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Game Scene - Week 5
December 17, 2019
After devoting all of my resources to the bridge and Unity work, I finally went back to this building. I replaced the door texture, upgrading from a Morrowind door to an Oblivion door, and added a wooden boarded up window. Even though it was present in the reference, I'm not sure it looks right. Maybe it's just because I went so long before adding it.
To bevel, or not to bevel
This bridge turned out to be a lot more problematic than I had hoped. I made some improvements, but it generally looked better last week than it does now. I thought it would be nice and clean, that I could just model the modular walls and fit them together with ease. Everything aligned beautifully on the first side of the wall, but not so on the other side. I made a new modular piece for a thin slice of wall, but that didn't solve everything on its own. A few areas needed to have their vertices adjusted manually.
I started out with a very low poly version of the wall models. My strategy was to bevel in specific places, keep most edges soft, and use a normal/heightmap to create depth. It looked pretty nice, but wasn't totally convincing. I experimented with a modular floor piece that was attached to the walls, but decided against it in favor of making the floor later. When I constructed the bridge out of the low-poly walls, I saw that I was still well under the 5,000 tri limit for extra models outside the three main buildings. I went back and made slightly more detailed variants of my pieces. I did this by inserting edge loops on the stone railing that matched some of the lines in the bricks, and squished things around. I also removed the bevel on top of the trim piece, and deleted an edge loop on the underside of the arch since I didn't think it was needed. That broke the shading, since all of the edges were soft. At the time, it didn't bother me as much as it should have. I rebuilt the bridge using these piece, but the tri count was now over 6,000. I compromised by replacing most of the walls with their low-poly variants, but sprinkling detail throughout.
The next challenge was the ground. I started with a large grid, deleted the faces that weren't needed, and bent the remaining ones into shape. It was not obvious how to layout the UVs. I had a few ideas that I was fairly certain would work, but I also felt convinced that there was a better, cleaner way. My basic technique was to do a planar map from the top, cut all of the edges, and stack them all on a tiling cobble texture. Getting it to tile accurately and keep the scale consistent was the challenge. Eventually I temporarily detached all of the faces from eachother so I could freely move the vertices in the UV editor. That turned out to be the solution.
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| color |
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| color |
Textures
My
game modding experience came in very useful here. Before this semester,
I was already familiar with albedo, normal, specular, and alpha maps,
and knew what they were supposed to look like. Whether or not I can make own maps in the correct way is another matter. I sourced most of my textures directly from game files. The process of extracting textures from games involved using tools called GCFScape, VTFEdit, and Bethesda Archive Extractor. This meant that some of my textures had normal maps that were ready to use. For the first texture sheet, which included everything for the house, I made my own bump maps. On the second sheet, I used the normal maps I already had, but made a heightmap anyways. My low-detail thatch buildings used textures made from screenshots, but I didn't want them to feel left out. I took the heightmap I made, and loaded it onto a subdivided plane in Blender, using a displacement modifier. I then used that to bake a normal map. It turned out a bit weird, but it was such a low priority. The last type of map I used was a specular map, which allowed me to control the specularity on the window.
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| bump |
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| bump |
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| normal |
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| specular |
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| putting things in the blender to bake |
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Game Scene - Week 4
December 11, 2019
The scene is coming together quite nicely. My teammates gave me work-in-progress versions of their buildings so I could start arranging them in one scene. Their current work is further along than what you see here.
My building is very nearly finished. I could probably call it done if I wanted to, but I still have more plans. I did most of the work on this building over two days, and construction went pretty rapidly. I already had most of the individual pieces ready, so it was basically a matter of duplicating and re-arranging wooden beams. The
textures were all sourced from Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Global
Offensive, and Morrowind. I pulled the textures directly from the game
files, which meant that I often had bump and normal maps ready to use. I still need to add some detail in some spots, and replace the door texture with something better. It's currently sitting at 1427 tris.
