Week 12 - 14 christmas

The Christmas holidays are here, everyone has gone home, its absolutely freezing.

I have a plan for this holiday, i aim to build up a some pieces of work to fill my portfolio with. Whether i do or not is a different question, but we will see. I realised that this year we won’t be doing any form of vehicle project, so i thought it would be a good idea to try a vehicle over Christmas.  I settled on doing a classic bike, a modded triumph Bonneville. I wanted something with a lot of the inner working showing so i can really go to town on the pbr textures. I Started by finding some good orthos to work with, this proved difficult as the bike i wanted to model was modded and has thousands of variations but i managed to peice them together. I knocked the model out quite fast but unwrapping was a pain due to the many individual parts. I started the texturing process and also imported in to unreal to test the textures. I also purchased quixel suite towards the start of the holiday as i didn’t have any functioning normal map software. During this i tested out the 3D viewer for photoshop. Its a cool idea however i it doesn’t really work that well, the pbr application isn’t quite up to scratch in comparison to unreal.

The other project i planned was actually a collaboration project with a friend of mine, Emily Kelly; a fellow DMUGA pupil. We wanted to do a fantasy based environment over the 3 weeks, obviously we only have 3 weeks for the Christmas holidays so it will be a long haul project.  We just wanted to do something that would really further or 2D work. So along side the 3D bike project i was painting lots of thumbnails to help design the environment. I Had no idea if the project would go very far or when it would be completed but it was a fun project with lots of potential. I haven’t really had much time to practice my 2D skillset this year, the course has definitely took a turn more towards the 3D side of things;Which i actually quite like, i do tend to get on with 3d more these days in comparison to 2D.

I found the environment idea generation to be quite awkward at first, its not something we have really done before, we have sketched plenty from real life but we haven’t really been taught how to generate ideas for outdoor areas. Luckily however, the internet exists and Feng Zhu has some great tutorials on this and also i picked up some stuff on photo bashing. Here are the thumbs and moodboards i threw together for this. 

Week 11 - Character post mortem

The marks the end of our last project of 2014 and also the half way point of my second year here at DMU, its very odd to think that we only have 2 more projects left this year. Soon it will be FMP time and that is a very scary thought indeed. This project was the first (and apparently the only) character project of the year, this project was the first project in a good while that really got my stress levels up, We had some serious time constraints during this project and we had literally no down time after the sentry gun hand in. I basically had to have a finished design for 5 days after the sentry hand in which was a little ridiculous, the design i managed to pull together was then completely torn apart when presented to the class meaning i had to start again anyway so it felt like I wasted a week

This project was a love hate affair for me, i didn't really like any of my design work but i really enjoyed the later elements of the process. I absolutely loved modelling the character and texturing was also quite fun, unwrapping wasn't quite as enjoyable but it wasn't too bad. I feel that i kept the design simple enough to execute well but it didn't really fit the brief well enough, the characters i designed weren't dichotomous at all. I feel that the dichotomy element of this project was a silly addition and this project would of worked a lot better without it.

I feel most of this project turned out very well, the final outcome really shows that and i feel it is the best 3D work i have done so far. I will definitely be putting this piece in my portfolio, i feel it showcases a lot of the skills i have learnt since starting out in the first and when compared to my gladiator project the jump in quality is substantial. After finishing this project i feel really inspired and compelled to look in to doing more character work after the project finished. I really want to learn zBrush as it is essential for character artists in industry, I will maybe plan a project in the near future where i can learn zBrush whilst developing another character for my portfolio in the process.

Again, during this project the main issue i had was in the early stages of development, i had serious issues with the design process and trying to achieve what the brief set out to do. A big issue was communication, lots of people look at your work and all say different things and give different advice, I guess at the end of the day I learnt how to look at criticism, how to listen to it and select the important parts and do what feels best; a fair majority of the crit i received was in fact correct and very helpful.

All in all, I oddly enjoyed this trainwreck of a project, it was a complete mess from start to finish  but i really got a rush from it. The final outcome looked the part and matched the concept and i will totally be able to use it in my portfolio, i may even model the second character but for now i plan on enjoying my Christmas.

Week 10 Character final

This week started a in a rush however luckily, we were given a surprise extra week on this project. THANK GOD. I was getting incredibly stressed; the extra week will be the difference between my project being good or bad. Over the weekend i finalized the girls design and painted a final painting and also finished the base mesh, i also started the unwrap which i soon finished within the following day. Before i start texturing i really need to figure out my tonal values and colour schemes, of course i can do things like the face and hair etc but before i can really get in to the clothes i need to sit down and figure a few things out. I left it for now and moved on to the second character.

At this point i looked back at my secondary design , i decided at this point i didn’t have much more time to work in to it so i just settled on what i would turn the silhouette in to. I decided a bear would fit best, i know i could of done something more creative with it; which was a shame but i was just out of time. I eventually decided on a polar bear type character, i never really took it any further than that as i wanted the time to really get the first character mesh looking good. If i have any time left at the end i will definitely work in to it.

Now the only thing left to do before texturing is figure out a colour scheme that fits the character. To do so i put some basic values on to the albedo and took a couple screenshots to do some paint-overs with.  I eventually decided on a darker colour scheme sticking with blues and browns, during this process i sadly never really tried lots of variations. All the colours were quite similar. Again if i had time i would of spent more time on this section.

Towards the end of the week i started to rig her, this was the work experience of my game art life. Disclaimer, i have rigged a couple models before and like to think that i know what i am doing but this was a whole new level of horrible. For some reason 3DS max just crashed every few clicks, so to rig the character id have ro rig a bones worth of stuff saving every few clicks and then move the bone to test the rig; every time i let go of the gizmo max was guaranteed to crash. After hours of work i get a really rough rig working. I tried many things in an attempt to fix it but it was just something up with that max file in particular. I may revisit the rig when it comes to getting the piece ready for my portfolio. All i really have left to do now is texture the character to completion.

