Week 7: Unlucky struggles with Lucky Cat.

    Well, the Sentry Gun project has drawn to a close and to be honest, I could be prouder. Don't get me wrong, I do like the final result, I just wish I could have achieved all that I had wanted to. I'm going to carry on working on it in my spare time if I can though, so I can get a nice piece for my portfolio.
   Following on from last weeks post, from there I went on to texturing, which with PBR is nothing but an absolute joy. Metalness and roughness maps are beautiful things that really make the texture. When it came to texturing I tested it straight in engine, so I would straight away be able to see what the final results would be, instead of putting it into Marmoset and having to edit it again later. The textures on the Daruma doll came out really well, so I feel like it's such a shame that you only see it for about a quarter of a second as it flashes past you.

Below is the main Sentry with just an albedo texture applied to it. The only difficulty I had with this really was with the face makeup, because the seams run up the side of the face.

   As you can see below, once I added the metalness, roughness and normal maps it really brought the model to life. I feel like the cat really looks like shiny porcelain. As well as testing the textures, I made sure that the pivots on the main body of the gun worked the way that they should. I had already been checking it as I went along and noticed as I worked on it that the projectiles weren't firing once I had replaced the example with my own mesh. This was easily solved by placing the socket at the end of the gun barrel and removing the collision mesh.

   By this time it was reaching the last few days of the project. I had made it my stretch goal to get the arm rotating independently, so it could look like it was reloading. I don't think I realised that this would actually be quite difficult, especially as I don't really know anything about blueprints. I received a lot of help from Hazrat to attempt this, and even though we didn't manage to get it working, we sort of got halfway there and I feel like I did learn from it. I say that, but as soon as I try again I will still probably be baffled. *Sigh* It's a learning curve I guess, I'll carry on trying. 

  Anyway, I built the arm separately to be able to do this and it took a lot of editing of the pivots in 3DS Max to get it dead on, because when we tried to get it rotate with the model at certain points it would sort of break away from the body. That works now though, so I'm glad that's one aspect sorted. When we tried to get the arm to rotate back and forth however, it whirled around and disappeared right through the body, turning my Sentry gun into something wildly sassy. I'm going to hand it in without the dramatic arm gestures though, and continue working on it to try and get it working.

   These are my final renders of my 'Maneki Neko' Sentry gun. Like I said, I'm disappointed about the arm rotations and really wish I had pushed it further. Having said that though, I'm pleased with the aesthetics of the final result and am most proud of the overall design process that I went through. It was at this point that I was most inspired and I am so excited to begin concepting for the next project.  

   We were also given the task of creating a poster to show off our design. I thought this was interesting as it's not something we normally do. It was pretty cool to do something different, though I have to say I think I could have come up with something a lot better. I'm going to have to work on my poster design skills too by the looks of things! I do like that this poster is a tad ambiguous. Its message is a bit sinister and I like that, because it was my intent for the sentry gun to be a bit creepy and this adds to that where creepiness is maybe replaced by cuteness.

   Our next project is the 'Dichotomy Character' project, where we have to design a pair of characters that belong to the same universe, but in appearance and personality are completely different. The brilliant thing about this project is that we can adapt whatever style we like. I don't feel like we've really had this opportunity much before, so the prospect of having free reign over the design of our characters feels so exciting!

Slowly.. but surely

   Over the past week or so, amongst doing other work, I have been revisiting the Architectural project from Game Production last term. I did this so that I would have more things to incorporate into my UDK scene, but doing it has given me a boost of confidence, because it's given me an opportunity to see how I've improved since then.

   This was my first house, well, pub. At the time, I was so proud of this, but I think honestly I was probably just glad I'd got something done. Looking at it now, it's not AWFUL, but I am not at all proud of it. I have fixed it in parts though, for instance the mortar originally was HORRIBLE on this. It looked like someone had hurled massive globules of porridge at the side of my house (not that I blame them). Not good. I redid this texture, and now it looks a lot better. At least it looks normal anyway.

   This is my new piece, and I am so much happier with it. I still have to make normal maps and some spec maps, but it already looks leaps and bounds better than my other building. It makes me so so happy to see visible evidence that I am improving. Game Production back then was a massive struggle for me, and brought me to tears quite a lot. Sometimes it still does. Not nearly as often though. I actually enjoy it quite a lot now, despite the hiccups I still have here and there. Here's to moving forwards!

Gladiators!

   Last week marked the end of the Gladiator project and the beginning of more stressful beginnings. Meaning, we are now learning how to use UDK.

   Back to the Gladiator though! I adored this project! Apart from rigging. That can go away. I think part of the reason I enjoyed this project so much though was because I was starting to incorporate some of the concept and design techniques that I had learnt in Visual Design. I started by researching classes of gladiators and creating inspirational mood boards to help me whilst designing my own.

   From here, I started creating some simple designs to build on, picking my favourite variation and taking it straight to orthographic designs. I was working out the problems as I went along where possible, but I didn't want to labour too long on these possibilities because I knew that time was draining away with this project. 

   I drew a very quick digital final, eager to get on with my model. I enjoyed the modelling process, because I feel I am becoming quite comfortable with that now. It certainly doesn't cause me the same stress that it did in the beginning! UV unwrapping was a bit tricky at first, but that worked out fine too and I was really proud of my textures once they were done. The design of my model changed in very minor ways as I went along, so I did another final piece. I spent longer on this, and drew it to look like the model I had created.

