Looking for Work!

So this week I've been reorganizing, rerendering, and realizing (that I have to find a job soon). Since I graduated last week with by bachelors in Game Art the next step is looking for work. That means creating a portfolio. Now I have dabbled with creating one previously but never really made one to my liking. This time is different and I am finally getting something I like. In fact I'm pretty happy with the layout as of right now and I don't have a problem posting it to the world. But keep in mind as of this post it is a work in progress.

My Portfolio

I don't have everything in there just yet. I still have a couple of texture and material images to post and I have one more prop to add. I'm debating right now whether to add another environment or two as well. I have four completed environments (and a couple uncompleted ones) that I have posted on this blog previously but I kind of want to push forward and finally work on the Dark Souls Library that I posted last time. I also need to post my resume but I can't quite get the formatting I want yet so it's kind of half there. Since all the images I was going to post are now on my folio, the only thing that is semi new is the sculpt I'm working on for the aforementioned Dark Soul environment.

Subway and new environment

So this week I made some, what looks like, minor changes to my Subway environment. I added a lot of grim and dirt to the walls via decals, changed up the lighting, added in a little more trash, and fixed up some of the the pipe meshes I had in there. Oh and I adjusted the arches to better match the reference. All in all it looks like I haven't done much at first glance but it took a fair bit of time to complete.

Here are a few images of what I have at the moment:

I'm liking the lighting I have in there but there is still a couple more things I wan to do before I call this complete.

The last couple of days I have actually been working on a completely different environment. It's been swirling around in my head for a little while but yesterday I decided to go ahead and start on it. This my have to be put on the back burner for a little while after this week but I'm happy with the progress I have so far.

This is inspired by an area in Dark Souls II. It's a library deep inside a dungeon. I thought it was such a cool little area but I think I can improve upon it with some updated visuals and a little of my own artistic interpretation. Here are a few images and a gif. Next time I'll have something in engine but for now all these are just from Maya.

The reason that I might have to put this on hold next week is because I'll actually be working on my second environment for school. I graduate on November 24th so maybe if I get a lot done I can post some updates

Subway Environment Update

This is my progress on the subway environment for Week 2 of the Game Portfolio class.

Over the last two weeks I've pretty much remodeled the entire scene to make it a lot easier to edit. I knew that I would have to make changes as I progressed but the way I did it originally made it very difficult to do so. From the viewers standpoint you can't actually tell but I'm glad I took the time to do so.

Here are my current renders of my UE4 scene:

Again I still have a good bit of work ahead of my of refining the scene. I'm very happy with some of the assets but other things I have yet to figure out how to make them just right. For instance I wanted to add a bit of trash lying around to look like it's been visited by people. From a distance all you can really see are some dark lumps on the ground; and that's only if you look real close.

Here's what they look like inside of Maya:

In order to get a crumpled look I used Maya's nCloth simulation for my four pieces of trash. I basically just took a tessellated plane and dropped it on a misshapen sphere (hidden in GIF below) and let it play. Once done I reduced the poly count to get it to look right I applied the texture and viola; trash!

Of course I still need to figure out how to make them a little more visible in my scene. Lighting, I'm sure will play a large part in this.

The other thing I worked pretty hard on were my plaques. I used Zbrush to sculpt some of the more intricate details like the human figures. They aren't 100% accurate but I really just wanted to get the feel of them rather than spend days getting it perfect. But in the end they are pretty close to my reference images:

Since I have probably 95% (if not all) of the meshes and textures completed, this week will be focused on getting the lighting and post process stuff looking correct. I'm sure my instructor will also have some critiques for me to implement as well.

Victorian Dining Room Blockout

For this week I worked on my Montreal Victorian Dining Room. Again we had to make a blockout for this week setting us up for our final month of class. So far I've made some decent progress but just like my previous environment there is a LOT of work involved. I tried to focus a lot more on replicating my original concpet as closely as possible. Of course that is very difficult to do; especially with using a game engine like UE4. This is my main beauty shot. 

The biggest issue to me is getting the right focal length of the camera. I'm having a quite a time getting it exactly right. Comparing my shot with the concept the scale of the objects looks funny due to this reason. I'm also having trouble with my lighting. Technically I shouldn't worry too much about lighting right now but getting it as close as possible now is going to make it easier in the long run.

Here are couple different shots from other angles. I didn't really flesh out the rest of the room; I was focused on that one angle. Later down the road I can finish up the rest.

Yesterday I pretty much finished up all my architectural details but the props you see laying about were missing. So today I made couple. Here's a marmoset render of some of the props I did today. They were textured in Substance Painter for the most part with some touch ups in Photoshop. None of the them are totally finished yet but it's as far as I wanted to take it for blockout purposes.

Subway Blockout

For the past week I've been working on my blockout for my Subway scene that I will start next month. Right now I've only got the meshes in there with all the materials and textures set up. That way when I start this scene next month I can start working on the finer details. I've put quite a lot of time in this but I keep finding issues as I work on it.