Week 9 - Character Artistic block

This week was a slow starter; the weekend was spent overcoming the artistic block mentioned in the previous post. But it was time well spent in terms of self reflection, i soon realised that the feedback given wasn’t so negative. I took most of what was said and re-evaluated my work against it, I soon realised how flawed the design was right through to the initial sketches.  I took a handful of the silhouettes from the start of the project and went in a different direction with them. Instead of focussing on what i wanted the final outcome to be, instead i looked at the shapes i was forming and how the shapes related to each other. I experimented quite a bit with this, not rushing in to anything, I soon settled on one of the characters designs I just had to come up with an interesting design to go with it.

The design of the second character was awkward, it took quite a while trudging through various silhouettes and finding something that matched the other character. Anything I came up with that fitted with the other character, was also in itself quite non-descript.  So when deciding on which design to further I really had to think about what the silhouette really was and how it functioned in the world.

To do so I did lots of research in to the way animals worked and their internals, I realised that the silhouettes I liked were all quite animal like and resembled bear or ape type animals. This proved difficult, no matter what I really did with the silhouette it always lost what made it interesting, its mysterious nature.  So I decided to leave it for a little while and work in to the design of the other character as I was quite certain that i would model that one. I started drawing over the top of the silhouette, the character soon turned in to quite a young girl in a large coat that filled the rest of the silhouette. I soon iterated on this and the character eventually started to change to a more Eskimo like design.  At this point I knew the character was going to be a young girl, so i started a base mesh in max. I started with the face; I used a slightly older face for reference with the intention of making it look younger and slightly stylized at a later date.  

There is not a lot of time left on this project and I’m quite worried about it, I need to finalize the design, finish the base mesh, unwrap the model, texture it and hopefully rig the model. So not too much, you know? 

Week 8 - dichotomy

This week marks the start of another project, the dichotomy project. I'm going to be honest with you, before this project I had no idea what dichotomy meant. By definition it means " a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different". So it's basically a fancy way of saying opposites.  We weren't given too many limitations, in fact none at all providing it can be justified, for example researching tri counts for various systems etc. I decided to forget this for now and jump straight in with designing and research.

I started the project the same way as the last, do some quick research on Pinterest and had a flick through some art books looking at character concepts. I was pretty sure after a few pins that I was going to do a sci-fi character, I've since realised this was the wrong thing to do but I'll talk about that a little later. I started by sketching, just basic doodling really, as I was quite rushed by the time frame we were given; our tutors were expecting a finished design in about three days. I soon settled on a basic design, a scifi girl and her robot. I tried to create dichotomy using shape, angles and size and obviously one is a robot and one isn't. I then went on to think about individual parts of the character, starting with the face and working my way down to the outfit and eventually the robot however I never really got around to designing the robot.

Towards the end of the week of the week we presented the work we had done so far on the project, having a presentation this early straight after the hand in of another project was incredibly stressful and requiring such a large list of work was a big ask. I feel if we were given a little more time to finalise our ideas we could have perhaps justified them a little more. The presentation went disastrously, I knew this the entire build up to the presentation. I figured my idea was quite weak but I didn't expect to be told to start again, I left the presentation more confused about the aim of the project than when I walked in. I wasn't the only one that felt this, I spoke to my peers and most of them were also told to restart.

After rethinking my approach and discussing the project with my tutors I began to think about the project again, I aim to start again from the very beginning and maybe grab some of the silhouettes from the previous attempt and work into them. One of the main things I was criticised for was having an image of what the character(s) will look like before I start designing them. So I will think about the general shape of the silhouettes. I will also avoid deciding on a genre for the characters and decide this later once I have an interesting pair of silhouettes.

In conclusion this has been an up and down week for me, it started positive by handing in a project and I was quite looking forward to the first character project. In all honesty I am feeling a little discouraged about it all however I am sure it will pass by next week and I'll be back at it again. I am surprised by how I'm  actually finding myself with more enthusiasm for characters in comparison to environments. If you would of asked me at the start of this course which I would prefer to do I would of said environments in a heartbeat.

Week 7 - sentry gun final

This marks the end of our second years first solo project and its been a fun one, I really had fun with this project, despite the design process being a little rocky, It was a nice introduction back to the design process. We were tasked with designing a sentry gun and placing it in to an Unreal Engine blueprint. I felt a little unsure about this project at the time as it had been a while since I've designed something. We only really did a handful of design projects last year and the work I did over the summer didn't really include much design work, i did a few design pieces but i never really took it to 3D, never mind to engine.

A focus for me for this project to really focus in on each key element and try and refine it, As I said I have never really taken something from scratch and carried it all the way through to game engine before so it was quite exciting but also a little scary as i had a lot to learn in a very short space of time. I feel I am really getting to grips with PBR as it seems to be coming natural now when i sit down to do some texturing so I aimed to really try and nail various material definitions. Working with tri budgets again was also a concern of mine as it was something we didn't have as much consideration for during the last project.

I feel the overall design of my sentry gun turned out well, however i am really not sure how as the initial design process really didn't click with me and I actually got to a point where I was completely stuck with my design. I did however find that i was being a little overcritical with the design, i got so fixated on the process that at no point did i ever sit back and look at my design objectively. The design was fine and with the time frame we had it totally ticked all of the boxes required by the brief. I then went on to model the turret, keeping in mind the tri count. The mesh i used in the end actually started out as a whitebox but after a day i soon reassessed my time frame and decided to start adding details etc. The next issue I encountered texel density of the unwrap, i had lots of separate parts  but actually found they all needed individual bits of the unwrap as it had lots of unique elements. I tried to prioritise but looking back on it I have found that maybe i should of just left a little more time to iron this out as it was too late by the time i noticed it.

