On a low

Unfortunetely this week hasn't been a great week. Due to various reasons and one quite big one I haven't been able to focus that well and as a result I've fallen a bit behind schedule. Not drastically (see even when writing this I initally wrote that as 'distractedly' I think that sums things up quite nicely), but enough to make me worry that my final outcomes won't be of the quality I expect and want them to be.

The first thing I did this week was a paintover of my whiteboxed turret. I wanted to do multiple paintovers to really push my design forward, but had to make the judgement call that I only had time for one detail paintover, that I could use a rough orthographic for modelling my low poly turret.

However before doing my paintover I'd recieved feedback on my turret that the design was strong from the side, but that I'd neglected the front view, which is really important as it's what the player will see first.

So I did a quick whitebox iteration of my design to strengthen the front silhouette. I did this by offsetting a few elements and adding in some extra components, that were still relevant to the design. These were the watertank and sunlight, both of which were needed to keep the plant alive in the back of the gun, so it could continue to generate it's fuel source. I also received critique on putting more shape variation into my gun, as at the moment everything is quite spindly. I wanted to iterate on this as well, however with my level of focus this week I had to make another judgment call and say to myself that I needed to make getting my high poly done by the end of the week a priority, which I did.

So these are the orthographics I worked from to create my high and low poly models, I've included the flow lines I made when considering where to place things on my model:

Sticking to the tri limit for my gun was pretty tricky as my gun consists of lots of cylinders and spherical or smooth objects. However the upside of that is it also made me think a lot more about my mesh efficiency and ensuring I had optimised topology. I'm sure there are still areas I could have modelled even more efficiently, but I don't have the time to go back over them now, as it'll be very time consuming counting each cylinder etc, although it is something I'll talk about in my final evaluation for hand in.

Something I wanted to do this project was work on how I model, and finding more and more methods for producing quality work quickly. As well as spending more time on the iteration process. Normally I model something and then go back and optimise it, but to save myself time I tried to keep that in mind as I worked, adding smoothing groups as I go, creating meshes in a way that would be easier to unwrap, fixing N-gons as I work, ensuring my cylinders are even so I can add or remove loops quickly, and so on. I've also tried to see the process as a cyclic one.

I'll admit I tend to shy away from re-doing work once it's done, because, well, it's done, that stress is over now right? But I realised this year that thinking that way is hindering my improvement as an artist. You get good by doing something over and over until you don't need to think about it anymore, it's become second nature, and thats what I wanted to start working on this year. Taking critique and actually applying it right there and then, rather than going 'oh okay I'll try and do that in my next project, or I'll write about that as an improvement I could make.'

But anyway, here is my low poly model (Just below the tri-limit-phew):

As you can see I had to remove some parts of my paintover from the design for tri's, and I had to be smart with my modelling so all the different sized pipes aren't connected, they're just hidden by their connector rings. I also forgot to model my plant and liquid meshes intially which meant I had to trim out even more stuff, but it's done now and thats all that matters. I Initially had the soil in the container at the back, level, but it was pointed out that it would have fallen diagonally due to gravity, so I fixed that-oops (should probably have known that as a sciencelover).

I also managed to finish my high poly (that took much longer than expected) though I'm sure i'll end up having to edit it a lot once I bake, and discover all my lovely little mistakes, but anyway, here it is:

I tried to add in as much relevant detail as I could, because I know part of this project is showing an understanding of the baking process. However my design is quite a minimal one, in that it isn't made up of lots of little parts like an actual gun is, so I didn't want to overload it with surface detail. Hopefully I hit that happy balance. I really hope I did.

I also got around to cleaning up some of my files for hand in. I won't show those here though as they're in the previous post, since I like to put my work on the blog when it's neat, and not before, because hey, we're artists, and I don't want an ugly blog.

This week in Game production we went over baking in Max, which is actually a lot simpler than I'd anticipated it to be. We also went over some high poly modelling technqiues which have been very useful this week.

In Visual design we went over rendering in Z-brush which is super useful for producing a pretty promotional final concept. We also went over masks in photoshop, which again will be very useful for concepting and painting in general. I don't understand masks in nearly as much detail as I'd like to, and this project is as good as any to start familiarising myself with them, so roll on masking for future concepts.

In Critical studies we went over brand identity. It's something I am familiar with as I did product design at A level, and so covered consumer marketing in a lot of detail. However I haven't thought of it much in regards to branding myself, so it was quite informative in that respect. It was also very interesting to see how others percieved me in the seminar, and to start thinking about my unique selling point as an artist and as a person. Right now I would say that it's my love for science that heavily informs my art that sets me apart from other artists. Obviously not all, because I'm not the only artist to have a passion for science. However it is a grounding point for me to develop, so I can work on how I present myself in the scary world of job hunting.

Unfortunetely I didn't get around to unwrapping my low poly, so thats what I mean by I'm a bit behind schedule. Hopefully I'll claw my way back on schedule next week, though I'll be honest I'm not overly optimistic about it.

I can however make an action plan to at least try to keep myself on task. Just as a general note I do plan my week out in more detail than my action plan shows, I just tend to break the big tasks down a lot into smaller timed tasks, so it'd be a bit confusing and long to put up on the blog.

So here's the action plan you've all been waiting for:

Unwrap and pack my low poly

Bake normals

Do my colour and material developments

Make fireballs in engine

Collect my textures (by taking pictures-renting a camera out again, yay)

Do a promotional concept mood board and nail down an idea for the style I want for my turret's final concept

Get my life together.

I've been wanting to use Substance Painter for a while now, so I've decided to try it out for this project. As I mentioned earlier I want to start experimenting with new programmes and ways of doing things to make my life easier, and my work better. Thats not to say I won't continue to focus on nailing the basics. I believe very strongly that you should have a solid understanding of using the core programmes like Max and Photoshop, before susbtituting them for a more advanced programme. Especially because not every company will have the specialised programmes, and so if you can't work quickly without them, well...things won't go very well for you. But at the same time learning new programmes is fun, and will be useful for doing personal work quickly if nothing else. Because there's never enough time for personal work.

And that's about all folks. Hopefully next week will be a productive one.