BeardedMike’s Long Term Project Thread [UE4 Cinematic]

BeardedMike

Hey Guys and Gals!

This is going to be a long post, but I have been planning this project for a while now!

I’ve had an idea for a project on the back burner all the way through college, I’ve been waiting to do until I had the technical/artistic skills and software to pull off properly.  I think I’m to that point now, considering I have spent over a year doing research, practicing, and gathering reference for this project.  My biggest challenge right now is getting my portfolio up to date.  Right now its full of college projects that aren’t even close to my current skill level or capability, I made a choice a few months ago to dump everything and start over fresh.  I think that this project and the assets i create for it will be more than enough to build a strong basis for my new portfolio.

Goals:

 

     I settled on a project scope that would allow me to produce a short cinematic at the high quality level I want, a short 15-30 second scene that will introduce my character with a voiceover.  I was Inspired by the phenomenal operator cutscenes Ubisoft created for Rainbow 6 Siege.  I’m not trying to make R6S fan art, but love the way they introduce their operators and wish to introduce my character in a similar way.   I am going to create the cinematic in realtime in UE4 and attempt to keep all effects and animation in engine.  I am shooting for an extremely high level of detail on my character, scene, and all my assets.  My plan is to create a few small “easy” assets as a baseline for how detailed everything else needs to be, before I move on to the more detailed ones.  They will be one of my first posts on this

Process:

I plan to use mostly a 3dsmax -> Zbrush -> Substance Painter pipeline for asset creation.  I have been practicing Amsterdam Hilton Hotel's proboolean hard surface method with a lot of success so far (http://polycount.com/discussion/168610/proboolean-dynamesh-hardsurface-workflow-tutorial/p1).  It seems to be a very fast and efficient way of hard surface modeling.  I am not going to be overly concerned on this project about heavy optimization of assets as its simply for a cinematic.  If i have to spend a few extra polys or use a bigger texture size in the interest of details, I’m going to lean in that direction more than I would with a standard game asset.

 

When I get to the rigging/animation phase of the project I may switch in to maya as I feel the rigging and animation tools are superior to max.  I am also evaluating Faceware to mocap realistic facial animations.

Assets Needed:

Character:

- “North” -  Army Special Forces Operator.  Fully Textured and rigged for animation - Gathering Reference Images

Weapons/Gear:

- Helmet

- Dip Can (chewing tobacco)

- Kitted Out Glock - Finished!

- Kitted Out M4 - Gathering Reference images

Scene:

- Back of CH-47 Chinook Helicopter - Blockout/Planning Phase

Deadline:

My self imposed deadline is GDC next year.  I was fortunate enough to be at GDC 2015 with my company and was pretty bummed I missed going this year.  Taking in to account I am working full time, plus have other portfolio projects (plus a small game I’m working on) I wish to complete, I think its a good deadline to shoot for that will give me plenty of time.

So anyway! My lunch break at work is over, I’m going to post a few of my mood/reference boards and hopefully some of my test assets this weekend.  Thanks in advance for everyones future help/advice!

BeardedMike

The first asset I wanted to start working on was my operator North's Glock.  I really needed something with a lot of curves and detail to test the proboolean modeling method mentioned above (http://polycount.com/discussion/168610/proboolean-dynamesh-hardsurface-workflow-tutorial/p1).  This is a sample of the huge amount of reference I gathered for the project.  The two Glocks outlined in green are going to be what i'm going off of as the primary reference images.  I like the receiver of the Glock on the left, and the slide of the Glock on the left (well most of it.)  The images outlined in red on the right are my "perfect" side views i'm using for reference planes.  I am taking pieces I like from every reference image I have until I have the coolest looking Glock frankensteined together I can.

BeardedMike

Here is a few WIP viewport grabs of my Glocks slide and barrel.  Being I was going to school for gunsmithing before I went to art school (weird combo I know) it was easy to get accurate measurements of a Glocks side.  Many of the above reference images are of 9mm Glocks, the one i'm modeling is a .45 caliber , very similar except the barrel is obviously a bigger diameter and the slide is 32mm wide vs 30mm for the 9.  I still need to model a few small elements like the extractor and i'm not overly worried about parts the viewer won't see like the bottom of the barrel.






