Collab Project 2-Day 39

Our last day before the christmas holidays. I have two jobs for the holiday period and I know that my version of Maya at home isn't compateble with colleges, so not much work may be done. We shall have to see.
Unlike with the previous break, I may not include the next two weeks in the project day count.

Collab Project 2- Day 36

I tried to create some normal maps for the bed, door and candle, but I wasn't happy with how they turned out so I left them for now.

Collab Project 2-Day 35

Altered the new candles flame with help from Simon.

Once that was done I sorted out the UV's for the bed and textured it.

Collab Project 2- Day 32

Decided to redo the candle as I felt it was too angular. This increased the poly-count of the object, but if the candle is too angular it wouldn't look right, so when modeling game res models, you have to balance appearance with poly-count. This is why normal maps are quite usefull.

Also on a spur of the moment I quickly made a single page. This can be used through out the map just as added details and to perhaps show wind blowing. It's simply a single plane, with a texture with an alpha applied to it.

Collabe Project 2- Day 31

Started to make a basic bed. The school our game is set in is a bording school so the upper floor will have sleep areas. There will be two kinds of beds: a simple one for the kids, and a grand four-poster for the teachers.

 

Collab Project 2- Day 30

Revamped the door. Gave it over to Jack as one of the main components needed to create the level.

Collab Project 2- Day 29

Deiced to go and re-do the tables texutre, so I acctualy has one rather than just a flat colour.

Collab Project 2- Day 25

It took all day, but look it it!

DEM UV'S!

Collab Project 2- Day 23

Started to work on a bench.

Like the table, making the bench was quite easy, however sorting out the UV's is going to be a bother again.

Seriously, what is that meant to be!

Collab Project 2- Day 22

Having got some good UV's for the table done on Friday, today I tarted to detail it in ZBrush. Using a slash brush, similar to the one I used to create the hair in the previous project, I tried to create a wood grain effect on the table.

Plank used for reference

The ZBrush process

One I had finished I asked Simon to help me with creating the normal map to apply to the basic mesh in Maya, having never done it before.

After some slight confusion with the normal map (turned out it was upside down) I applied it to the table alond with giving the material a brown colour. I may decide to create a full texture for it later, but I think it looks quite good already.

Maya render of the finished table

Uing the normal map on a model helps give the appearence of detail, but acts like a texture and doesn't add the the models poly-count. This puts less strain on the game engine and it can run faster and smoother.

Collab Project 2- Day 19

Spent all for today sorting out the tables UV's. End result:

Collab Project 2- Day 18

 Made the baisic shape for a table, but even with this, the UV's are awkward.

We also decided, that if we had time to add credits to the end of our game, this is the song we want to play.

Black Veil Brides - In The End

Collab Project 2- Day 16

I got to use the Wacom Cintiq again to day so finished of making more pictures for the walls. Some are drawn from crayon and some are out of blood. These are all the images I've made over the last two days.

Drawings in blood. They are slightly worrying, but they're meant to be.

Drawings in crayon. They transition into blood as the game progresses

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Collab Project 2- Day 15

Got to use the new Wacom Cintiq today. Admittedly, I got a little distracted by the fact I was using it and was trying out different things to start with.

After I was done being distracted, we had decided we wanted some drawings to place on our levels walls, in a similar style to Left 4 Dead, to try and tell a story in our level.

YELLOW WEEK (Days 8 to 12)

This week is yellow week so I'll be doing different stuff as apposed to project work. I've been given a report to write which is part of some of our core units, so I'll be focusing on that and trying to get it done.

Collab Project 2-Day 5

 Started to sketch out some idea for items to use in the level.

Collab Project 2- Day 4

Having done some research and discusions time to start some sketching of ideas.

A couple of drawings of a possible ghost

Some screenshots and development drawing of the ghost 'D' from Another Code: Two Memories

We wondered about having a ghost in the game. If the game is set in a school, then it be haunted by the spirit of a student.

During our research into schools from the tudor times, we found that rich children would pay to have a "whipping boy", a child who would be given the punishment if they got in touble. Back in tudor times kids were still beat with canes for misbeaving, so this gave us and idea for the ghost.

The ghost could be the spirit of a whipping boy, who was beaten to death and wants revenge on the school.

Collab Project 2- Day 2

After getting down some ideas yesterday, it's time more some research!

MOOD BOARDS!

This mood board is completely made of screen shots for the game Amnesia: The Dark Decent

This mood board has images of old and derelict buildings, along with photos and screen shots of writing on walls from the game Left 4 Dead and blood splatters

Collab Project 2- Day 1

After I had finished up the previous project, I started work on our second project, which we were introduced to on Friday. The project is another group collaboration between art students and design students, like the induction project, but with a smaller group. Because of the ratio of designers to artists each group should have one designer with two to three artists.

