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Sunday, December 11, 2016

3D Class Week 16 Creating An Environment Part 04 (Vegetation)

For our final week working on the environment project, our assignment was to add vegetation

I first found three different images of vegetation to use and masked them out in photoshop. Then I took them to maya where I applied them as textures to planes, vertex painted them, and refined their shape


Then I brought them into UE4, created a material and material instances for them which included wind movement, and painted them on the terrain



I also went back and reworked some things for the level on top of the foliage. Other than redoing the colors of the sky, rocks, and sand texture, I also redid the textures for my sun and clouds to reflect a more realistic theme


I also went into World Machine and created a procedural landmass to put in the background of my scene


I baked the hi and low res meshes and textured it in Substance Painter before importing it into UE4


Finally, I removed the brick texture path and instead added a rock path made of geometry instead of texture

And here is the final environment





Saturday, December 10, 2016

2D Figure Drawing

For our final 2D grade we had to choose our best three figure drawings. I decided to take my best three from figure drawing class and redo them digitally for a cleaner and more polished look

These were all originally drawn with pencil and paper and then taken into Paint Tool Sai to redo the linework and shading and to add color




Tuesday, December 6, 2016

2D Class Week 15

To continue with our work on our 2D project, this week I had the task of taking the witch's throne and making it bigger and "grander".


Here is a before and after image. Beyond making the size larger, I added larger, bramble-like decorations and spread our the armrests.


We also wanted the witch to have a cauldron near the center of her scene, so I created that.


I also went back to the arches once more to make them larger, thicken the bases, and work on removing the hard edges


Then I took the layout from last week and added example images to it for evaluation of the template design.


Monday, December 5, 2016

3D Class Week 15 Creating An Environment Part 03 Skydomes

Continuing with working on our environment, this week we had to make custom sky spheres, dynamic materials that included moving clouds and a dynamic sun, and turn it into a blueprint for easy use.

I wanted to make a sunset desert scene with a sort of vector-looking sun and stars just starting to become visible.

I started in Maya by creating my sphere mesh, a ring for my clouds, and then half a sphere for the stars I wanted to add


In photoshop, I created several textures: four different types of clouds, a sun, a starry sky, a cloud render texture to be used for uv distortion, and a sky sphere background that I ultimately scrapped.



In unreal, I put together the meshes and textures to create materials and the sky sphere

Sky sphere material with custom sun and changeable gradient

Cloud ring material for moving clouds with uv distortion, changeable colors

Material for low opacity, moving stars

Here is the material instance for my sky sphere and the material instance for one of my four cloud rings

Then I turned my sky sphere into a blueprint

On top of the sky sphere, I began changing the colors of preexisting elements of my environment for better color harmonies. I went into photoshop and played with the levels to make two of my terrain textures a better fit.
I also played with the colors of my rocks



And here are the final results of everything combined




Before and after comparison shot


Here is a small video to show the sky sphere in action

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

2D Class Week 14 Concept Round 04 (Final Color)

This week, I pushed on with the concepts for the Witch. Last week we decided on design number 3, so this week I took that design and redrew it with three different color palette concepts


Then I took the notes we received about our template for our concept sheets and redid the design.

I removed the monkey silhouettes and instead created a scene with tombstones in the foreground, and a hill and pathway, the witch's castle, and the moon in the background. I also cut off the border at the top to make room for two skulls and the page title.


In addition, I took the arches I created and made them thicker

Monday, November 28, 2016

3D Class Week 14 Creating An Environment Part 02

For our continued focus on environment art, this time our task was to create an environment within UE4 using the landscape tool. We first had to model and texture a set of rocks, then create a terrain in UE4, paint the terrain with at least three textures, and arrange everything together as an environment.

For my environment, I wanted to create something like a hidden cave oasis in the middle of a desert

First I sculpted the rocks. I decided to try and work without Maya this time, so I sculpted, retopologized, and UVed within ZBrush

Somewhat ironically, I had to use Maya to line up the low and hi res versions of the rocks

Then I went to Substance to texture them

And here are the rocks in Unreal

Next was the process of creating the terrain, applying textures, and arranging the rocks. Here is my material for the landscape:
For my landscape, I used four textures total. My brick and my stone texture from last week, fransico's rocky dirt texture, and Matt's sandy texture

Overview:

Outside view:



Inside the cave view:

For the cave, I added a transparent plane for water and I added a few lights to help illuminate the area 




Bonus: To get the full effect of the environment, I captured a short video

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

2D Class Week 12 Concept Round (Value Pass 02)

For this week with the VR Oz project, we continued to iterate on our levels as always. Along with that, our assignments were to continue with the character and environment concepts with another value pass.


For my part, I did the new concepts for the witch



Along with that, I also redid the layout for our team's template pages



Then for the 3D Scene, I created new arches for inside the castle along with some sconces for set dressing