UE4 Fire Effect- 3D Game Production Week 26

 This was the final week of my project. I did my final checks and exported my maps from Substance into Unreal. I got everything working and there and edited the materials a bit. I put the asset into a lightbox and created a fire effect before finishing the project.

After importing everything and fixing some errors, I set the default level to load my level, organised and renamed my assets and placed everything in an orderly fashion. I checked to see if the materials were working the way I indended them to work and saw nothing wrong.

I separated my texture maps and made materials with them.

I plugged the maps into their individual channels like this and saw no problems.

I assembled a stack of firewood out my assets and put them into the scene. Having the objects be individual assets really helped a lot and gave me a great deal of freedom.

For the particle effect, I decided to just paint one texture and used it for the fire, the smoke and the embers all at one. I made sure to paint something that would work with all of those things at the same time.

For my particle effect, I created multiple fire effects of different speeds and positions in order to add more variety. I added luminosity to the effect as well.

My finished fire ended up being a little underwhelming, but for now this would have to do as other things had precedent. I was satisfied with the overall look.

I placed some of my extra assets into the scene such as the pots and pans. I put them into positions that they are supposed to be. For the lighting setup, I used a combination of spot lights and point lights to get the feeling that I wanted.

Oveall, this project was by far the most fun and challenging one I have done so far. It challenged me in every step, and I got to use many different pieces of software to achieve a very natural look to my asset.

Observing Objects from Life - 3D Game Production Blog Task #5

 Observing Objects from Life

I went out and took photos of a couple of interesting looking objects that I thought showed a lot of wear and tear. I took pictures of these boats as they had some very interesting things going on.

With this first one, there are a lot of things going on. The chipped paint at the top stands out. The blue paint contrasts nicely with the white coat underneath. The paint has been chipped away in flakes. There is also more wear closer to where the operator would be sitting, particularly the edges, that were likely used for holding on. 

There is a similar wear with the rest of the boat, with the white paint being further chipped and discolored. The top facing parts have been worn out considerably more, presumably from things like ropes, nets, or shoes. There is also moss around the boat, which has formed from a prolonged period if immobility. The same effect can be observed on the fenders and the rope. 

This is another boat, with some different material effects. The metal areas have lost a significant amount of their original paint, and the paint flakes are even more apparent now. There is close to no paint on the top, which is likely just from exposure to precipitation. There are spots of rust all over, most notably being around the little incisions at the side. There are rust marks in the shape of water slowly running down. There is also an interesting contrast created by some of the newer metallic parts, which are clean and shiny. 

The metal on the sides has been worn out quite badly and look very old. Constant stepping and scraping of other objects has taken it's toll. The rust is clearly visible behind layers of paint.

The green paint is mostly intact but has a number of cracks. These most likely started out as smaller scrapes from impacts, and once opened to the elements expanded rapidly. The paint has the same running down shaped rust.

Painting - 3D Game Production Week 25

 This week I worked with Substance Painter to create my materials. I mostly just followed a combination of tutorials but was able to achieve the results that I wanted. The pre loaded assets were really helpful in understanding how materials were made.  I used some of the techniques I saw in those for my own materials as well, such as the sharpness filter for wood fibers.

I used a metallic edge generator and some mask editors do push the edges on the bricks. I finally started to understand the basic logic of how Substance worked. Layers here work like layers of paint work in real life. Unlike photoshop, fill layers here are actual coats of paint so it's very easy to grasp. 

The huge amount of layers that started to pile up really confused me and I struggled to understand what was going on. Naming each layer depending on its function helped.

I added further detail to my bricks with the mask editor by showing the sculpt details in the middle and not just in the edges. I changed the edge color to a slightly yellower and brighter tone.

I separated my planks by using the polygon fill tool and the uv island option. This allowed me to quickly select the individual planks as they were just rectangles. This was another benefit of having done retopology with flying geometry instead of step build. 

I added a dirt layer and multiple noise layers in order to get the wood feeling in. I experimented first with a bright wood, but then decided to go for a darker, dirtier kind of wood.

With my main materials done, I went in and did some additional detailing using the paint layers. This allowed me to add some more realistic detail variation.

I also went through all the steps with the extra assets. The metal parts were all masked under one layer and edited as so. I gave the metal a darker tone as well, as these would have been used for a very long time and for extended duration. I used the polygon fill option extensively here as well.

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.

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.

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.

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.

ZBrush Intro - 3D Game Production Week 21

 

This week I started with Zbrush. The software came to me much more intuitively, as the sculpting process was really similar to Blender, which I have experience using. Specifically, being already acquainted with concepts such as dynamesh, different brushes such as clay strips, among many other things, allowed me to get a quick start on the software. For starters, I decided to sculpt some basic materials that would be useful for my next project, such as wood and rocks. 

I limited myself to the basic clay buildup brush for the time being and got to know the software better. I trimmed the edges to create a worn feel. Adding details on the edges alone made the model feel much more believable and nicer to look at. I was able to create further visual interest using variety is the wear amount throughout the edges. 

I tried some different brushes to get other interesting effects in. I used this brush to create a feeling of cracked rocks. I failed, but I learned a lesson in what not to do next time. Having every surface being damaged doesn't create visual interest. Having every surface have the same amount of damage just looks bad and fake. 

After messing about with sculpting bricks and planks for a while, I did a little test sculpt to see what the software was capable of. I was impressed by the variety of brushes and tools available and created this little backpack below. It was a fun little project to just test out some of the brushes and the tools, like the move tool. Although I am aware that a real asset would first be modelled and then sculpted, obviously.

I did some further sculpting on the backpack before leaving it for later. Overall, I feel like I understand the way ZBrush works now. The amount of tools available by default and the remesher stood out to me as very convenient. I am looking forward on working with it in the future.

I did some research and some concept sketching for my fireplace. I had used mostly realistic references so the design ended being an accurate one for the most part. On the low right you can see the final concept that didn't change much for the entire project since it accomplished everything I wanted it to.

Gladiator Finish - 3D Game Production Week 20

 This week I developed my gladiator to a final stage. After this week only the textures could be improved, and so I decided to focus on completing other things first before improving an already developed part of my work. 

First I added a biped to my gladiator model and did some rigging. I was surprised by how intuitive this was to do, and making body movements came naturally to me. I started from the pelvis and worked outwards toward the limbs. 

I worked on each part separately, thinking of the motions my character would be doing in a game environment. I put the rig bones in the middle of the anatomical forms, against putting them where real muscles would be. The distinction made sense after a while, as this would allow me to have an easier time skinning later.

After rigging the main parts of the body, I used some of the extra bones in order to add shape to the dangly bits of my character, this being the wrappings on the arm, as well as the cloth pieces on the waist. I found three bones to be enough for these as I didn't need more.

I rigged the fingers as seen below. Before starting my skinning process, I checked everything and created a test animation to simulate some motions.

Next, I added the Skin modifier. I had already reset my xForm and have created copies just in case I accidentally collapse it. Which I didn't. The animations that I had created were really useful in this stage as they allowed me to quickly move my character into various poses and fix him up. 

I added more weight to the center of a bone, and lessened the weight as the bone ended. The automatic balancing in Max helped me out a lot in this stage as I didn't actually have to waste time going through every single vertex.

I imported my gladiator into UE4 and made sure there were no errors. I separated the helmet and the other equipement and imported them separately. I created materials for the model.

I used the last key of the animation that I created to make my character strike a pose. I went back into Max and fixed the skinning in this pose a little bit.