Ben's Second Year Uni Thread
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I've been working on some at uni and hadn't really got time to post until now. In the second semester of first year I was challenged with making a car alongside some other briefs.
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I have now started second year and as such have the ability to aim my focus more, with the brief of creating a room from a book, TV series or Movie I chose Neo's room from The Matrix:
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I have decided to create a couple of hero assets to add to add detail I can get closer to in the room as well as to add to my portfolio.
Hero Assets (so far):
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VCR Player
CRT Monitor
Bed
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Other
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Crit and Feedback is always good. Thanks for reading.
[spoiler]
[/spoiler]
I have now started second year and as such have the ability to aim my focus more, with the brief of creating a room from a book, TV series or Movie I chose Neo's room from The Matrix:
[spoiler]
[/spoiler]
I have decided to create a couple of hero assets to add to add detail I can get closer to in the room as well as to add to my portfolio.
Hero Assets (so far):
[spoiler]
VCR Player
CRT Monitor
Bed
[/spoiler]
Other
[spoiler]
[/spoiler]
Crit and Feedback is always good. Thanks for reading.
Replies
Additionally, i would look at widening the bevels on the edges of some of your high polies, or if you're not using high polies and using height maps instead (looks like that's happening on the cassette player?), blur the height map a little to get rid of the extreme aliasing on the edges of the indents.
I agree with @shabba that getting an initial block out for the space you have available would be a good thing.
@almighty_gir has a point with the coloured background being better for the car than the environment. You don't want anything to distract from the actual model, and I would say this would go well for the other models as well.
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VCR
Monitor
Bed
Keyboard
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As well as these I have been blocking out my scene
I am working on triplannar projection in ue4, to make the walls, roof and floor tiling cleaner.
I have also started on retopping my car for a game engine
Walls created into assets of their own, lighting messed with, assets still to build but this isn't looking impossible, also have nearly finished my complex material for another module, it creates an old glitchy monitor affect on a camera capture allowing overlaying on top of an acquired pacman game, going to create a blueprint to allow for the game to be played on one of the monitors when looking at it.
Thinking currently about dust motes...
Creating more of my room at the moment, here are a few screenshots, its looking a little different from last time, I checked my references again and there are 2 windows, a tilted wall and a little hallway that I hadn't noticed.
More room to come.
Get the dark areas of the environment out of the black. You never want to be completely black for large sections of your environment. Think of it this way, why go to the trouble of creating the environment if you can't see it. I know you haven't done a proper lighting pass yet but I'd suggest taking the time to do so now. Get used to actively thinking about your lighting as part of the composition process rather than an afterthought (doing it last).
Props as small as the keyboard don't need bevels on the edges, it's a waste of topology because the prop is small enough to bake. Only use geometry to smooth out shapes when the prop is larger than your texel denisty allows for. As a rule of thumb, if it's small enough to bake, bake it. As soon as it's too large to bake in a single texture, you start using tiling textures, with baked areas where needed, and multiple material ID's. Use that baked information to smooth out the hard edges.
Most of your wireframes can be optimized a lot.
Don't be afraid to model deformations into the mesh to break up lines. Dents in door frames, table edges etc. It will only add to the level of detail.
Password: room101
@JLHGameArt
Hope the room is brighter, I agree it was too dark, the monitor I was working on seemed to have god like brightness in comparison to any other I've come across since. I don't have a bevel on any of my objects and a lot of my assets are as low poly as I could manage, the pillow on my bed is , the entire scene is 54k tri at the moment, I've included pictures of some of my assets.
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Be careful where you're placing your camera though, anything that's going to be super close to the camera needs more details in the mesh. Like the keyboard, if you want to be super close then I would have individual keys, and then use a LOD for when it's further away to switch to what you have now.
Same goes from the computer screen. and the Electronic thing at the end (VHS?), the edges are too sharp for that close to the camera. Just bevel them and use your current version as a LOD.
I don't know how far along you are with the scene, but I'd say in general some of your textures need some work, and the shelving unit looks like a blockout right now, so I'm assuming you have yet to get to it.
It's still too dark I'm afraid. I understand the effect you are trying to achieve, feels very film noire. Try putting a touch of atmosphere in there. Up the bounce lighting. Change some light settings, take a screenshot, change some more settings, take another screenshot and compare. Check your lighting reference, in fact, post your lighting reference here so I can get a better idea of what your goal is.
What's the focal point of your scene? The bed? The computer area?
You seem to have a few shots setup already which is good, stick to those and push the composition for those shots. The shot of the shelf unit with stuff on it is boring, don't use it. The shot with the computer, pull the camera back a bit, the screen is taking up too much of the shot. Make sure the brightest part is your focal point. Right now you have a white spot of the left (blockout) which is distracting.
Make sure to post full breakdowns of props you are proud of. So a final render of the prop on its own from 2 angles, then a shot of the wires and the high poly if there is one. Then the texture sheet after.
Keep it up. Feel free to PM me if you want to ask questions.
Password: port
This is the low poly version compared to the higher original poly version of my car, I had to up the tri from the no cat-clark smoothed tyres that I had, as such I smoothed the original so it was a more accurate representation of the actual poly count that the wheel had. The chassis will be removed entirely, its part of the car I'm not sure anyones actually ever seen anyway. The poly count for the exhaust pipes images only include the pipes themselves, however I have also lowered the poly of the surrounding frame as well.
The following video will be added however it will be a turnaround of the low poly instead of the high and will have a gray (or near) background instead.
Password: dues
There is also the group project I was part of this year for a semester. Gjallarhorn, I was responsible for the buildings, snow particle system, getting the mechanics of the walking speeds to work on the character alongside some of the character shaders, the terraforming and landscape painting, both foliage and textures.
I plan on getting better shots of this piece however here is the trailer that we had to create for the project so that you can get a sense of the piece and give you opinion on it.
Password: gjal
I've also very much gotten into tech art and have been working hard on some smart materials and artist tools such as a procedural building generator where the artist can input pre-fabricated sections of wall and have the blueprint generate buildings based upon their parameters, such as width of building and number of floors. The plan was then to take this and use it to generate cities quickly by layering under another blueprint.
So my questions are,
1 do I remove the frames of the building (I plan on it as it's too long,)
2 what is your opinion of the intro card (it will also lose a second of time)
3 what tech art stuff should I put in this, I'm open to suggestions and will most likely attempt things which I believe would look good for my portfolio.
4 whats your opinions on the modular building inside ue4.
5 whats your opinions on Gjallarhorn and the scenes/aspects you think should be added to my showreel
Cheers Ben.