   The only thing I really didn't get on with was rigging. That's unfair, I suppose. The main problem with rigging was that it felt kind of like treading on eggshells. The labs were filled with voices of 'Whatever you do! Don't collapse the skin modifier!' and someone groaning when trying to reset the x-form and the model practically imploding. Those groans may or may not have been from me. 

   I think that really, like with the rest of Max, I will become more comfortable with it in time, and with practice. Which is what I intend to do! Practice practice practice!

   This is a final presentation of renders for my model for this project. I am most proud of the textures on this model, and although it isn't perfect, I can honestly say I have enjoyed this project more than any other in Game Production so far and raised the question in my head... someday, could this be what I want to do? Be a 3d character artist? I would have to practice like crazy to nail the rigging down to a T, but conceivably, I think it would be something I would enjoy doing, and is something I'm starting to consider for the future.

Inspiration: Keith Thompson

   I'd like to make a record of some of the artists or resources that inspire me, and I thought I'd start with one of my favourite artists, whom artwork I have loved for a very long time. His work has always been a source of great interest and inspiration to me, because of its illustrative nature. Here is a link to his blog!

http://blog.keiththompsonart.com/

   Keith Thompson is a freelance artist, who has worked on films, games, and produced beautiful book illustrations. He drew all of the illustrations for Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan trilogy, one of which I have read. I have yet to read the others, even though I really enjoyed the first.

   These are some illustrations Keith Thompson did for the book 'Drakia'. I think they're fantastic, I absolutely love the atmosphere he achieves in his work. Especially in the bottom image, I love scanning over the picture and seeing what creepy additions can be seen in the scene. That's actually another thing I've always loved about Keith Thompson's work, it is so detailed and I enjoy looking closely at his work to see if there is something I didn't notice the first time. I could seriously just sit and look at his work for ages.

    These are some of my favourite pieces by him, because they have a dark but still quite beautiful nature about them. The Urban Faun, for instance, is eerie and haunting but still soft and gorgeous. I think this feeling is achieved by it being black and white, with the mood being achieved with the tonal qualities. The character is very much the subject of the piece, with the background being subtly hinted at in the background.

   Ooh! Something I didn't know that I only found out the other day, Keith Thompson created the creepy creatures in a film called 'Don't be afraid of the Dark'. I haven't actually seen this, but I've seen an advert for it, I THINK on the trailers on the Chernobyl Diaries DVD. I will have to cover THAT another time because, how interesting I find the Chernobyl disaster is a whole separate issue.

   Anyway, these things are horrible. But I can totally see elements of Keith Thompson's style in there. This illustration for the movie that goes alongside these is so creepy, but beautifully drawn.

  

 It made me really happy actually to find that a 3D character artist called Alex Stratulat, who has made a model inspired by the above piece by Keith Thompson called 'The Thief'. You can look at his other works here; http://alexstratulat.com/

   This model is very beautifully made and very detailed. Alex Stratulat uses a vast range of tools and programs to create models such as this, like 3D Studio Max, Softimage XSI, Maya, ZBrush, Mudbox, Unfold 3D, V-Ray, Mental Ray, KeyShot, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effect,  Corel Draw, Corel Photopaint. This makes me realise the competition that is out there, and that I must strive for every bit of knowledge I can, and learn all the time, wherever and whenever possible!



    

Architectural Brief

   So.. the four weeks we've had for our architectural project have drawn to a close. I finished this a couple of days ago, and although it's not amazing, I am quite pleased with what I have achieved.
 
   My biggest regret about this piece is that I feel I wasn't ambitious enough with my choice of building. I just chose this cute little pub called the King's Head. This thought didn't really occur to me until I was halfway through the mesh. I'm bad enough with stress as it is, and I didn't want to risk going back and finding something else, only to run out of time to do it. I regret this now, however only slightly, because I came across hurdles across the way, which may have prevented me getting it done on time had I gone back to make something larger. I decided that instead, I'd try and add details to make the mesh more interesting, such as lights, satellite dish, etc.
   The UV unwrapping for this mesh caused me much more headaches than it probably should have.. Thing kept going wrong or I'd have to edit parts of the model and reset my UVs. I did end up learning a heck of a lot from this though, so even though it was a pain at the time... I'm glad of it now.
   The tiling textures I actually really enjoyed. Well... I enjoyed the bricks and the roof tiles... I found the grouting incredibly difficult, as you can see by the tiling still on it. Creating all of the textures took a while, but it was worth it seeing it all on the building.
   Once I'd put all the textures on, I decided to make an alpha for the the sections connecting the lamp to the building and I was really pleased with the results. So after that I added a plane and put an alpha on to display the sign on the building.
   At first I found applying normal maps quite difficult. I used a tutorial off blackboard to figure out how to do it, and I followed it to the letter and it still wouldn't work for some reason. I was in the labs at the time and I wasn't the only one struggling with this problem. We were saved though when a helpful second year student showed us what had gone wrong, and it was as simple as changing how the materials are shown in viewport.

   So overall, I am really quite pleased with how this came out. It's simple, but I think the textures and the normal maps made it look a lot better.