Finished Vehicle

 17/12/20 - Week 11

I am pleased with the final outcome and adding some visible damage to the vehicle helped a ton, but there are some things that definitely still have let me down about it.

This was my first time photobashing and there would definitely be a lot that I’d do differently next time, most of that being to just take my time to not get overwhelmed.

Design wise, I don’t think it’s particularly strong since some areas are still too busy and confusing, though the colour has definitely helped to clear some things up. As a concept I feel it has potential.

 I think it would have been more interesting if I’d thought more about what to include on board, more evidence of supplies rather than just random things.

Overall, there’s a lot I would change to make this piece much stronger, logical and interesting. However, for a first vehicle and photobashing attempt I think I can be proud of it in some aspects.

Chernobyl - Pripyat

 12/12/20 - Week 10

This piece was an incredibly tricky one to create, I struggle with colour on paper and I felt that struggle strongly here.

I first started by laying down a base sketch in pencil, I don’t think the composition and basic structure of the piece is too bad and I think if this piece ended up being more successful it would have looked interesting and definitely reflective of an apocalyptic scene. I chose to sketch on a light peach paper, I wanted to contrast this with the blues, reflective of the cold and abandoned nature of the scene.

After laying down some basic colour, I sort of realised how difficult this was going to be. I was using quite a small palette of hard pastilles and some charcoal to create this piece. The pastilles felt not very precise and I couldn’t quite capture the colours I wanted as obviously they weren’t going to be the same as the ones in the original image, this is something I’m not very good at coping with.

I started to lay down some more colour and added some more purple and reds to the scene to try to pull it together, this seemed to help a bit and make the piece feel a bit more cohesive. I started to struggle with the fact the pastilles weren’t able to produce intricate markings and this ended up making the piece rather clumsy and appear heavy handed. I’d perhaps try to bring in some coloured pencil next time as this might help me to place in these smaller details, unfortunately I didn’t have any with me at the time of drawing this.

To try to add some smaller details I brought in some chalk, it didn’t help the way I wanted it to as it would blend too much sometimes but it definitely helped to break up some areas such as the walls and the chairs. I found myself not too sure how to progress with the piece often at this stage as I couldn’t get the detail I wanted, especially in the background.

I feel I have left this piece still looking a bit unfinished, but I did try hard with it to get it to a standard that I am happy with even though working with these materials is difficult for me. I think if I could have figured out a way to take it further I would have been more pleased with it, but I felt that pastilles were quite limiting in the style I was going for.

Project Wrap Up

 11/12/20 - Week 10

This term, we set out to create a backyard slice. This project was quite difficult and I learnt a lot that was new to me. This set me back a lot and I feel if I were to do it again I could do it way more efficiently and things would probably have looked better as I would have had more time that way. 

I started off this project not knowing anything about Unreal, and I am quite pleased with the knowledge I have built up, I managed to even have time to include a small use of particle systems which is the fire in the fireplace. Last year when we were learning about particle systems I felt very overwhelmed by it and barely understood it. I now have a super basic understanding but I think I could use it to create more simplistic particles if I wanted to.

Another major thing I learnt was the workflow of low to high poly, though I don't think I understood it at first, I now have a pretty good understanding of it and if I were to do a project with this workflow again I think I would be able to implement it much better, this is the timesaver that I needed. I would constantly go back and forth between modelling, texturing and creating high poly versions of things. This meant I kept needing to unwrap my models and add smoothing groups, change textures etc. These are all simple things, but over time they add up and I lost time quite quickly.

Apart from the major time losses in this project, a couple things I failed to tackle correctly is the lighting and the plants. I found lighting super difficult and though I watched quite a few videos on lighting in unreal, I still couldn't make mine look realistic. I wanted to create a peaceful sunset scene that managed to still highlight all the assets in the scene. Though the lighting is fine for some assets, it doesn't capture others and makes some look dark and dull.

The foliage in the scene I mentioned in my previous post. If I'd have known how much more room I'd have left in the budget I would have made these plants much more detailed. I think they look ok, but they also don't look very complex or nice in some cases, though if anything, they do add a lot to the backyard and tie everything together. I'm happy with them in that sense.

As for things I feel I've done well, I am the most happy with my textures. I really enjoyed using designer in this project, since I learnt it for the summer project I found it easy to use. I also made a lot of the textures on my own accord and without any tutorials and I am quite proud of that even though my textures aren't particularly complex, apart from the chairs. I still think they work in the scene and I feel they look somewhat realistic and using painter to aid my designer basematerials helped to break them up and add more realism to them. 

Another thing I like about my project is probably the overall composition. To me, I feel like I have created the sort of style I wanted to. It's interesting and not too empty or too busy, and I like the industrial style a lot so I think its quite aesthetically pleasing. Obviously, good lighting and better plants could have aided the aesthetic of the piece.

Overall, there's a lot that went wrong with this project, but it was naturally only something I could see in retrospect since I was learning a lot of the core parts of this project as I was going along. If we are to use these skills any time soon I will definitely be able to lay out my workflow much better and hopefully create something that looks a bit more professional.

Choosing the Colour Palette

 09/12/20 - Week 10

To decide the colour palette for my vehicle I chose 4 images from my mood boards where I found the colour to be interesting or most interesting. They ended up being rather similar but I think this was probably the best way to do it as I ended up being quite surprised with which palette I chose. 

