Production Week 6
Week Ending 26th April
Coming back after a weeks break the team is raring to go. We've had to change our perforce server as we were on a trial so there's been some hiccups making sure everyone is still connected. We've refocused our efforts and had a reshuffle of responsibilities to make sure we can get the job done! A scary thought that we only have 4 weeks left until we're done!
Viktor - Art Director
After all the feedback from Creative Assembly, our team has really started to speed up the asset creation progress and we've been trying to get all of their feedback on board and act upon it.
They mentioned how the statues are an essential part of the scene, but we didn't put enough focus on them, so I've created another bust for the scene in the span of 4 days.
As the focus is on the hero statue in the centre, I've finished the plinth it's sitting on. The statue itself has really nice texture details from the photo-scan process, so having a plinth that doesn't feel wrong next to it was quite a bit of challenge! With a good photo reference, I've tried to add as much detail into it as possible.
At this point the main statues were done so I had to go back to the architecture. It was seriously lacking details compared to the rest of the scene so I've created the final versions of the arches next. I've experimented with a different workflow than I usually work with. I've created individual Bricks that make up the arch, baked them down to their respective low poly version and gave unique texture details. Then reassembled the arch from the individual blocks in Maya, combined together to be a single mesh and imported into the project.
Overall they have a really nice visual quality, but I'd need to add decals to them to make more variations and contact details.
Another feedback from tutors and Creative Assembly was that the connection points in-between the walls and ceiling are lacking details. it's too straight and boring, which was absolutely true. From the reference images we have, I found out they had a wooden trim running along the edge at certain places and that seemed to be a great idea to interpret. It solved the problem of huge boring white walls and perfectly straight connection points. It still needs a bit of fine tuning as the beams don't have any holes to poke through, but that's for next week.
Overall, I'm very impressed by last week's improvements, the scene literally transformed. Another 3 weeks to go, so hopefully everything falls into place and with a lot of decal work, we get something even more stunning.
Urim - Prop & Environment Artist
This week I firstly worked on the vista and getting every mesh done that needed to be sorted. For example, the church in the distance had to be modeled with basic shapes and a 512 texture. I made about 4 different buildings and fit them in the same UV space. I then used basic materials to texture the church so that it looks like that type of building from a distance.
I then needed to work on the placement of the foliage in the vista. I received a bunch of foliage to work from by Hannah and started set dressing the slabs etc. I then realised that the rock slabs weren't sitting flush on the ground and didn't look realistic enough. So I modeled between the cracks and imported in the scene with a mud/ grass texture on it. This made it a lot more believable.
I then moved on from the vista and had to finish up the sequencer for the feedback Thursday sessions. I wanted to practice a little bit more on the cinematic side of things and experiment with camera shakes and lighting. I added basic blueprint camera shakes on different scales for different shots. The close up on the foliage ones I used a little bit more camera shake as, realistically, no one can hold a camera that steady unless they have a stabilizer. I also played around with lens flare because it looks cool.
Finally, the plates, bowls, etc. They needed to be redone and making sure the texture follows the reference as it's Spanish themed. I managed to get the modeling done and finished one bowl texture. The rest still needs to be complete.
Hannah - Foliage Artist
A mad week but a productive one. Immediately I started creating new meshes for the clematis plant. This gave more variety as I was focusing on tendrils and ways this mesh could be used. I created several variations which would aid simple set dressing. The need for the spline is not as crucial as I thought it might be!
I tweaked my oranges based on feedback to try and make them more realistic. However this is proving to be a right struggle. We've since received further feedback it's still not right and the overall roughness on the foliage needs fixing. This will be fun to figure out with Speedtrees gloss maps merged with the normals rather than a roughness map in ORM! I won't be defeated yet!
A break from foliage I helped with the architecture. Focusing on remaking the stair case so it was wider and fit in the scene better. I used shays materials from other parts of the scene as much as I could. In the end she had to make me a special terracotta tile just for the steps themselves. I also re-purposed Urims railings for the handrail to keep everything looking like it belonged together.
