Term 10 begins

So after a great break I am back to the Gnomon life :)  I visited San Francisco which was awesome! The city was amazing and it was really nice to get away from computers for a week or so, though I am back in the thick of it now.  I also finished the new Phillip Pullman book over the break "The Book of Dust vol 1." Its a beautiful story but for me it ranks as probably my third favorite of the 4 main books he has written within that universe, still its a great set up and I can't wait for the next installment!!  Also I got a little inspired over the break and I decided to write a short story myself.  I am only a dozen or so pages in but I am using this story to inform my main demo reel project for the next few terms.  There wont be much time to work on it over this term but I hope to have the majority of the story written before I start next term :)
So term 10... this is going to be really tough!  I know I seem to say that every term but honestly there are no easy or even minor classes this term, I have: Rigging for Production, Houdini 1, Advanced Digital Sculpting, Game Creation 2, VFX for games and Character for Games.  I am already 2 weeks in and I feel like the workload it getting a little tough to stay on top of.  I may have to take some of the classes a little lighter than I usually like :(

This is the concept I want to model for my Advanced Zbrush final, though I also plan to change the concept to adapt it to the Horizon Zero Dawn universe.

 I am really enjoying this class already.  It still feels a little strange doing hard surface in Zbrush after becoming so comfortable in Maya but learning from Paul Gaboury is certainly clearing up a lot of Zbrushe's finer functions.  Just a simple block in for now but I expect to make some real progress before next class!

This is the concept I have chosen for Character for Games.  I am going to stick quite closely to this concept from Bloodborne but I will probably be changing a few things to keep the character in line with my own story.

I haven't decided on a name yet but this character is an immortal emissary from a secret society of people who worship ancient forgotten gods.  Seventeen years ago she persuaded the steward of Bitteryarrow to bring up her son in exchange for great fortune and now she has returned to ensure her son succeeds his father by any means necessary.

For Rigging for Production we haven't moved far from last terms teaching but after only 2 weeks we have to have a complete skeleton and a completely skinned mesh! I like this pace since it looks like we will be getting into some more advanced stuff soon like corrective blend-shapes and facial rigging yay!  Also we were given the choice of using one of Gnomon's characters to rig or choose our own.  I really didn't like the free model so I dusted off my character from 2 terms ago, fixed some of the topology and got the go ahead to use her this term yay!!

VFX for games has started really well :) we have been spending the first couple of weeks working through basic particles to create fire works and rain.  I've never really spent any time working on effects and its so nice to learn something completely new.

The first Game Creation 2 class was cancelled this term but I have an assignment for this week.  Pretty much I am either just playing around in world machine or blocking in my own concept.  I am hoping to do the exterior for my environment Bitteryarrow castle from last term.  That means, water, cliff face, and a castle model (though the model can be simple since it will be viewed from far away).  Still that's another big project for this term :*( wish me luck!

Houdini has been pretty disappointing so far.  It's quite hard to follow in class since the teacher is dissecting existing projects rather than building stuff from scratch.  I don't want to say anything yet because this might actually all come together in a week or so but I am feeling really lost at the moment.  Nothing much to show for now.

Anyway tonnes of work to do so I better crack on.

Finals... for real this time!

OK term 9 is done! wow that was by far the hardest term at Gnomon to date! but we all survived good job everyone! :D

I wound up baking my creature final onto a rough low poly cage so I could do my previs in Marmoset instead of relying on Keyshot.  Hopefully I can run through a few Keyshot tutorials in the near future since it is a very useful program I just didn't leave enough time for this final.  Also now that I have seen what the other tracks are able to pull off in Nuke with their post processing etc I feel a little amateur doing mine in Photoshop :p

You can see more pictures and the Marmoset scene on my Artstation page.

For the Animation for Games final I finished up my Attack combo and added a rough death animation.  I have had a lot of fun in animation this term I feel like the lessons I learned last term combined with some of the new tricks in this class has caused animation to really starting clicking.  There is still a long way to go but I can totally see myself as a games animator if that every happens in the future.

If you want to see the full animation loops check out the files in my term 9 Google Drive folder

Here's the big one! Environment for Games! wow this class was huge.  I learned so much in this class and in the supporting classes like Texturing and Shading for Games and Game Creation 1.  I wound up finishing my Marmoset scene on Sunday night and the assignment was due Monday 7:00pm  So I thought I would try and get the whole thing into Unreal! It seemed like it wouldn't be too tough but wow there were a lot of steps!!  I had to add a 2nd UV channel to everything in my scene to hold the light map bake which in itself wasn't hard but there were just so many pieces in the scene that I had to repeat the same process so many times.  I think I might be able to write a quick script that could do that in the future though... we will see.
But that was only the first step after that I had to build and assign every material in the scene including some of the more complex ones like the glass and wax shaders, then do all the post (in camera) effects.  Looking back at it I'm not entirely sure how I managed to pull it off but somehow it all came together just in time!  Still there are a lot of little problems that cropped up, most likely from me having to rush it.  Still I did want to take this scene further in Unreal and make a small cinematic so I guess its pretty good to have it in Unreal so I can start chasing down those errors.

