Week4-6, Midterms done!

Looks like its been a while since I posted an update but here are my projects now as we all move into week 7!

I have been following some Houdini tutorials trying to get a better grasp of the program and even though I cant get anything to look good I do see the appeal.  These rocks and corresponding fiber crystals are all dynamically modeled which could be a helpful tool to use in the future combined with procedural scattering, uv'ing and decimating.

For the Midterm we are building an procedural envrionment.  I still dont know how to render well in Houdini but generating this mountain and scattered trees, clouds and rocks wasn't as hard as I expected.  I think if I learn a few more terrain tools in Houdini I won't need to use World Machine any more.

Game Creation 2 is coming along, though I had a major setback mid week 5 as I couldn't get Unreal to display 3 materials on the terrain mesh without crashing :(  Tried everything I could think of and in the end I got some help from our instructor and it's all fixed now yay!!! (as it always is in Unreal it just needed one button or drop down menu changed and it all worked fine)  The base environment is done so the next few stages will be adding foliage, rocks, and buildings.  Then after that I hope we will cover some more lighting and post processes to make it all look pretty! I know I've had a few classes in how to light well in Unreal but it's still a difficult process I want as much practice as I can get!

 I also played around in Speedtree (which marks the 3rd new program we have had to learn this term :p)  It's a really nice piece of software and gives great results really fast!  Once I have LOD'd these trees and grasses I will be able to scatter them all over my environment.

As always learning some pretty cool new tricks in Zbrush this term with Paul.  I am still holding back on the final for just a tiny bit longer till he covers Sculptris Pro next week then it's all engines go in a race to get my final done.  This week though we experimented with the Zmodeler brush to do some Maya like modeling.  It's pretty good even if the interface and controls can be a little confusing but I am definitely going to use this more regularly now that I know how powerful it is!

 We have covered facial blendshapes IK spines and IK FK arm and leg switches in Rigging now.  That pretty much marks the extent of the stuff I was already kind of familiar with after last term, next week we will be covering cloth and costume rigging! I am really excited for that!
 

Character for Games has been taking up the lion's share of my time these days but I am really enjoying the results!  I have pretty much finished the costume sculpting barring a few little tweaks here and there and the face is really coming along too, thanks to a lot of help from my classmates and instructor!  I am trying out carded hair for the first time too which is really fun but very time consuming! I spend the entire day yesterday just placing cards for my characters hair! and I still think its going to take another hundred or so to really flesh out the style properly!

I built the cards using Xgen, which is very straightforward in terms of actually generating hair but a real pain apparently for moving files around different computers.  I tried to take my Xgen files to Gnomon to render out the hair cards on 3 occasions before I managed to get it to properly load in the Xgen files :(

This is how the hair looks atm just previewing the AO pass on the cards to help with placing them.  Once I am happy with the layout I will take the model into Marmoset or Unreal and see how the cards look with their whole material working.  Then I can set up a back and forth while I add new hair cards to fix up the final look.

So wow all in all I am still just about surviving this term. It's been really tough so far and there are still 5 weeks to go but I can see the faint glow of the light at the end of the term 10 tunnel! good luck everyone

Week 2-3

Well these last few weeks have been pretty tough! I'm making plenty of progress but the workload is getting tougher and tougher.

Rigging is progressing well.  We have moved onto corrective blendshapes to fix some of the skinning issues.  Next up is facial rigging and face blendshapes :D It's pretty fun to be bringing this character to life after not working on it for so long.

 

 Houdini is still really tough, I am following online tutorials to try to understand it better but there is just no time this term to chase down information so its pretty frustrating :(

We missed a week of Advanced Digital Sculpting which gave me time to catch up with character but I think my Cyber Jaguar is progressing well we will see in time when I start working on more finalised parts.

In Game Creation 2 we have started blocking in the environment for the final.  I am going ahead with creating the port town of Bitteryarrow for my story.  I started with a sculpted block in using Unreal and then using World Machine I was able to run some erodes and noise maps to make the environment look more realistic.  I also built a simple script for use in Maya that should help with modeling objects in place.  Essentially it lets you model in XY space and then update your set dressed instances even if you are adding new geometry.  I want to add Bitteryarrow castle, the port town and maybe some boats moving around the harbor.

For VFX we created a rainy scene using a bunch of particles, some animated textures for godrays and a simple blueprint for lightning.  You can check out all the effects animated in my Term 10 Google Drive folder.

Character for Games is progressing just not quite as much as I wanted.  I spent a long time in Marvelous designer trying to block in all the folds.  I guess I can finally move into Zbrush and start fixing the forms and sculpting better folds.  I just wish there were more hours in the week :p

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!