Design tweaks (Whoops)

Whilst in my last blog I boldly stated I was happy with the design...I have since changed it! Whilst not quite the initial plan, I think the design changes make the shape language far more successful than before. Let's look at some before and afters.

Using some incredibly drawn highlighted sections, you can see the main areas of focus that have been updated. I wasn't too happy with the base of the terminal design, Whilst I wanted it to feel solid and heavy, it Just didn't have the same level of sleekness to the top section that I was happiest with. 

That changed then informed the Doors. The blocky nature of it, just didn't feel as fitting as something a bit more curved. 

A small platform stand included into the design to help tie the floor platform with this integrated terminal. How it interacts with the environment, it needs to feel built for purpose, so using these supporting elements to inset it into the wall, and give a better base foundation, it starts to feel like it belongs a bit better than before.

As the design now stands, I'm much happier with the look and feel of it. I'm now working on refining some of the individual components, I like to think of this particular asset as 3 unique assets; We have the terminal body, the doors, and lastly the screen display.

Screen Display progress:

I'm mostly taking inspiration from Mechanical arms for heavy machinery, and even monitor arm stands, seeing as that is essentially what the use of the mechanical arm is. it feels a right fit to be using these references to inform the design.


That's the bulk of the progress this time round. With the next update I'll be aiming to get some basic material passes in. I'm planning to use a mixture of trim sheets, an RGB mask for unique detail and a DECAL sheet.

Thanks for reading!

Working Concept and Design

Hi all, it's been a while since I've written up a blog, here's to being more proactive in my endeavours to document my personal projects and learnings in the future!

I'm currently set out with a task that challenges me in multiple ways:

• My adaptability to new art styles / Visual languages
• Developing my own concept from the ground up
• Making something that not only looks good, but is functional within a game setting also
  
  

Current progress on the project:

At this early stage of the project, I'm focusing on visual development, as well as the function of the asset within a wider context.
The current concept being a player approaches the terminal, proximity activation turns it on. The player can then interact with the terminal. Once finished, the player can walk away, and just the same as the proximity activation, it will deactivate and return to it's closed state.

For some of the smaller details currently in the scene, I've included a small coffee cup next to the terminal, so once the doors open up, it knocks it off. Small details like this can do wonders for the narrative, it sets the scene to be clumsy.

There is still A LOT of work to be done here. Visual development is still being worked out, but it is at a point where I'm generally pleased with the shape language. The main next step will be to break down the individual components, and take them out of the blockout phase, moving the asset into the UV and texturing part of the process.

Hey everyone,

With this update, the diorama is nearly all wrapped up now, which is super exciting! I had a busy weekend, primarily focused around making textures for the deer asset, lighting and post processing changes.

I received some awesome feedback around the piece, and have some final touches to make to really bring all the components together. This scene has been a real long chipping away process, but I'm really pleased with how this has shaped up.

Key things I have taken from this project:

• A better understanding of foliage creation
• Concepting my own scenes 
• Concepting my own creature designs

These are a few of the main things that I have exercised and challenged myself on throughout the creation of this piece, that's not to say there isn't room to improve it still. But I think that it would be better for me to move onto a new project and start challenging myself more on something new, instead of spending an insane amount of time tweaking tiny details.

The next update for this will come in the form of a published portfolio piece, so keep ya eyes peeled :)

Thanks for reading.

Hey! 

Not a super long update, but just wanted to drop a quick visual on some of the progress I've made this weekend. I'm very happy with the general lighting progress, as well as the new lily pads around the island.

Now, I'm going to return to the deer and focus on making the hero asset of this piece to the highest quality I can achieve. Once this last component is in, I'll take the next step to the polishing stage.


Next update, coming soon!

Hey, Happy new year to you!

To start off the year the right way, I've been working to get some decent progress made on the diorama- A lot of the last few weeks, I've been planning, and taking the time to think about the best course of action moving the diorama forwards. Then, over the last few days, the pieces began to fall into place and I can say I'm starting to see the diorama come to life!

Main shot

This is a big step forwards since the last update: I've been working on the overall composition of the scene, and stripping back some of the components that I Originally intended to include and focusing on fewer elements. I find that this is helping me keep the focus point on the main feature of the piece.

Water

So far, this has been a challenging element of the project to get right- something about the water just hasn't sit right. So after some iteration, and digging about on a few different tutorials- I've started to build a simple water material that I feel fits the style of the project.

Zbrush sculpts

These are two of the recent zbrush sculpts I have done for the project. This has been great for capturing details and breaking up the silhouettes of these assets. For example, the imperfections of the steps, and the subtle surface changes around the boulder.

To achieve a good level of detail, I primarily sculpted using 3 brushes: The DAM standard, clay build up brush, and Trim smooth border.
However, for high frequency details, I use the layering system with the noise generator and masking; this combination allows me to quickly create high frequency details.

Mossy Surfaces

I really want to create this idea of an unkempt and un maintained area, I though moss might be a great addition to this, pretty much the idea that wild life was left to do as it pleases without much human interference. Plus, being surrounded by water it would make sense that moss would be growing in these damp areas.

These Jizo statues, are a great example of the moss taking over these stone sculptures. It truly looks beautiful and spiritual: Exactly the type of visual language I want to capture in this diorama.

So now that I have the reference in place, I just got to make it work right?