Because I was at the other campus with Jack for the introduction to the project on Friday, we agreed to work together, along with Aaron. Jack is out designer while me and Aaron are the artists.

Talking to Aaron via the IBM smartcloud, we quickly decided that we wanted to create an Amnesia styled horror game.

 

These are a bunch of scans of the ideas we came up with together.

We debated of where to set the game, when Drew told us that he personaly found things more scary when he found them more relateble. This led us to seting our game in a school.

We them had to decide on what time period to set the game in. We wondered a bit over victorian, but weren't able to find much info on it. After having a look online we settled on the Tudor period.

Art Project 1- Day 43 FINAL DAY

The project deadline was last Friday, however, I was not at my campus for it. I had been asked to atend a different campus of my collage to represenst the games dev department along with another memeber of my class. Because we were away, the two of us were permited to finish and hand in our work today.

I simply wanted to render out my finished head, but before I did, Simon showed me how to polypaint in ZBrush.I added a little colour to my modle, then rendered it out to submit.

Art Project 1- Day 36

Today I decied to make a start on my characters hair. A quick google search brought up this guide: LINK I followed the first 9 steps of this guide which left me with this:

First attempt at creating hair, with the mask still applied

Either later today or tomorrow, I'll remove the mask and start to feather out the edges of the hair so it doesn't look like melted wax.

Art Project 1- Day 33

I continued to work some more on the ear region of the head, following Simon's example.

Until now I'd mainly been using the Standard brush for ZBrush. Once I'd watched Simon doing some modeling though, I started to experiment with the other brushes available. The Clay Tubes brush is nice to build up areas slightly. I find that this brush smooths out very nicely to blend in the existing model.

While creating the ear, I used the Inflate brush quite a bit. It's very good to increase the volume of certain ares and if using the Zsub variety of the brush, it can create smooth indents.

The example Simon made, which I was using for reference

My head

Compared to where I was last Friday, I'm very happy with the improvement with my work.

Art Project 1-Day 32

I started to try detailing the ear on my ZBrush head. The ear is a difficult thing to scuplt and after the first half of today I asked Simon for more help. He demonstrated to me how he starts to develop the ear, along with editing other parts of my models face.

Art Project 1- Day 30

Went back into ZBrush today. I wanted to work on the eyes and eye area, so I asked Simon for advice.

I needed to sink the eyes a little further into the face for the eye sockets, along with raising out the cheek bones to define the faces shape better. Previously the cheeks were very flat and smooth. I added in a shpere to show the placement of the eyeball and see if it fits properly within the head.

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Progress made on and around the eyes

Art Project 1- Day 29

Returned from half term today. Having had to start again on ZBrush I didn't feel like working in the program again. Plus, not being able to to work on my clay bust during the week off, I felt I needed to work on it more.

The whole day was spent layering on strands of hair on my characters head. It was a very long process but I liked the effect. I wasn't able to finish the hair and we've ran out of Magi Sculpt, so I'll go back to working in ZBrush for the next few days.

Art Project 1-Day 26

It's currently half term and I won't deny that I've been having a bit of a relax and chill out. However, when I did sit down to do some work today, there was something wrong with the ZBrush file of my model and it would load. I'm glad I made the base mesh in Maya, for that was still working and I was able to start from there again, rather than staring from scratch.

By working on it throughout the week I achived something that, while wasn't amazing, at least has some form of detailing started on it.

Back to the begining

Art Project 1- Day 19

Today I acctualy diverted my attention away from my project work to tackle my personal staement for my UCAS application. I find writing quite hard so I was stuck for quite a while. Midway through the day I left to talk to a visitor fron Worchester Uni, who was visiting the college to offer advise for personal statements.

I continued to work on it a little more after that, then decied it was time to update the blog again, becuase I'm bad a remembering to stay up to date with this.

Art Project 1- Day 18

Workedon my phisical bust today. I spent most of today working the ears. Ears are quite a complex shape and quite tricky to draw and modle.
Also, I keep forgeting to take photos.

Art Project 1- Day 16

I opted to work on the bust again today. I had done the base for the shoulders, but they seemed a little thin, I buled them out more and shaped them. I tried to make a start on adding the hair, but it was going beadly and I ended up removing the fresh clay on her head.

Art Project 1- Day 15

Imported the finished maya head into ZBrush to start the sculpting. I just started to work on the details of the face; the shape of the lips, adding in eyeballs and shaping some eyelids around them. Tried working the ears aswell, but they're very difficult.