I have heard along the grapevine that the next project is actually a character project so i am incredibly excited for that. After this project i really aim to work on the initial process and look at the designs i come up with a little more objectively. I will also leave a lot more time for the 3D side of things, I was really cutting it short during this project so i will plan my time a little better, i will spend more time on my unwrap and really focus on getting an even texel density on my UVs. Something else i will aim to do for my next project is try and really focus on making it a portfolio piece, portfolios are something i will need to start thinking about this year so the earlier the better i guess.

In conclusion, whilst this project didn't quite fulfil what I aimed for it wasn't a complete mess and turned out looking pretty good in the end. It will probably be a project I put in my portfolio if one of my future projects doesn't quite fit the bill or goes a little wrong. I am actually quite tempted to do this project again at the end of the year as it will be a good test as to what I learnt, I now that's a long way away but I am just thinking it would be an interesting experiment and would probably look considerably better.

I am really looking forward to another character project, i have been itching to get my teeth in to a good character project since the start of the project, its interesting seeing how i progressed over the past year. Originally i hated drawing people now its the only thing i want to draw. Well, lets see how i feel about it after an entire project of it

Week 6: Finally Making Progress

The week started out a little rough, I got a little stressed as i had still not really finalized my idea by the start of the week, I even tried adding parts in to the bash-kit. I actually, more or less, created a secondary kit and combined it with the first, this broadened my ideas and created some variation. This unfortunately took the first half of the week to put together, which meant i was running out of time. I had a week and a half to finalize the idea, white-box, model, texture and put it in to engine. By all means i think its achievable but ill have to cut back on some sections; as soon as I finalize the idea  wont have the time to alter it too much. I do however want to allocate a fair chunk of my time to texturing as i feel that the texturing will be key to selling the overall feel of my project.

 From here i put together a quick plan, I had found a few ideas i liked, but i wasn't 100% sure on them. I decided to iterate on these a little by adding and subtracting different elements and re-incorporating bits of the bash kit, i feel that this really improved my ideas and i really like a different element in three of the 4 i chose to iterate upon. So i quickly put all of these together and decided to go with this as my final design. I used this idea to create a very quick whitebox of the model, which i used to do a paintover to finalize the details of my design.

I feel the design as a whole was working quite well, it fit to the theme that has slowly developed over the project. Things that maybe need changing are the legs, I love the way it is wearing traditional Japanese footwear but I feel the base of the legs are too small. I. Think my favourite part is the gas tank on the back of the gun, however I have no idea how I could pull that off in texturing, I will have to try experimenting a little next week. I'm quite looking forward to the texturing phase, I just hope I'll have enough time to make it look good and model and unwrap it to a high enough standard too. The next week will be very stressful, I hope to have the model unwrapped by Monday , the mesh is mostly finished, just needs a few finishing touches. 

Week 5: First Solo 2nd Year Project

This week we started our third project of the year, it is the first solo project of the year and is the first design focused one too. We were tasked with designing a sentry gun and placing it in to an Unreal Engine blueprint. I feel a little unsure about this project at the moment, its been a while since I've had to design something like this. We only really did a handful of design projects last year and the work i did over the summer didn't really include much design work, i did a few design pieces but i never really took it to 3D, never mind to engine. So to start with i did a little research in to generating ideas, i decided to create a bashkit using images from a moodboard i put together. I put the moodboard together using pinterest taking influence from a variety of shapes and images.

To create the bashkit, i took parts of my moodboard and also looked for extra parts on pinterest just to mix it up a little. I started by painting over the images, i found this to be a very dull lengthy process that didn't give great results. I then tried putting a threshold layer over the image making it just black and white, the result was a little grainy  but i quite like the detail it captured from the image; with a little tinkering i could make it work. I started to throw some stuff together from a large sheet of different parts, i tried to make each bash as varied as possible but i struggled a little with this. I think towards the start of the next week i will try and add some parts to the kit in the hope to create more variation.

So for next week i will continue to play around with the bash kit and then probably take a few of the best ones and experiment with a few different parts and variations etc. I really want to start modelling early next week too, so i will probably create a whitebox from the final bash idea once its chosen. I will then paint over this white-box with any details to help finalize my design.

I feel this week hasn't quite gone to plan, I spent a large portion of the week figuring out how to tackle this project. I struggled quite a bit with this project and i feel i could of done a lot more in terms of planning and gathering inspiration. There were too many ways to go with this and i should of specified where i was going with the project a lot earlier on in the process. Next time we do a project with a similar nature i will really try and work on this.

Week 4 - group project post mortem

This was the final week for the film room project, we had to have everything done and ready to present by the Thursday. I plan to offer a brief breakdown of the project and also discuss how well I think it went, how we worked together as a team and how we could potentially improve the project if we were to attempt it a second time.

Overall I feel that the project was quite the success, our final outcome was good and relatively accurate but I do however feel that the project could definitely be improved on. Firstly I'd say that planning was essential for this project, we had a very small window of time to get this done and we really needed to maximise that time. I unfortunately left the planning phase until a little after we had started which meant we were a little behind to begin with, I started planning after the concept stage  which was a little foolish. Even once I had put the plan in to motion I soon realised that making sure the whole team followed it was a difficult task. Another thing I would have done differently was start putting everything in to engine a lot sooner as setting up the camera, positioning everything and lighting the scene were very time consuming and meant I slightly ran out of time when trying to improve textures. The main problem I had with texturing was the very back wall of the tent, much like the tent the material allowed a lot of light to pass through the material. However the material was very different, it was much thinner than the tent and the light pierced through it differently which was difficult to replicate in Unreal Engine 4. If i had followed the planning we put together then we would of had enough time to really work on this back wall material as we had allotted the last 3 days for problem fixing but instead this time was spent putting everything in to engine. Also i think our team work flow could of been a little better, maybe identified each of the team members strengths and weaknesses and plan accordingly and alter who does what.

