Demoreel begins!

Wow I was expecting Demoreel to be intense and I am not dissapointed!  I guess since the majority of the week is self directed, its as tough as you want to make it but after last term I feel like I am slacking off if I don't clock a solid 14 hours or so :p

I am going ahead with my in game cinematic reel focusing mostly on environment but also showcasing all my other skills: character, vfx, props, blueprinting etc.  I know it is a dangerous area because it runs the risk of looking too much like a generalist reel but I know my focus will be environments and I hope that will come across.  I guess the main reason I am pushing this is because I love storytelling and the Bitteryarrow story is becoming so real to me that I want to use everything at my disposal to showcase a small piece of it.  We will see in time if this was a terrible plan or not but I am pretty confident I can craft some awesome environments and still find time for the rest :p

I started this guy over break as the playable character returning to Bitteryarrow to face off against Leyla.  I am pretty amazed at how fast I was able to get this done! It's not quite as complicated as my character from last term but still I did this in about 4 days from gathering reference to baked low poly! Just have to texture him now and I will be able to use this model for my Game Creation 3 final.

There are a couple of quick scene setting shots I want to do and this guy from waaaay back in Creature Modeling was perfect! So I did a quick retopo and uv.  Nothing special since he will not be the focus of the shot.

OMG this thing caused me so much pain!! I wanted to do a very close up shot of my environment pieces from last term.  Trees, grass cards textures etc and I though it would be a simple job to create a high rez model of a yarrow flower! Had the base done in under an hour but I overestimated the polycount Unreal could handle for a rigged mesh and I wound up rebuilding the flowers about 3 times before I could get them low enough to go into engine :p  It works now though yay!

I used a bit of my rigging knowledge from last term to set up a hair folicle based dynamic skeleton chain.  Basically it means you only need to wiggle the base of the flower with a couple of keys and the IK splines move with their own built in drag.  Saved a lot of time when I was trying to create my own wind blown animation.

I also had a bit of trouble with ultra dynamic sky last term.  It had a tendency to turn off all my lighting and over-crank my fog as soon as you simulate or run the game.  I really liked all the control from UDS but I couldn't have it making my scene so unstable so I wound up building my own custom sky control with some of the same functionality e.g scale-able moon, sun, clouds, customisable colors and fog and if you move the moon and sun in the sky the directional lights match the same angle.

Here are some shots from my first pass at camera animating in Unreal. I tried out the sequencer system built into Unreal and it may not be as tidy as Maya but for an in game engine animation system its awesome!!!

I made some dynamic grass cards that don't rely on the in game wind just so I could get that extra control for the cinematic. I also made a very simple particle effect that spawns little lights that rise up from the grass.  I may be adding one extra shot to hint at where these lights come from but I don't want to do too many fx shots.

I think I will be re-doing Bitteryarrow castle or at least improving this model.  I want to change the silhouette to make it feel more imposing and sinister, right now I think it blends in too much with the cliff side.

I have also been getting back into Substance Designer this week trying to remember how the program works in preparation for the next couple of shots I have planned :)

Lastly I blocked out the main characters weapon too.  I wanted a fantasy style but also dynamic weapon.  This mace has 3 stages - Compact, mace shaped and open.  I want to have the last step feel kind of like the activated state of the Tonitrus from Bloodborne. So when the character needs that extra level of power the mace will open up revealing the power core, greatly increasing its damage but making it very unstable.  

Game creation 3 and Stylised character are going well.  Thankfully they have been quite light for the first week but I am expecting them to ramp up pretty soon!  For the stylised character midterm I am planning to do a bust of Jinx from League of Legends! I am really looking forward to doing some stylised stuff! I love both realistic and stylised but we have so few opportunities to do stylised stuff at Gnomon and actually get help doing it!