I forgot to take screenshots and now the file's gone! D:

Art Project 1- Day 12

Some of us continued working on our clay sculpts today, me included. The Magi Sculpt had been alowed to cure over night, so it was time to put in some elbow grease and start to sand the base smooth. After that I carved out the eye sockets more deeply and placed in some eye balls, followed by layering over some eyelids. After that I started to bulk in the shoulders.

Art Project 1- Day 11

Today we started work and creating a physical bust of of character, made of Magi Sculpt.

Magi Sculpt is a type of epoxy clay which is made of two type of clay. You mix these two clays together which causes a reacation, making the clay gently warm and start to cure. It takes roughly two hours for the clay to cure, at which point it becomes rock hard and you are able to carve and sand it.

Art Project 1- Day 9

I continued working on the head model I started yesterday in Maya. I kept making tweaks following Simon's advice, then mirrored the model over to make it symmetrical. This head is now finished and is ready to be imported into ZBrush for me to sculpt with. Simon reminds me that if I ever to to change it, can always bring the model back into Maya from ZBrush to edit it.

Art Project 1- Day 8

Simon tallked us through the topology of the face so I went into to Maya to start modleing a head following his example.

Art Project 1- Day 5

I spend all of today having a play in ZBrush. I continued using Z-spheres to create a basic armature, but this time I added in some image references of a female to give me a better idea of how it should look. After I had finished with the Z-spheres I created an adaptive skin for the model, then started to shape it a little better. I haven't quite finished shaping, but the end result of the day was this:

Art Project 1- Day 4

I started today by looking for some reference images to start from. I found a good one of a female in the pose I need for modelling and a ref of a head. Simon recommended that i don't use this head for reference though, as even very good modellers can have small flaws in their models.

Female anatomy reference

3D head model

I'm planing on taking the full body reference and drawing over the design of my character so the proportions are right and then using a photo image for the head.

After the break, Simon went through some of the baisics of ZBrush with us. In the last half hour of the lesson I played around with some Z-Spheres to create a rough image of a human.

Art Project 1- Day 2

I started today by having a look at using SmartCloud, which I'll porobably use a lot in the future. Using this site I can share work and idea with my class mates and teachers, along with video conferencing when I'm not at college.

After I'd finished looking at that I finished of a drawing of Ali that I had started yesterday.

I then looked at starting to use ZBrush. I looked at www.digitaltutors.com and thier viedos on A beginners guide to ZBrush.

Art Project 1- Day 1

This is our first full project, which will be lasting 6 weeks. The art students with be creating a physical bust of a character, along with a model in ZBrush. We can use our characters designs from our previous project if we want. I quite like my design so I'll probably keep it the same, though I may look at changing it in little ways.

Final Design from previous project

 

Orthographic from previous project

I could change the style of Ali's hair in some way.I had a look at some different styles online, then drew out some ideas on paper.

Hair Style Research

Hair ideas

Division

The class has now been split in two. One part will spend the rest of the course focusing on concept art, 3D modeling and physical sculptures etc. These are classed as studying the Art side of things. The other part of the class is focusing on looking at game engines and game mechanics, this is being classed as the Design part of things.

I'll be studying the Art side of the course.

Induction Project- Evaluation

WIP

Induction Project- Day 19 FINAL DAY

For this last day I came in a little early so we could get the est few things finished. I attached the last arm to Ali, so she's now done. I had hoped to paint her, but there isn't any time for that now. Now all the info had been settled on I finished of the last of the character cards. A couple don't have images, but there's no time now.

FIRST GROUP IN

Our first play through went well. The group manged to beat the boss and win the game. Their feedback was good; they said they enjoyed it.

We saw that it was difficult to keep track of the players health with out anything to right on so some score sheets were made for players to keep track on on. In the break between groups I mounted the card down so they weren't just paper, which took longer than I thought, as I had to wait for the glue to dry.
Coughing fit.

SECOND GROUP IN

More coughing fits. Missed most of what was happening. Colds suck.

Induction Project- Day 18

Still no super glue! Instead, me and Laura started to mod-rock over the wire mesh we had made on the board. Once we had done, there wasn't much of the day left so I tried to put one of the arms on my moulding it together with some green stuff. I seemed to work alright.

Induction Project- Day 16

I wanted to finish attaching the arms to Ali today, but we had no super glue. Instead me and Laura continued to work on the game board. We cut out some wire mesh which we'll be using to create some mountains to edge the board.  It took a while to get the positioning right (and I totally didn't cut myself while trimming the wire)

Indution Project- Day 15

I've been working on details on the arms and head of the figure. I snipped of the wire loop that I had left exposed when the head should be. Using a little green stuff I made a thin neck. The toothpick I had molded the head on had left a hole underneath, which I could easily slot over the neck, which I then smoothed together.

