Gonna be the be the very best
Sorry I've been watching Pokemon recently. I'm also sorry about how long this post is. I've sectioned it out, so feel free to just skip to the more interesting/relevant parts.
Freaking out a little here:
So I'm a second year now, which is pretty scary if I'm perfectly honest. I keep telling people to go get advice from a second or third year and then remembering that I'm a second year. Hopefully it'll sink in soon.
Anyway this year is going to be a fresh start for me. Cliché but true. I made a lot of mistakes in first year, which is what it's for, so I suppose in a way I also succeeded a lot too. The two biggest changes I'm going to make this year are my blog and my attitude.
Last year this blog was pretty overcomplicated and over-thought, which whilst a true reflection of the inside of my brain, isn't beneficial to anyone, especially myself. This year I'm going to try and keep it clear, more attractive and easier to navigate.
In regards to my attitude I want to be more confident, less afraid to fail and just get stuck in more, seriously I waste about an hour every project thinking about it before I do any work.
Lets get stuck in then.
The TV Room (less punchy than film room I know, but more accurate for my group)
A bit on group work
As always communication is key when working in a group, so we've met up almost every single day this first week to plan and keep on top of things. Our first goal was to have the room decided by Tuesday at the latest.
On Monday I was very excited for this project. I'll admit, concepting is my least favourite part of any project, probably due to the whole 'I'm never good enough' complex most artists have, so the fact that this project was more focused on creating a realistic environment accurately, really appealed to me. Technical, accurate, realistic, these words soothe my soul.
However thats not to say this project isn't going to have me tearing my hair out by the end. It's already been a pretty stressful week, but first, onto my initial film/tv choices for the room.
The first thing I did was create a criteria list for my group.
Strong Lighting (this seemed to be quite important judging by the examples given)
Populated but not cluttered (so not too ambitious, but difficult enough to challenge us
Preferably have a mix of major and minor assets (I called it 'attention grabbing objects' and 'ones no-one would be miss but would be nice to have')
A range of different materials, e.g. wood, plaster, stone, for texture practice and visual interest
Movement potential (to meet the stretch goal of particle systems)
Repeatable/Modular Assets
Lots of reference available
My main proposals were; the community study room, the room of a 1000 fists from Kill Bill and the Manor (attic or living room) from Charmed.
Community Study Room:
This was my top pick. As a room in a TV show that revolves around it, there would be lots of reference for us to use. It's lit well and has a bright colour palette that I find pleasing to look at. It has enough assets to be challenging but also a good amount of modular assets (such as the books) and they are all simple enough to model and texture that it isn't too ambitious, especially considering no-one in my group apart from me even knew what PBR was. There's also movement potential with the post stick notes on the billboard and maybe a few flickering lights (there's an episode in the show with flickering lights so it'd be a nice narrative element too). Feedback from the tutors was also quite positive for this room, but unfortunately my group just weren't feeling it so it was scrapped. Such is the nature of group projects I suppose.
Kill Bill
This was my second proposal but I actually decided to withdraw it after further discussion with Mike Kelly and a couple of third years.
Whilst I think we could have made it, Mike rightly pointed out that it was bordering on too ambitious. He suggested we go with something simpler, but that still has strong lighting. Other than the repeatable assets, the room is fairly sparse but has an interesting design, and the floor is lit from underneath which in my opinion is a good example of striking lighting. However it's also huge and leads onto a restaurant which would be fairly tricky to cut out of the room. The sheer scale of the room was the main reason we decided to scrap it as an option.
The Charmed Manor
This one was also scrapped fairly early on, but It's a good example of what we should avoid with our room choice.
My first thought was the attic because it's contained, it' s full of intriguing and charming objects, and the window lights the room in quite an atmospheric way (I was thinking dust particles, flickering shadows etc. since it's a witches attic). However it's a good example of a room that flips from populated to cluttered. There are too many complex objects in the room to be completed to a high quality standard within 5 weeks. On this project I knew fairly early on that whilst I love being ambitious, I also wanted to focus more on absolutely nailing it. I tend to bite off more than I can chew, and although I want to challenge myself, I also want to polish off my existing skills and really get to grips with the new ones this project is teaching me. Something I can't do if I'm running around screaming trying to do a million and one things.