Once the building reached it's current state, I turned my attention to Unity and other models for the scene. I've spent several hours so far working on this bridge. I used modular modeling extensively, and learned a lot about making things tile cleanly. I started with a template piece for a wall with an arch, vertical brick trim on one end, and a horizontal brick rail on top. Then I made a template for a flat wall with no arch, and another for a wall half as wide. Piecing them together proved to be more complicated than I expected, and it's far from perfect at the moment. The biggest challenge turned out to be building and UVing the road. The entire bridge has 3449 tris, with each tiled component at or below 120.
I also threw together a low detail fence that will be used in the distance around other low detail buildings. It's a simple plane with an alpha map. I still have to make some those LOD buildings, as well as smaller props and details, such as barrels and boats.
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Game Scene - Week 3
December 4, 2019
I also made some great progress in Maya and Photoshop. One of the offending walls has been replaced with a newer, less edgy version. The wall on the far right behind the overhang has the same problems, so I plan on remaking that one, too. Separating the wooden boards from the wall plane allowed me to use the texture space much more effectively, and will make it very easy to build the rest of the walls by re-using the same pieces. I've been putting a lot of thought into the UVs and textures. I threw together some basic textures in photoshop. It's mostly just solid colors, but it allows me to block in the places where I'm going to rely on the diffuse and bump maps to add detail. I have a general plan for how I'm going to arrange the pieces that I have yet to model. I tend to work on models and textures simultaneously, keeping Maya and Photoshop open at the same time. I got used to working this way in Blender, and I can't imagine doing it any other way.
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Game Scene - Week 2
November 18, 2019
Bit by bit, I've been constructing this building on top of the blockout. I set the blockout to display as a wireframe so I could use it as a guide.
The first piece I worked on is wall on the left side. I created a plane that had 4 width subdivisions, and 3 height subdivisions to get a grid that lines up with the wooden slats. From there, I brought out the rest of the detail using edge loops and extruding. I used a planar map for the UV, then threw together a basic and temporary texture in photoshop. The wall, wood, and door are all one piece.
The method I used turned out to be a lot more complicated than it needed to be. It would work well if I wanted the wooden slats to have a uniform look, but that shouldn't be my goal here. In the reference, the piece of wood above the door is crooked, which I didn't notice until very recently. It's probably better to keep the wall and wooden frame separate instead of welded together, that way I can manipulate and re-use individual components more easily. It would also make creating the other walls go a lot smoother. I will most likely redo this wall entirely.
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Game Scene - Week 1
November 13, 2019
My group decided to create some buildings from the Witcher 3 for our scene. We wanted to have three different styles of buildings that all made sense together in one scene. The area around the gate into Novigrad has a mix between well-constructed buildings within the city walls, and smaller, thatch-roof houses just outside. The team met up in the library to take some screenshots of the area. I personally do not own the Witcher 3, but I do have the first Witcher. There is some overlap in the look of things, especially in the poor houses in the outskirts of the city. I'm mainly going to rely on screenshots for reference.
I threw together a basic blockout of the scene to illustrate the position of things in relation to each other. The terrain, wall, and bridge are very bland and rigid in this version, and likely won't look much like the ones here. We plan on adding detail to make the scene feel alive, and have ideas of ways to keep the polycount down. Eventually, we also intend to add low-detail building models in the distance. The next step is for our group to meet up and put together a more unified plan.
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Living Room Scene Final - Week 5
November 4, 2019
Well, it's all finished. I'm very satisfied with how most of it turned out. I ended up removing some of the furniture and props I had planned so I could spend more time on what I already had. Placing the scene inside a cave may have been a mistake, since it took a lot of my time and focus away from the actual living room. Everything that made it into the scene except the television is work I'm proud of.
Most of the textures were painted digitally in Photoshop. The coffee table and floor lamp were the first textures I made, and they were the only ones that used outside images as sources. After that, I decided on this art style.