To get the ball rolling, I've set up a material that uses a world aligned blend, to bring the rock material properties, and the moss material properties together. This is still certainly very early stages and will require further iteration and improvement, but the basic tech is there. Furthermore, to help sell the idea of moss forming on these surfaces, I add an extra layer into the base textures of all the assets that are intended to have moss on them, and then use that layer as a 'Moss base' This little extra detail to me, just helps further blend the transition between the materials.

Lighting

Lighting is still very early days, although I feel I have an idea of the direction I want to take this in. I'm hugely inspired by Ori and the will of the wisp- Its rich and bold lighting, makes for some truly emotive environments, and I want to translate this into my project, using similar tones to the lighting mood board I threw together. Of course this requires a little more thought and experimenting with different colour schemes. But, I do believe this would be successful in making a truly interesting visual.

 Until next time!

MORE CHANGES?!

Always and absolutely! As much as I enjoyed the idea behind including the large mystic wisteria tree, I felt that it detracted from the original idea of focusing on the deer creature sculpt. That's not to say the work is necessarily for nothing, I learnt a bunch about foliage creation through the process, but ultimately the composition needed to change.

So I basically stripped everything away, and re-thought how I wanted this scene to look.

I went all the way back to the basics, and planned more heavily around the piece; different components, ideas, all in all what every piece meant in the scene and why it was there. 

Miro board planning

A quick screenshot just to show the broad overview of the planning. What I like about using Miro, is that it allows me to treat it as a live document, so I can go in and continue to flesh out the planning. In addition to this, I treat it as a digital whiteboard, where I can take notes, thoughts, feedback, pretty much anything that springs to mind and leave it there to be revisited at a later date!

Now that I've done a bit more work in the scene composition, I'm starting to enjoy the overall look of the diorama more. However, it's far from done and will need further polish before moving onto getting some textures in the scene!

Test renders

With a huge focus around the creature sculpt, it's important to me to get a few test renders in along the way, this is really just for me to check how all the forms are reading, outside of the Zbrush doc space. Plus, it's a bit of a bonus to see something a little more polished when you're blocking out loads! 

Until next time!

What's this all about?

Simply put, this blog is going to be documenting my process of creating a small personal piece that I've been kicking about for a little while. I'll be doing breakdowns of all the techniques and process's that I go through to get to the end result.

What's the project?

To best explain it, I wrote a small narrative to help guide the development of this piece:

'Under the tree, a young deer god resides. Without guidance he stands nervously, as he must navigate the world and explore beyond the safety of his home.'

This served as a base for me to get started on fleshing out some sketches for the design of the environment, and the deer god. Using the short narrative has also helped with keeping the idea on track. Despite some changes along the way, it has been very helpful as an original building block to build upon.

Research:

I wanted something symbolic that could tie into the fantasy idea of the environment; something that would ground it to real world mythology etc.
In my research I found that wisteria tree's are symbolic of longevity, and being that the piece was based around a deer god, it felt fitting to include something representing longevity to be put side by side with an entity typically associated with being immortal.

Deer God (Name pending) sculpture-

After a few sketches this is the design that I landed on, I want to create something that feels dynamic and flows, Using the bold and curved fur design into the sculpture I believe helps reinforce the flow in the character, and once posed should be even more effective!

Wisteria tree development:

Foliage is absolutely not my strong suit, but I'm keen to learn more about it and improve my skills in foliage, so what better than throwing yourself into the deep end and make a wisteria tree. Couldn't be too complicated right?

Totally wrong...It's been an incredibly tough challenge so far.

I started off with a base shape for my tree:

Once I got a shape that I was roughly happy with I brought it into the engine to check how it was working with the deer and making sure the composition felt strong overall.

Next step, making some canopies!

Base sculpt and normal map

I was certainly comfortable with fleshing out my canopies. It was definitely still a different experience, but a lot of fun to create the arrangements for the flowers. Now these have been built, I can jump straight into making some cards out of these!

I essentially used the cards to build out these two canopies and then dressed the base blockout tree, to increase size and shape variety, I placed  a few single cards around to break up the shape further.

Once all the branches are in place this is the sort of result we're seeing. And considering this is really one of the first times I've put together a complex tree like this by hand. I'm pretty pleased with the results so far. That's not to say that there isn't room for improvement on this, there most definitely is. But as it stands right now, I think I have a good base to get some visual idea of how things are going to look in Unreal engine!

Scene development-

I'll be using Unreal engine 5 to compose and render my environment

This is just a series of images captured in engine.

And this is where the scene currently sits. I'm pretty pleased with the development of this piece so far, and like the direction that it's heading in. Next steps is to figure out some extra elements to add into the foreground and around the island. Once this is all in place, I'll probably start looking at refining the Deer god asset as the final piece to go in and complete the scene!

Until the next update!

Thanks for reading.

Now I'm trying to flesh out a better understanding of the composition and the general feeling I want to achieve in the piece. There are some really cool ornate ideas I want to create for the two back rings, and I'm going to work in the bust.

I'm now picturing how it would look in different poses. breaking away for the symmetry we currently have in this piece. None the less, I like where this is headed :) 

Hi all! 

I've recently been experimenting more in 3D and wanted to challenge myself to a piece that would realise the act of 'overthinking' as a physical thing. So many great challenges, such as what would that look like? trying to realise these forms took a load of iteration and work to even get it to the stage it is now. Still loads of work to go, but for now enjoy this little render I threw together. Lets call it, a mid progress piece :)

Just a grumpy little goldfish I'm making at the moment in my free time- really enjoying this project so far, more texture detail and emissive to come in soon :)