Some details like the teeth around the barrel protector, and any logos or text engravings i'm going to add when I take it in to Zbrush for edge smoothing.

klown

Can probably save a bunch of time and just buy a glock and m4 model, high and or game res, let you focus on bigger picture stuff

BeardedMike

klown said:

Can probably save a bunch of time and just buy a glock and m4 model, high and or game res, let you focus on bigger picture stuff

While simply buying the assets needed would be a lot easier and faster, It would defeat the purpose of using these assets in my portfolio and learning from the process of creating them.

BeardedMike

Quick update on my Glock model.  I have most of the receiver and the trigger finished (I modeled it after a competition flat trigger so it will look different from my reference images I posted).  There is a few areas that still need some love, and a few small parts that need to be modeled.  For now I have moved on to a few of the accessories on the weapon.  When i get it in to Zbrush I plan to do the stippling on the grip like it is in my reference.




this last image has the start of the surefire light, and a blockout of the extended magazine and RMR.

BeardedMike

More progress on the Glock, the Surefire light is about 90% done now.  Figured a clean MR render was in order this time!

BeardedMike

Another Quick update!

Put the Glock receiver in to zbrush, did my smoothing pass and added the stippling!

BeardedMike

Had some spare time on my lunch break at work today and managed to round up some references images for the environment phase of my project.  After putting a bit of thought in to it I decided to have my character riding in the back of a CH-47 Chinook helicopter instead of an airplane.  I didn't really want to have him wearing a parachute.  Luckily I found a few different pictures that gave me some dimensions of the cargo hold.  Looks like some interesting shapes to be modeled as well!

BeardedMike

Done with the abusing booleans phase on the Glock! Time to move it in to zbrush for edge polishing and small details, retypo, unwrap, bake, and start texturing!





Figured if anyone was interested.... here is the wires...  Some areas (the receiver for example) was made with a hybrid boolean and conventional HP modeling technique. 

BeardedMike

One last update for the night! Put all the parts in to Zbrush, smoothed, and added details.

BeardedMike

Little bit of practice in Substance Painter (render in SP2 with iRay)

BeardedMike

Quick update!  Been a busy last few weeks but I finally got some time to sit down and work on my low poly.  I'm about 95% done now.  Threw a junk flatten unwrap and bake in substance painter to test everything.  Pretty happy with the results!  I see a few areas i need to add some geometry and obviously a better unwrap.  The material is just a "stylized leather" smart material..... don't worry though its not going to end up being a leather daddy Glock  Sitting at around 7k tris right now btw
 

BeardedMike

I'm going to call The Glock done for now!  I may go back and tweak the textures a bit later on but I'm really happy with the results at this point.

The marmoset viewer is available on my Artstation, https://www.artstation.com/artwork/gGvlP  (honestly not sure how to embed one here)

BeardedMike

Tonight I'm gathering reference to start on my character.  I was originally going to start on my environment and work through before moving on to the character, but I think I am going to start transitioning between the two at the same time.  I'm going to start by sculpting my characters head first as a baseline.  I had a few questions for some of the character gurus here before I start working.

1.  Is there a good free base mesh head for zbrush (that already has polygroups and clean topology etc.)  that anyone can recommend?  I have found several here and online but i'm not sure if there is one that is better than the others.  It's to save some time and headache, but I can make the base-mesh myself too if that's what is recommended by everyone.

2.  Considering this character is going to be used only in a cinematic, and I plan to have a few closeup shots of him, what would be the recommended number/size of textures to break him up in to? I'm unsure if packing every part of the character in to a single UVW space is the norm; or to have something like one map for his face and head, one for his legs, one for his arms.

Thanks everyone!!

BeardedMike

I almost wonder If I should start separate threads for this stuff.... just trying not to be obnoxious  Just don't seem to be getting any traffic....

I had a few hours today to think about and block out the back of the helicopter that will serve as the environment for my cinematic and I could use a little bit of early feedback.  

Looking at reference images (more provided in a previous post)  I've kind of broken the helicopter up in to chunks to model.  It seems like I could simply model 2 different wall panels (the outlined parts in orange) one with and one without a window.  The purple area with the cargo door can be built separately in several pieces, and the floor appears to just have 2 different types of repeating  panels.

I have built a very simplistic blockout based on real measurements of the helicopter I have found online but something just looks off.  I don't want to jump in to more detail until I can get the whole thing sorted out.  It feels like the cargo bay should be a bit wider, or maybe i should take a little creative freedom and make it wider.  What do you guys think?  Any advice will be helpful as I am fairly new to creating a scene like this.