I made use of bump and displacement maps for the pile of rocks at the cave mouth around the light source. I made a basic rock model in Maya, painted four texture variants in Photoshop, and gave it a bump map. I piled many of these rocks up, then took two renders of it. One for color, the other for ambient occlusion. I used the ambient occlusion render (with changes) as a displacement map on a plane. I used very few subdivisions, since my goal was only to get an approximation of what it would look like. I used the full color render as the texture, and the AO again as a bump map. I kept many of the original modeled rocks in the scene, placing the displacement piece underneath to fill in the gaps.
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| planks, boards, supports |
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| TV stand |
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| cushions/pillows |
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| rock pile displacement |
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| rock pile texture |
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| rock with UV overlay |
Lessons Learned
Plan more and plan better: I started with the idea of a modern, hand-made home inside a cave. I gathered reference images, and had an image of the scene in my head, but never sketched it out. I never totally settled on my composition, which meant that I ended up spending time on elements of the scene that didn't really fit in the final shot. I was constantly re-arranging furniture since I was never quite sure where things belonged. I need to improve on time management and keeping my priorities in order, so that important elements of the scene aren't neglected.
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Living Room Scene - Week 4
October 30, 2019
I
finished the couch! No more sitting on blocky cushions with sharp
edges. The textures aren't quite done yet. Also added two more picture frames with photos of my cat, and modeled the table behind the couch to replace the one from my blockout. That one is UV mapped and awaiting textures.I did some work on this rug here. Before doing anything, I UV mapped it with a planar projection. I'm going to add a texture with a pattern to it eventually. Then I added subdivisions and triangulated parts of the corner so I could squish it around realistically.
I still need to add a lot more props and small clutter, and replace many of my existing props with more detailed ones. Most of the props in the background still need to be remade. The wooden posts and ropes at the edge of the platform, for example. Most of the cave is pretty much finished, but parts of it still need attention. I'm going to focus on every part of the scene next week, because all of it needs work. Going forward, I might try planning out additions to the scene by drawing over renders in photoshop.
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| Cave wall, floor, and plank textures |
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Living Room Scene - Week 3
October 23, 2019
Now I turned my attention to the furniture. I loaded up my coffee table and sofa from earlier in the semester, and started making some changes to the coffee table. I added some glass, then made it longer to roughly fit the block in my scene. I placed the lamp and a sheet of paper on it, but I plan on adding more later. I also slightly improved the TV by adding a screen. I'm going to replace it with a model made from reference later on.I finished this update off by re-arranging the furniture. I moved the lamp to the other side of the TV, replaced the arm chair with Worf's chair, and brought the generator closer in so it could all fit in one shot. I also added a picture frame to the table behind the couch. Probably going to put a picture of my cat in it. Going forward, I will continue adding small props and improving what I already have. I also expect to do some more texture work before the next blog post.
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Living Room Scene - Week 2
October 16, 2019
This week, I focused mainly on the individual objects in the scene, with only minor revisions to the overall arrangement. Each piece of furniture was made from a reference image. I have two lamps that are nearly done and a couch that needs work. Both of the lamp meshes are basically finished. Well, at least one of them is.The floor lamp is totally complete and waiting on textures. For the table lamp, I made the arms by extruding shapes along a curve. This is a method I wanted to use on Worf's chair, but couldn't figure out how to do at the time. Our instructor did an in-class tutorial on it, so I made sure to follow along.
The couch was the first thing I started on, but it still has a ways to go. The basic shapes are all there, so now it's just a matter of making it into something comfortable. In my reference image, the cushions have a pattern, so I plan on texturing them eventually. My next step is to UV the cushions, then likely bevel them and go from there.
Not much has changed in the general design of the scene. I added a narrow table behind the couch, and replaced some of the placeholder furniture with my current versions of their models. Next, I'd like to overhaul the structure of the cave. Right now, the cave walls are a rough and low-poly object meant to sketch in the general shape. Other than that, I'm going to find some textures for the lamp and continue modeling furniture.
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Living Room Scene - Week 1
October 10, 2019
The very first thing I did was start gathering reference. I saw this as a chance to have fun, so I focused on finding weird furniture. I collected 31 pictures of strange couches, chairs, and lamps.