The living room was almost immediately dismissed because it's very open plan, and it would be too tricky to cut the other rooms off without making it look awkward. Mike's other piece of advice was to make our room walk-able. We looked at a few bedrooms, but since they were quite small they weren't viable as they'd be difficult to navigate as a player.
Daredevil's Apartment.
This is the room we managed to decide on, on day two. I'll be honest, the whole process of deciding on a room was much more draining than I'd anticipated. Being in a group involves a lot of back and forth and making sure that everyone is speaking out or on-board with the decisions made. Whilst I was hesitant about the choice at first, It's grown on me, especially since watching the show. My main concern was that it was very dark, which would be hard to get right as I didn't want it to be so dark in areas the player couldn't see the room properly. However it certainly does have a lot of atmosphere to it, and it is a good example of how a room can match a characters personality. Whilst it wouldn't have been my pick as I didn't find it that visually engaging at first, and after further analysis of it, I have found that it's sneakily very ambitious, we needed to have a room decided asap, it meets quite a few of the criteria I laid out, most of the group was happy with it and I'm sure that I can make it my own! I just have to psych myself up about it.
We discussed it with Craig and then Mike Kelly too, and whilst Mike was a bit cautious about it (and upset that we didn't choose Hard Candy, sorry Mike) he seemed to think that we could manage it, and that the room does have strong lighting ,tricky, very very tricky lighting, but if we nail it, it'll look awesome. He also pointed out that we may have to brighten it up just a bit (more than the reference). We also discussed the stairway with him (as there are stairs and a balcony part in the aparment) and his advice was to block the stairs off with a few boxes and a chest so that players couldn't go up them. The important thing is just to do it so it looks natural and not deliberate, which will be hard to do, but I'm sure we can manage it.
The first thing I did then once the room had been decided is watch Daredevil (for research, I promise). I went on to create this Masterboard of screenshots from the show (showing different areas of room and details):
The tricky thing about the apartment is that there are no shots of the whole apartment in the show, so I've had to build it up using shots of various parts of it. We also discovered through this that it's actually very open plan. (Oh no) But luckily it's quite sparsely furnished so doing the hallway and stair part won't add that much extra work, and the bedroom has a sliding door that we can use to stop people going in there.
With the master-board I went on to create a very rough birds-eye view of the apartment, which I then gave to Ross as a task to create a more accurate one (as I was busy working out the asset list).
Here are the two birds-eye views of the apartment, rough and finished:
To decide on our still we all looked for stills as a group and then reconvened in our next meeting to pick our favourite. I suggested that we look at the values of the stills as an aid for deciding on the best one. I think it worked out well because our chosen still has, in my opinion, readable values and strong lighting (which is highlighted by it being posterized).
Chosen still, and top 3 picks:
I also asked for Mike's help to analyse the stills composition using some of the techniques we covered in his lesson. It proved to be really useful, especially for when we start comparing our room to the still. For example we can compare our room to this analysis and use it to work out if objects are in the right places.
Timetable
The next task for me was to create a timetable for the project. At the moment it's still quite rough, but I'm planning on breaking it down even further tomorrow and making it a nice visually clear waterfall plan. I wanted to give us time at the end to deal with any problems we may encounter, and to polish off our work.
Here is the rough timetable:
Week 1: Chosen a still, created an asset List and assigned tasks, white box completed, stretch: have started modelling minor assets and get some practice with engine
Week 2: Modelling has started, aim to get majority of models completed and minor assets unwrapped
Week 3: unwraps and texturing has begun, some models can be finalised, but only stretch assets should be left.
Week 4: Engine and lighting should have begun, continue texturing.
Week 5: should preferably be done by now and have started polishing/dealing with problems.
