Week 26 - OTM progress, career confusion and character refinement.

   So, we're one week into the Easter holidays and so far I've spent most of it continuing with work on the Off the Map project. I'm going to be taking a break from it for a little while, so I can focus on refining my character project, writing my essay and preparing my presentation.. eek. 

   At the start of this week, I was finishing some concepts for some of the objects for the inside of the Apothecary. These objects have been split between my group so we all have our sections to work on. I've produced these to help with how these objects could potentially look, although they're of course not completely concrete. I did a few of these using watercolours, which I think it's safe to say I need to practice with a bit. It's just since I produced the concepts of the street clutter, I've been thinking I'd really like to work on practicing different materials so I can apply these practices to my concept work. I really enjoy working digitally but it's refreshing to work more traditionally.

   Also this week, I've been refining the model of the florist and have been simultaneously working on the interior textures for both the Florist and the Apothecary. I've been thoroughly enjoying this; once the materials are all plugged in and working together it really starts to bring it to life. I have also built some awnings for the outside of the Florist, which will better distinguish it from the rest.

   I've come home for a couple of weeks and I'll be focusing on my presentation first and foremost, as that is coming first. I still have no idea what to talk about. I'm hoping beyond hope that over the next couple of days that will become clear. I'll be preparing this alongside writing my 2,500 word essay. I'm looking forward to writing it.. sort of. I mean, it'll be nice to get into a big chunk of writing, it's just the subject that is slightly unnerving me. We have to write about our progress over the last year and an action plan to help us progress to the career we want in the industry. As I say, I've been enjoying thinking about this because it's been good to reflect and have that talk with myself, it's just the whole planning for the future I'm having difficulty with. I'm not entirely sure what I want to do yet, even though there are many aspects I enjoy and I know I have the potential. I feel much younger than my age recently and it feels strange thinking about careers as a thing that is actually happening. I know that sounds weird, to be honest I can't help but find the whole thing scary right now. I'm still thinking about it, and I'm going to be working on the essay this week, I just don't have things concrete in my head yet. I'm also going to be spending a few days in Yorkshire next week, and I'm hoping that will be a good way to get away from it all and clear my head a bit, because everything is a bit hazy right now. 

   I'm also going to be working on the character project from before Christmas. In my review a couple of weeks ago, I was advised to refine him to bring my grade to a more solid level. I will be working on his textures and making the topology flow better, because some parts are really low compared to others. Most importantly though, I will be making the character more masculine looking. The image below was the male character originally, before I altered him for the original deadline.

...And the screenshot below is the character after I altered him for the deadline. There is massive improvement between the two, however he still reads as slightly feminine in appearance, mostly due to how pointy the chin is and the lips. I'm going to do some sketches to try and remedy these problems first of all. 

   I'm going to look at some other character types to get inspiration first, using pixar primarily as inspiration. I'll post again once I have created a quick mood board and completed some sketches for the character. I hope everyone is having a good Easter!

Week 25 - OTM - Textures and Progress

   I feel like things have started to turn around this week. We've all started to collect our pieces together and put them in the scene and as the textures appear, the level is gradually coming together. Hopefully this means, as a group, we'll be getting out of the rut we've been in over the past few weeks. In the first part of this week, I was mostly focusing on finishing the modelling, unwrapping, light maps and creating the collision meshes, to get the exported files into engine. As it stands now, there is just one more larger thing for me to complete this process for, which is the Florist.
   The texturing I've been doing now has been more fun than previously. Midway through the week I completed the texturing for the cake shop, which I think looks quite nice. I have also been working on the glass a bit more to make it more convincing. I tried to stick to the same colours for the bakery as in the concept, even though the design has changed a bit since then.

   After this, I went onto a much larger texturing job, which was the Apothecary. It's not finished yet, but it looks quite good so far. I put in some lights and seeing these through the frosted glass has really started to bring the whole look together and has pushed me to want to complete the rest of the textures for it. I'm really looking forward to this being done and seeing the Apothecary completed.

   So yeah! It's starting to get more rewarding now that things are being textured and I'm feeling slightly more optimistic about the whole project. So here's to another week of progress!

Week 24 - Fixing Issues and Heaving Ourselves Over Hurdles.

   This week was in most ways better than the last, and that's good. We're moving forward at least. I think, for all of my group, the problem has been the pace at which we're moving forwards. It sort of feels like we're plodding along and not really progressing.

   I started the week by trying to solve the Degenerate Tangent Bases problem. Craig helped us out by telling us a fix, however I realised after trying this that I had also needed to unwrap the object before it would work. To fix it, you first should unwrap the problem objects, their light maps too. Then create a box and convert it to 'editable mesh'. Attach the problem object to it, then convert it to 'editable poly' then delete the box and export as normal. It was SUCH a relief to not see that little error box pop up as I exported the objects after fixing them.