I decided right away that I had to make this chair from Worf's quarters on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and immediately got to work on making it. At this point, I still hadn't given much thought to what the scene would actually be. I may or may not end up including it in the final scene, depending on whether I feel it belongs there by that point.
Next, I decided to put my living room inside a cave. I found a lot of photos of one cave home in Arkansas, and grabbed a few pictures of Morrowind's interiors off uesp.net. I would like to depict the adobe of a modern cave dweller with an off-the-grid lifestyle, using a generator to supply their power. My plan is to find a middle ground between Morrowind's primitive setting and the luxurious cave home. It should have modern amenities but look like it was built by it's inhabitant with their own two hands
Object List:
cave wall, platforms, bridge, railings, round table, stools, tarp, rug, sofa, armchair, chair, coffee table, TV with stand, lamp, generator, cables
I mainly followed the Morrowind screenshot for the layout, and used the Arkansas home to remind myself of how people generally arrange the furniture in their living rooms. Going forward, I plan on gathering more reference pictures of real caves so I can nail that aspect down in a realistic way. It's been my observation that video game caves are often boring and unrealistic in comparison to the variety of personalities seen in nature's caverns. I will likely continue to experiment by drawing on rendered images in Photoshop, and only model once I have a more refined idea of the story.
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Grocery Shelf
September 2019
September 2019
I had a great deal of fun on this assignment. Too much fun, possibly. My composition was unfocused and chaotic as a result of that. I think my personality definitely shined through here in some places (but not everywhere).
The assignment was to build a grocery shelf stocked with six boxes, three glass items, and one plastic item. All objects needed to have strategic UV layouts with appropriate application of textures and materials. The scene needed to be lit with four point lighting.
I already modeled the pasta, sauce jar, and wine bottle in the previous assignment. The instructions specifically said not to use the wine bottle, but I figured it was safe since I chose to make the model myself instead of use the one provided. In hindsight, I think I probably should have cleared this with my instructors just to be certain.
I don't eat cereal (like, ever), but as soon as I made the random connection between Jonathan Frakes and these particular brands, I knew what I had to do.
I took extra time to add little details throughout. There's the spilled sauce jar, the evil pasta box, a peanut butter jar containing marinara sauce, and a marinara sauce jar containing peanut butter. I don't regret a thing.
Two of the most problematic elements for me were the boxes of quiche and beer on the bottom shelf. The problem with the beer is that I could not find very accurate references. I found a great image that had a full frontal view of one side of the box. That's the side with the logo and image of the can. The end caps and the other two sides were more difficult. I could see what these sides looked like, but they were always at an angle that made them unusable. I found a more generic image that was similar to the ends, but not quite exact. It was also lower resolution, so I wasn't too happy about using it. For the two sides that had only the image of the can, I simply rotated the rectangle degrees clockwise, scaled it down, and reused part of the texture.I am happy with how the quiche turned out (both the one I ate and the one I modeled), but the process of making it could have been better. It was the last object I made, and I did it the night before the assignment was due. Once the quiche was in the oven cooking, I unfolded the box and got to work. I took photos of the box using my desk lamp as a light source. Far from ideal lighting conditions made for a less than ideal result. I made lots of adjustments in Photoshop to get it to look better. There's a lot more I could have done, but it looked normal enough in the final render.
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Dinner Prep
September 2019
September 2019
This assignment focused on learning to use the curves tools, and getting comfortable with layout out UVs. Our tasks included making a pasta box, a sauce jar using curves, and UV layouts for both objects. We were also given a wine bottle mesh with textures, and only needed to layout the UVs for it. It also involved making a tiled sauce texture in Photoshop. Each object needed to have its texture contained in a single texture sheet image. The objects also needed to be scaled appropriately to each other.
At the time, I was perfectly satisfied with the work I submitted. In hindsight, I wish I'd done things slightly differently. I gave some thought to scale, but I don't think I got it quite right. It looked normal to me, but now I think I made the pasta box too large, and the sauce jar too small.
