Week 1 (Introduction to the project)
.This new 6 week project is to simply make a diorama environment. One of the main things I need to consider is the best way to structure my idea as well as the idea itself.
.This brief also teaches Z brush, which is rather necessary for such a project. This is already very handy as i have a good amount of experience in the software prior to the project.
.The majority of my week has been spent trying to obtain some references for ornamental decal and items i might want to have included in my environment: The theme being based around a deal with a devil. The most immediate struggle/ obstacle i see with this is the gathering of references that could be fitting based on 'the Devils' office. However, on the other side of looking at this- i can be as surreal with the environment as i like; meaning i can extract certain elements of my reference imagery.
Week 2- (Block out and substance designer intro)
.To start the week we have been introduced to substance designer; a really awesome software that i will certainly be using a lot more to create cool procedural textures. this will be very handy for my diorama as i'm enabled to Have complete control over the look of my textures. One thing i am wary of about this is that i only have a short amount of time for my project so it is important to remember that throughout making my materials. However, this does allow me to very quickly make procedural textures that can be changed with a lot of ease: Seeing as i want to create a project based around a deal with the devil and i want a stylish atmosphere coming from his office: I want to create a nice clean wood for the scene; and using substance designer will allow me to customise the wood as much as I like with its node based system, very quickly and efficiently.
.Vertex painting- We also got the opportunity to learn a little about vertex painting (blending materials) in unreal engine, as well as tessellation for extra detail in height blend. This will be very handy and exciting to use in my diorama as it can bring out a lot of the grunges and other fine decals i want to implement. I'm not sure if I'll be using it in this project however; yet the application of it can be used in future projects especially for breaking up large scale tilling.
So far i believe my engagement with the project has enabled me to get a reasonable amount of work done in an early stage of the process- I the feel that this will enable me to experiment more within this project being that i have been able to get a good majority of my blockout done at a very early point within the project. Furthermore, I've also learned some very useful techniques that could be used within my project like procedural materials.
Week 3:
.Progress shots of my blockout so far have been taken. I believe that for where i currently am in this project i have done a lot of the work in sculpting and composition blockout already.
With regards to the week i'm going to need to work on some more materials for my characters and environment assets- as well as ensure all my assets are in the scene by the end of the week. For the characters I've been investing a lot of time into them as they're a big essence within my scene: for the next part of their development I will need to think about posing these characters and the best way to do it. I'm likely at this point to be using the transpose master tool as its something I already have experience in within Zbrush and it may help refine my skills in using the particular tool.
This has been an interesting week for my project, during lessons we looked at vertex painting and material blending inside of unreal engine, which gave a helpful insight in how to be able to freely paint between textures on a mesh, this will be incredibly good especially when breaking up some tilling textures.
During lessons we learnt about foliage for games. Despite there not being any foliage within my scene; i was still able to benefit from the lesson because it taught me a little more about subsurface scattering and how it functions on a model. This was then applied to my character models in the scene to improve their textures and heighten their realistic sense. And to further add to this I learnt about sequencer which has really been helpful as i can now show off certain sections of my Diorama through the sequencer; this will be very helpful for my presentation as well as my portfolio; being able to achieve certain composition and trying to illustrate the story of 'A Deal with the Devil', can become more interesting just through the sequencer. This will be something I'll begin working on nearer towards the end of the project.
This is the current state of my blockout at this stage of the project; I feel that i have a good understanding of a good composition layout for the diorama already.
Week 4:
.Week 4 is mostly consisting of refinement of my own project currently: finishing models and adding in more lighting and textures has been my primary focal point. Getting some good feedback of what i can include in my scene from peers and tutors has allowed me to change the setting in my scene to be more fitting to the mood i'm trying to emulate in my Diorama.
Another aspect of my Diorama I've change is the overall scale of the project; I decided that as i wanted to have a focal point of 'The victim' signing his contract with the Devil- making the scene more compact has allowed me to refine where the viewer is going to look; and as its the most well lit area of my scene, any viewers at first glance will be attracted to the brightest part of my Diorama.
Throughout the rest of the duration of the week; I aim to refine more of my textures and include some smaller asset props to fill some of my empty spaces within the scene.
We Had a very useful lighting lesson from a member of the lighting artists from Splash Damage; He gave a fantastic demo which allowed me to have a much more in depth understanding to lighting an environment inside of UE4; He looked at my scene and suggested that I add contrasting colours to my scene so it doesn't feel so monotone. And since acting on his feedback my scene feels a lot more exciting and well lit.
