Production Week 3
Week Ending 29th March
We're now on our 3rd week of production. Due to Covid-19 the college has moved to remote working completely. We've had to figure out a way of keeping our project going and after a couple of failed attempts we now have a working perforce server to keep the project going!
Viktor - Art Director & Environment Artist
We had a very busy and productive week with our project ad I'm happy to see such progress.
At the beginning of the week, we had some help from Gregorio, a student from another team at Escape studios, who had a solution on how to run our perforce server efficiently and non-stop which ws a life saver. We still couldn't get any access to school PCs or network through any connection over the internet and without decent version management and collaboration options, I was very concerned about getting the project done. A huge thanks to him and his help, without it our team and progress would've suffered a lot.
Our own little perforce server was set up by late Monday evening and on Tuesday I've spent most of the day making sure everyone can access the required files, I've set up some users and some restrictions on perforce so we don't upload/download unnecessary files.
Once that's out of the way, I've uploaded my 1st pass architecture assets to the scene so the lighting and set dressing can start.
I've spent some time setting up a slice mask workflow through substance painter, but it's not finished fully yet as I need to test a material setup in UE4.
On Thursday our tutors gave feedback on our work and progress which was very helpful and welcomed, as they advised to get rid of a smaller storage room because of time constraints and just focus on the foliage and bright sunlight. Also we were missing half the created assets that we've been working on, so we started populating the environment.
I personally worked on our hero statue which involved photogrammetry and then clean up, retopo the mesh to be usable in game. The original statue can be found in the V&A Museum, London, which I was lucky enough to have taken pictures of before the nation wide lockdown.
Hannah - Foliage & Prop Artist
Another full week of official lock-down and working remotely with the team. I'm really happy with my progress this week as it's been a huge learning experience with speedtree. As my olive tree is mainly for the vista I didn't need to go into this much detail but I was enjoying the process of learning speedtree and now I am quite confident moving around it's interface and prepping the file for export including light maps and wind! (The wind still needs testing!)
You can see my first hard attempt of my tree below followed by the final result with nice smooth transitions from trunk to branch. Also me figuring out lightmaps in speedtree.
Taking a break from speedtree I finished texturing my terracotta pots and even added a glazed version. The glaze is based of some traditional Spanish style decorating of the time with simple hand painted patterns. This really helps bring a pop of colour and roughness variation to the scene!
Finally I also started the orange tree which up until this point was still in a block out phase. I've reached a second pass now but this still needs a lot of work but I have managed to create this very quickly now after my experience with the olive tree! I'm looking forward to how all this foliage turns out!
Josef - Prop & Environment Artist
The second week of our remote work went well, the scene is starting to develop more and is improving. I made a few edits to the bust sculpt (WIP) and took Urim's fountain to improve on the sculpted detail. I ended up with a lion crest that I personally really liked and altogether it looks really cool, all the tiny tweaks did take up a few days but I look forward to the following week and making all the important assets final pass and the rest at least second pass.
We're now on our 3rd week of production. Due to Covid-19 the college has moved to remote working completely. We've had to figure out a way of keeping our project going and after a couple of failed attempts we now have a working perforce server to keep the project going!
Viktor - Art Director & Environment Artist
We had a very busy and productive week with our project ad I'm happy to see such progress.
At the beginning of the week, we had some help from Gregorio, a student from another team at Escape studios, who had a solution on how to run our perforce server efficiently and non-stop which ws a life saver. We still couldn't get any access to school PCs or network through any connection over the internet and without decent version management and collaboration options, I was very concerned about getting the project done. A huge thanks to him and his help, without it our team and progress would've suffered a lot.
Our own little perforce server was set up by late Monday evening and on Tuesday I've spent most of the day making sure everyone can access the required files, I've set up some users and some restrictions on perforce so we don't upload/download unnecessary files.
Once that's out of the way, I've uploaded my 1st pass architecture assets to the scene so the lighting and set dressing can start.
I've spent some time setting up a slice mask workflow through substance painter, but it's not finished fully yet as I need to test a material setup in UE4.
On Thursday our tutors gave feedback on our work and progress which was very helpful and welcomed, as they advised to get rid of a smaller storage room because of time constraints and just focus on the foliage and bright sunlight. Also we were missing half the created assets that we've been working on, so we started populating the environment.
I personally worked on our hero statue which involved photogrammetry and then clean up, retopo the mesh to be usable in game. The original statue can be found in the V&A Museum, London, which I was lucky enough to have taken pictures of before the nation wide lockdown.
Hannah - Foliage & Prop Artist
Another full week of official lock-down and working remotely with the team. I'm really happy with my progress this week as it's been a huge learning experience with speedtree. As my olive tree is mainly for the vista I didn't need to go into this much detail but I was enjoying the process of learning speedtree and now I am quite confident moving around it's interface and prepping the file for export including light maps and wind! (The wind still needs testing!)
