3D Class Week 015 Creating An Environment Part 04 Final Polish and Lighting

Week 015 Creating An Environment Part 04 Final Polish and Lighting

  Now it come time for the final installment of our journey through Semester 1 of 3D. Rounding out the second half of this week, I took the feedback I'd received in filling out the base of my scene with my rocks, making my lava move, and creating a mesh particle system to make flowers fall from the branches. As a bonus triumph for me personally, I figured out how to make the scene turn in a blueprint for video capture.

 I'm super proud of what I've accomplished this semester, and I can't wait to continue to learn more.

 Without further ado, my Cherry Blossom Tree

2D Class Week 015 - Round 06 Audio and Final Polish

Round 06 Audio and Final Polish

   Nothing too crazy on this final week. Just added some background music and tweaked and polished the scene a bit :)

3D Class Week 015 Creating An Environment Part 03 Texturing and Setting everything up in UE4

Week 015 Creating An Environment Part 03 Texturing and Setting everything up in UE4

   Heyoooooo so we were tasked with the nigh impossible to bust out as much as we could this week. I aimed to complete as much as I could, falling short on nailing my lighting pass. Oh whale.

Starting off, I created a tileable lava texture in Substance Designer

Next up, I hopped into Substance Painter and textured all my rocks and then my tree

I then hopped into UE4 and began laying out my scene. I bounced back and forth between texturing and setting up my meshes, so here's the end result I came up with, before materials were applied

Finally, as mentioned above, I bounced between setting up my scene and texturing. When my textures were complete, I brought in the maps and created materials for each mesh. With further tweaking, and some basic lighting (to be refined later on), this was the end result:

2D Class Week 014 - Round 05 Effects and Atmosphere

Round 05 Effects and Atmosphere

   For this penultimate week of our project, we turned our focus to amplifying the atmosphere of our scene and creating effects to make our scene come to life. First off, I added in UE4's dust mote particle system to give ambiance to the scene, and then played around in the settings of the Post Processing Volume. As a team, we discussed the possibility in implementing a homage to Moebius' style in use of gradients, and doing so in the shadows and midtones. The color scheme we chose was a purple to blue for the temple, and doing so immediately made the scene pop

Before Post Processing Volume:

After Post Processing Volume:

After that, I tackled creating my own fire particle system. Creating a custom system, as opposed to what UE4 has built in with the starter content, is inexpensive and, well, customizable. After conferring with our Project Lead, Zack, I went with a reddish to purple fire to further the mood and atmosphere of the scene, and added the effect to all the sconces in the room

Finally, I utilized the dust motes particle system that comes with UE4's starter content, which totally gave the scene a greater sense of atmosphere :)

3D Class Week 014 Creating An Environment Part 02 Vegetation and Low Poly Resurfacing

Creating An Environment Part 02 Vegetation and Low Poly Resurfacing

   Continuing on the Environment project, I started off by refining the sculpt on my tree. I thinned out the ends, and thickened the trunk, and also adjusted it's distribution of weight so it was more realistic in be able to hold its weight in such a precarious position

Switching over to Photoshop, I composited my vegetation assets for the branches, flowers, and grass for my scene

Once I completed my vegetation sheet, I switched over to Maya to cut out the planes I'll be using to emulate the vegetation in the scene

Finally, I retopoed the high poly sculpt of my scene and made a low poly version

3D Class Week 013 Creating An Environment Part 01 References, Proxies, and a Rock Set

Creating An Environment Part 01 References, Proxies, and a Rock Set

  Kicking off a new project, we've been tasked with creating an environment, with it's main focus being a hero asset tree. We began with gathering our reference images, and I was drawn to the concept of doing a Japanese cherry blossom tree. Not long in my search of references, I was greatly inspired by a the image in the lower left of my reference sheet. Using that, I gathered additional images to aid me in crafting my vision

From there, I went into Maya and roughed out a proxy, laying out the larger forms in the scene

I exported the assets to ZBrush, where I then made a more refined pass at the scene I want to create

Finally, we were tasked with creating a rock set for our scene. Since I'd like my terrain to emulate cool-over lava, I made some lava rocks, as shown in my reference sheet, specifically on the top left

2D Class Week 012 - Concepts Round 04 Proxy Refinement and Concept Finalization

Concepts Round 04 Proxy Refinement and Concept Finalization

  So this week I focused on getting medium and small detail into my 2D concepts of my column

Then, I went to work in refinement for our 3D VR scene. I modified parts of the room, such as creating alcoves, decorative wall pieces, banners, crystal bushels, and a frieze. Furthermore, I blocked out rough iterations of Prometheus' weapons to be displayed on the altar. In addition, I messed with the lighting and created artificial god rays using a masked cylindrical mesh and a material. Finally, I adjusted the pose of Prometheus to give her a shackled look.

3D Class Week 012 - Texturing and Exporting to UE4

Texturing and Exporting to UE4

   Wrapping up the final installment of this project, I jumped into Substance Painter and baked my sculpt information into my Game Res model. Once that was good to go, I got to texturing. Once I finished, I exported my textures and brought my Game Res model into UE4 and set up my textures. Without further ado, here is the culmination of my work for this Deer concept :)

2D Class Week 011 - Concepts Round 03 Color

Concepts Round 03 Color

   Continuing on the Prometheus train, this week we focused on color and nailing our final designs. The chosen column we decided to go with was Column 3, and using a color palette made by our Team Lead Zack, I made several color variants of the column utilizing the Moebius art style

From there, as a team we addressed the concerns and critiques offered last week, and after determining what to improve, I went in and made adjustments to our VR proxy scene. Changes include altering the shape of the temple by widening the main area, and also adjusting the scale of the robots, Prometheus, and Zeus. I also moved the crystals to the ceiling and rose how high the crystal tomb was from the ground, making it out of reach. In addition, I modeled a proxy platform staircase that the altar would rest upon, and modeled a rough version of the columns. Finally, I posed the characters and swapped out materials for potentially better alternatives

3D Class Week 011 - GameRes Model and UVs

GameRes Model and UVs

   This week the focus was on taking my super High Poly sculpt of the Deer and bringing it into Maya to "retopologize" to form a low poly model over top of it

The end result is to have a model of lower resolution and technically fidelity, but can be put into a game engine without someone chanting, "CHUG CHUG CHUG."

Once I had my Low Poly Deer all set to go, I went over into Substance Painter and imported my newly crafted LP Deer, and then baked the sculpting details using my High Poly as the base for the beginnings of my texturing process. Then I threw on a base color and added a little oomph to the Ambient Occlusion to pop the shadow information existing in the model