My biggest concern is scale and proportions right now. I see a couple of issues already like the arches on the left of the first image need to be a little less deep and a bit taller. Earlier I had the opposite issue and it seems that I went a little too far with it. But that's all part of the process I suppose. Tweak and tweak, and tweak some more. Also I messed up on the materials on the far back white wall. There is supposed to be a brick part on the bottom. Not sure how I missed that.

The second area isn't exactly part of my original concept but I did find some reference for it here:

This section is where the stairs lead to in the first image. I'm getting close but again there are still a few issues. I also must have accidentally scaled in my arch, you can actually see through it from this angle. Again not sure how I missed that. I'll fix it a bit later.

Next week I'll start working on that Montreal Victorian dining room and post that here.

GPR - Concepts for Finals classes

In Game Production class we are tasked with creating 2 different portfolio assets. We can choose pretty much anything we want to do so long as we have actual photo reference but it does need approval from the instructor. After some back and forth I chose two environments to create.

The first one is the long abandoned NYC Hall subway station. There a are bunch of images out there for it but I like this one for my concept:

The following images are the texture and asset breakdowns:

This seems like a decent amount of work but I can already see how I can work modularly with the arches and walls. I will need to rely heavily on a bunch of tiling textures for sure. I also need to be thinking how I'm going to light it with those windows. Might be tricky.

The next asset I will be creating won't be nearly as big but it looks far more detailed and has many more props to create. The following is my concept image.

This is a dining room of a 1920's Victorian style house in Montreal. Pretty much everything in the house is all oak. Unfortunately I can't find any higher resolution images for this room, but I do have other angles I can use. I will have to change out some of the props; namely the chandelier and clock due to not finding those exact models for reference. I have images for the reference I chose for the moment but I may change my mind on the clock once I get to it. I'll try and get close as possible to the style of each though. The next two images are my texture and asset breakdowns.

So seeing all the work I have set out for me I'll have a busy couple of months ahead. Next week we start our blockouts for the first project; I'll post updates then.

More Substances and Textures

Currently I'm working on a personal project that I don't want to reveal just yet. What I will show is what I've done for my current class. Last time I posted some substances but I wasn't quite finished with the assignment at the time. Here are a few more projects that I've completed since then:

This is the emissive substance that I talked about last time. Turned out pretty cool.

Week 2's assignment was to create three tiling textures, a rectangular texture, and a normal map from geometry. The two above were part of the tiling textures (the third being the brick from last post). The image below is a very generic Sci Fi texture atlas that could be used for many different things. Nothing too special.

This last image is what I spent the most amount of my time on. I took a design from an Aztec calendar and sculpted it in ZBrush. Technically the assignment was supposed to be something simple but I wanted to work on my composition and rendering for my presentation shots. I like how this turned out as well. I did add some moss and dirt to it in my most recent version but I seem to have deleted the image. Once I get down to putting this on my folio I'll have to re-render this.

For the past two weeks the assignments were more specific but nothing too impressive to show here. I had to create a couple of subdivision surface models in Maya for week 3, and create a vertex blended material for week 4. Maybe if I get a chance to re-render those images I'll post 'em here. If not then I'll probably start working on my actual portfolio (finally). 

As of right now I am three months away from graduating. That means I'm entering into my portfolio classes. Finally I'll get a chance to really work on stuff that I want to work on. I can't wait to get started.

Substances

I've been pretty busy last month with two different classes and not much to show for it. I had to do a lot regarding character sculpting so not much to show there. I did okay grade wise as usual but I'm not that proud of the work. This month I am tasked with a some assignments that are more in line with what I want to do. For the first week we have to create a number of shaders using pretty much any technique we want to. I figured this would be a perfect time to work on creating some procedural textures with Substance Designer. For the last week or so this is what I have come up with. All of these are only using what is available inside of SD5; basically all done with procedural math.

The brick one I did last week but the rest I completed in the last four days. I still have one more to go and it's due tomorrow. I have to create a shader that has an emissive glow to it. I think I will continue with another Subtance as a lava texture with rocks and ash. 

LVL and a new project

Here are the three images I turned in for LVL class in June. I'm not as happy about it as I would have liked. I don't think it's strong enough for a portfolio environment to be honest. Lots of stuff that I wish I could change but I think it turned out a lot nicer than my previous Sci-Fi level. I'm slightly temped to continue working on it but I think my time is probably best served in learning from my mistakes and trying something new.

The next image is of a tiling rock wall I did in about 2 days time. I wanted to create a game asset that could be used modularly. Overall I think it turned out nice but I would want to do another pass on textures if I ever put this on my portfolio.

This last image is the current project I'm working on. It's not for school but just an exercise in composition and quick level building. Not sure if I want to keep that alien in there or not. We'll see. But it definitely needs more stuff in it, right now it looks kind of bland.

Ugh....Seven Weeks...

So I fell off the band wagon for a while there. Over seven weeks and I haven't made a single post on this blog. As for my previous environment I was working on; I haven't touched it since then. Maybe that's why I haven't posted. Becoming an artist (and I feel like I can actually call myself that now) tends to put ones emotions and desires through some weird loops. It's strange but I find myself becoming very introspective and thinking about things that I imagine most people don't give much thought to. It inevitably leads my mind into thinking of a thousand ideas on what to create next and then I can't focus on what I'm doing at the moment.