The team worked well, just like any team we had our hiccups but we overcame them. For the next group project i would really try to plan a lot sooner and also get a lot more input from my team mates on the planning as i found there was a lot of back and fourth over this which wasn't too productive. We seemed to really be able to work under pressure when needed and supported each other when help was needed. All in all i would happily work with my team again, now we have worked together once, we understand each others strengths and weaknesses and feel a lot more confident around each other.

If i was to do this project again i would of done a fair few things differently. (as you probably guessed) I would of planned a lot more and put the plan together a lot sooner and next time ill really make sure everyone is following it and is on the same page. I would put a little more time in to the budgeting of the project, whilst it wasn't so relevant for the this project in particular; we were a little over our budget (which was rectified). I think next time ill try not to learn so many bits of new software at the same time, i used zBrush, xNormal and volunteered to put everything in to engine for the team. Whilst all this was incredibly useful and i learnt a lot it got quite stressful at times.

Here is the finished outcome, I really feel we have captured the scenes atmosphere and mood; whilst it may not be prefect and 100% accurate to the scene, I am proud of our groups effort and have enjoyed working with me team mates. As for the next project, we were briefly told bout it during Mike Kelly's class, we will be designing and modelling a sentry gun to then put in to engine with the intention of animating them. This is our first truly open design brief so I am quite looking forward to it, it is also our first solo project of year 2 so I aim to take everything I have learnt from the group projects and really try to apply it to my own work. I've also made a start on my personal project this week, I've started assembling various mood boards to gather inspiration from etc; I'll go in to a little more detail on this during next weeks post.   

Week 3 - zBrush is not my friend

The second week of the film room project just flew by, i cant really believe how fast the the past couple weeks have gone. Working in a group really does make certain aspects of 3D a lot more enjoyable, don't get me wrong i do enjoy 3D its just great to have support when something goes really wrong or to show you new ways to do something in max a lot faster. I managed to get everything done i wanted to do last week which means we have a detailed plan and i more or less finished the tent base mesh. The goals this week are to unwrap the tent which shouldn't take longer than half a day and then take the mesh into zBrush which i have budgeted a couple days for as i have never really properly used it before. Although the little i did use it before, it was unbelievably frustrating. Here is the plan along with a shot of the base mesh.

After unwraping the tent, which was rather painless (other than the window flap rolls!) i turbosmoothed it in max and then exported and imported in to zBrush. This was the first time i had really properly used zBrush and i was quite looking forward to it having done a lot of clay work during a-Level - i was so wrong. The interface is impossible to navigate and completely different from any other software we use, it crashes if you press undo too much, and is just generally glitchy. Some of it feels logical and it is really at its best when using a Cintiq screen but i eventually got the hang of it. After many rage-quits and table flips i finally got something looking half decent, i tried to mostly focus on how the tent would look from the angle you would see it in engine. So, whilst it didn't look right when looking straight at the walls it looked right from where the camera would sit.

I would of taken a better screen cap but zbrush would not co-operate with me 

Another plan this week was to experiment a little with material properties in unreal 4, as the tent material will be key to later lighting the object; as most of the light is coming from the exterior room.

So i did a little research and threw together a basic Albedo, roughness and Normal map and began experimenting with some of the material nodes in Unreal 4. I started by making the material a subsurface material, meaning light could pass through the object, the material started to better but it still wasn't quite what i had wanted. So i then tried turning the material emmisive which got rid of the horrible black shadows. I then tried combining the two and it was beginning to look quite a lot like the films tent, a little more work when it comes to the final textures and it should look good.

All that remains to be completed in the final week is the texturing of the tent, and also put everything in to engine. I say that like that's a small task, which it most definitely isn't but i'm still confident in my team getting everything finished by Monday next week so its ready to go in to engine. I do however fear that the lighting and angle is going to take some time to get right and i just hope we have budgeted enough time for the engine stuff. We also aim to make a physical model of the scene over the coming weekend which should be interesting as we can experiment a little with the lighting with that.

Week 2 – Group work

During this week and the last few days of the previous week we started a much longer group project.  In a group we have to replicate a scene from a film in Unreal 4, mostly looking at composition and lighting and capturing the atmosphere. We started by picking a handful of films each, we then compiled them and decided between us on which ones we all liked. Initially we settled on the final scene from Kill Bill, as it had lots of nice colours and lighting; but upon presenting this we were told to have another look for something. At first I was a little annoyed but I soon realised this was teaching us a lesson; not to go with your first idea and really push your ideas to end up with the best possible outcome. We have since decided on another film that we aim to re-present but I’m still keeping an eye out for that other possible scenes and I’ll stay less invested in this new scene until it’s given the get go.

Our first choice of film -  Kill Bill

The film we have (more or less) decided on is the Royal Tennenbaums, primarily focussing on the tent scene featured towards the end.  The scene itself is very vibrant, whilst looking at different film rooms we tried to focus on rooms that still looked bright and colour regardless of whether the characters were in the shot or not. We broke the scene down looking at values, colour and lighting; we looked at the lighting a lot actually as we knew that the main light sources were positioned outside the tent and the light came through the tent material. We also very quickly white boxed the scene using perspective match in 3DS Max, this was then passed around and we made any alterations as a group and eventually distributed the final version containing the correct proportions and scale. Concepting wasn’t too important for this project as we had all the reference we needed from the film shots but we did a little anyway just to make modelling a little faster.  We then started to model the assigned objects one by one.

