WEEK 1
Day 1:
To start off the project today we have been given a run down of all the requirements necessary to complete our projects, to simplify this; we was given a variety of options to chose from and the option that appealed to me the most was Prop Art. This has enabled me to play to my strengths with sculpting based work; along with this also it has offered the opportunity to learn photogrammetry which is widely used in industry and can give a cutting edge when it comes to portfolio reviews in the future.
The two props I'm planning to create are as following:
.Oni Mask- With my Oni mask prop, I'm planning to use traditional pipeline methods to create this asset- using inspiration and influence of For Honor; trying to make the prop feel as if it could belong in that world and fit in with a consistent style.
As Ubisoft is one of the companies that really interest me with the incredible levels of detail in their rich environments, I believe it will be inspiring as a project to run with this and push my skills to the point where I feel it matches with quality also.
.Doctor Martin Boot- Learning photogrammetry is something that will certainly take some practice; trial and error etc. However, I still want a model that is going to be challenging, yet in the same respect not incredibly overly complicated to the point where I'm struggling with the time constraints given; I believe with good practice it will create nice visual interest as an asset. Again, relating back to Ubisoft, however, this time looking at the kind of world that 'The Division' is, and making the prop feel a part of that world; much like the Oni mask, I aspire to create the prop to a standard that is consistent and coherent with the quality work that the triple AAA game has.
For the next few days I'm starting to plan out the following:
- A schedule to best manage my time on the project (setting this out week by week should be specific enough for me to reach weekly goals)
- My Art bible- this is a super key area for the project, I need to view it and treat it as if others have to look at this art bible, look at the outcome of the work and are able to create clear links between the two.
- Learning photogrammetry, using resource videos and experimenting, I need to learn about how it works to get a good gauge of how long it could take me to create the prop.
- Visit to the British museum to get some real life first hand references of some Oni masks that I can use for my prop research.
Day 2:
Today has been an interesting day; already one of the two assets I plan to create have changed. Due to the nature of Prop Art, I couldn't find necessarily a very interesting Oni mask that would be fun and visually interesting to replicate. However in a recent visit to the British museum I found some fantastic sculptures of Buddha statues. When i ran this through with my tutor he really approved of the idea of creating this asset, therefore this will be a much more interesting project.
I will still even be able to hit all the targets i set out with tailoring my work around certain games to strive to create assets that could be believable if put into the environment.
I feel that today was a super productive day; I managed to get started on my art bible, filling this with as much descriptive research is going to be super essential for creating a strong project with good direction. I've already begun looking at things such as Ubisoft job ads, and doing an analysis on if my skills match the requirements they need from a prop artist.
Budai: Image of the prop I will be making through traditional pipeline methods.
Day 3:
I've now flushed out a good basis for my project brief, as well as art bible. From seeking feedback and getting one of the tutors to review the content I currently have it has given me confidence that they are pleased with the subject matter and content of the work I will be doing as well as the production planning done in the process. This has enabled me in my spare time to begin blocking out forms for one of my props, and therefore get ahead of my schedule.
Here's a current Zbrush sketch of where i am with blocking out the forms. There are certainly some proportion issues i intend to fix soon.
Another thing I've looked at is creating a skills Audit; this has enabled me to compare my own skills in comparison to those of the industry standard required for the aspired job role.
Day 4:
Today was a good opportunity to watch over a photogrammetry workshop; this enabled me to get to grips with the process of photogrammetry and how quickly you can get good results from the photos. In terms of my time schedule I think I may of over estimated the amount of time needed for this particular model however, that can be reviewed at a later date and the worst case is im left with more time to act upon any feedback my tutors or peers have for me.
This was also a good day to focus and try to polish up my art bible. Having this done ahead of Tuesday's presentations will give me more time to focus on the project development.
Day 5:
Budai Statue- Working on the Budai statues main basic forms, I can already tell this will be challenging when it comes to the detailing section of the high poly sculpting/ detail modelling. I still believe this will be a manageable task and I feel fully engaged in the challenges it's providing for the development.