Not posting for this long doesn't mean I'm not working. In fact it's just the opposite. I've been so consumed with working on things for the past month or so that I haven't given much thought to this blog. I haven't made any significant personal projects and so I've put all my time and effort into school. I received some high praise from my last class from my instructor (Texture Painting and Sculpting) which made me feel pretty good at the time. He gave me a grade which I don't feel I really deserved (99%). At first glace this might seem like a good thing. But I'm not in this school to get good grades; I don't give a damn about my GPA. All I want is to make awesome art. And I want my teachers to help with that. I don't get useful critiques from them; all they tend to tell me are some nice platitudes on how I'm doing 'well.' If I want good critiques I definitely have to seek them elsewhere.

Anyway here are a few things that I have been working on recently. The first two are hand painted scenes that I'm not too interested in (but they turned out nicer that I'd actually hoped for). But the last two are much more my style.


The idea for hand painted style is to paint every detail by hand without the use of photo overlays or fancy Photoshop tricks. I don't consider myself much of a painter or illustrator at all but I was quite pleased with the result. In the end it looked like I wanted it to. This won't go on my portfolio, buy hey...

For week 2 we were tasked with texturing a low poly cylinder and creating some sort of barrel. There were a few requirements (like types of materials, has to tell a story etc.) but I just kind of had fun with it. I made two even though we only needed to make 1.

For week three we had to sculpt and texture a wall and sidewalk. It might seem quite simple but I think this is something that would be actually used in a game. I sculpted this in Zbrush and baked it down to low poly planes. It hard to tell but I added a little displacement to the brick wall to give a little pop.

During week 4 we were given a high and low poly model of a Sci-Fi crate. We then had to (you guessed it) texture it. I again made two for this week. Rendered both in Marmoset. 

I have more images that I could post but I'll leave that until next time. I have a few things in the works at the moment. I'm redoing my entire website, working on a side project, and re-rendering a lot of my previous work. I'll post progress in the coming days.

Door and Dome

So the last few days I've been working on the door (and the window above it), ceiling, and overall efficiency for my level. I condensed many materials so that I now only have a handful to deal with and I've made many instances to use for my various textures masks. Essentially I'm streamlining my materials so that they can be changed easily on the fly. Today I took some time and created the normal for the dome in Substance Designer. It's not complete yet but I'm liking how it's turned out so far. I want to add some base color and roughness maps to it next and I might end up hand painting the battle scene at the bottom. Not sure yet. Right now it's just some image I grabbed off Google as a placeholder.

I received some feedback that previously my level was a little too dark, especially in the corners. At the time I couldn't find the settings to help increase it inside UE4. Now I've found several settings that can up it from various sources and I think it's actually a little too bright now. But I'm not too worried about all the lighting settings yet. I still have a LOT of work to do with just creating meshes/textures. If you look closely, some of the objects in the scene actually don't even have a material assigned to them.I'll keep plugging away...

A little over two weeks...

Here are a few progress shots on my environment. Since last time I've set up the master material to span the columns, floor, trim, steps, and I'm thinking about adding in the walls to make it easier to organize/cheaper on the draw calls. I've also added in some plant life to make it a little more believable as a livable space. Next I need to work on the door and redo my little railings. After that I want to finally start working on the main focal point of the inside of the building here. Not 100% sure how though, at least not yet. Once I'm satisfied with the inside, I'll start looking toward fixing up the balcony and then the landscape/ocean. 

I have a LOT to do still but I feel with just over two weeks in I have made some pretty decent progress. My workflow is a lot quicker and I'm able to iterate much better with the way I'm texturing. I only have one unique sculpt in the entire environment. Normally I would bake out my normals from HP scultps/models but I haven't had to that much with this geo. I'm just using more polys for edges and bevels.

I've also been using Substance Designer quite a bit recently. It has surely helped out with this environment. Baking maps has never been easier/quicker for me.

Sidetracked!

So I haven't posted in a few days mostly because I didn't have much to post. I was working just not on anything you can really see per se. I did make a few materials including a concrete, gold, and marble. They represent most of the colors I'm going for. The rest I have used masks with some fancy shader magic that I can now customize to my liking. I've also updated some of the geo in the scene. The biggest being the gold trim on the ground, the tiling mosaics on the wall, and the sun roof. I tend to work on one area for a while and move on. This keeps things fresh. It definitely helps when I'm trying to solve a problem and I get frustrated with whats happening. I just move on.

What I was really doing these past few days was texturing and fixing this robot for another project. I had a few geometry issues that needed to be changed for it to suit the animation but we're getting there. It's a shame though that I've spent a LOT of time building this thing but odds are likely that I won't ever put it on my portfolio. I looked at it as more of a learning opportunity though. Still not done but I'm hoping within the next month we'll have everything wrapped up.This image is actually almost a week old but the stuff that I have changed is slight, mostly just minor fixes to the shoulder and knee joint. I also added a jet pack to him but it's not textured yet.