Three Point Perspective Scene 1 - Digital Art Practice Week 24

 This week I worked on my three point perspective scene. I first started with some different ideas, although I knew from the start the kind of scene that I wanted to create. It was to be an underground bunker, maybe connected to the military base I made for my first project. I decided to go for it and just make different designs with that as a foundation.

For my thumbnails, I experimented with different lighting setups in my scene. It was really fun making these as always and I actually came up with a couple new ideas that I could use in a later project. The first thumbnail in particular is inspired by the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games and the second one is from a scene in Disco Elysium. 

I gathered a bunch of references, and sketched out everything by hand just for practice. The game screenshots are from Shadow of Chernobyl, with one particular section that inspired my entire design. I mostly looked at references of only Soviet bunkers in order to not to pick up wrong design elements.

This is my brainstorm stage. Basically, the initial design had a large open space in the middle that I really didn't like. So I made a couple new thumbnails and combined elements of them together to create a better scene.The final concept scene was surprisingly not the final concept as I further modified it later.

This is the final design that I went with, along with my rationalizations for the changes I made. I also did some experimentation with lighting here. The location in Shadow of Chernobyl actually has overhead lighting, but I decided against using it in my scene since it would make some areas way too dark.

I experimented with different lighting setups to figure out what I really wanted.

After the lighting and values were figured out, I went on to sketch out some of the elements I would use in my scene. I was a bit rusty on all the environment details from working on the tribal character for so long so this was a nice wake me up. I also utilized most of these colors and designs in my final scene.

Lighting Characters - 3D Game Production Blog Task #4

Character Lighting Setups

Characters in video games can be lit the same real life models are lit up for photography. I have gathered a couple examples below.

The butterfly lighting setup uses one light from just above the camera to achieve a clear one directional lighting effect. It highlights all of the main features of the face and shows the details. This is a very simple yet effective setup.

The Rembrant style lighting is very iconic for the triangle that forms by connecting the nose shadow with the cheek. This is a very effective and clean lighting setup that gives a more pronounced look to the subject, while avoiding the total darkness of one side that the split lighting setup creates. This setup is also similar to the loop lighting setup, which again does the same kind of lighting from an angle, but doesn't go as far to create a triangle.

Three Point Lighting Setup

The three point lighting setup uses three main light sources on one subject, the key light, the fill, and the rim light in order to provide a controlled environment where any changes to the setup can be made as needed to produce many interesting setups.

The key light is the main light that shows us the focal point of the subject. It is usually directed slightly to the side instead of directly at the subject. Multiple different implementations exist with high and low key lighting to create completely different moods. The key light brightness affects how dramatic the setup becomes overall and is therefore an important consideration.

The fill light functions as the counterpart to the key light, by lighting the side that the key light doesn't. It helps create an overall softer feel. 

The rim light lights the subject from the back, and it's main use lies in separating the subject from the background. It can also provide visual interest on the shaded side of an object. Additionally, rim lighting can highight parts such as hair and make them create additional visual interest.

Plaster Head - Traditional Art Practice Week 20

 This week I worked on drawing plaster heads. I've had experience with drawing portraits in the past but I've never done anything up to a finished level. This was a challenge for me but I worked though it by doing some sketches from references first. After warming up, I started with the first sketch of the first model. 

For the second sketch I did a different kind of shading style.

For my finished pieces I used a combination of hatching and blocking. I don't believe they turned out particularly well, and now that I look at them there are severe proportion mistakes. The shading is mediocre at best as well. 

Overall I think my lack of experience with drawing portraits has really held me back this week. I didn't particularly enjoy making these either and I think it shows. For the next time I do characters I think I will try a different shading technique.

Substance Painter and Baking - 3D Game Production Week 24

This week I fixed my UV unwraps and got started with baking. I didn't know what baking was until a couple weeks ago and have never used Substance, but the whole concept was easy enough to understand. I struggled with understanding the logic behind Sunstance however, and will be diving into it more in my spare time.

I optimized the UV map for my extra assets. I tried to maximize how much of the space I used since this would be a very low resolution texture map at the end.

I realised here that I would need to separate the bricks and the fireplace into two different maps. This could have been done far better, but I still think that I made the right choice making the bricks individual forms instead of one long strip.