In regards to the texturing process, I have found that a nice way to get a stylised effect is to use my baked curvature map when texturing; this allows me to outline all the curves and crevices within a model and contributes greatly towards the overall look development.
Over the course of the next few weeks i plan to do subtle changes to the scale of the scene to make it feel more compact; as well as various other lighting fixtures as it's important for the style of art i'm trying to achieve through the project. Furthermore following the lesson i had with the lighting artist from splash damage i'm intending on focusing on lighting a fair amount to get the absolute most out of it in my scene: strong contrasting colours is a big essence within the diorama i'm trying to create. I feel this lighting knowledge will allow me to take the project further, and achieve better results. As I managed to get ahead a reasonable amount with the modelling and textures; this has allowed me much more time to experiment with the lighting in my scene and how it portrays the composition overall.
Week 5:
Over the course of the week I had set myself targets from the prior week that I wanted to achieve: especially with the scale of some of the silhouette area; Which I proactively engaged with to try make the composition as eye catching to the centre as possible. Looking back I can see that there was a lot of dead space lingering in the left that distracts the viewer away from the main focal point. This was only achieved by the insights of others; My peers perspectives had allowed me to make a change to the Diorama that has been computationally very beneficial.
Furthermore, at the end of the week we had a very good presentation: The purpose of this presentation was so that we could show progress over the prior weeks; the current stage of where we currently are. and share this with the class- I found this incredibly useful, as it gave me a good opportunity to illustrate my work and seek the classes opinion on what they would like to see tweaked; The course of the week consisted of a lot of constructive criticism, this highlighted the importance of other perspectives to me as they highlighted problems to me that i didn't necessarily notice before. This is something that i probably could have looked for throughout previous projects and I feel that my project has benefited more from getting more feedback, I can now apply this in my future projects more regularly.
Week 6:
For week 6 we had the start of the week learning speed tree: for my scene in particular I didn't use any vegetation within the office scene as i didn't feel it would entirely fit within the environment: However, the learning of the process will come in handy for the group project coming up. Throughout the duration of the rest of the week: I aimed to polish up the project as much as I could- especially with some of the details that my peers and tutor had commented on in the prior presentation. Some of which i was successful in like making sure to change the carpet material and polishing up the direction of the wooden floor boards and ceiling. I also had to spend a bit of time sorting out the project to ensure it was uploaded correctly and packaging.
applying what we had learnt in class about the sequencer inside of unreal engine; I really tried to create a good sequencer that could show the composition around the environment and the project as a whole; this was a fun learning process as it gave me an understanding of how to create a cool cinematic for a game and could definitely be used in the future very quickly and easily.
At this point of the project where it concludes; i'd say overall i'm very pleased with the result of the Diorama, I chose a challenging concept to run with and I believe that I executed it to a very good standard; there are still issues within the project that I have acknowledged. Yet, I think that the challenge of the project and the problems encountered has developed my overall ability as an artist and improved my skills for future projects.
Presentation!
On Friday i presented my work to the rest of the class and one of my tutors; This consisted of showing my Art Bible, as well as the build for the game: This I feel went well as I feel the project came across clear through it's concept and illustrated through to the build of my Diorama. The class made some good points of areas that could have been refined a little better like the direction of the UV's around the edge of the floor boards; the material got pulled out and broke up some of the direction; this will be something i'm now going to be polishing more often, furthermore, I realised something interesting about the optimisation of UV's within the scene and the difference it can have on a texture. in Future projects this is something i will certainly do consistently as I've now seen the difference it can make to an environment. However, overall i'm pleased with the outcome, I feel as though I did well to capture the scene I did within a 6 week time frame; creating 2 characters and an environment for them within the time given i feel really did challenge me and i came out with a good result that i am pleased with. Reflecting back, I feel from what I've learned throughout the project if i was to do it again, i'd try to be more thorough with some of my UV optimisations as I've seen the difference it can make through some of my assets. In addition to this I Would add some more detail/ objects within the scene just in some of the more empty areas like above the fireplace. However with the knowledge i have of creating Diorama's, i believe i could achieve this quality of work being more time efficient and polish areas brought up in the presentation as i'd have a little more time to do so.
To conclude, I Believe the project was successful from original concept the final Build, some aspects changed along the way of the process but i feel the end result best fit the scene and the mood set in this environment: the Devils office.