Willow - Lighting Artist
A incredible amount of progress has been made through out the team this week and some overall large changes. I myself took on more responsibility as a producing role this week to help push the team forward. This meant a lot of time catching up with each individual from the team and doing some careful review of what work had to be done and what needed to be done. For example a big push has been to get people to polish assets and begin working on decals. This was again emphasised on during tutor feedback. Here we discussed why the environment was not achieving the realism that we desired. They also mentioned roughness throughout which is now being addressed.
In terms of lighting I solved multiple issues of not being able to bake by severely stress testing my computer. So while now we aren't able to have fully baked lighting, it is,in majority baked. Leading to higher detail and depth being able to be achieved. After talk with the art director we also decided to take the lighting in a slightly different direction, taking reference from a reference we found on Artstation, that looks very similar to what we are aiming for. This lighting is very intense in its whites and blooms and I began pushing this now in the project as I have now completed the final rough layout of the lights and baked in what I can. This also came after tutor feedback who also felt this would really help our environment and overall create more or a interesting contrast.
I also put work into the reflections in the environment. I did this by working on and replacing the reflection captures in the environment, trying to really capture a specular on certain textures such as the tiles. Of course this will only look better once roughness issues have been sorted.
This week I also worked on some visual effects creating a lake shader and fountain water shader. This shader is fully controllable from colour shade to the level of refraction. Making it a effecient and useful tool for the team.
Shay - Material Artist
I spent most of this week modelling and making a trim sheet for the mosaic piece that sits behind the fountain. I haven't modelled in ages so it kind of took longer than expected. Most of the time was spent trying to make the uv's straight so it lines up with the trim better. Viktor showed me some ways to fix it and it seemed to fix the issue.
The trim sheet didn't really take that long to do as it was a pretty simple pattern. I tired to follow as close to the reference as I could. The feedback we got from the tutors was to push the realism of the scene more. They suggested that we have a look at our roughness values in the scene as some things were off. Overall the scene is looking pretty awesome!
Also started to add in some decals for the wall to make it feel more lived in. Next week I'll start placing more into the scene
Josef Russel - Prop & Environment ArtistThis week was solely used to model and finalise the 3 Variations of Sunna Statues that represent student studies. After the implementation into engine i proceeded to start on an architecture piece being the 2nd floor pillars. this is currently at a high poly stage and i will be completing the low poly and final model this following week.
Coming back after a weeks break the team is raring to go. We've had to change our perforce server as we were on a trial so there's been some hiccups making sure everyone is still connected. We've refocused our efforts and had a reshuffle of responsibilities to make sure we can get the job done! A scary thought that we only have 4 weeks left until we're done!
Viktor - Art Director
After all the feedback from Creative Assembly, our team has really started to speed up the asset creation progress and we've been trying to get all of their feedback on board and act upon it.
They mentioned how the statues are an essential part of the scene, but we didn't put enough focus on them, so I've created another bust for the scene in the span of 4 days.
As the focus is on the hero statue in the centre, I've finished the plinth it's sitting on. The statue itself has really nice texture details from the photo-scan process, so having a plinth that doesn't feel wrong next to it was quite a bit of challenge! With a good photo reference, I've tried to add as much detail into it as possible.
At this point the main statues were done so I had to go back to the architecture. It was seriously lacking details compared to the rest of the scene so I've created the final versions of the arches next. I've experimented with a different workflow than I usually work with. I've created individual Bricks that make up the arch, baked them down to their respective low poly version and gave unique texture details. Then reassembled the arch from the individual blocks in Maya, combined together to be a single mesh and imported into the project.
Overall they have a really nice visual quality, but I'd need to add decals to them to make more variations and contact details.
Another feedback from tutors and Creative Assembly was that the connection points in-between the walls and ceiling are lacking details. it's too straight and boring, which was absolutely true. From the reference images we have, I found out they had a wooden trim running along the edge at certain places and that seemed to be a great idea to interpret. It solved the problem of huge boring white walls and perfectly straight connection points. It still needs a bit of fine tuning as the beams don't have any holes to poke through, but that's for next week.
Overall, I'm very impressed by last week's improvements, the scene literally transformed. Another 3 weeks to go, so hopefully everything falls into place and with a lot of decal work, we get something even more stunning.