I alligned both the low and high poly assets, named them appropriately, sized them, reset xform and pivot, collapsed modifiers and then exported them for Substance.

I assigned different material IDs in max to be able to import two texture sets into substance. This allowed me to easily work on both materials separately without having to worry about affecting other parts. I then went through the basic baking process of importing the low poly and baking the high poly onto it. I went through different iterations before deciding on the final version of the low poly.

This was the fireplace bake that I really liked and I decided to stick with it. It showed all of the detail that I wanted to see and therefore was perfect. 

I baked the rest of the model in same manner. As I had two texture sets, I was able to bake the bricks separately which gave me a very clean bake.

Two Point Perspective Scene - Digital Art Practice Week 23

 

This week I completed my two point perspective thumbnails and scene. This was really fun to make and I used some new brushes while making the scene. Out of my initial designs I decided to go for the last one as it had jus the right amount of details and variety of objects. I didn't want to make a scene that would be too dark or one that wouldn't have many different materials.

I created the lineart through iteration and filled in the individual elements with different layers. I took care to ensure there were different values in the materials present in the scene as I usually tend to make everything too grey.

I shaded with a multiply layer and added highlights with overlay. I made sure not to overdo either but now that I look at it it could have been a little more washed out. Maybe the harsh sun created these dark shadows.

I also made a little bronze pot as a material. It fit with the general theme of the scene as well. This material was particularly enjoyable to paint since I utilized a combination of the non destructive workflow first and then used a super destructive workflow to overpaint what I felt needed it.

One Point Perspective Scene - Digital Art Practice Week 22

This week I made my one point scene as well as some more material studies. For my one point thumbnails, I did the following four. I decided not to go for the first and last ones since those didn't have natural lighting. I decided to go for the second design which is a sort of hallway. I initially imagined it to be some sort of museum, but the top lighting really didn't work with what I wanted for the scene as the lights kept overlaying and cancelling the effect.

This is my final one point perspective scene. I added sharper lighting in order to convey how dark the hallway really is under normal circumstances as there are literally no other light sources. I added some reflections on the walls across and some highlights where the light contacts directly. I added shadows for the window frames and shadows around the windows in general since that's how light works.

 

Remesh - 3D Game Production Week 23

This week I worked on retopology for my main fireplace. I also created the extra assets in my scene that would populate it and provide an extra bit of believability to my scene. I faced some difficult decisions with the remesh.

My extra assets used the same workflow as the main fireplace. I decided to allocate a separate texture map for these since the shapes were too irregular to fit into the other maps. They also didn't really need that much texture space in the first place.

It was really fun experimenting with some organic sculpting like this bread. I used some new brushes that I hadn't used before. I also found a use for the indent brush that had ruined my bricks before. 

When I started the remeshing, I first thought that I could just use the decimation to get a low poly model easily since basically every piece of the fireplace was a rectangle. However this turned out not to work and I wasted an entire day in attempt to avoid two hours of work.

The automatic remesh didn't work at all, and gave me a lot of broken topology that was near impossible to properly unwrap. I decided to do it the normal way after seeing this.

I worked with the step build tool to create a low poly remesh that could work this way. However doing this way meant that the bricks wouldn't have any spaces between them that I was really relying on in order to create further visual interest. My bricks weren't lined up and some were rotated a little, which made it very difficult to remesh this way without losing my original vision.

After careful consideration, I scrapped that idea as well and instead used the low poly that I had made before for the main fireplace. For the bricks, I added individual bricks where the sculpted ones were by manually dragging them. This took time and I understand that this is not an efficient way of working. At the end my creative vision was preserved and I was able to do a much cleaner unwrap.

I'm glad I didn't try to unwrap this.

Drapery - Traditional Art Practice Week 19

 This week I drew some drapery. I've never drawn drapery before in my life so this was a welcome change of pace from the usual. First I started with some thumbnails to get the composition down. I shortened the background drapery a little bit in order to create a better composition. I again made sure to consider different local values, but since all these were very similar in value it didn't really matter at the end.

For my final piece I went from lineart into line weights before starting the block in process. The background drapery was a slightly darker color and provided a very nice contract to the bright drapery in the foreground. Overall I really enjoyed drawing this type of thing and can see this improving my values and shading significantly just because of how much there is to shade and consider.

