test.

For our first milestone presentation, I had to make basic grey box assets of our game as seen above. This is the start of the game at a makeshift camp; with the player's size highlighted.

This is the next major location, the village, with the quests aim cart highlighted in the distance.

Another key spot is a bridge passing over a river. Several NPC (Non-Player Characters) characters and enemies will be around this zone, so it was essential to get a wide atmosphere here.

The last challenge you come to in the vertical slice is a boss in the castle ruins atop a mountain range. The path leading to the bridge, is still a work in progress as the elevation is rather tricky to work out and keep flat to enable the player to walk up.

I was really pleased with how accurate I could get the Maya grey box map to that of the sketch I did. However, I am open for suggestions as I know things and their placement could change as the world is developed along with the story.

Photoshop Session - Dynamic Form using Values Exercise

In our second session for the 2D pathway, we had an exercise of values. Below is my step by step of the four values I built up from the silhouette of the mech droid; of which we were given an A4 paper copy to work from. 

We had all the time of the session (which was two hours) to create the piece, which I was really happy with the end result and how accurate my visual judgement was to the supplied paper copy.

Here is the final image with a white background so it is easier to pick out the four values of tone. I enjoyed working with a hard brush and also using the eraser to pick out highlights and body form more efficiently.

Games Art: 2D Pathway - Environment (M1/4)

For this unit, I choose the 2D pathway, as that is the area I wish to specialise in. We were given the task to create an Art Concept Pack of either an Environment, Character or Vehicle for a game of our own design. I then started generating ideas on what I could make, mainly interested in an environment design.

Above is my reference/mood board of something I had an idea of, after reading an article about the ship breaking industry a few years ago. The consumption and demand for goods in the future would be so great with an increasing population, I thought it would be an interesting idea to have these giant container ships flying with the power of something like anti-gravity which, with no drag, would get to places quicker.

For my one sheet I had to create a short back story and basic info to why the container ships are now floating rather than sailing etc.

I made this sketch back in 2014 when I first had the idea but never went any further with it.

Photoshop Session - Interior & Character Concepts

As an icebreaker session, to see what are strengths and weaknesses were in digital painting, we were asked to create an interior and a character concept of our choice. For the two speed painting pieces, we were given around fifty or so minutes to complete them in our session time.

Here is my interior perspective I made look like a futuristic space station. I kept to basic grayscale colours for both pieces so that I could concentrate on the structure rather than how colourful I could make them. I also made sure to leave in the white guidelines I formed, so viewers can see the perspective dimensions.

Above is my pirate character I made in around fifty minutes. I though the original white canvas was too bright on the eye, so I added some background context in. I really enjoyed working at a faster pace to make these and will aim to keep improving on my time organisation skills for speed paintings in the future. 

Our lecturer also asked us to perhaps list our favourite artists and create an influence map. Above are a selection of digital artist's creations mainly from the community site DeviantArt; that are quite a big influence to me. In addition, I included the names of each artist at the bottom of the board image, if anyone wished to see more of their spectacular work.

Winter Submission: Triple A Asset Production - Low-Res Model

As the gun I was modelling was from my own concept sketches, it was very difficult to model into 3D. To aid my construction, I made the sci-fi gun out of modelling clay as seen below.

I tried to form the gun and make it look as hard-edged as possible, while just using my hands to build the all components.

As the model is the size of a small banana in length, I had to reinforce the clay with wooden toothpicks and thin metal wires to support the individual structures and also to bond them before baking it.

Overall, this side project towards the final game asset has been a huge help towards the final vision of the gun from 2D to 3D. I was very pleased with the scale as many of the parts were close to what their size was compared to the volume when I thought them up previously.

Before finalising certain components in ZBrush, I placed the OBJ files as tools (objects) into a scene and subdivided just to see what it looked like smoothed in the software. Above, I have the model (gun base handle) at five divisions. When I eventually reached the final gun parts, I had most of them at six divisions which is around two million TotalPoints. 

Here I had to sew UV's in the UV Editor to make a stream line edge to the side of the base handle panel.

 I had to unwrap and layout the UV's here in the high polygon model, instead of the low polygon process, so I could extract with the 'auto-group with UV' feature. This enabled me to highlight (in selected view) an item utilising the UV face geometry.

In this image, I have placed the before and after of the divided handle grip. You can see the drastic difference of the smoothing process with the polygons from left to right.

This is a topology view of the base handle. I was really pleased with the process of this part of the gun. This is one of the reasons it is well documented; as well as to show what the stages of work are like over the model as a whole.

To give the base handle its grip texture, I added similar to the knife assignment, noise using the Surface NoiseMaker feature. After adjusting several of the slider values in practise, I masked out the area I wanted to leave smooth in the side isometric view and then applied the NoiseMaker changes.