Before the week is out i have a small list of things id like to get done before we start the main bulk of work next week. We have roughly divided scene up between us but we need to document this and assign budgets etc and a few object are outstanding. Some people have started but i aim to lay down a detailed plan with the team so we dont fall behind/dont leave enough time to really perfect the scene. I would also like to try and experiment a little with shaders inside unreal 4 as i feel the tent material will be important.

the screen shot we decided on from The Royal Tennenbaums

The project seems to be going quite well at the moment the team seem to working well together and are putting in the effort. I look forward to the next few weeks, I feel we have the real potential to produce something that looks really good. I am beginning to understand the group dynamic a lot more and aim to take more of a central role in the coming weeks, i have already offered to be in charge of putting everything in to unreal but i will see how the next week plays out.

Week 1 - New Year – New stuff

After a rather slow summer I have finally returned to university, it’s a welcome return. Whilst I may miss the freedom to do personal work, I’m looking forward to getting back at it and back in to a routine.  Since returning, the course has been completely overhauled; focussing a lot more around group work which obviously is a key skill in the games industry. After a week of working in a group I definitely feel considerably more confident with all the new software and new texturing methods.  For starters, we are all up to date software wise now, we are learning primarily Unreal Engine 4 along with PBR texturing (Which looks amazing); I’m hoping we are taught a little zBrush too this year, whilst I picked up the basics towards the end of summer there is still so much to learn (once you get your head around the navigation tools).

To ease us in to group work and to get us used to the basics of Unreal 4, we were given a simple scene to recreate in engine, it consisted of 7 objects where 1 person concepted, the next modelled and the next unwrapped and so on until the asset was completed and in engine; it was a basic introduction to Unreal 4. The scene was a Viking banquet; it was fairly low poly and wasn’t too demanding technically as we were given an empty room and a list of assets that needed to fill that room. I concepted the barrel, modelled the table, unwrapped the bench and textured the hog; I also gave feedback on the plate and mug and altered the textures on the shield. We all let one member of the team put together the final scene in engine, whilst this was the most simple way of doing it in such a short space of time I do feel that I could of learnt more if we all had contributed.

 As a test to myself and to also benefit the group, I actually decided to create an additional asset towards the very end of the first week, doing the entire process myself as we didn’t get a chance to do so during the group project as we worked on different things at all times. I feel the group work we have done in the first week has been incredibly helpful, along with learning about the new engines features I felt I could really explore the group dynamic.

I also plan to do a lot more personal work during term time this year, I’ll give a week or two before I properly start work on anything as I am unsure on the work load at the moment. I’m thinking of maybe concepting something (a mech for example and then take it all the way through to Unreal 4 mostly for my portfolio. All in all I’m pretty excited for the next project, Its film related so it sounds like my kind of thing and it’s another group project, this time a lot longer so I can really explore working as part of a team. I feel I could really play a much more central role when working as a team, it will be a major boost in terms of confidence and I feel it will benefit the quality of my work too – being that out of the loop team member that just does what is asked of him wasn’t particularly enjoyable during this project.

Innovation

Next gen has been around for a fair bit; I did watch the reveal conferences around a year back and was a little underwhelmed. Yeah the graphics looked great but the jump in visual quality was nowhere near as drastic as the PlaySation2 to PS3. This was probably made worse by the fact that I have been a PC gamer for around a year and was used to on par if not better graphics. Microsoft tried to innovate a little by adding multi-functionality to the Xbox One but gamers accused them of focussing more on that and ignoring their gaming audience. That doesn't mean the games industry is without innovation, from kick-starter’s Oculus Rift to Epics Unreal 4 Engine, lots of people are trying to further the games industry in different ways.

For example, The Astronauts, a small dev company are currently working with photogrammetry to create amazingly realistic game assets the likes of which we haven’t seen in games before. The idea behind it is you take hundreds of photographs of the object or building you wish to model and put it in to the software and it will generate a base mesh for you. Obviously it’s far from perfect and requires artists to go over it fixing any errors with the topology and texturing it. As you can see below the asset looks incredibly realistic and detailed.

By the looks of it, it’s not just taking a few photographs and you are done. There is a considerable amount of work put in to these, I mean just look at that UDK material flow chart(see below); looking at that as someone that has just picked up UDK is beyond confusing. But from the looks of the assets the whole process seems very much worth it. Each individual crack, crevice, the wear and tear  and the dirt look perfect on the finished rocks below; It looks so real mainly because it is so real, it’s taken from life.

The Oculus Rift is another innovative product that’s all the rage at the minute although it’s currently a bit of a controversial topic as it was originally a kick-starter product but was brought by Facebook so the company have more money to help develop the product. I was always a little wary of the Oculus, it seemed to be a good idea when I heard about it back in the day but the more I saw the worse it looked to me; like many other products (*cough*xboxKinect*cough*) the concept was good but the actual execution is a little lacking. Recently I attended the Gadget Show convention and I got to have a go on the Oculus Rift and as I expected It wasn't an enjoyable experience, I found myself feeling a little nauseous after just under 30 seconds of using it due to the lens’ used and it felt very uncomfortable ; at the end of the day  it’s a product that is very much in its early days, it feels like it wouldn't

really add anything to your gaming experience other than inconvenience and you look like a bit of a moron whilst wearing it.

Software used to create games is always updated with new features to ensure the production process is smooth and up to date with the latest game technologies. The Unreal 4 Engine is an example of this; in fact it’s currently updated every month. The subscription fee they offer is actually for the updates, if you cancel your subscription you can keep the software but you don’t get future updates. The first time I saw this engine I was amazed at how good it looked, I saw it again at the Gadget Show convention but last years. There was a competition on between 4 teams of university students to produce a game in so many days and the people at the convention would judge which is the best game and the winner received a license for Unreal 4 which wasn't released at the time. I'm not going to list the vast array of new features in Unreal 4 as there are just too many but I aim to pick it up over the summer as it is rather cheap and I will probably do a more in depth review of it then.