I touched up the image in photoshop a little big to bring out the darks and to fix the framing. Here I noticed how I had again failed to utilize darker values. I could have made the background drapery far darker and gotten away with it. That would have made entire composition much better whereas now it looks like everything is basically the same value.

Perspective Thumbnails - Digital Art Practice Week 21

  This week I got started with my perspective project. Since I didn't have a lot of work to do in particular, I instead made some more materials. I first started with creating some sketches which would eventually be used for my thumbnails. I made one point and two point thumbnails since I had quite a bit of time.

I came up with a lot of interesting ideas for one point. My favorite was the last one which is a submarine torpedo room, but I decided on doing the simpler castle hallway design since I wanted to spend my time on making materials instead. 

For my two point scene, I decided to go for a small outdoors scene that would allow me to experiment with different values and materials.

Out of the materials I made, this leather material was my favorite. I worked from value into color and this allowed me to have interesting gradients which I wouldn't bother with otherwise. The slight highlights were also really fun to paint. I added some additional detail in form of stiches as well since it made sense to me.

Fireplace Block In - 3D Game Production Week 22

This week I created a low poly base for my fireplace that I would later use for sculpting and the made the actual sculpt in Zbrush. For the low poly I initially wanted to make a model that I could just bake the sculpt on to directly, skipping retopology, but then I realised how much that would limit my sculpting and decided against it. I did the lowpoly with floating geometry in max.

For the bricks, I did them like this at first, but later decided to just make a few bricks and copy paste those around instead. This saved me a lot of time on something that really wouldn't have had created much visual interest.

One part that I am really proud of is these bricks sticking out beneath the planks. It gives the illusion that there are bricks all around it and not just there. For my planks, I made sure to move them around and to add variety. No plank is fully straight here.

I started my sculpting with three normal sized bricks and one square shaped one to break the monotony. I used a lot of reference to get an idea of what kind of surface shapes could be on a brick. The edges were done with more variety in mind.

I then copy pasted the bricks as many times as it took. As I had sculpted every side of the bricks, rotating them around was enough to create a lot of visual variety and interest.

Since the main material of my fireplace was to be a very rough plaster/paint material, I added a some bumpiness and paint strokes to it. I toned it down a little for the final product as this seemed too excessive.

I tested the sculpt with a white matcap to see how it would look like with a brighter material. I was pleasantly surprised by the result and decided that this level of wear should be sufficient for now.

I sculpted the rest of the fireplace and prepared for retopology.

Tribal Character Finish - Digital Art Practice Week 20

 This week I finalized my tribal character all though the lineart stage to the end. It was a lot of work but I am really proud with the result. I first started with making three layers of lineart, improving it each time. I copy pasted some elements that I liked into the next layers while remaking the ones that needed fixing. This ended up with a very nice lineart that I could work with.

This is the final lineart. I decided to make the backpack separate from the main base. I added all the previous design elements that I had sketched last week. 

For coloring I used a combination of photos and game screenshots. I started by blocking out the values as seen on the back view of the character. I kept everything separate and this allowed me to render the elements separately. Losing the ability to blend things together was a challenge for me as I usually utilize that in my own work.

I decided to go for a similar workflow to what we learned in 3D, by doing a base color first and adding lighting separately. This would allow me to utilize the separate layers workflow to it's fullest potential. I also added some dirt and wear as a separate layer. I avoided adding too much shading with this layer as well.

With my base color layers complete, I could proceed to adding the color layers. Doing the painting this way presented a totally different way from how I usually work and was a pleasant change of perspective to the way I paint.

I put the backpack in perspective. I added one new element that wasn't there before which is just a microwave. This simple addition would be a great help at identifying what the backpack actually was.

I put the backpack on a separate layer to preserve the non destructive workflow. I developed the lineart to finalization and then masked the thing. I would be using my own painting style here.

The finished product looked something like this. I was very pleased with the way my character turned out. 

My biggest challenge in this project was definitely my lack of character design experience as I usually work with environments and props. I also usually work with a much more loose style resembling traditional oils or gouache so this painting style was challenging. I had much less trouble compared with my orthographic scene from the first semester though, which I feel is an improvement.