Urim - Prop & Environment Artist
This week I firstly worked on the vista and getting every mesh done that needed to be sorted. For example, the church in the distance had to be modeled with basic shapes and a 512 texture. I made about 4 different buildings and fit them in the same UV space. I then used basic materials to texture the church so that it looks like that type of building from a distance.
I then needed to work on the placement of the foliage in the vista. I received a bunch of foliage to work from by Hannah and started set dressing the slabs etc. I then realised that the rock slabs weren't sitting flush on the ground and didn't look realistic enough. So I modeled between the cracks and imported in the scene with a mud/ grass texture on it. This made it a lot more believable.
Finally, the plates, bowls, etc. They needed to be redone and making sure the texture follows the reference as it's Spanish themed. I managed to get the modeling done and finished one bowl texture. The rest still needs to be complete.
Hannah - Foliage Artist
A mad week but a productive one. Immediately I started creating new meshes for the clematis plant. This gave more variety as I was focusing on tendrils and ways this mesh could be used. I created several variations which would aid simple set dressing. The need for the spline is not as crucial as I thought it might be!
I tweaked my oranges based on feedback to try and make them more realistic. However this is proving to be a right struggle. We've since received further feedback it's still not right and the overall roughness on the foliage needs fixing. This will be fun to figure out with Speedtrees gloss maps merged with the normals rather than a roughness map in ORM! I won't be defeated yet!
A break from foliage I helped with the architecture. Focusing on remaking the stair case so it was wider and fit in the scene better. I used shays materials from other parts of the scene as much as I could. In the end she had to make me a special terracotta tile just for the steps themselves. I also re-purposed Urims railings for the handrail to keep everything looking like it belonged together.
Willow - Lighting Artist
A incredible amount of progress has been made through out the team this week and some overall large changes. I myself took on more responsibility as a producing role this week to help push the team forward. This meant a lot of time catching up with each individual from the team and doing some careful review of what work had to be done and what needed to be done. For example a big push has been to get people to polish assets and begin working on decals. This was again emphasised on during tutor feedback. Here we discussed why the environment was not achieving the realism that we desired. They also mentioned roughness throughout which is now being addressed.
In terms of lighting I solved multiple issues of not being able to bake by severely stress testing my computer. So while now we aren't able to have fully baked lighting, it is,in majority baked. Leading to higher detail and depth being able to be achieved. After talk with the art director we also decided to take the lighting in a slightly different direction, taking reference from a reference we found on Artstation, that looks very similar to what we are aiming for. This lighting is very intense in its whites and blooms and I began pushing this now in the project as I have now completed the final rough layout of the lights and baked in what I can. This also came after tutor feedback who also felt this would really help our environment and overall create more or a interesting contrast.
I also put work into the reflections in the environment. I did this by working on and replacing the reflection captures in the environment, trying to really capture a specular on certain textures such as the tiles. Of course this will only look better once roughness issues have been sorted.
This week I also worked on some visual effects creating a lake shader and fountain water shader. This shader is fully controllable from colour shade to the level of refraction. Making it a effecient and useful tool for the team.
Shay - Material Artist
I spent most of this week modelling and making a trim sheet for the mosaic piece that sits behind the fountain. I haven't modelled in ages so it kind of took longer than expected. Most of the time was spent trying to make the uv's straight so it lines up with the trim better. Viktor showed me some ways to fix it and it seemed to fix the issue.
The trim sheet didn't really take that long to do as it was a pretty simple pattern. I tired to follow as close to the reference as I could. The feedback we got from the tutors was to push the realism of the scene more. They suggested that we have a look at our roughness values in the scene as some things were off. Overall the scene is looking pretty awesome!
Also started to add in some decals for the wall to make it feel more lived in. Next week I'll start placing more into the scene
Josef Russel - Prop & Environment ArtistThis week was solely used to model and finalise the 3 Variations of Sunna Statues that represent student studies. After the implementation into engine i proceeded to start on an architecture piece being the 2nd floor pillars. this is currently at a high poly stage and i will be completing the low poly and final model this following week.