But now time for some well earned rest! C you all next term!

Finals!!... Kinda

Phew haven't updated in a week or so but I have been crazy busy!! Also had a little dental trouble... which was annoying and lost me a few hours so I guess I will be doing a little catch up over break :*(

I have a couple of makeups in week 11 so there will be 1 more update for my final final stuff...

Gonna do a little bit more with this project after the final TnS class.  I want to do a bit more with the Podracer Texturing.  Mostly some tweaks but I also want to paint some permanent decals and damage.  The assignment was to use Unreal for that stuff and it was a really cool learning experience but I really like how it turned out and I think with a few more hours of love the textures could go a lot further!!  I built some functionality, UI and animations for this piece too which I will screen capture for the final post of this term :)

Animation is getting there.  I need another pass at this attack animation to really push it and I got some great notes in class of how to make this feel more energetic! check out this attack loop in my Google Drive Folder

Going back to rendering.... hmm I never really got all that good in Keyshot but I shot myself in the foot a little here by assuming it would work with multiple emissive objects, custom lights and SSS skin :P I wasn't able to get the character fully rendered in time but I got some OK (debatable) screen grabs out.   

 I am pretty happy with the way this character developed.  I pushed the secondary forms a lot more from week 4 and I did a lot more with the cloth too. Still I have a long way to go before I would consider myself comfortable with costuming.  I am hoping to do a Victorian, Bloodborne inspired character next term which will involve a lot more costuming than this character... So I guess by the end of next term I should be a lot better with costume!

One thing Keyshot is quite good at though is making renders that look like 3D prints!!! I really like this effect! 

Just in case my workload wasn't quite heavy enough already I opted into an extra rigging project for a friend at school.  I have learned so much in Cameron Ward's class this term! really great teacher. I am pretty confident that I can rig up this stylised character, by Rico, with stretchy IK and a few other cartoony tweaks too before the start of next term.  If I can get it all to work well enough Sofiane Bnk will be using it for his animation graduation reel! which would be awesome!

I spent most of this week building a few extra props for set dressing my scene to bring a little more narrative intrigue to the shot.  Now that I am more familiar with the games pipeline getting these props all modeled and textured really doesn't take that long.  Especially considering they aren't "hero props." Still they bring a lot more to the main shot and some close up shots I have planned.

I am pretty happy with my first pass at lighting this scene :) but I do want to make a lot of corrections and tweaks before I hand this in next week!  There are still a few more props to texture but I am pretty confident that I can get it all done in time :D

Man this term has been tough!!  And I even had a couple of easier classes like Game Creation 1, Animation and Rigging each of which only took up a few hours a week to stay on top of... It makes me a little worried for next term especially since I switched out a couple of easier classes for 2 pretty tough ones, Advanced Rigging and Advanced Digital Sculpting.  Those classes combined with Character for Games, Game Creation 2 and VFX for games is gonna make next term even tougher :*( better get some rest over break!! Still one week left of this term better not slow down too much yet!

Week7 - Not long left for Finals eek!

 A sobering and at the same time very productive week!

 Finally got the last thing on my to sculpt list done!! though this piece probably took the same time as almost all my other pieces combined :p or at least it felt that way.  Though now I have something like 15 custom brushes I made for this piece that maybe I can use again in the future.  It was an especially fun piece because it holds a large amount of the back story to my environment's setting.  Much like the long stone carving for Skyrim (but nowhere near as cool) a lot of the pieces of this relief sculpt hint at larger story elements.  I called out a few of them in the above image but there are more hidden gems in the piece too.  There were a lot more I wanted to add but I planed out my schedule for the rest of term and I need to kick up another gear if I want to get it all done :*(  I dont know where I'm going to pull the time from though I feel like I am already maxed out.

I got the rest of my scene into Marmoset this week too.  For the most part I am happy with the bakes but allllllll of my Substance Designer work needs a lot of work.  They all need re-scaling and just more break up.  I am going for a cleaner Bloodborne vibe and putting this all together made me realise just how far off I am from that goal.  Still moving forward though :) and now I can feel the piece coming together as a whole and I can add textures to the scene as I complete them.  I hope I will have time to add more break up to the floors and walls and add all the tertiarty props to bring some lived in clutter to the scene! Plus I need to learn how to light and post process the scene but that comes later.

