Week 17; Clothing Folds and Resurrection!

  To kick off the new week I have a new power supply and my computer finally works again! I know it'll be difficult following up from that exciting sentence but I'll try my best.

   This week we had a lecture on Monday from the Animation and Games Art 3^rd Year life drawing tutor; Geoff. This lecture was actually really useful for my life drawing as he explained how to really understand the volumes of the subjects we were drawing, with exercises like drawing the form as if it was see through to understand how (for example) a leg would deform when in a seated position – how the thigh flattens out. We also covered head proportions and the weighting of the subject in the sketch. For example: always bearing in mind the centre of gravity of the model when sketching, which gives a weight to the sketch and makes more realistic.

Andrew Loomis - Proportions at various ages

  In games production we were covering clothing folds, where we had to model a sleeve on an arm which was rigged to help us understand deformation of topology and how to create clothing folds on topology. The process includes using the “cut” tool to create diamond-like shapes and moving the verts to make overlapping folds – better demonstrated below

  For Critical Studies this week we were given our character project brief which I was absent for but have picked up the PDF. We have 4000 tris to model our character, a 1024x1024 texture and a 512x512 32bit targa for accessories.

  I've already decided what kind of character I'm going to design roughly; I'd want to design myself as an older character, perhaps late 50's as a medieval fisherman. I would have just created the character as a model of my in medieval fisherman attire although I didn't find that to be particularly imaginative and I thought it'd be interesting to try push the boundaries of what my imagination can cook up.

  I'll be back next week with my concepts and mood boards of the my character!

Week 16; A Character Continuation

  So after a weeks reading I'm ready to continue on with the next project warm-up for the looming character project. This week we were tasked with modelling a low-poly head, as a learning experiment for out character project. I didn't have too much hassle with this and was rather simple to follow along with.

  For games production we used a technique called box modelling where essentially, like a classical sculptor you carve the head out of a block, using the cut tool and swift loop tool craft out the head.

On Monday was the preparation for this exercise as we were tasked for Monday to take photos of our face ready to draw face loops and facial topology over them so we could model out the head using those images as reference.

  For the latter part of the week we were given a critical studies talk about cleaning our footprint on the internet and roles we would have in a company or group. We started with a sort of personality test which then determined which of these Nine roles we'd fall into:

Plant
Resource Investigator
Co-ordinator
Shaper
Monitor Evaluator
Teamworker
Implementer
Complete Finisher
Specialist
 

  After taking the test I fell into the category of “Teamworker” which is surprisingly accurate for one of my attributes. This role entails “Co-operative, perceptive and diplomatic. Listens and averts friction”. However the “Allowable Weaknesses” include “Indecisive in crunch situations. Avoids Confrontation” Which I wouldn't say is totally accurate. Some good food for thought though, It'd be nice to be more rounded an individual rather than sitting in one category. The other part of the lecture was finding ourselves in search engines and how we can eradicate any unwanted data of ourselves found easily on the internet, which I didn't find too bad as there isn't many things that I could find about myself, except my Batting average in 2012, which is probably the only embarrassing I could find!

  Other than that I ventured into town to buy my own copy of “The Hobbit” as my other copy is back at home, since I had finished “The Rachel Papers” and my Power Supply had not yet arrived. The reason for doing this was the third film in The Hobbit series was released recently which was getting poor reviews and it'd been a while since I'd read the book. But that's about it for this week, I'll join you next week!

Week 15; A Fresh Start with a Funeral

Hello again! So we meet again after the Christmas break and this first week back has been quite eventful.

To start off the week we were given a project to help us with the forthcoming character project. We were given a low-poly female body to model in a week. Now, halfway through this week is where the fun begins. On the Thursday, my power supply for my desktop blew, leaving me stranded for a computer, only being able to access one in labs – The death of my computer. This was a rather awkward situation as I was working from home on modelling the body of the female character so I only got so far.