Asset List and Task Assignments
Our main goal as a group was to have the asset list, task assignments and white-box done by next Monday. Our stretch goal was to have it done before then, so we could get a head start on modelling. As it is, we finished our goals on Friday, so whilst we're not as ahead as we all wanted to be, we are on schedule, and a tiny bit ahead (if we use our weekends to start modelling, sssh, modelling counts as personal time ok).
For the asset list we sat down as a group and worked out what was in the apartment on a word document. Beth and I then went away and came back with an excel document.
We ended up using my arrangement of the assets because the group found it easier to keep track of them when they were divided into groups such as structural, furniture, other and minor assets. It meant that we could easily keep track of how far ahead we were with the important parts (structural and furniture) and keep other and minor assets as in group stretch goals.
I was also in charge of coming up with the guestimates for the tri count of each asset, something that I know will get easier with practice. They are also something that we'll be constantly tweaking or outright changing as we go along, but we needed a starting point so here it is, the glorious, headache inducing asset list:
(For a lot of the assets I speed modelled some roughs, or looked at the example film room, to get a better starting point for the tri count). At the moment we're only using about half of our tri budget. That's because it'll be quicker to go from low poly to high poly than the other way around. Our rough rule of thumb at the moment is that everyone gets a breather of the same amount they have for their asset. For example I have 5000 for the couch, which means I can go over by 5000 if I need to. For a table thats 200, they can go over by 200. Of course this is just a rule of thumb, and some tri counts will probably have to be completely changed , some may even get reduced. I also found out recently that replicated assets don't count towards the tri count as long as they are identical to each other. It's something I want to confirm first, but if thats the case then we have even more tri's to play around with.
The next task was assigning everyone their assets. At first we divided them up by difficulty and size, giving everyone either 2 or 3 major assets and a few smaller ones. We also tried to give people assets that would require the same textures. For example we gave Matthew all the windows and bottles, because they all require a glass material/texture.
However a few of the team members decided that it would make more sense to divide assets up by area, so that people could work out scale more easily in their sections. So we divided them up that way, whilst still trying to make it fair, and checking that everyone felt confident with their assigned assets.
Here is the current assignment list:
Sorry it's not all pretty and colourful like other groups. I find it hurts my eyes and it never came up as an issue for anyone else.
Finally, White-boxing. (My week 1 nemesis).
Wow did I struggle with this. Which is frustrating because it's something I really want to get to grips with as it'll help my concepting so much. I really struggle with perspective and depth so getting the hang of white-boxing will cut out so much time in my concepting process. (no more screaming at rulers and compasses for me)
I found trying to white-box in engine very frustrating as I found the size of the scene a massive throw-off. I'd model everything and it'd look right when I made it, but then I'd go into first person view and it'd be too large, but when I made it smaller it looked too small. So I decided to ask lots of people how they went about white-boxing and was told a myriad of different ways to white-box. As someone that prefers mathematical or scientific methods to work things out I opted to white box in Max first as it allows me to use exact measurements and grids.
I wanted our room to be as accurate as possible so I found out the actors height (thank-you third years for this one) and then went around my house measuring walls and door frames and couches and kitchen counters like a lunatic. Then by using screenshots of the actor in the apartment I worked out the rough size of everything. Another beautiful thing about using Max is it meant I could create a biped and size it to the actors height, then I could place it around the apartment to check if things looked to scale in comparison to the actor.
After a group meeting comparing everyone's white-box (we suggested everyone do one to get practice with it, and to have more choices to pick from) we ended up choosing mine for scale as I'd worked everything out to real world size, and Ross's for detail and positioning (his models were too small but they were positioned in the apartment more accurately, and were more real representations of the furniture).
Here they are in Max:
Here is my white-box in engine (IT WORKED IN FIRST PERSON VIEW).
In the end, I learnt a valuable lesson about doing things your own way. That's not to say you ignore other people's advice, but everyone has their own way of working things out, and mine just happens to be very technical. Sorry everyone who told me to 'do it by eye' It's just not my jam.