As the ZBrush software was new to us this term, there were hundreds of complications and issues we had to independently overcome. One that seemed very obvious (although named weirdly) was the tools. At first I thought I had to load in tediously, each tool through the importer. This meant that I placed eighteen tool OBJ's into the dock but not as a sub tool.

The sub tool is a similar layering system to that of Adobe's Photoshop layers. These enable individual editable elements of the image or object. All I had to do then, after some help from our session teacher, was to append all the eighteen tool OBJ's into one ZPR tool file and place it in the scene view.

Some UV's could be unwrapped in ZBrush, such as the wire parts seen here in this image which looked not that bad overall.

When placing the entire gun model into the scene I added a metallic chrome material to it to bring it to life a bit.

Every time I divided in ZBrush, on the gun parts I wanted to texture/add surface detail too, I would have to crease the edges before in Maya.

 This crease process allowed the software to understand where I wanted the hard edged/straight corners to remain after smoothing with the divide tab back in ZBrush.

After I had my high polygon gun set up in ZBrush, I carried out the excruciating task of deleting edges and vertices not needed in my low polygon model. Above is a screen capture where I was using all the functions in quad-draw to quickly and effective make a low poly form of the base handle.

Here is a selection of Alpha brushes I created in Photoshop following a similar scratch pattern to that of the one I found online (top left hand corner). I simply applied these adjusting things like the size of the brush and the intensity of pressure to the object surface in ZBrush.

This part of my gun was rather problematic and I attempted several outcomes (the one above my final after no luck separating noise placement).

What I was attempting with this section was a braided rope effect over the top of the wires; similar to what PC's have to protect external cables. I made the surface detail using the NoiseMaker feature again with the checkerboard pattern.

After what seemed like forever, I had deleted all the unnecessary edges to complete my final low polygon model at thirty three thousand, eight hundred and seventy four 'tris'.

Above is also my final ZBrush gun model with all the parts I wanted to add texture too complete.

As the weeks quickly went by, more deadlines and content for our second (Games Production) Unit was needed. As I was the concept artist for our group's game, I had to create a lot of material in a short space of time in high detail (for other members to work from). On return to my gun asset, I sensed I had fallen behind quite a fair amount.

As I panned about my low poly model's UV's in Maya, one problem turned into a hundred, as I realised there was a huge section of what I can only describe as hidden faces/edges on an earlier merged component. There was no way out of trying to get around this dilemma that had to be resolved by finding each vertices or face and either moving and merging or deleting it entirely (as I had now formed the low from the high poly model).

As seen in the previous image, I made sure to delete my history after an action as I had several points where Maya just kept crashing (due to old attribute memory). In this image, I laid out the UV's for the main stock of the gun as automatic unwrap didn't do a very good job.

One method I used to help fix n-sided faces (a massive problem that occurred later in the software xNormals) was the Cleanup tool in Maya. This tool fixes tessellations by adding in an edge to any faces with more than four sides (which I had lots of). Here the Cleanup tool is in action on the top handle of my gun which was a real drawback. 

Above are the final unwrapped UV's displayed using a checkerboard preview in the Editor. While trying to get hold of the only session teacher without any success in the last week before the hand-in deadline (everyone needing one persons help), I overcame a major issue of merging down sub tools in ZBrush; with a little help from a student on the same unit. Ultimately, I had to export four separate parts, that make up my gun, as OBJ files which worked fine with the texture issue in my high poly model.

Before I unwrapped the combined petal ends correctly, as seen in the previous image, I did a test of what the normals looked like in the map baking software xNormals. Following all the steps and instructions we were taught, I instantly knew the UV layout was disarranged in the normals preview screen.

Here is my final four normal maps (without ambient occlusion) baked in xNormals. At this point, I did not worry about the really small errors in the face values of the individual parts. The main goal was to get all the stages completed. These last two stages being, to use Quixel in Photoshop (to make textures on my UV layouts) and importing the model and textures into Unreal Engine (within a scene build).

Above is a preview of the baking for an Ambient occlusion map for my assets exterior cables. The rendering wraps around the image in a clockwise rotation (halfway round in my screen capture). Because of the file size (around 4K quality), it took about twenty minutes to complete baking. I then had to do this for all four parts that make up the entire model.

Unfortunately I did not get to texture in Quixel and Photoshop. Here is a UV Snapshot of the stock of the gun asset.

These are the materials I would have placed on my gun asset model.

I formed a very basic scene in Unreal to place my gun in. 

Here is the gun asset in the scene view within Unreal.

Finally I cropped a screen capture of my gun with the lighting and shadow depth quality at production standard. Overall, this Unit has challenged me constantly and I have enjoyed so many aspects as a whole. In addition, I would love to continue to complete my textured model in the future as well as animate the original arcing firing mode.