In better news, this lead my back to my love of reading; since I was going to be without a computer for a while. So, I decided to revisit an old favourite of mine which I never finished; The Rachel Papers, by Martin Amis. An Intriguing and somewhat challenging book (vocabulary-wise) which I distinctly remember reviewing for a Year Nine project in secondary school, only to be told it covered “Rather inappropriate subjects”. I digress, the book itself is a fascinating read into the mind of a highly intelligent, yet uncomfortably awkward teen, Charles Highway, on his journey of the last three months of being a teenager. A highly acclaimed book that I'd recommend to most (once I've finished it, anyway), as so far it's been a gripping story and has more than sufficiently challenged my vocabulary.

Back to more familiar ground with the modelling side: This week was an exercise in body topology of the female form. I spent most of my time trying to replicate the topology given to us on the reference plane for the modelling process, and even though I didn't get to finish the model before my computer blew, I still have a good understanding of how to go about modelling my character for the Village Project.

For Critical Studies this week we were given a new perspective on how we should be constantly evaluating and re-evaluating ourselves as we continue on the course. There were some very helpful things I need to do which I really hadn't thought of before like filing my marked work away so I can reflect on the feedback on a later date. I also need to actively do something about my feedback, something like making a plan and sticking to it, maybe pinning it up in my room to remind myself. Also compiling all the data of my feedback and trying to work out some trends to improve on. The lucky thing is that our feedback is either verbal (Therefore I need to have a notebook handy to take a note down) but mostly digital so I can always have a copy online to file away. 

  We were also given a sheet to write an action plan for our next two years at university and analyse our personal strengths and weaknesses. From these things I determined some future goals; including every Tuesday working through an hour of tutorials to improve my overall knowledge of the programs and medium I'm working with and writing a blog schedule to strictly follow.

I have also determined over the Christmas break that I need to make time to work on my ability to draw, which will come with practice of life drawing and extra life studies outside of taught class time.

So it's not all bad news, I've rekindled my passion for reading, and in a couple of weeks I'll be able to have my computer back and upload the model lost in progress.

I'll join you next week when I hopefully will be the proud owner of a new power supply!

Week Eleven; Stylized Tree Continued... A Lesson to be learned

Much like the week before, I ended up doing double the work that was actually required. However, instead of the Willow tree I tried to model last week, I started modelling a Japanese Maple tree, purely as I love the forms and colours of that species of tree. Although, even now, in hindsight I see where I had started to go wrong – by somewhat disregarding the style guide. The look for this project was meant to be a sort of happy, medieval Euorpean style, whereas I started off with a Japanese Maple tree, and then moved onto a palm tree. However, I'll continue in what I actually did in the week then conclude the lessons needed to be learned from this exercise.

So, after trying and hastily giving up modelling my Japanese Maple tree (for the deadline was approaching fast), I moved onto modelling something I'd consider easier to do and more effective, as I seemed to be struggling with more conventional tree forms. As the palm tree's form is relatively simplistic, I didn't have too much trouble modelling or texturing the tree, only that I should have cleaned up the bark texture to make it a bit more plain so it'd have a somewhat stylized look about it.

Model with Wireframe & Flatshader.

Model with Wireframe & Flatshader.

Model with Wireframe & Flatshader.

Model with Wireframe & Flatshader.

Looking back on the project now I do wish I would have stuck to my Willow tree and Maple tree as they would have exerted my full skills at this point in time to see what I could do, seeming as I was struggling with them. If I had another chance to do the project I'd have spent a lot more time on polishing the textures and figuring a way to place the leaf alphas so they sit correctly on the model. I should have also gone back and referred to the style guide more often, which would have stopped me modelling a tree which isn't in fit with the style guide.

Final Model

Final Model

Final Model

In the future I'm going to set myself a project to force myself to model and texture the trees which I find challenging; more conventional trees such as oak, maple, willow, etc. with the same tri budget and texture constraints as this project.

Leaf Texture

Bark Texture

Week Ten; The Tree Project

So, quickly after we finished our stylized house project and submitted we had the last two weeks of term to complete two trees to fit into our medieval style village. The idea for this project is to have a better idea for creating organic forms in 3ds max, and as games are heavily populated with them, we start with trees. I admit I did struggle with this project in the first week and had to re-do my tree several times as I was not happy with it whatsoever.

Initially I wanted to model a Japanese style maple tree and a willow tree, but during the first week I encountered problems that I couldn't move past, which meant for the hand-in, I had to change what types of tree I was to model.