It is good to see companies try to do something new, even if it completely fails, the games industry will probably be better for it. I look forward to picking up The Vanishing of Ethan Carter made by The Astronauts just to see how they pull such realistic assets in to the game space and I also look forward to using Unreal 4 as it looks really powerful. I am still on the fence as to whether or not I get a next gen console mainly because the games aren’t really any different from last gen, they just have a slight graphical improvement. If I was to get one now however it would probably be the PS4 as it is more powerful meaning it has more potential.

References:

http://www.theastronauts.com/2014/03/visual-revolution-vanishing-ethan-carter/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogrammetry

http://www.theastronauts.com/#about-us

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculus_Rift

https://www.unrealengine.com/register

http://www.polygon.com/2014/4/24/5647550/unreal-engine-4-ps4-xbox-one-linux-steamos-support

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_7awHM-pr0

Progress so far

It’s been a while since I have done one of these posts, a fair bit has happened since the last; lots of work and lots of stress. I definitely feel like I have made major progress over the past 2 terms and I feel a lot more confident in most areas of the course, especially 3D at the moment I feel like I know the software a lot better and I have actually started to integrate some new software in to my workflow. I do wish I could say the same about putting my models in to UDK, I have had so many problems with it (mainly with light mapping) but I do feel like I have learnt a lot more about the software from these issues as I have fixed them.

After the last progress post, we started by doing lots of storyboard like sketches; just a few minutes per sketch. To begin with I was panicking a little with the quantity asked of us but when I got going with it I really enjoyed it and I am quite proud of the finals I produced for it. I think I could have improved this project by spending a little more time and perhaps doing a couple more finals as I feel some of my finals could have been better. Here is an example of some of the final pieces I produced for this project I'm really happy I managed to capture the scene/person accurately and in proportion but I feel I could have used the water colour a little more effectively.

We have also undergone multiple character projects, the first trying to design an interesting character based upon drawing from life, the latter involved a bit more Imagineering as it was a reef character based loosely on human form. It was nice to be able to implement techniques I have picked up along the course and use them as part of a design process; we also had to them sculpt the characters out of clay too. Here is the final design alongside the final sculpture, whilst the sculpture isn't the best and isn't as accurate as I would like it to be but I really enjoyed doing it; it was good to go back to something so traditional especially after 3D modelling.

We also recently did a project on portraiture, looking at the technical side of drawing a face, to put what we had learnt in to practice we were told to produce a self-portrait. I had done this a couple of times before, the last time I did was probably a couple years ago and it was absolutely terrible in comparison to now. I was never really any good with faces but now I feel like I could produce something similar to the subject.

Some of the more recent bits we have been doing have been about revisiting previously visited locations and drawing there again to show how we have progressed over the past year. The amount someone can progress over the small space of 6 months is incredible, I was really surprised at how confident I felt in drawing what I had struggled to draw before. As you can see below I have improved considerably, the image on the left was from around Christmas and was a re-do of the same piece from around a month before. I feel my rendering abilities along with my sense of scale have vastly improved however I still feel that I need to work on my texturing using pencil as it looks a little flat.

I can’t believe how quickly this year has flown by, it’s hard to believe I finish for good in around a months’ time. Before then we have another extra 2D and 3D project, the 2D one being a design project based around 1920s Chicago and a mystery 3D group which I should hopefully hear some details about on Monday. I am looking forward to a summer of furthering my skills and exploring some areas I perhaps don’t have time for in term time as well as catch up on a few games I haven’t had chance to play yet.

Personal History of gaming

Following on from my previous history of gaming posts I have decided to share a little of my own personal gaming history. I have mentioned some of this before in the previous posts but I thought it would be a good idea to elaborate on this, I will discuss how I got in to gaming, the games I like to play, games that inspire me and the future games and consoles I plan to buy; I will also mention some relevant gaming news articles that I find interesting and exciting.

The first game I owned!

I’ve mentioned the first few games I started playing as a kid in previous blog posts, I mostly played games on pc as it was all we had at the time and the occasional game of street fighter on my brothers Sega Mega Drive. However at the age of 5 I received a Gameboy Colour for my birthday along with Pokemon blue, this was my first proper introduction to video games and it was great. The next year we got a PlayStation 1 but it wasn’t until the PlayStation 2 era that I truly started to appreciate games as something more than just fun; Metal Gear Solid 2 was the turning point for me, after playing through it I didn’t understand the ending at all but after playing through it again and again I began to understand the meaning behind it. This game changed my outlook on games completely (partly why I am such a big fan of the series now) and made me much more analytical of the games I choose to play.

The next milestone was the jump to next gen, the Xbox 360. I was quite an early adopter of the console and the graphics at the time weren’t great, they were considerably better than the PS2 but the scale of the games was what surprised me. I remember playing the first Assassins creed game and being amazing at how detailed the buildings looked and how seamlessly you could climb them, in games in the past it was pretty obvious what was climbable. I’d probably say that Batman Arkham Asylum is my favourite game from this generation, mainly because they captured the visual style of the comic books really well yet kept it realistic and gritty.  I was always a little curious as to how games were made, I did a little research and tried to download Autodesk Maya years ago but struggled to get a free version and my computer at the time was awful so didn’t run it properly. So I decided to focus on my drawing in the hope that I could pick it later in life, I mainly looked at very stylized artists as I grew up reading comic books etc. but realised if I want to be a better artist I must start with realism.

 As of now my main gaming device is a gaming PC, so I have pretty much gone full circle back to PC. Mainly because of the increase in graphics and steam, since starting this university course I can no longer play console games without picking them apart; especially games that have a large scale like GTA5 or Red Dead Redemption. A friend of mine recently lent me his PS3, mainly to play Metal Gear Solid 4 as I never had a chance before; I also picked up The Last of Us as well to see what the hype was all about and I was very surprised at how well made it was and how much better it looks compared to equivalent Xbox titles.

