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.