So (nearly done I promise) the other thing I wanted to do this week is have a play around in engine. I love engine. I wish I'd played with it more over summer now, because I'm having a lot of fun with it. I decided that since this week didn't have a lot of pressure on it (not looking forward to modelling week I'll be honest) I could take the time to get familiar with some of the things we'd need to do (or would be nice to do ) later on, so that when we get to them we aren't trying to figure it out under stress, which is never fun.
Engine.
So here is are of some of the things I had a go at:
I looked at putting a camera in engine on the first day to work out how we'll recreate our chosen still.
Camera. (under all classes), right click-pilot camera viewpoint, place and adjust field of view (on right) until perspective matches. I think when it comes down to it, a good idea would be to do this with our room, screenshot it and then put it into Photoshop, work out it's perspective, and compare it to our actual still(with the perspective worked out on that too).
I went over Alpha's in engine (more of a refresher). Here's my tree from last year (I want to play with foliage in unreal at some point so hopefully I'll have a nicer background to display my stuff against):
-Open texture, link bottom node to opacity mask. Put blend mode to masked. Make 2 sided.
Wind. (Ok I found this way too exciting, I ended up playing around with two different ways to create wind. I wanted to try cloth simulation as well but the tutorial I found included signing up as a registered developer which scared me, (and I wanted to check if thats okay before I do something like that).
Here are the two set ups in engine:
Particle systems. I was apprehensive for this one at first but then discovered that all it involved was a simple right click-create particle system. (I thought it'd be a much longer process to get to that point). From there I just played around with a tutorial. I was told UDK tutorials for particle systems are the best to follow so I'll be doing that in the future. For now I just wanted to wrap my brain around engine a bit more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sJr-Av4ZyU
This is the tutorial I followed, it's just a start and I'd love to start looking at lots more tutorials in my free time (Ha, whats that?).
Glass. I also made a glass material, which I think may have gone a little wrong? But I did it at 2 in the morning on Saturday so I'll have to check with someone on Monday to see what what.
Finally I had a go at making Leather using PBR and my god is it awful. But hey, fail early right? At least it got me thinking a bit more about PBR and how to go about it. Plus I discovered substance painter and Bitmap to material which look like very exciting and useful programmes to get to grips with. It was the folds in it that got me, they look very awkward if I create a height map to make them. I think I'll use Z-Brush when I get to that phase as it's a workflow I'd like to learn anyway (I'm making cushions and blankets, it'll make my life a lot easier to know Z-Brush).
Cloth Modifier. I also discovered a new way to model cushions and cloth in max using the cloth modifier, thanks to a fellow classmate. Which will come in very handy as I have to model cushions and a blanket later. I'd like to try out marvelous designer too but thats only if I find the time.
Critical studies this week was all about focusing on what went well last year and what didn't, and identifying my own achievements and failures. I think last year my work hours weren't great and I didn't give enough time to personal projects which really killed my creativity in the end. My work hours are just something I'll have to keep working on. I still struggle with sticking to them, because If I don't finish my task for the day within them I feel like I need to keep working. I'm trying very hard to not let stress affect me this year, and so far I'm not doing a great job as I'm already feeling quite sick and fatigued, and it's only week 1! But then again it was always going to be a tough transitional period from summer to second year, so hopefully things will balance out in the next few weeks!
So thats the end of what I've done this week.
It's been a pretty tough week. Having spent summer going at my own pace it's been a bit of shock getting back into the superfast one of gameart.
This week didn't go as smoothly as I wanted it to. I wanted the whitebox to be done on Wednesday and to have started modelling by now. However I can't be too harsh on myself or the group, as none of us have had to do a project like this before, so there's a lot to learn and a lot to wrap our brains around (as you can probably tell from this ridiculously long blog post, sorry guys).
My action plan for next week is to;
Do my asset concepts, have modelled all of my main assets and have at least started unwrapping them by the end of the week. I also want to do some more PBR practice, more engine stuff and spend some time working out the camera angle for our chosen still.
Within the group I'm also going to try and step back a bit more, as I'm struggling with relying on other people for the project outcome.
Anyway week 1 is over. Lets hope next week runs more smoothly.
Comments