Instead of using the model provided, I opted to make my own wine bottle. My mother works at a winery back home in Livermore and I wanted to use one of their labels. The mesh provided was the wrong kind of bottle, so I made my own for the sake of accuracy. I didn't watch the provided tutorials until after making it, but there was one possible issue with what I turned in. We were expected to make UVs for two labels, one on the body of the bottle and a smaller one on the neck. My reference had only one label, so I didn't need to put much thought into mapping the texture onto it.
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Sofa & Coffee Table
September 2019
September 2019
IKEA is an amazing resource for modelers. In this assignment, our instructor provided us with links to a sofa and coffee table on IKEA's online catalog that we were to model. The two pieces of furniture are apparently named Karlstad and Lunnarp, if you were curious. Their product pages each had several good reference pictures, a list of measurements, and assembly instructions in PDF form. These were all incredibly helpful in achieving an accurate representation. I looked at the PDFs frequently for illustrations of the furniture at various angles and in different stages of construction.For each object, I started off by making a box for the overall dimensions. I assigned this box to a new layer, and set the display type to "Template", which made it wireframe and prevented me from accidentally selecting it when working on the actual geometry. I made several more off these, using them as guides marking key measurements. Some of them I eventually duplicated and used as the base for that area of the model. Others remained as guides for their entire life, such as the invisible box filling the space under the couch. This technique works very well for me, so I will continue to use it in the future.
I'm happy with how the coffee table turned out (or was at the time). Looking back, the scale of the wood grain between the top and bottom levels is inconsistent. The couch was a little bit rushed near the end, and I know I could have done better. I created a basic (and measurement accurate) version of the entire model early on in the process. Everything was there, but needed refinement. Most of the model was just fine like this, but the cushions were not comfortable. It was my intention to replace the placeholder cushions with an entirely new model. I realized around 10pm the night before the due date that I had more work to do. The coffee table was totally ready, but parts of the couch still needed their UVs and other work. I focused on the UVs and textures. I sourced wooden legs from a free texture site, but simply used Photoshop's "Render/Fibers" filter for the fabric. Looked good enough to me at the time. I didn't do very much to the cushions besides beveling and squishing the edges around in soft select mode. I don't think I looked at the reference picture enough this night. I was probably thinking about the blocky cushions of the couch in my apartment, but Karlstad deserved better.
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Marker
September 2019
September 2019
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| In the reference image, the marker said "Low Odor," but it just made more sense this way. |
Our task here was to create a dry erase marker from a reference image, following video tutorials by our instructor. This involved creating the mesh, assigning materials, UV editing, and simple texturing in Photoshop. The techniques we used included revolving a mesh around a curve, extruding, and duplicate special (among others). I didn't have any issues for most of the process, but I had some trouble with the UVs being distorted at the seam in subdivide mode. I tried to solve it by adding more edge loops, but ended up adding way too many without solving the problem entirely.
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Primitives Scene
September 2019
In this assignment, our task was to create a scene using only basic primitives, and no vertex editing. I recently re-watched Eraserhead, and that put me in a certain state of mind. I wanted to do something industrial, and it was important to me that it be grayscale. I did some thumbnail sketches in a notebook, including a value study. I had a specific plan for lighting this scene, but didn't quite get there.
These are some of my reference images. On the left is a still from Eraserhead, and on the right is a photo taken by David Lynch of the same area years after the movie.
I'm not completely happy with how this turned out. I established the mood I was looking for, but I should have given myself more time. The patches of dirt on the ground and the clouds in the sky were a particular disappointment for me. I wanted to achieve the effect using layers of translucent discs, but I couldn't figure out how to do it at the time. The strong points here are the valves and pipes. The curves in the pipes were made with a series of short cylinder segments connected by spheres. You can't see the valves very clearly here, but they were made using a torus with spheres placed all around the side. I am very comfortable working in Blender, and learning Maya has been an uncomfortable transition for me. All of the tools I know are there, but they're in the wrong place.
