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.

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.