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 I knew that I would have to make changes as I progressed but the way I did it originally made it very difficult to do so.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.