In terms of next gen, I haven’t really seen the need to pick up a PS4 yet but I plan to when some more games come out. I do have my PC for anything like that and I need to catch up on the PS3 titles I have missed. I plan to lay off gaming a bit over summer and really get to grips with 3DS max and maybe an engine, I have wanted to do some higher poly stuff for a while now but I just haven’t had the time. I also aim to get a lot better at Photoshop for next year as well as keeping up on the drawing side of things.

Evolve from the creators of Left 4 Dead one of my favourite games

 In terms of games I am excited about that are coming out later this year, there aren’t really that many. Evolve is shaping up quite nicely and looks quite enjoyable, I actually had a go on this the other week at the gadget show convention and really enjoyed it. The other game this year I am really excited about is probably Batman Arkham Knight, it’s a series I have loved for a while and its back in the hands of the original developers; the visuals look jaw-dropping too. The only other game I am really looking forward to, is probably Metal Gear Solid 5 The Phantom Pain but that comes out next year so I will probably pick up a PS4 when that is released.

Batman Arkham Knight in-game Screenshot

Image reference:

http://media1.gameinformer.com/imagefeed/screenshots/Evolve/evolve_-_goliathvmarkov_fire.jpg

http://images.psu.com/index.php?size=img_full&src=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.psu.com%2Fmedia%2F14-03-05-12-18-35-3815%2F14-03-05-12-18-35-3815-ss-6.png

http://whatanerdgirlsays.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/pokemon_blue_cover_art_by_comunello76-d4xvjro.jpg

Game Art Conference Day

A few weeks back I attended a Game Art conference day, mainly focussing on our blog writing and the feedback we received on our blogs a week prior. We were recommended various classes to attend depending on how we were doing on our blogs, the day consisted of 4 sets of classes each quarter of the day had 3 classes and we could choose which to attend. I decided to go to Word art: using words creatively, shaping your writing, The tools of visual practice and using them in your critical writing and Practical strategies for getting on with it. These were all the ones that were suggested to me along with one I wanted to go to as it sounded interesting to me. I definitely feel like my blog writing could be improved a hell of a lot so I was quite looking forward to the day.

The first class I went to was word art, we worked in groups looking at alternative words we could use in our blog to help make it more interesting and help it to flow a little better. We analysed an image from a particular artist, using lots of descriptive words and our general feelings on the piece; we then went on to try and come up with a title as if we were writing about it for a blog post. Overall I found it to be quite useful, I know try to think a little about the words I am using and the general flow of my sentences however I would of perhaps gotten more out of this class if it was a little more focussed towards game art.

The second class I attended was about shaping your writing, the main focus of this class was to help focus your writing and to make sure we don’t ramble on about nothing as it can get a little dull for the reader.  We were tasked with creating a comic strip, it could be about absolutely anything we wanted but we were limited to only 5 panels so we had to be to the point. This was one of the more useful classes of the day as I feel I can ramble on a little in my writing, in the posts I have written since the conference day I have tried to focus my writing and feel I have done so much more successfully than before.

The third class I attended was about the tools of visual practice, I actually really enjoyed this class. It was lead by our usual visual design tutors so was very relevant to the course. The class consisted of developing creative writing skills to analyse images from games, concept art and movie stills, which eventually lead on to us describing a scene of our own for Mitch (one of the tutors) to take away and paint. Initially I was out of my comfort zone, I had never really done this before but I slowly got in to it and eventually got the hang of it; id probably say that the time we had felt quite rushed, i would of preferred a little more time to begin with. I also plan to create a piece of writing describing a scene and then try painting it in my free time.

The fourth class of the day was about practical strategies for getting on with it, I had actually seen this presentation before during employability week a good while ago. It was mainly focussing on time management and planning ahead, which I do struggle a little from time to time so it was a welcome reminder and I felt a little more inspired to go away and plan my time more effectively.

All in all the day was rather useful, I felt like I learnt a fair bit especially in the creative writing session and I look forward to painting from a piece of my own creative writing. As well as implement everything I learnt in to my blog I will plan my time each week to make sure I use my time efficiently.

The Free-To-Play Revoloution

Free to play

Free-to-play, a business model that is taking the games industry by storm, it’s been around for years but why only now has it become so popular? And why is it so successful?

The free to play model has become vastly popular in recent years, however it has been around for a lot longer than one may think. The earliest type of free to play games were mainly aimed at younger and more casual audiences, titles like Runescape and Neopets were around in the late 90s and offered most of the game for free but offered a premium subscription service unlocking extra content and game play elements.  For example in Runescape there are various areas that can only be explored if you are a premium subscription owner.

A major factor in the advancement of free to play games is the advent of mobile phone gaming, portable gaming used to just be on devices produced along side home consoles; they were clumsy, large and you could only really play games on them.  Now you can play them on your mobile phone which you carry around anyway, making it much more convenient. In the early days of mobile gaming, games were often sold as free but after a couple levels you would hit a wall where you cannot continue without “buying a new game”. Nowadays you are faced with in game transaction allowing you to buy extra content get past levels you are stuck on or speeding up certain aspects of the game to continue playing rather than wait a few more hours; this is usually done with in-game currency which can be purchased. This is now the standard model for free to play, depending on how the developers implement it, some are a little more subtle while others are accused of being a pay-to-win game.

An example of the sort of items you can buy in the game DOTA 2

One of the more unique free to play games on the market at the moment is DOTA 2, a free MOBA game made by valve; recently featured in a documentary by valve. This game is more or less completely free, all items you can purchase are simply for aesthetic purposes and the XP boosters don’t add much unless you are good at the game. However steam will put popular player made items on sale through the steam workshop. One of the major pluses for valve is that to play the game you will need to install their online digital distribution software Steam, increasing the chances of sales on other games that are often on offer.