One issue I may encounter is the complexity of the base. This particular statue has a very unique and strange wooden base; Due to material it's wear and unique cuts, imperfections and detail levels are very high all around. This could potentially take up more time than I would like it to. I will need to collect more reference images by returning the the museum, if I want a more accurate recreation of the statue.
Week 2:
Day 6:
I begun my practicing of photogrammetry today, taking a total of 457 images. So far this is my first time in reality capture so learning the process's required to clean up some of the areas which aren't great in the quality; as it stands i'm expecting to have to retake some images as I feel there could be more detail captured in some of the model.
Day 7:
Continuing my work in Photogrammetry I've been experimenting with clean up process's and found some very nice results in a lot of areas in the shoe; still I have some issues round the top of the shoe, label and laces. This could be due to not having enough images, I'll get some feedback, and see how I can move forwards to improve some of the geometry results from the scan.
Day 8-9:
The last few days have been incredibly busy for me. I've had to use all my time in refining my Budai Sculpt. However, in terms of my schedule this is still on track for me. Not to mention, that I also but myself ahead by learning about photogrammetry in the early week. This means that next time I should get nice clean results that I can work with and I understand now that the process is short so i have little to worry about in terms of time management.
I also had the chance to propose my idea to my tutors and the rest of the class. in regards to the extensive research I made, I had some great comments back from tutors, which was fantastic and my ideas where approved. This has allowed me to now go full steam ahead with the development of my assets, a few areas I could extend on my art bible. However, as a main point my research has been completed to a good amount, therefore I've given myself more time to work with my prop assets.
This is the current stage I'm at with the Budai statue. I'm rather happy as it is, but i need to push my skills further. Therefore, Looking at little details that could be inconsistent between reference and my model as it stands. Doing this should help me increase my sculpting skills, and overall skills as an artist.
Week 3:
Day 10:
As I've now spent a fair amount of time on the statue, I got some feedback from my tutor to look at all the forms in, and give his opinion on the proceedings going forward; due to having to complete a second prop within the time frame given, this is something that has to constantly be taken into consideration, time management is going to be essential for this project when there is more than one prop to make.
The conclusion we had come to is that I have a good amount of time to spend a few days polishing up the quality of my model. it's good enough as it is to perhaps go to the next stage, but in terms of pushing my skills further, looking at the micro details and differences between my model and the real statue. Acting upon this feedback, it should increase my skills with my attention to detail and overall increase the quality of my work. It does bend my schedule slightly. But, in preparation for things like this occurring, I spared up my last week so I can have a few days leverage in areas should I need it.
Day 11:
Much like the last few days I've spent even more time trying to refine the features of my statue sculpt. Looking at how my skills have improved from previous projects and how I'm now paying much more attention to detail in my models, this particular sculpture is proving to be quite the challenge with refining some of the sharper features; anyone that has at any point sculpted fabrics, they will know just how challenging it is to make them feel natural and believable, which is where I feel most of my time is going at the moment. Forever being wary of the time I have left on the project I'm going to have to start using up the time I had free on the last week so that I can keep on Schedule. I think proceeding forwards, I'm aiming to begin quad drawing and texturing by the end of the week.
As the statue is at the moment, I only need to move a few pieces around in the scene to flush out the likeness better.
Day 12:
Today was completely invested in the preparation of my low poly and setting up my UV maps, so I could move forwards to the texturing stage of the process. I believe that now the majority of the final details are going to be captured through this. All in all, I feel like it was a productive day, however, I feel like my quad drawing was some what slow at some points, it was my first time doing this, so taking my time to get the topology correct was a challenge but also very good experience. I can now understand the benefits of hand drawn retopology. Though I didn't leave myself much time left for UV's; my quad drawing had made the process of creating UV's much simpler as I knew where I wanted my cuts to be, and I also considered this when creating specific edge flow. In some areas, it certainly isn't perfect. Yet, I feel that it was very clean overall.