   I've been enjoying the balance of concept/modelling flow in my development throughout this project and I actually have been really enjoying moving back and forth between the different processes. Which is a good thing, because as our project has been developing and we've been making more decisions, it's been required of me to produce more concepts. We came to the conclusion that we would probably not have the time to make the interior of the cake shop. We haven't ruled it out altogether, but for the meanwhile we're going to make a cake shop and a cake stall out in front of it. I had already concerted the shop fronts, including the cake shop, but I went on to concept the cake stall.

   We settled on the look of the top left, which in my personal opinion is the most interesting one, which we will also be able to reuse throughout the level. I then went on to build this cake stall, along with a selection of cakes to go on it.

   I also got some more texturing done over the course of this week, but from now until early next week my main priority is making sure everything I have is exported so we can flesh out the level and things can be placed accordingly, waiting for materials to be plugged in. 

   I came home over the weekend and had a much needed visit with my Mom and Dad and my boyfriend, breaking from work by watching Brave (which is now officially my favourite Disney film), and going on a long drive through Birmingham in the early hours of Sunday for no reason, feeling like an actual teenager for once. Which was pretty great. I did some work while I was home as well, though. Some parts of our level needed some painting over, to explore how we could cut off some sections of our level, so that the player would be able to see them but not venture into them. I didn't have my computer with me, so I printed off some screenshots of the level and sketched over them with marker. These were so enjoyable to do and to be honest, I think I'd like to do more concepts on paper from now on.

Week 23 - OTM: The Joys of Interiors

   This week, in honesty, has been a bit of a dissapointment. I had hoped to crack on with lots of texturing this week, but there have been a few other issues, personal and project related, that have been stealing my focus and attention.

   I started the week by finishing some interior concepts for the Apothecary and the Florist.

   From this and the concept I did of the insides of these shops, I have been able to make a list of what assets need to be made, which I will be expanding on whenever I think of something else we could find useful. At present, the Cake shop will be a cake stand, but once I've finished everything that's necessary for us to have, I can think about building a cake shop that the player can go into, and possibly more variations of generic shops. 

   From here, I tried to build the shops so that the player would be able to enter them, but also so that there would be no Z-fighting. This proved trickier than I had anticipated, and also from this arose another problem. When I imported them into Unreal Engine, it brought up an error message saying 'Degenerate Tangent Bases'. Right now I still don't understand why this is happening, but I'm going to try a few different things and see if they fix the issue, like seeing if unwrapping the models and sorting out the light maps could possibly fix this. If not I'll try importing the different parts of the mesh seperately.

   I did also get a bit of a chance to do some more texturing; I made a start on the tiling textures I needed to make and textured some of the street furniture like the shop signs, etc. I've also made a start on modelling some of the assets to populate the apothecary with, which has mostly been a welcome break from seeing the words 'Degenerate Tangent Bases' and wanting to curl up under the desk.

   I'm going to really try and focus on producing a lot more textures now and try not to get distracted by other tasks. Here's to what will hopefully be a better week!

Week 22 - OTM Catch up

   This week I was testing the look of the level more. At this point we were playing with the idea of running through the level several times, much like in P.T. Except each time you'd run through the level it's change, gradually getting more eerie and twisted, the weather changing and so on. Following this I painted over my concept of the street to think about the street under different conditions, however since this we have dropped this idea because repeating the same level over and over may get a bit boring.

   I went on to build modular buildings, testing them to make sure they snap together well as I went along. I created the shops, windows, columns and brackets so that they could plug into the buildings. This way they'll be able to repeat and in different combinations, along with the modular buildings that Carl has been building. I also built a few things that will be able to be repeated throughout the level such as shop signs, different variants of windows etc.

   There are a couple of shops that the player will be able to enter which will be the Florist, the Apothecary and the Cake shop, if time permits. I focused first on looking on the outside of the florist, because I realised it would need to be much larger than I had originally designed it. I drew up these concepts and tried to make the building look quite grand. The garden in the back is where the player would come across the St Frideside Well, which would transport them to the courtyard in Christchurch.

   I started building the florist, which I have yet to finish, and then I started to model the Apothecary. I've built it so that the player is able to go inside, and also that it snaps together with the other buildings that I've modelled. I've also looked into the inside of the Apothecary, of which I have started to do some more detailed concepts to start writing an asset list.

   I also began texturing one of the repeatable shops. Lewis taught me how to make glass and even better, textured glass! Yay!

On another note, I've been trying to get in more painting in my spare time. I feel really pleased when I look back to some of the paintings I was doing in the first year and compare them to paintings I produce now which are better, and I do quicker. These are two of my favourites that I have done more recently. The first is a film still from The Hobbit : Desolation Of Smaug, which, if I'm honest, I partially painted so I could paint Thranduil. Elves yay! The other is a portrait of a french singer from the sixties called Francoise Hardy. I really loved the lighting in this portrait; it was a lovely photo to recreate.

Thanks for reading, I'll post again soon (I promise).