 My texturing and shading final is coming along nicely too.  I have my low and high poly pass done and its all baked now so onto texturing!  I spent quite some time in Zbrush adding detail to the Podracer and rusting it up a bit too.  We will see how much of that comes through when I work on the roughness and grunge passes!  I also have to build in some floating damage and sticker decals as part of the assignment. I left the damage quite light for the first pass so I can add those custom details in Unreal.

 A bit of basic material work, plenty more to do but so far a good start :)

I also build a small trim detail sheet which I will use later to add procedural damage.

Moving into the final for creature design! I picked my star wars creature to develop and take to final render.  I have one more week to finalise the sculpt and tertiary detail and cloth but I am happy with the main silhouette at least :p

I think I bruised my pen finger though with all this Zbrush this week!! It's the same feeling I used to get during my exams back in college.  Advanced History and English exams requiring multiple essays that all had to be done in ink pen left me with a permanent dent to my middle finger :p I wonder if that is something that future generations won't have to deal with now that digital papers are more widely accepted.... weird thought anyway lots of work to do! bai!

Week6_Awesome Week!!

The usual Sunday and Monday night push this week to get everything done on time but I feel like I have made huge strides this week :D

 Wow this was an awesome and difficult project!  I build some of the insert pieces first at a waaaaaay higher resolution than I should have.  I kept thinking that this piece should be ready to bake when its done but that just left me with an unstable and huge Zbrush scene.  I know now that it would be better to use proxy shapes at a much lower resolution to figure out the interaction of forms. I think because of that issue I wasn't able to play around with the creature too much because it took a few seconds to even move the camera after a while :p Still I really love this guy! and it was a blast to combine environment pieces and creature.  The face was probably my favorite piece to work on when I integrated the colossus eyes and the kind of cute features he immediately became likable :)  If this was a creature in the game I wouldn't want to kill him!

 I wanted to create a creature that was a living embodiment of the Great Wall.  A little tropey I suppose but I still think its a legit direction :p 

I built the center piece in the above image and then I was able to create all the other shapes just using different mirror axis.

I wanted to play around with some shape creation in Substance Designer and thankfully this weeks creature assignment was perfect for it!! It was easier than I thought and in a few hours I was able to put together this cool floor texture that is completely dynamic! I think its my OCD side but its so satisfying to complete one of these things knowing I could use it to create dozens of variations!  Now I just need to figure out the later stage stuff like better edge ware and detail!

 For Environment design everything is starting to come together.  I have my scene all blocked out and I have added a couple of the missing pieces from last week like the rose window etc.

 I added a wood panel texture to my Substance Designer textures which marks all of the basic ones in my scene.  If I find time it would be nice to add some more but I have to get the rest of the base stuff done first!

It took a few late nights but I now have almost everything in my scene baked!!  Just a few more pieces like the rose window and the floor disc left then its onto texturing.
I mostly focused on environment and creature this week so I haven't made much progress on my pod-racer but there isn't a lot more to do on it other than a little sculpting and then I can move onto texturing! :) We will be using hovering planes to add damage and decals to the prop so with any luck I may be able to rig up something in Unreal where I can use variables to add damage and stickers to my prop! which would be really cool.

Week5 - a bit of a breather

A bit of a tough one but compared to last week this was much easier!  I still only got one night to work on creature but I think I am getting a lot faster in Zbrush so I was still quite happy with what I was able to do in a short time :)

Moving onto the texturing and shading final :) I am going with the below concept for a cool looking podracer!!  I have finished the low and mid models this week.  It took up quite a bit of time but it was so much fun to do!  I now have to send it thorough to Zbrush to add some cut lines, rivets, damage, etc. then texture it over the next few weeks :) I will probably be taking a break over the next week to make more progress with Environment for games but I feel like I am in a good spot to move forward.

Completed my basic run cycle for animation.  Next up is refining the run and starting on the pre-attack idle animation.  You can see the loop in my Term 9 Google Drive folder.

Finally putting things into my environment scene in Maya :D there is still plenty of sculpting to do but everything is UV'd and low poly modeled and all the tiling is working now yay :)  It was really satisfying to put the whole scene together and see it all taking form.  Can't wait to see the next step where the high poly sculpts come into play!  I should have the majority of the modeling done by next week and then I can move onto texturing.

Here is my creepy creature sculpt for this week!  The brief was to design a face hugger based on the Alien movies.  I went with a spider like creature that burrows deep into your skull scoops out your brain then takes over! I really grossed myself out looking at reference for this creature and found a whole new subspecies of super nasty spider 'the bird dung spider'... yuck! you can see the decimated model on my Sketchfab page.

So this week I will hopefully be making big strides with environment for games, also the brief for creature is Shadow of the Colossus!! that is so cool! I can't wait to get started! I will definitely need more than one night for this assignment! wish me luck