The Beginning of the End

Wow OK its the end of break now and I took the whole 2 weeks off after that beast of a term!! Still I am so glad with everything I got done and I feel confident going into next term that I have the time to really put together a strong final reel :D
I had to drop the town exterior project I was planning mostly just to free up enough time to push the lighting on my other projects.  I underestimated the complexity and time it would take to fix a lot of the issues that cropped up but I feel that my 3 finished pieces are now ready for a few final polishing passes before I put them to rest.  Still I got a couple of Internship offers off my WIP reel so yay!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't begin to explain how excited I am to join the workforce next term even if it is (for now) in a part time fashion. 

I  revisited my Podracer Final from Texturing and Shading for Games.  I polished up the environment a little, re-rigged the Podracer and put together a few camera passes to show off the model :) I am so much more confident lighting in Unreal now, I feel I can do a much better job of showing off the model compared to a couple of terms back when I first put this together.  I feel the bright and orange pallet of this piece nicely balances out the darker feel of the rest of my reel.

 I got some great help with pushing my Environment for Games piece both from my Tutor Anton and from my peers.  Thanks guys!! I added some vines, broken glass and more candles to make the room feel fuller and more intimate.  I also did a lot of work on the lighting for the piece to boost the colors and vibe. Check out the full animation on my WIP Reel

 In the end I pushed and pulled my environment final from last term so much it became a mess.  So I just opened up a new scene and, using the same assets, I built; what I feel, to be a much stronger shot.  It was surprisingly fun to just place assets and move around landscapes to add depth and intrigue to the scene.  I also polished up a lot of the texture work on both the castle and surrounding town.  Additionally I build a blueprint for the town buildings that allows you to change the building type and generate a random window alpha, which means once the buildings have been placed you can still change up the feel of the shapes with a lot of ease and the windows don't feel so obviously laid out like they used to.

 I settled on a logo and a business card too.  After all my experimenting with combining the 3 first letters of my name I just scrapped it all and tried a simpler idea that hints at my Architectural background.  I much prefer this logo to my previous attempts.  :)

For the Game Creation 3 final I rigged up my character, Cyrus, from earlier in the term.  I didn't have a lot of time to put together the animations for movement but I managed to do a first pass on everything.  I might go back and polish them up some day.  I did however learn how to set up dynamic bone chains in Unreal so Cyrus's jacket is animated dynamically in this scene, you can see a better example here: Game Creation 3 Final

 Lastly here is somewhat of an art dump for my stylised character final.  That class was such a treat this term when I was panicking with other projects.  I did enjoy the challenges of really finishing my environment projects with lighting rendering and optimizing, but when the clock is ticking to the big deadline there is something calming about coming home and just loosening up with some Zbrush.

 I don't know how I managed it but I guess that extra week after the WIP reel deadline really helped.  I had nothing but stylised character to work on and I was able to finish my sculpt, build the low poly model, texture, rig and animate it in time for the final.  Having said that it was right up to the wire! I was very glad to have my name place me in the middle of the list for presentations :p if I was higher I don't think I would have had the precious last few minutes to set up the Marmoset scene!

 

So tomorrow marks the beginning of the end of Gnomon! Even typing that now feels surreal, it's been a crazy ride and even through the bumpy parts I've loved every moment.
Good luck everyone see you on the other side.