Finishing the optimising of topology and UV's before the weekend has been really helpful as I can start planing for the texturing stage, as well as get my photogrammetry pictures taken again in the next coming week.
Week 4:
Day 13:
Very productive all round day; I got some brilliant feedback from tutors about direction and how to now best manage time to ensure I complete all the work I have left to do. The quality of my Budai Statue has reached a stage now where It's a solid model with a little more refining needed on the texturing; I much longer process than originally anticipated due to the nature of the materials being all very unique. The best way to capture the enamel like appearance on the robe is to hand paint the detail into the texture. Apart from the lengthy outlook on this, I'm very pleased that I have been able to complete it thus far and to a good standard in all elements.
For the next few days the plan is as followed:
.Finish texturing- Latest by Wednesday
.Photogrammetry- (Retake shots of Boot), Ideally start this Wednesday, If not, this must be started by Thursday.
.Retopo Mesh for Photogrammetry and UV in preparation for Texturing.
.Texture the Boot
.Present them both inside of unreal engine
I plan for this to take me up to the start of next week- this is my own soft deadline to myself so I can complete my work with plenty of time before the hand in date arrives. This just allows me a little more time in the end to proof check everything before the submission date.
Day 14:
I managed to complete my texturing work to a stage of where I'm happy with the result; I challenged myself to create a tilling pattern to go around the robe by taking aspects from the actual statue and making it quick and modular. which proved to be very effective.
Day 15:
I've finally begun to set up my unreal scene to showcase my props once they're finished. Doing this now stops me from rushing the final presentation; instead I can chip away at the final look in engine and refine the way I show my work.
Along side of this I've restarted my work in photogrammetry, after a rather lengthy sitting of taking photographs for 3.5 hours and getting 1065 images of my Boot. I'm a lot more pleased this time over with the end result and therefore can begin to export the mesh and hopefully finish the prop by the start of next week.
Day 16:
I have now placed my photographs into Reality capture and on the most part the data is super clean; and with that I'm very happy with the result- It captured high levels of detail in the 'Normal' detail mode, to the point I could even read a label on the inside of the shoe word for word! The trade off for getting these nice and clean high quality results is really the amount of time it takes to calculate the information and generate the mesh, for example, The preview mode for me takes about 2-3 minutes to calculate the mesh in a low level of detail. Where as in normal mode, it took around 3.5-4 Hours to generate the mesh. I attempted High levels of detail but it would of taken around 16 hours to generate my mesh. next week, I should be able to set up a computer early in the morning to run this process throughout the day; this was my highpoly will have the highest level of detail possible.
We also had a materials artist from Rebellion Games come teach a lesson today on substance designer and painter, after which he also proceeded to see the students work and give valuable feedback and suggestions to improve in areas. For me, we spoke about how to create a better clear coat effect inside of engine, using something simple like a Fresnel added a tiny light rim that suggested the clear coat to be a lot more apparent which was super handy. To add to this, he also suggested making some detailed normal maps to add to the mesh to get the high frequency details even when in close to the model- I think this would be awesome to complete as an extra level of detail when showcasing my asset. Therefore, over the course of tomorrow, I'll try to create some Detailed normal maps.
Week 5:
Day 17:
For the start of the week, I've finished the re topology of my Boot, and well within my poly count budget, this is really good as this is an area I really wanted to improve on. Furthermore, I've begun texturing the boot now and without finishing the roughness values and restoring the original colour. It's a very quick process to get right and realistic looking results very quickly.
In regards to following my feedback; I've created my detail normal maps- one with a clay base and another that has a wavy, distorted and crack look. Both of which with a little tweaking (i.e the normal intensity) Have worked incredibly well in engine and give nice up close detail. Of course this may not be necessary if looking at in in a practice. However, Displaying this for my portfolio just gives subtle differences that enhances the overall look.
I also received another little bit of feedback today from my tutor, I need to now focus on making these little amendments; the base colour of the robe just currently doesn't have enough colour variation. So using some of the reference images I have I plan to turn them into stamps, blending them with the already hand painted base to get the realistic results I'm aspiring for.