The free to play model on one hand is really good for the consumer as well as the developer, the consumer gets the game for free and the developer gets the game in front of lots of people. Sounds good right? On the other hand, it can be a bit of a pain for the gamer. Whilst you do get to play a game for free, there are a number of problems you can encounter with F2P games such as in game adverts or you might not get the whole game unless if you pay up. That said, many gamers have become used to owning physical copies games and having everything there instead of having to pay to unlock everything.  Therefore, some consumers may get angry. I feel that free to play games are definitely here to stay but I consider them to be a bit of a temporary fix for the economical issues the games industry is struggling through, unless game developers innovate the business model it will fade away and become something we just see in mobile games.

References:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6552/the_design_of_freetoplay_games_.php

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134959/the_design_of_freetoplay_games_.php?print=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-to-play

http://www.runescape.com/members_benefits

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/trials-frontier-and-the-dangers-of-free-to-play/1100-6419069/

http://www.pcgamer.com/uk/2012/06/01/dota-2-free-to-play-store/

http://blog.dota2.com/2014/02/free-to-play-coming-soon/

http://crackberry.com/talk-mobile/can-mobile-gaming-kill-consoles

http://www.geekazine.com/news/games-news/free-to-play-model-popular/

http://www.e-clubthailand.com/image/wallet/Dota-2-Store.jpg

http://s.pro-gmedia.com/videogamer/media/images/pub/large/free.jpg

History of Gaming Part 3 - 2000 - Present

The long awaited third instalment of gaming history, this post will cover the history of gaming from 2000 up to now. I will try and keep it relatively condensed; obviously there is a lot to cover as this is the period where gaming becomes a lot more mainstream and popular. This is also the period where I started to really get in to gaming as it was when I grew up so I actually owned a lot of these consoles and had great experiences with them; if I didn’t pick up these consoles and get in to gaming I probably wouldn’t be at university studying game design. The industry advances in leaps and bounds in the years to come, three generations of consoles, massive advances in technology mean for much better graphics and the online revolution really kick-starts with help from Xbox live, PSN and Steam.

The first step towards modern day gaming was the release of the PlayStation 2 in early 2000, this showed a massive leap in graphics compared to the PlayStation 1. The console was home to many great titles that many consider to be classics; games like Shadow of the Colossus, Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, Jak & Daxter, Grand Theft Auto 3 and Kingdom Hearts etc. When Sony officially discontinued the PlayStation 2 in January of 2013, over 5 years later than the game cube and 4 years later than the original Xbox. For over a decade, the console has proven itself a reliable entertainment device and an affordable bridge into gaming for people who couldn’t afford newer consoles and models. As of March 2012, the console has sold over 155 million units. It’s a machine that was home to experimental games, pure titles released for all manner of niche gamer and it bridged many age groups.

A year later Microsoft and Nintendo announce their new consoles within days of each other, Xbox pushing more towards power and Nintendo pushing more towards new forms of interactive gaming. This is also the same year that Sega announces they will no longer be releasing hardware and will instead focus on software due to its Dreamcast failing to sell well due to the PlayStation and PlayStation 2.

This decade of gaming also saw the release of the current generation of consoles, well not quite current as next gen has been available for a couple months now but in my opinion that will only become current gen when the Xbox 360 and ps3 become obsolete. 2005 saw the release of the Xbox 360 a whole year before the PS3 and the WII which gave it a massive head start against its opposition however it also means the technology in the PS3 was considerably more powerful.  However the Xbox did considerably better in the early years mainly due to the PS3s price which was a lot more than the Xbox; Sony combatted this by offering free online play and a cheaper optional subscription service that gave you so many games a month for free. These consoles again brought us many fantastic games that defined the decade, Grand Theft Auto 4 and 5, The Last of Us, the Halo series, Heavy Rain and many more.

PC gaming has also come a long way, especially toward the latter half of the 00s; this was mainly because of the advent of steam. It was first unveiled at GDC 2002 and when it launched a year later, it was far from the popular sales system that we know it as today. In fact, it was first released as a digital distribution surface whose main purpose was to distribute patches and updates to online games. However steam did get better with age and have slowly snowballed in to the go to online distributer for pc gamers, selling triple A and indie titles alongside each other and making pc modding a breeze with Steam workshop steam has soared in to popularity among many.

As of last year we saw the arrival of the next generation of consoles, the Playstation 4 and the oddly named Xbox One. The consoles have been out for around half a year now and have fluctuated a little bit but with the PlayStation 4 coming out just on top on sales. This is mainly due to it being cheaper and the odd announcement of the Xbox One putting off some of Xbox’s fans. They announced there console at a standalone event just before E3 but focussed on the consoles non-gaming functionality and saying that they will get rid of second hand games. They have however pulled a 180 turn on the second hand games due to fans creating a fuss about it and them not getting enough pre-orders in the first few days. I suppose only time will tell who will come out on top, I know Xbox has better games coming this year in comparison to the PS4 however I can see the Xbox struggling unless the price drops.

References:

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/gamestimeline4.html

http://www.lazygamer.net/general-news/a-brief-history-of-the-playstation-2/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_(sixth_generation)

http://www.lazygamer.net/general-news/a-brief-history-of-the-playstation-3/

http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/consoles/ten-years-of-xbox-a-brief-history-1040866

http://www.wired.com/2013/06/xbox-one-drm/

http://whatisplaystation4.com/the-history-of-playstation/

Images:

http://media.officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk/files/2013/01/PS2-best-sellers.jpg

http://cloud4.steampowered.com/ugc/506952434831402553/30F9E5053DA7D6C3A8FB854CFB60D1BDAB27AFFE/

http://fmobserver.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/xbox-meme-3.jpg