Week 5 - Midterms

 OK Midterms have arrived! which doesn't mean much this term since most of my classes don't have any hard deadlines for week 5, but it still marks the half way point of the term!! eek!
So far everything is going according to plan, I have finished all the character and extra stuff for my scenes, I am currently rendering out the initial 2 shots I have completed and now I have started the block in for my final environment for the term! phew...

 Not much to look at right now but the block out is coming together.  I have the major key buildings worked out I just have a few more general details to figure the scale of, then I can bring in my buildings from the large scale scene as set extensions to really make the scene feel large.

We had a class cancellation for Stylised Character so I moved ahead with Jinx and I did a little work on my final piece.  I really love Johannes Helgeson's 2D work its a beautiful mix of stylised faces with slightly more realistic bodies.  I hope I can do the concept justice, we will see.

 I touched up the facial anatomy from last week and moved onto polypainting for my Midterm.  It's slowly coming together but I am really glad I chose to do 2 pieces this term since I have learned so much from this first piece which I can hopefully transfer to the final :)

Threw together a simple rig for Cyrus but I will be testing out some cool dynamic bones for the lower half of the jacket in the next few weeks for Game Creation 2! Still I have used the basic rig to get all the custom animations I need for my environment shots and once I have the decent skinned version I can start rendering out those shots too.

 I finished up the last few props for my main character namely his torch and flanged mace texture.
The torch was super fun! mostly because I really like the twisted wood branch shapes and trying to capture that in Zbrush was a fun challenge but the other reason is that I only had about 6-8 hours to get this whole piece done, from high poly sculpt to game rez with textures and fire effect! So the time constraint made me work quite fast!  I could certainly do a better job with more time but for the actual amount this prop will show up in the scene its more important to move onto my environment final.

 

 Finished the transforming mace texture.  I would love to put some kind of effect together for the fully awake form but I don't know if I will have time this term.  I may have recruited a VFX artist to take a stab at it too but we are all crazy busy this term so its still tentative.

Also got around to updating my Artstation with some of my recent projects including this piece (not posted as of the time of this post) though I am waiting to finish the other 3 character rigs for this term before I post them all as one project.  Still you can see how the rig and skinning hold up here: Ninja Animation

Tomorrow I a bunch of us are heading to Blizzard!! for a tour! yay! it will be really nice to have a little bit of a break and just hang out with friends away from the computers for a few hours.   Maybe even soak up a little inspiration :D

Week4

This week things are moving ahead at a good pace but I am hoping to get onto the environment block in starting Monday so hopefully I can get some of the extra filler stuff done over the weekend, we will see!

Some very strange and almost hypnotic textures created for my fruit and vegetable crates! In the end I wound up using a low poly cage to capture the main mass of the pieces of orange and potato and then placed some of the low poly individual props on the top to give it a more believable look.

I tried something new this week which totally payed off.  I wanted to generate a whole load of filler props for my sea side town scene and I wanted to do it as efficiently as possible.  I figured since all of these things are made of the same material (wood planks) why not just make an atlas of wood plank sizes fully texture that and then use those textured pieces to create all the individual props.  The caveat being you cant add custom grunge to any of the pieces but for background filler pieces that wouldn't be much of an issue anyway.  I guess you could use a second set of UV's for each piece if you did a simple planar project to quickly get some vertical dirt or something.  Which I may do in the future if they stand out as too clean.  Anyway this technique really worked out since I was able to create around 30 unique props in only 2 days (and most of the second day was spent on sculpting fruit to fill the crates :p)

Here's how they look in engine

It was a pain in the butt, but I was able to get some moon light bouncing on the water for my 'approach to Bitteryarrow' shot. I had to use a blended material with a series of masks just to hold the rippling moonlight and position it in the correct space. I'm glad I put in the effort though since I think it brings a lot to the shot.

 This is the first pass at Cyrus's texturing.  I haven't done any of the skin or hair yet but I allotted myself half a day to get his main costume done to fit my schedule and I am quite happy with the current look. Still since I am not preparing a character based portfolio and he is only supplementing my environment I can't give him the full development at this stage.  Still games assets are very dynamic and maybe some day in the future I can develop his look further.

I also did a quick pass on the deep born severed head which will be used in the final close up shot before the big environment piece.  It looks so much creepier with textures I cant wait to see it in the scene with some spooky lighting.

Second pass on Jinx for stylised character.  Some of the forms are beginning to really take shape now :) I always feel a little guilty putting too much time into these homeworks but they are just so fun!! This week we will be going over hair and hands for the next stage of development.