3D Art Production: Reflections

The 3D modeling aspect of this course has been extremely challenging for me this year. It has challenged perception of art creation and has pushed me to be far more considerate of my designs in 2D concept art. Maya was extremely daunting at first, but now I feel far more confident and even find some joy in creating models.


The statue was probably less stressful than the rest of the battle arena. Maybe this is just experience and confidence, or just that we had more time to produce a singular element, but it was really exciting to watch this come together.


I still had issues with uv unwrapping and stitching; many of the seams aren't in places I would have liked and created some texture clashing and stretching. This is certainly something to work on over the course of the summer and next year. The arena in comparison now feels smaller and more rudimentary but again, I can chalk this up to experience. I made some small changes to it and added some animations to make it more immersive.  Overall I'm very happy with my statue and look forward to more challenges in Maya and Unity.

3D Art Production: UV Unwapping and Texturing

Looking at the feedback form for my initial Battle Arena, I lost marks based on the fact I dropped textures straight on to models without UV unwrapping them first. I lucked out on the more simple models, but more complex ones ( like my statue ) required proper unwrapping.


This was a laborious but rewarding process. It is simple enough to do with less organic shapes, but the head and torso were more difficult. I feel that seams on parts of my statue aren't where they should be, but this is a learning process. Stitching them together wasn't as difficult as I once thought, and it yields far superior results. There is still some stretching and that is something to consider for the next time.


For texturing I used a combination of Quixel and X-normal in order to get really solid results. Quixel worked a treat for me last time and this time it was much easier having proper UV maps to work from. I tried to be lazy last term, but this time round it worked very well. I went for a very basic weathered stone look to fit in with the general aesthetic of my arena. Some stretching is certainly visible on parts of the body like the hands but overall, I'm very happy with the model.

3D Art Production: Animation

This week Phil introduced us to key framing animations in Maya. I've had previous experience of this in Unity when adding animated elements to my Battle Arena and as per usual, this seemed to be a far more in depth way of doing it. This was handy however, as although we aren't animating our characters this year, it did introduce us to basic animation after rigging a mode. Even if it was just a floppy tube!

3D Art Production: Helmet

Yeesh, I just can't get the horns on this helmet to work and look weighty. Looking at the UV, these will be an absolute nightmare to texture too. With that in mind, I may need to look at an alternate version of the helmet in order to maintain quality across the model.

3D Art Production: Hands

Now this turned out to be far more difficult than modeling the head. Hands are particularly intricate things and similarly to drawing them, a slightly incorrect choice will make the entire thing look out of whack.


I struggled to get the base of the thumb at the correct size and plumpness. When you look at the palm of your hand, it protrudes slightly in comparison to the rest of the palm. It's little details like this that make all the difference when modeling. It took a good few hours to get these to where they are. Initially, the model looked good in the low poly function but very sausage like when smoothed out. It took a lot of tinkering and moving of vertex points to get them functioning.


Overall, these could certainly be better but for the sake of time I may have to leave these as they are and hope they don't deform too much when rigging.

3D Art Production: Building a head

For this weeks session we were tasked with creating a 3d head in Maya. I thought back to the first week, modeling that barrel and hoped I'd come far since then.


Thankfully, it ended up being far easier than I thought. We utilized 2d images as reference within the different displays in Maya and this made things infinitely more efficient. It was relatively simple to extrude faces outwards to continue building the structure of the skull.


The ears turned out to be absolute hell to model, but I mirrored half of the built head and then built a single ear and did the same. It was made apparent to us that it is good practice to jump between the low poly and smoothed out model frequently in order to make sure the model is in good steed.


Overall, I'm chuffed with how it turned out! I made some small alterations using the sculpting tools afterwards, to create more character but I'm not sure if these will make it through to the final model. I'm all for a strong Roman nose but this is slightly hawkish!

 

3D Art Production: Spring Term

This term we have to build a statue to fit inside our Battle Arena.


We were initially asked to comp a concept image together based on moodboards and other images that inspired us:

 

However, after having a chat with Phil, it seemed like project suicide to create a model with such extensive amounts of detail, when I hadn't modeled a human before. There was also just too much going on in terms of battling styles. The future can be merged with the past, but this maybe took it too far.

With that feedback in mind, I sketched out an amended model sheet with topology in mind. I spent a fair bit of time before the course watching Maya and Zbrush tutorials and correct topology kept getting brought up in order to rig it and animate correctly.

This concept will be FAR easier to model on a first timer and will allow me to put more work into the finer details.

3D Art: Battle Arena Milestone 1

With Christmas looming, so does the first deadline for our Battle Arena.

To say it and I have come a long way would be an understatement. I look back at my original moodboard and modelling attempts and can't believe where I'm at now. In the beginning I was so proud of my barrel. It took me HOURS.

Now I would knock that thing out and texture it in minutes. Maybe.

All jokes aside Maya and Unity are nowhere near as daunting as they used to be. Ambient Occlusion no longer sound like a progressive rock band - I can create Normal Maps, paint UV's, stitch them, model with some efficiency and understand how to then take these into Unity and really make them sing.

Having said that, there is HUGE room for improvement still. I need to improve my modelling workflow and get to grips with some of Maya's more intricate features that we have touched on. It is a programme all about confidence I've come to find. I certainly need to simplify my models - This deadline require a 60,000 triangle count. On a superficial level, my arena look pretty, but had I been more efficient with my triangle count when modelling, I could have added some extra areas to battle opponents in. Maybe a bridge or port. A Sci Fi tower looming in the distance. This will all come with experience and time. My columns alone take up a majority of the count.

Now it's time to recharge the batteries and get ready for the second half of the year. And take this bad boy to the next level!

