Assessment

We've had the formative assessment today. I think it turned out well. I was really worried this morning, especially as I was getting the train back and I was worried I would not make it in time. But its over now, and I can get some rest.

Overall, they seem happy with my progress. I'm happy with it as well, but I get the feeling it is not enough. Even if I work hard, it seems that people who are better are still much further ahead of me, and it would not be possible to catch up. I hope I will get to a happier point by then end of the year. I need to work harder.

The rooftop is fine, and there is not anything to change. The normal's were a little too strong though, and I wish I hadn't miss read the brief, I could have made something a bit bigger then.

However, with the vehicle, there could be some improvements. The first thing is that there could be more detail around the horses head, with the reigns. This should not be too hard to do. As well as this, the cart could have some more scuffs and marks to show its been used. The seams were also a bit too visible, and I definitely should have unwrapped it differently. I'd also managed to have to horse floating in the scene I submitted! I thought I had checked it all, but obviously not.

Now I'm going to spend some time on some personal projects, just for this last week I've got left here. I started on a little low poly inn on the uni computers, but as I had come straight from the train station I did not have my hard drive with me. I'll pick it up tomorrow, and it should be finished by the end of the day. I tried to make the building under 200 tris, so it's super low poly.

But for now, I need to go get some sleep.

Almost Christmas...

Only two weeks left to the holidays! I've finally handed that horse project in as well. I know there is a lot to change, but I really need to stop looking at it for a bit. I've been working on a few other things as well. I continuing my research and development of my FMP over on my other blog. 

I've also started a mini environment. It's going to be a mini office, nothing too crazy, but it's something to do while assessments are going on. I'm aiming to finish it by the end of next week, but we'll see how that goes. I blocked it out yesterday and added more detail today, next it'll be unwrapping and texturing.

 I'm also still working on that mass effect project, got some textures on him now, but I don't know how much progress I'll make with this other project going on.

 I also had more of an idea for another project to do over Christmas/ January. I really like the backgrounds of the Ghibli film Arrietty, so I thought it would be fun to adapt one of the borrowers rooms into 3d. They've got such a nice feel to them, and it would be a lot of fun to paint them.

edited shots

I edited these renders today, just altered the lighting a bit.

Also I made a 360 gif

Shaders

More updates on the vehicle project, I gave up and rendered it in marmoset. The shaders were not working, even though I put it in the exact same way someone else had, somehow the shadows were still gone. I don’t know what’s causing it, I have tried several other versions of the shaders and max, and nobody else knows what is wrong. Heather has said that we don’t need to use them, so after spending this week trying to fix them, I’m going to use these other renders instead. On another note, I tweaked the horse so it looked more natural, and I think it looks a lot better. The design document is finished, so all I have left is to paint over some of these shots.

 

oh and here is my horrible other shader shot

 

 

This last week, I've been working on the vehicle some more. James from codemasters came back to look at what we'd done, and he gave us some feedback. He said mine could look good with backed lighting, which he showed me how to do. It looks a lot like how UDK lighting works, so I'm setting that up this week. I'm just glad he didn't rip it to shreds!

The shaders we are using are a pain though. I worked all Friday on setting it up and working it out, and by then end of the day my scene looked worse that when we started. One of the other third years told me we were no longer required to use them. But it's always good to learn new things. The alphas are the worst, although I know who to fix them now, so finders crossed I can sort this mess in the week left.

Ok, I'll stop with the complaining now. I've been continuing with that competition. It's been a lot of fun and it's a bit distracting from my actual 3d work. I'm aiming for about 10k tris for this, but I might go up to 15k, it depends how it looks.

As it's nearing the holidays, I thought up a little mini project to do. It's going to be a really low poly hand painted scene, kind of DS/IOS level of detail. I don't have anything like that in my portfolio, and it could add some variety. And if nothing else, practice is practice.

It's textured

Another update on the vehicle project, the horse and cartridge is textured and built. All that’s left is the cube map, and for that I need to build the environment. I’m keeping it simple, with the courtyard of a large stable. I wanted to make it look all old, like it was part of a stately home. It’s a work in progress, and I’m now going to be texturing it. The horse and cart itself also will probably need its specular tweaked, as I’m not sure what’s going to happen with the shaders. I’m so worried they are going to be horribly complicated, which is why I’ve been doing this project as quick as possible, so I have a few weeks to sort it out.

This week I’ll be finishing the environment and sorting out the shaders.

In other news, I’ve entered the mass effect character project over at CGHUB. I know I’m not a character person, but it’s good z-brush practice. It’s also one of my favourite series, so it looked like a lot of fun. This is what I’ve got so far.

Horses are fun to make

It's been a little while since I've posted, I've been busy with the presentation for the FMP. I should be posting more up in that blog as well, but for now I'll do and update on the vehicle project

We had a presentation from James Roadly-Battin from codemasters. He set us our next project, which is a little bit different from the previous ones. It's to build a vehicle and its environment, but the focus is more on shaders and rendering. The vehicle has to look like it belongs in the environment. He has provided us with some shaders to use.

I wanted to make something a little different, so I chose to make a horse and carriage. I thought this would have a variety of different materials, for example, the carriage would highly glossy, where as the horse would be matt. This would show off the reflections we have to use and the different levels of specularity. Making a horse would also allow me to practice high poly sculpting, and the carriage would help me practice hard surface modelling. For the environment, I was thinking a big stable, like those seen in stately homes.

To start off with, I made a base mesh for the horse. I figured I would start here as there was not much design work needed with a horse, it was more anatomy based. I looked at a lot of reference, including muscle diagrams, but it was very difficult. I can see why people say horses are challenging! the next thing was to sculpt the high poly model, which I made in Z-brush.

At the same time as this, I was concepting the carriage. I thought this would take less time to build. Overall we had 4 weeks to complete this. It was recommended that we spend 2 weeks on modelling both the environment and the vehicle. For the concepts, I worked from silhouettes, then picked 4 of the shapes that worked the best. After drawing these shapes with more detail, I picked one and made a final concept.

After the horse had been retopologized and baked, I started painting some different horse colour ideas. I settled on the brown and tan as I wanted the final scene to be warm, and the two colours made it more interesting. Under the AO, I painted in the colours.

Finally this first week, I built and unwrapped the carriage. I didn't quite finish modelling and texturing the vehicle, so I'll be finishing that off as I build the environment next week.

Finished rooftop

The rooftop is finally finished! Before I go into detail about the project, I have to say about a disaster that happened to this.

At about 10 on Thursday, I had just finished rendering out a video flythrough. After going back into UDK I found that all of the levels BSP was gone. It wasn't turned off in the viewport, it was gone for good and no new BSP could be assed. I luckily had a back up from the previous day, so I had to stay up and redo a days' work over the night.

So after all that fun, here is the final product. I'm quite happy with it, but there is a lot of room for improvement. Mostly I just ran out of time, and there are things I think I could have done better (for example the rain and the puddles). I'm honestly glad to see the back of this project, especially after the problems, and the new one seems like a breath of fresh air (I'll be posting about it tomorrow).

The best thing about this project was learning more about the material editor in UDK. Setting up moving textures and things like that have really helped me learn a lot. For my final major project, I would like to work in UDK as I am a lot more confident with it and it needs to look as good as possible. Got to work towards getting a job at the end of the year and all, which is something I am really worried about.

But enough about that, here is the flythrough of the rooftop.