You can see my first hard attempt of my tree below followed by the final result with nice smooth transitions from trunk to branch. Also me figuring out lightmaps in speedtree.
Taking a break from speedtree I finished texturing my terracotta pots and even added a glazed version. The glaze is based of some traditional Spanish style decorating of the time with simple hand painted patterns. This really helps bring a pop of colour and roughness variation to the scene!
Finally I also started the orange tree which up until this point was still in a block out phase. I've reached a second pass now but this still needs a lot of work but I have managed to create this very quickly now after my experience with the olive tree! I'm looking forward to how all this foliage turns out!
Josef - Prop & Environment Artist
The second week of our remote work went well, the scene is starting to develop more and is improving. I made a few edits to the bust sculpt (WIP) and took Urim's fountain to improve on the sculpted detail. I ended up with a lion crest that I personally really liked and altogether it looks really cool, all the tiny tweaks did take up a few days but I look forward to the following week and making all the important assets final pass and the rest at least second pass.
Adrian - Prop & Environment Artist
Week 2 of the Pandemic and remote working has been very tricky and not easy. I am currently looking after my Dad during this time he is 74 suffers from heart disease and has been plagued with astham all his life. This unfortunately this places him in the very venerable category, so for the last two weeks I literally become Dobby the house Elf. We also operate two companies from this address one a small construction and the other a cleaning company. I am playing tech support and being pulled into the business side while we wait for government updates. I also seem to having issues with hay fever which is kicking my arse, which is messing with my sinuses and making me feel like crappy, very lethargic and not wanting to face the world.
So this week I have not made as much progress as I wanted, due to the numerous distractions which is making it very hard for me to remain focused.
The mainly things that I have worked on are;
The door to the storage room, I done the base, high poly, retopo (which I was not happy with the result so I am doing it again).
The reference picture of the Door shows numerous overalls hanging from the back, so I have been tasked with creating some, just simple clothes for the time being. I am using Marvelous designer (you can get it free for a month) to run a simulation on a simple ground dust sheet, which I will put into zbrush to add detail, then retopo in maya. This is a learning process, in hope that when I come to do hanging clothes from the door, I will be more aware of any potential pit falls or adjust my method.
I revisited the stone carving and adjusted it proportions to better match the refer picture.
Everything is very much still a work in process, I hope to finish it all other next few days.
Willow - Lighting Artist
It's been a busy week with lots of changes from everyone in the team. Due to everyone working from home we started the week with some perforce issues, meaning I didn't yet have access to the environment and was holding out for this to be fixed so I could continue to do lighting work. Meaning I started the week trying to begin to polish up some props. This was bit of a slow process due to hardware issues that are now resolved. However by Tuesday we had a working perforce and I could jump back into lighting! As this was my first time in th scene for a while I took time first and foremost to tidy up the environment, going through the assets that where in the scene at this point and changing light map resolution and checking general quality of light map. I also spent time adjusting work settings to re adjust light bounces and look into vista lighting as a rough version of this was now in place.
At this point I was still working from our old light boards but after some feedback from tutors we decided to adjust the lighting to a earlier time of day having the sun more directly above with a blue sky. The aim of this was to just try and let more light into the environment as the very high walls we have in the scene where blocking the evening sun out, creating a far to shadowed environment.
These changes have a had a lovely impact on the environment already despite only having been worked on for a day. There are a few problems that will need addressing this coming work week in regards to this but for now seems to be a very promising start to a new lighting pass.
Urim - Prop Artist
This week was a productive week, we all understand the situation we're in and are powering through it. I managed to work on finishing the chair texture and implementing it into the scene. I then had to work on creating a short sequence video for a feedback session on Thursday. That had a few complications but managed to share my screen and get help from a tutor. I also have been taking updated screenshots of the scene so we can create a production timelapse of our work. I also managed to get the new railings in the scene with textures, as well as the bench. After receiving feedback on Thursday, we decided to scrap the small storage room as we just haven't been focusing on it that much. We also got feedback to switch the lighting scenario to a more bright and beautiful with lots of foliage. Lastly, we want the vista to look a lot more appealing, so we decided to enlarge it and have a lot more vision and parallax going on.
Shay - Material Artist
This week I worked on the mosaic tiles for the pillar. I had two different approaches to play with at the beginning but then decided to push forward with the single tile pieces rather than the painted mosaic one. The team seemed to like the teal and white pattern a lot so I recreated using the single mosaic approach. I think i'm going to leave it for now and see how it looks when more things are in the scene. I think the feedback we got on Thursday will push us in the right direction.