To finish off me and Laura started to paint our game board. We created the effect of the terrain my dabbing shades of brown and green over a charcoal base. Then using some blue shades we made a small pond on the board too.

Induction Project- Day 12

All of today was spent continuing my figure. Yesterday I got the basic form of the body and legs done, so I covered those with thin layers of green stuff, which I molded to look like her jeans and top and boots.

While I waited for that to cure for a while, I started creating her head. It was slightly smaller than the one I had done before, but I feel it turned out alright. Once the main head had hardened slightly I added on some thing strips of clay for hair and left that to cure.

I switched back to the body, to which I added the belt going round her body. Having gone on break, the head had cured a little so I adding in Ali's goggles, then added another layer of hair.

Lastly I started to work on her arms. These were modeled separately from the body. It was tricky to work out how they should be placed, but I could see where they should go by positioning the wire armature in the right places.

I left the four separate pieces to fully cure of the weekend. I'm hoping to get the figure done by Monday, but if not Tuesday at the latest, so I can focus in the other elements of the project.

Induction Project- Day 11

Today we started work on developing our figures of our characters. Though I'm happy with the picture of Ali I produced the other day, it's not the pose I have chosen for the figure. I thought her just standing wouldn't be that interesting. So inspired by the photos I took of myself posing, I'm modelling Ali crouched down on to one knee, pulling out a tool from a toolbox. I may vary from the picture a little by having her looking up, to show she is in the process of doing something and her face can be seen.

I got the basic form of her body and legs done. Her head and arms are meant to be added later.

Induction Project- Day 9

Pretty much all of today was spend working on a finished picture of Ali. This will be used in our game document for her profile and on her stat card. The image on the card will mostly like just be of her head and shoulders, so the card can be keep small.

Ali the Engineer

Induction Project- Day 8

Again we started today with presenting what we had done so far, this time in our groups. Once that had finished we sat down to continuing work on the project.

Spend a while working on things for this blog, such as (finaly) get the photos of the first sulpting try up and the photos of me posing edited.

For the game guide we're making for the game we each had a bio to write for our characters, fromt hier point of view. While writing mine I decided on a name for my character: Ali, short for Alice.
Ali's Bio

Induction Project- Day 5

Today started with a talk about game play dynamics and character archetypes.

Differentiating characters in a game allows for player choice. Giving people a choice allows for player investment e.g. A favorite champion in LoL, a favorite class in TF2, their main WoW character. People become attached to their characters and it makes them want to continue playing the game. Also, by giving different characters strengths and weaknesses, you encourage collaborative play between players.

In game play terms, an archetype is a common character seen often in games. These often appear as classes, of which there is generally four kinds; Damage Soaker (Tank), Damage Dealer, Healer and Utility (Support). Balancing the classes ensures variety and that there is no "I win" button. Like in a game of rock, paper, scissors, everything should be strong against something and weak against something.

After that we moved on to forming groups and started work on creating our games and the mechanics for them.We started by deciding to have a stat system for each of our characters. Looking at our designs we decided which character archetype would be suitable. In the end we had a damage soaker, two damage dealers, a healer and a utility which was my character.

The stats for each of the characters are;
HP: Health
Attack: Damage dealt
Defense: Damage received is reduced by this %
Speed: Turn order- fastest goes first
Range: How far away a character can attack from
Skill Point: Needed to used abilities

Inspired by Skylanders, a game which in itself uses figures, I suggested the idea of having stat cards for our characters so that people don't have to remember all the stats of the top of their heads.

We added abilities to each of the characters. They have passive abilities which constantly happen and active abilities which require the player to activate them and which use up the characters skill points (mana). The damage dealers and the damage soaker don't have many skill points in comparison to the healer and the utility. The healer and the utility also have an extra ability.

I finished with going up with designs for the cards. I looked at cards from Pokemon TCG, WoW TCG, Top Trumps and Magic the Gathering for ideas.

Induction Project- Day 4

Today we had our first look at sculpting. This was the first time I had modeled using a type of putty (Play doh when you're 4 doesn't count!) so I eager to give it a try.

We have two types of material available:
Epoxy Putty: After two hours a reaction occurs making the putty slightly warm.. After two more hours the putty becomes rock solid and is sand-able and carve-able.

Green Stuff: Consists of yellow and blue strips which need to be kneaded together. Very sticky and becomes firm over time.

All sorts of tools can be used when modeling: Scalpels, cocktail stick spatulas etc.

We created three things; a bed roll, a bag pack and a head.

For my first time modeling I'm quite happy with how they all looked. With some more practice I hope I will be able to create a good figure of my character.