I used overlay and also the gradient tool to put some quick colour onto the vehicle. I haven't used this method very often as I don't usually work from greyscale to colour but I ended up being pleasantly surprised with how it looked. I think my favourite is the last one as the colour is not too saturated but also has the pops of colour that I wanted on my vehicle, I think its important to keep the grungy effect of the apocalyptic world. This colour palette also seems to clear up areas that I was a bit worried about and make it easier to read, with the correct areas standing out.

Foliage

07/12/20 - Week 10

Foliage ended up being a little bit strange, I was planning on using the method that was put on blackboard, which included actually modelling the foliage in max then baking and texturing in substance painter. I tried this method and it was really difficult and time consuming. I struggled most with trying to texture it since I am quite quick at texturing man made objects in painter, I am not at all familiar with texturing anything organic.

I then looked at the stylised chaparral environment by Marie Lazar provided in week 8's resources and found this really helpful, though in the end I don't think my plants look all that good. I decided to do it the way she did, through planes and hand drawing the textures. This really helped as I am much stronger at hand drawing organic textures. I was quite unaware of how many tris all my foliage would take up so I went for a really basic structure, if I'd known I would have had such a big tri budget left over, I would have tried to make my plants more high poly and model each leaf/layer instead of having them in a bulk like I did. I think it has brought the quality of the foliage down a lot, but adding the foliage into my scene has definitely helped it so much to look full and complete.

Photobashing

 06/12/20 - Week 9

For the past couple weeks I have been slowly working away at photobashing, I am quite happy with the outcome but I can definitely see areas where things went wrong.

I started with getting some of the major elements onto the vehicle. I think things had already started to go wrong here as I was rushing too much and not putting enough detail and care into each element I was placing down, eventually I had to come back and edit each piece again to get it to the standard I wanted which I think really slowed me down in this process. If I could have sorted out lighting and neatening things up as I went then I think the process could have been much smoother and coherent. I usually jump around when I am painting so I think I was doing this naturally here but I have learnt that it's not the best idea and if I were going to do this again then I think the outcome would have looked much better.

Next, I added some more things to the piece. Things started to get a bit confusing here, I am not sure if it was because I was adding to much at once or it is just because the design itself isn't strong enough - most likely a combination of both. Everything wasn't reading to the eye easily and I couldn't make things out myself even if I tried to add highlights and adjust the values. I was also struggling to align some things to my grid for some reason, I think this is probably down to the fact I should have been spending longer on each item as things being slightly off was probably making other things look incorrect too.

I tried to salvage this piece by removing some things and readjusting others, and I think it worked a little bit, the scoop on the front and the first half of the vehicle was looking a lot clearer and adhering to the perspective. After doing this, I added more detail and also all of the clutter I wanted onto the vehicle. This really helped it to feel more alive. I also looked at the silhouette and made some adjustments to the design, adding things in places that I didn't have originally planned, to help with the shape.

I still don't feel this is particularly a strong piece though I am hoping adding some colour will help to bring it together. At this point I feel the grayscale isn't helping me as much as I do work better digitally in colour, so hopefully it will make more sense to me and I can improve the realism and overall aesthetic of the vehicle.

Jack The Ripper Environment

 04/12/20 - Week 9

I am quite happy with this piece. The practice pieces from last week definitely really helped me with the outcome of this one since they led me a lot stylistically.

The composition is interesting I think, though its not particularly complex which is perhaps an issue, but I didn't want to take from the intricacy of the building itself, and I felt adding more would maybe over complicate the piece.

This piece took me quite a while as I wanted to try to make it quite accurate, or at least enough that it wouldn't throw the piece off. There is definitely places here and there, such as the windows, that don't align with the correct horizon points but looking at it right now things don't pop out to me too badly. I first laid a base with pencil to try to avoid any mistakes, obviously one of the cons of using pen is the fact you cant rub it out so any mistakes that happened in this piece have just been integrated.

I worked through the piece trying to make sure nothing was squished in or left out and tried to add as much detail as I could, though I was struggling a bit with getting some of the very fine detail I since the pen I was using was perhaps too thick, or one line in the wrong place wouldn't leave room for detail in that area. The worst area for this is probably the two front pillars as they had some details on them that I couldn't really make out and I tried to fill in without thinking, unfortunately.

After adding all the detail in the places I wanted it, I then added in the shadow on the walls. I am not sure if having detail here would have benefited the piece since I feel the scale has sort of make the style I liked so much from the practice pieces a bit less effective. I still think I like it like this though I am not sure if others would agree so much. I also added some shading to the sky in pencil as I thought it would act as a frame to the whole piece. This was a good idea and I really like how this looks and I feel it brings out the building itself much more than if it were to match the colour of the page.

Overall, this was challenging but fun and I liked the payoff of seeing all the detail come together to form this grand building. There's definitely some things I'd change, such as adding the lamppost and the pavement below as I think it really takes from the piece, but pen isn't very forgiving.

Substance Painter

 01/12/20 - Week 9

I have been working my way through each asset and baking and texturing each one. Substance is definitely a long process, but I am not finding it too difficult on the texturing side. The use of baking the high poly is being really problematic and it feels like no matter how much I try to move all the sliders around, I cant get a good bake. I tried to adjust the actual assets themselves and make them smaller/bigger depending on the issue. This seemed to help and I found that the smaller the model was in comparison to the high poly, the better the bake would be. This still caused some issues though, the hardest was the bin as it seemed to bake the details on the corners wavy instead of straight, I did try to research how to bake better but I think the fact that I misunderstood how low to high poly workflow works in the first place made my job a lot harder.

Here is the bin I made in the end, I am quite happy with it, though you can see the high poly baking hasn't really worked on the corners too well. I am still unsure as to why this is, but I don't think it takes away from the finished product too much.