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.

Alexandria II Day 4

Not much in the way of visual change here but I added a pattern to the walls and floor and I messed around with some lighting options. I think the overall brightness level is where I want it to be with the room but I need to refine the dome and perhaps some windows to give it some nice shadows on the ground. The sunlight is to contrasty with the floor; my bloom level might be too high right now. I tend to play around with the light settings too much at the beginning, I know that it will change dramatically down the road. I should start heading into ZBrush to make some sculpts of some of the detailed pieces. I also want to start adding in some materials to the floor, walls, and columns.

I did play around with making a marble material in Substance Designer today. I'm not fluent enough with the program yet to really get anything pretty but I'm getting there. Tomorrow I have to work on the robot for the school project so I don't know if I'll get to much of this stuff done by tomorrow but by Thursday I'll have something more to show.

Alexandria II WIP

Third day in and I have most of my blockmesh into the scene for the main building. I'm still going to focus fully on this main building until I have it polished to a point where I'm happy with it. The landscape/lighthouse/water/other buildings will come after. Getting everything lined up and fitting perfectly was kind of a pain since it's mind numbing monotonous work; especially the outside walls. I think there must be better ways to do it than what I'm currently doing. I might need to do some more research of modular workflows. Tomorrow I'll start working on some trim details or continue refining the meshes. Here are a few shots of my current progress.

Alexandria II

I'm working on a new environment project today. Well I started it yesterday but I forgot to post. It's inspired by the Alexandria set in the movie Alexander but with my own take on it. Here is my progress so far:

My goal for this project is to integrate some new texturing workflows I've been practicing involving substance designer. I'm trying to make this a very modular type environment where I can duplicate around assets to reuse pieces where I see fit. Some of my main goals:

Create landscape with a beach, hills, water (with animated waves and see foam)

Vegetation consistent with this type of geography.

Buildings that can be spread out along the landscape to make it look like people actually live here.

The main building itself is the focal point. I haven't quite decided on if it will be a personal living quarters or maybe a library of sort. We'll see.

A custom skybox that I can animate including a day/night cycle.

A lighthouse in the distance.

There are a few other things but my main focus right now is the building itself. I'm still in the blockout stages and everything is a bit rough right now. I'll try and post progress as often as possible. I know this project will take a while so I need to be diligent on working on it every day. Maybe I'll have something worth looking at in a month or two. I just need to take it a day at a time until it's finished.

Desert Rock Scene

I made a quick Unreal level with rocks and sand that took me about 3 days to build. I'm pretty happy with the results for the amount of time it took. I learned a lot in regards to materials; stuff that can help me immensely moving forward. The whole thing consists of a total of 9 meshes and 2 master materials (1 for the rocks and 1 for the sand). I probably could have done it with one material but I originally wanted to add more to the sand texture at one point. I had tried to use some vertex painting to add some smaller rocks but in the end it looked terrible so I scrapped it. Another thing I wanted to add was a prettier skybox. That would have been cool but it was outside of the scope of the project. I wanted to make a quick scene that looks decent and focusing on complex shader materials. Anyway, here it is...

New finished environments (sort of)

I've been working hard on two separate environments last month as I've stated previously in the Cambodian Temple and Sci Fi hallway. Here are the most up to date renders inside of UE4 for both levels. Neither of them are completely finished but they are as far as I could take them in the time allotted.

This is the Cambodian Temple level for ACG class. The goal was just to learn the basics of the Ureal Engine and how an environment artist would use it. I had some knowledge of the program already but actually using it for a class really made me dig into it. There are some things I like about it but a lot that I didn't. For one the foliage looks terrible. I'm not really a fan how my grass and leaf textures turned out. I'll have to practice some more on making alpha grass cards at some point. I was pretty proud of the water shader that I created. Or at least I would be if my floor wasn't so low poly. The floor tiles being so angled kind of makes the water falloff so sharp that it looks fake.

This Sci Fi Hallway turned pretty good in my opinion. I had to learn a lot about lighting with just emissives (glowy lights) and how that affects the whole environment. You can't see it in these images but I actually have some animated materials in there. A closeup of the console would showoff a hologram of the door that floats (and even spins!) The monitor even has scrolling text. And the green tubes have a flowing liquid inside. I probably learned more from this environment because there wasn't any guidance at all. I had to really do research on how to set everything up.

I'm still working on a student project this month with the robot I posted a while back. Right now I'm texturing it and will soon have it finished (more or less). Once I do complete my part of it I will be free to start working on some more personal projects again. I can't wait to get started. I have plenty of ideas that I want to implement. I could go back and finish the Obsidian Throne I was working on but I feel like I've learned so much since then that I want to implement some of my new found skills on something else.

New Stuff

I've been pretty busy lately but unfortunately haven't posted in a while. As of right now I haven't been working on my throne room at all. School has been crazy last month with Character Animation eating up most of my time. This month I actually have two different class and a student project that I'm modeling for. I'm stretched a bit thin right so I'm putting the throne room on hold for the time being. On the upside, both my new classes will allow me to start working on environment art. Finally, the fun stuff. Below is a few screens of what I've been doing recently...

This is a blockout for a Cambodian Temple environment that I'm making for ACG class (Art Creation for Games). We have to create an entire environment during the month inside of Unreal. Not much to see here yet. This was what I had to turn in for this week. The floor texture actually looks pretty decent when viewed closeup.

This is the wall I'm working on for the same class. Still not done with the sculpt yet. Once I do have this finished I will continue with texturing and then place it in my level. I'm also planning on making a second wall piece that will look a little different.

This is a robot that I'm modeling for the student project I mentioned. He has a head but right now I'm putting the finishing touches on it before I place it on. This has been pretty tricky to make, I'm not a character modeler by any means and I'm sure how it will turn out in the end. I just hope I don't let my team down. The goal is to composite this guy shooting a wall and kicking over a train in a short 8 second or so animation.

This last image is another Unreal environment I'm working on for my other class. I had pretty much free reign on what I could work on for this class so I choose to do a Sci Fi Hallway that would rely on modular geometry. Repeating the assets will help with time management in the end since I'm really busy with everything else. So far this too is just blockout geometry and many many more details will be added in soon enough. I'm excited to see where I take all these projects this month. I'm hoping I can make one of these at least good enough so that I can put it in my portfolio.

That reminds me; I have a portfolio now. There isn't much to look at but it's up and I'm happy with the layout right now. I realize I will need MANY more pieces before I will start looking for work but I'm glad I now have something. Link here:

mattsmithgameart.com