Human Head Construction - Traditional Art Practice Week 21

 This week I did a portrait with head construction in mind. This week's turned out a little better than last week I believe. 

For the portrait I used a different shading technique that involved more blocking in than just hatchning. 

I touched up the portrait in photoshop a little to bring out the shadows and the darkness of the hair. I am satisfied with the result but I could have added a darker background to improve it. The darks are again not dark enough and the facial proportions are pretty wrong.

Three Point Perspective Scene Part 2 - Digital Art Practice Week 25

 This week I worked mostly on my three point scene and also assembled my materials. I started first by making my sketch bigger and checking the perspective setup. Everything was in order, and after resizing and rotating I was ready for the lineart.

I went though 3 stages of lineart, same as my character in order to get all the details that I wanted. This took a long time as I had to account for the perspective lines at the same time. 

After completing my lineart stage, I blocked everything in and started with the flat colors. I decided to use the workflow from the past project since it provided a clear path of where to go step by step. I blocked in the elements individually and masked everything.

I started adding some texture to the materials without modifying the value too much as I would make shadows on a separate layer later anyways. This structured workflow allow me to quickly get through the process.

This week also marked the end of my material studies as I assembled what I had created in a psd file. I touched up some of the materials at the end. I would like to say that doing these studies was probably my favorite part of this module this year. These improved basically every part of my artwork, and I started creating better personal work as well thanks to these. I plan on making these studies a part of my regular art routine.

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.

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.