Breaking Down the Witch's Cauldron Vignette
CGMA student Dawnson Chen breaks down his recent class assignment, from Stylized 3D Asset Creation for Games, taught by Kevin B. Griffith.
Background
Hi my name is Dawnson Chen and I am currently
taking the Stylized 3D Asset Creation for Games course, taught by Kevin B.
Griffith, on CGMA. I am going to break down one of my assignments we did in the
course.
I graduated from a four-year Bachelor of Arts and Animation program at Sheridan College. That was where I learned most of my traditional skills, like drawing and painting. Following Sheridan I took a one-year Game Arts program from Seneca College, where I learned how model and texture.
After school I landed a job at Gameloft Montreal as an Environment Artist, and that is where I currently still am. We recently released a new game, Gangstar New Orleans, which is my first released title.
This is my second CGMA course; the first was Environment Design with Aaron Limonick. The goal of taking both these courses was to improve my design skills. Both Aaron and Kevin have been great mentors in helping me achieve that.
The Assignment
I chose to do a witch’s cauldron brewing a potion in the woods. Normally I would do a bit of a concept painting, but time was an issue. I only had a napkin sketch of the idea, so instead I found a really nice painting on Artstation, done by Grace Liu. I used it as a mood inspiration and tried to imagine my cauldron inside that painting.
Block
Out
I began modelling a
block out inside of 3dsMax, just to get a sense of scale and position for most
of the elements. Everything is really rough here. I didn’t use any of these
meshes for the final.
Modelling
and Texturing Rocks
Then I went to Photoshop
and began painting the rocks. I used the meshes from the block out as reference
and painted their approximate shapes. When I was happy with the painting I went
back to 3dsMax to start modelling. I started by mapping the rock texture to a
plane and began cutting the plane, trying to follow the volume of the rock.
Once the plane was all cut, I began to mold it into a 3d shape. I pulled out the areas that came forward, trying to give the rock some volume. This part can be a bit tricky; it just takes some time to massage the mesh into the shape you want without stretching the texture too much. After I finished all the rocks, I replaced the block out mesh with the textured mesh to see how it fit into the scene.
Terrain
The
next part was the terrain. I painted two tileable textures: one rock and one
grass. Then I blended the two of them together, trying to keep the shapes of
the blades of the grass. After I painted in a rough shadow on a separate layer,
I keep it rough because at this point things are still being shifted around. I
also painted a circle in the alpha channel to give the base a circular shape
and grass coming off of the edges.
Paint-over
Here I did a quick
paint-over of the props I wanted to make for the next stage. I like doing this
because it helps me take inventory of what I have left to do, and also see what
I can get away with repeating a few times. As you can see, I changed my mind
about a few props for the final. After getting feedback from Kevin and other people,
I thought it would be clearer if I left out the some of the props and kept it
more focused on the witch theme.
Marmoset
Toolbag and Lighting
*Note: I added the trees and foliage; they
were made the same way as the rocks so not much to explain.
At this point I
imported everything into Marmoset Toolbag and did a first pass on the lighting.
The lighting for this scene is very simple. I just had one main warm
directional light coming from the top left and a cool back light to give the objects
some rim lighting. Then I added some omni lights in a few places where I wanted
to draw the eye (the fire, the book etc.)
*warm directional light is offscreen
Props
and Polish
The
final step was making the props. Unlike the rest of the scene, which is 2.5D,
the props are all 3D. This way I could rotate and place them around wherever I
needed. After I finished painting the props, I scattered them around the scene.
Finally, I went back and did a polishing pass. I cleaned up some areas in the rocks and trees, just adding some details at the points of interest. I made sure the shadow on the terrain matched the rocks and props and I fixed the discoloration in the grass planes. And for the cherry on top I added some bubbles.
This was a fun scene to work on. I enjoyed having time to paint everything and polish until I was satisfied. It was really good practice for doing hand painted textures, which I hadn’t done too much of it the past. Thanks Kevin, CGMA and Gameloft for the experience.
For more information on CG Master Academy and the Stylized 3D Asset Creation for Games course, please visit the course page on the CGMA website, or email 3d.registration@cgmasteracademy.com.
Replies
The grass planes seem a little too flat in my opinion. They seem like they are flat against the ground instead of growing upwards. Also, the colors of the jars seem a little too saturated and don't quite fit. I'm assuming they are made of glass, but they dont have the same specularity of glass jars and seem a bit flat. The colors could be changed a bit so that the greens dont collide with the greens in the grass. Also, the rocks around the fire seem a bit overly detailed and don't quite fit with the detail of the ground beneath them. Lastly, the placement of the broom against the rock seems a bit awkward. The detail on the rock makes it look as if it is more in the distance, whereas the broom is closer in the scene and more detailed which makes the rock behind it look flat, almost as if a flat background instead of actual rocks.
Aside from those small things, it looks great! Good work.
@Killwithhonor7 Thank you! I'm not exactly sure how the D3 team painted, but the way I did it was nothing special. I just used Photoshop and painted with a round brush, mostly on one layer (just the shadows on a separate layer). Using a piece of ref for a colour palette really helps, I use that painting by Grace Liu.
It's really nice, it's look like this one (for leaves
By the way, check your pixel ratio