3D Art: Sci Fi Door and Wagon

The final tutorials of the year and the perfect three classes to take my arena to that next level.

Now you'll notice that the actual Door isn't here - My environment didn't need the doors so I absorbed all I could from the tutorial and applied it to a number of various models in my level.

Quixel is a beautiful programme. It deserves some sort of sainthood or at least an OBE. It makes texturing far less stressful and comes up with wonderful textures that would take far too long to hand paint. Don't get me wrong, I've actually come to really enjoy painting textures, but when you can map out a mountain range that you never see close up, and just bake a wonderful texture for it in a matter of minutes....It's too good to pass up.

To use it on an object with more than one texture, you simply add different colours to the seperate elements of your model, bake some Albedo and AO in Turtle and take it into Quixel/Photoshop. From there it does a lot of the heavy lifting for you - Creating normal maps and STUNNING textures for your model.

Now having said that, it is a particularly erratic programme - Crashes are the norm and it dislikes groupings and any sort of history in your Maya models, so you have to remedy those issues first. I also had issues initially with the texture tiling incorrectly across the model, but this ended up being my fault and a simple fix.

This wagon is going straight into my Battle Arena! It looks so good, I just want to ride around in it.

3D Art: Terrain and Channels

This week we were taught how to texture models with materials made out of multiple different images.


Initially we had to create a UV map out of a plane in Maya and then open it up in Photoshop. We then used the tutors stock textures - Rock, grass and sand and manipulated them to look more unique. After this, we had to add a ShaderFX material to our Maya model and import the different images. We would then link them to the model in different colour channels to create a unique looking texture on the Plane.


My original texture ended up looking quite stretched and low resolution. It works as a place holder but in the long term I need to look for a higher quality solution...




*Update* 19th November:

Now that I have subsequently been introduced to Quixel, I created a far better looking texture for my terrain. This combined with my sculpted surfaces created a pretty cool look, far more along the lines I was going for. Yay Quixel!

3D Art: Mushroom

Another tutorial, another set of tools that I'd been dying to try out.

When you first get your hands on Maya, modelling inorganic shapes is easy. Shape, Bevel and hey presto! Something that looks like a television. However, trying to make something that is asymmetrical..another story. Add in texture stretching and you can be in for a long day.

This utilised the curve and sculpting tools - both INVALUABLE when it came down to my Arena. Terrain and mountains suddenly became possible. This tutorial also introduced us in more depth to UV tiling and stitching. Whilst daunting when your complex model appears to be in a million parts, it really does help when preparing a model with unique properties for texturing.

I learnt my lesson from the Barrel in week one and decided to not go too crazy with the shapes that made up the Mushroom. That helped a great deal with even distribution of the texture.

Whether or not I end up using these is a different story - I feel they could fit in to my arena, but I'm not sure if they'll serve the narrative. Either way, I'm pretty stoked with how they came out!

3D Art: Column

This week we were tasked with modelling a hi poly Roman Column utilising photo reference in Maya for the first time.

This was perfect as my Battle Arena had columns throughout...hinting at a world that may have been. I had already created columns but they were very basic and not as smooth as this tutorial intended.

The curve tool was something I had been looking to use for a while - It is very useful when trying to make more organic grooves in shapes. It finally feels like I am starting to get to grips with Maya a little more. This model is very high density so I may have to lower the poly count later down the line but I'm very proud of this simple little fella.

It also help that these feature heavily throughout my project! One prop down....

3D Art: Battle Arena and Mood Boards

The Battle Arena has been coming along nicely. Maya was a very daunting programme initially, and although it still holds many secrets from me, I'm feeling a lot more comfortable with it.

This term we have to create a full textured and realised Battle Arena. With a rough idea in mind, I put together a moodboard. Artistically I love the whimsical. The concept art work of Pixar and Dreamworks artists really speaks to me. Gaming seems to be in a rut in terms of unique looks and art direction. Dark and gritty rules the day and more ' animated ' looks tend to lend themselves to games aimed at a younger audience.

There's a lot of concept art from How To Train Your Dragon and Team Fortress 2 in here. TF2 in particular deals with violence combined with a more animated aesthetic. There are images from No Man Sky - the footage from this game has a wonderful, vibrant colour palette. And of course, some old school renaissance paintings and Roman Architecture - For the battlearena to have legitimacy, its origins have to be grounded in history and real world objects.

After beginning the modelling process, I was able to create a far more specific moodboard referencing the actual map I'd made. I still want to maintain an exotic, otherworldly colour palette but am leaning towards some more assets that fit in with the back story I have created. Speaking of which....

This battlearena is located on a planet light years from our own. After countless wars, the superpowers on earth decided that it would be beneficial to relocate our battles to planets void of intelligent life forms. These proxy wars would set the standard of warfare for hundreds of years to come.

This arena is very much built in a traditional manner to remind combatants of the history of Gladiatorial combat. Stone pillars combined with new metal polymers and ancient alien artifacts, creating a unique aesthetic.

Texturing this is daunting, but who doesn't love a challenge.

3D Art: The Barrel

So after the delightful highs of 2D art it was time for the huge challenge of 3D. Part of the reason I enrolled on this course was to throw myself into the deep end. Add some new strings to my bow. I've been making art for years now but had never jumped in to the 3D arena.

Oh Maya. Cruel Maya.

This Barrel was a challenge, no two ways about it. A simple geometric shape with a few twists here and there and it was like being back in school all over again. Frustrating but in the end, worthwhile. There are some issues - I struggled getting the Turtle Rendering to take hold in the final texture map. Texture stretching is an issue along the metal rims of the barrel. But boy was it an exciting learning process. I'm excited to have this under my belt now, warts and all and can't wait to take the next step.

Part one: Barrel. Part two: Battle Arena.