Flatshader of my Oak tree model

Flatshader of my Oak tree model

I started the week by trying to model a willow tree, but when it came around to texturing and placing the leaves, I didn't have a large enough tri budget to bulk out the canopy of the tree effectively. Therefore I moved onto modeling something more simplistic with big clumps of leave forms that I could model as one oval with alphas sticking out, whilst keeping with to the style guide – an Oak tree. The process started with a mood board; picking out forms of the branches, trunk and leaves. After this was completed I went straight into modelling, and in hindsight it was probably wiser to draw up some concepts and figure out how I was going to model these trees whilst conforming to the tri budget.

Areas of the oak tree look sparsely populated with leaves - should have populated the underside of the canopies
as that is where the player would have been looking at most.

I used the spline tool to model the trunk and pulled around verts to make the tree look somewhat stylized. I also used the spline tool to create a branch, and duplicated this branch, scaled it and rotated it to create the others. We were allowed three texture sheets, two for tiling textures and an alpha texture sheet. Although I utilised all three, using the tiling textures for the bark and the blocky mass of the leaves under the alphas, I feel I should have tried to spend more time stylizing the textures.

Undercoat leaves texture and birds nest detail.

Tiling bark texture

Oak leaf alpha

If I could have done this week again I would have just continued modelling the Willow tree and just have made it aesthetically nicer and spent more time on creating the alphas and texturing and modelling rather than having to rush the Oak tree because I ditched the Willow tree.

I'm definitely going to have to revisit this project and spend more time on modelling trees in my spare time as I am thoroughly unhappy with the outcome and it's vital to improve on modelling organic forms.

Final Render

Final Render

Week Nine; Polishing of the Stylized House

    Monday came around and in our lecture instead of handing in our project on Tuesday we had one week to continue polishing our finished model to make it look even better. This worked well in my favour as I could spend more time and care on my textures and make them tile better.

    So the start and end of the week basically entailed many iterations of my textures, making the cloth alpha and brushing up the details on my detail texture map. I'm glad we had this week in polishing otherwise I'd of been quite unhappy with the result.

    I also had the chance to fiddle with it in Unreal engine, where we were placing the model when completed with the other house assets our team had made. Unreal presented little problems, the only one I struggled with is the fact that I couldn't get rid of the Waterwheel space filler in the engine as It was attached to the foundations for the Watermill asset. However, I'm quite happy with the result. I used the extra time for texturing to look back at the style guide and correct any errors in the colour palette I used.

Alpha Channel of Cloth

    The rest of the time used was just editing the base mesh to cut down on the tri count and make the model more economical. At the end of the week I was quite pleased with my model and really enjoyed the whole project.

    If I could go back and re-do the project to make it better I would have definitely made better space

of the foundations in unreal engine, so the asset would be a better fit when I put it into engine. The only other thing I'd correct is my unwrap as it is incredibly messy.

    Here are the screenshots of the finished asset in engine:

Week Eight; Stylized House Continued.

    Continuing on from Week Seven, I quickly modeled my house in 3DS Max, using the orthographics I made last week, not adding any detail just using boxes. I used the screenshots from this process to put them back into Photoshop and paint over them to figure out where I was going to put some of the finer details and how it'd all look when I'd done that process.

     This helped me model the house as well as I had a better idea of where everything fitted in. I do have to say it took me around three iterations of modelling before I was happy with the forms of the building.

    After all of this had been completed and I'd done the main forms of the building and some details of windows and timber struts, I went back into the house and decided to add some more areas of interest, like a cloth roof for the porch and some barrels full of flour, just to make the Watermill a more believable structure.

    Creating the cloth was good fun, I made a custom box for the volume of the area that the cloth was going to drape off of the wooden struts, I then used a turbosmoother to give the box more tris to collide with the plane that I used as a cloth, thus making the drooping effect you see on the model.

    I then unwrapped the model into 4 different UVW Templates and made all but two texture maps used were tile-able. I did end up finishing my plaster texture and my wood texture this week but I fell ill on the last couple of days and couldn't do my cloth alpha map or details texture to the finish that I expected though.