Joe's MA Game Art Thread
greentooth
Hello all you talnted artists,
I've just started the MA in Game Art & Design at Hertfordshire University.
I'm going to keep a work thread on here for any feedback & critiques. There are some truly incredible artists here, who's feedback would be invaluable.
Our first week's brief is 'Red Chases Blue'. We will be assigned a different brief each week (we just need to flesh out the idea for each brief, and then we can pick two to develop further), which we can interpret them how we like, and keep it focused on our particular are of interest. With me it's environments. Before starting this MA I haven't really touched UE4 (was using Unity), or Substance Painter, so I'm using these weekly projects to try and learn as much as I can.
https://youtu.be/C_yLxSFNzKE
My current 'To do' list based on some feedback:
I've just started the MA in Game Art & Design at Hertfordshire University.
I'm going to keep a work thread on here for any feedback & critiques. There are some truly incredible artists here, who's feedback would be invaluable.
Our first week's brief is 'Red Chases Blue'. We will be assigned a different brief each week (we just need to flesh out the idea for each brief, and then we can pick two to develop further), which we can interpret them how we like, and keep it focused on our particular are of interest. With me it's environments. Before starting this MA I haven't really touched UE4 (was using Unity), or Substance Painter, so I'm using these weekly projects to try and learn as much as I can.
https://youtu.be/C_yLxSFNzKEMy current 'To do' list based on some feedback:
1. Make it a night scene? Current light is too distracting from the 'spirits'.
2. Add some more bend variation to the bamboo (currently a bit too straight)
3. Particle trail to the spirits
4. Investigate substance painter for painting water effects to some of the worn stone
5. Model 'shrine' area at end of trail
6. Adjust spirit animation so they fly off to the shrine area.
7. Ground is currently a bit flat, try adjust the ground material setup so I can vert paint in some variation
8. Have a fly-through camera for video for submission
There's a lecture on Materials and shaders tomorrow which I'm going to use to learn how to add some nice looking moss onto my rocks and stone models.
There's a lecture on Materials and shaders tomorrow which I'm going to use to learn how to add some nice looking moss onto my rocks and stone models.
Replies
Quick update on how the scene is progressing. Attended a lecture today on how to create a material instance where I can apply textures to the upper parts of my mesh's, for stuff like snow and in my case moss.
I've got through some of my to do list, and the scene is feeling much better to me. I'm part way through modelling a shrine to go at the end.
Back to work!
Playing around with some fog and light rays
The shadows seem to still be too dark, anyone got any pointers to get them out of the black?
This is as far as I got with Red Chases Blue. Now we're moving onto the next brief, 'A Place in my Mind'.
So for the new brief ‘A place in my mind’, I thought of the idea of a synapse.
My idea for a scene would be the player inside some kind of cave, that looks and feels like the nerve centre of some kind of life form.
The textures in the cave would be flesh like. Something similar to the Flood from Halo.
Here are some of the references I’ve been looking at.
http://imgur.com/a/TJoC1
And here’s how the block out is coming along..
I want to have lots of fleshy material, and the pulses of light coming from the centre to be a bit more random and look like they're coming from inside the tube, like light shining through skin.
Realised my scene was quickly becoming quite the mess while I was trying to figure out my composition, so I've stripped it down and had a re-think and done some more research.
I want it to feel massive in scale, but I need to tell some kind of story.
Here are some exploratory screenshots of various camera angles.
The first image is from before I took a step away to think about my scene more. These weekly projects can cause me to rush a little it seems. Need to make sure I approach my ideas correctly. I'm liking how this idea is evolving though.
My submission for this weeks brief. A Place In My Mind. I enjoyed working on this one a lot, so I may come back to it as one of my two projects to develop further.
For me I get very nostalgic over Final Fantasy 7, so I chose to start building the observatory from Cosmo Canyon.
This week's brief is Light and Darkness. I've been asked to spend the week working on my lighting, so no modelling for me this time. Lighting is easily my weakest area, so I should learn a lot this week.
I have picked up an american diner scene from the Unreal Marketplace and plan to re-light it two different ways to try and get across a particular atmosphere.
For my workflow I'm going to follow this guide - http://www.worldofle...in-10-hours.php
Today has been about research and looking for different ways I could light this scene.
Road to Perdition -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59RzpyVKIgA
Has a very dark feeling to the scene, very effective, muted.
Cee Lo Green - Forget You -
Here they re-dress the diner 3 or 4 times, with different effects
When Harry Met Sally -
Heat -
Goodfellas -
Although I'm really looking at this for camera angles.
Other movies that had fantastic lighting not affected by VFX are Clouse Encounters of the Third Kind, Bladerunner, and pretty much any scene from the Godfather.
I might also try and experiment with the camera and see if I can create a feeling of unease through zoom effects -
First up will be the diner, I'll have three weeks for this officially, but I want to get a head start.
This evening I did some research and modelled the first few modular pieces. I'd like to create the whole building in a modular fashion if I can. Which probably means I need a square roof, but I'm looking for different ways I could handle it.
Looking at various images, but this is the closest to what I'm imagining.
Also trying out Marmoset and Artstation - https://www.artstation.com/artist/jlhgameart
Few more to do over the next couple of days then I'll be on to the materials.
Just going to post an imgur link : http://imgur.com/a/8P55E
Imgur - http://imgur.com/a/wf3r4
Rough fly through.
Oh and...just because
Love the mood.
really good work dude
Okay so, moving on to Development 2. I've chosen to come back to my Red Chases Blue scene.
Having done some more research and thinking about where I want to take the scene while also needing to learn how to do some new stuff; I chose to make mountains, and snow, and re-do the bamboo with speedtree, and make it a day time scene (because I always make it night time for some reason).
I also wanted to do some more Zbrush stuff as I pretty much always Sub D model my assets, and sometimes do zbrush high poly models, but not if I don't need to. The scene as I had it did a good job of keeping you interested at the start, but nothing happened at the end...so something needs to happen.
I'm going to have the spirits fly into the eyes of the Chinese dragon statue (currently WIP) and then have various magical runes begin to light up along its body. Hopefully it'll look pretty cool against the backdrop of the mountains. Although I'll probably have to figure out what I'm doing with the lighting so that the runes are actually somewhat visible.
I am COMPLETELY out of my comfort zone on this project, especially with the Zbrush stuff, so I'm learning a great deal and I think i've made a pretty good start with the dragon, but it's got a ways to go yet. He'll be made of stone and pretty worn down I'm thinking, but i'll see where I go with it.
I need to re-do a bunch of the assets (rocks, shrine will become the dragon etc), as I've learnt a lot since I made this scene.
Here's some progress.
So here's what I was working on around August/September 2016 (I'm sorry for your eyes)
and here are 3 finished pieces after 6 months working on my masters degree.
Taking some time away from the final to work on another module. It's not a game art module, so what I produce doesn't have to meet any specific standards, but rather it has to be relevant to what we were taught, in this case the module is media discourses, and my chosen area is realism.
So I'm creating a stylised scene, but with a realistic model in it to show a stark contrast between the styles. The purpose is also to show that high fidelity realistic modelling and texturing isn't required to make an interesting and atmospheric scene, but rather that shape and silhouette are king. So it's essentially an argument against the common belief among some gamer's that if it doesn't have realistic graphics then it will look bad or boring.
I'm treating this as a chance to have a bit of fun with some low poly ideas.
Anyway here's some early screenshots from my first evening on it.