Y3 Week 1: A New Beginning!
The summer has gone and we are back at DMU for another year of Game Art Design. I was keeping myself busy during our break by travelling up and down the country and even abroad and now I am ready to begin the last hurdle: the final year!
We have been asked to create a whole new blog for our final year and I will be using this blog from now on.
To get started we are doing what we refer to as the 'style matrix'. Why? Because we have been given a matrix and a whole lot of briefs from which we were able to select 3 different projects!
I am not going to go into detail about every single brief. Instead I'll briefly go over the briefs that I have chosen (n.b. My selection is still not 100% certain and I might actually change one of my briefs. More about that later.)
My aim was to demonstrate a big range of work, so I decided to choose the following: The 'Realistic Character Asset' brief, the 'Partially Stylised Prop Assets' brief and finally the 'Fully Stylised Small Environment' brief. All 3 chosen briefs are game production briefs, since I am going to be focusing more on developing my 3D side rather than 2D.
The Realistic Character Asset Brief (aka Helmeted Character) requires us to create an 3D NPC character with a helmet and the Fully Stylised Small Environment Brief (aka Stylised Shop Front) requires us to create a 3D shop that exists within in a completely stylised world. I'll go over these 2 briefs in more detail at a later date, however for my first project I decided to do the Partially Stylised Prop Assets Brief (aka Apocalyptic Weapon), for which I will now go into more detail.
The aim of the brief is to create a 3D weapon in the style of Dead Rising or Bioshock Infinite. To start us off we have been given 6 unfinished cocepts, from which we have to choose 1 and model it. While we are encouraged to add our own two cents to the design, we are not allowed to massively change it and have to focus on creating a 3D model using an incomplete reference.
I have decided to choose number 3 and started this project by finding some additional research images to help me create the model. I created a pinterest board (yes, that's a link) for this to easily keep track of my visual research. I also looked at a video about pump action shotguns and chainsaws to find out how the different components of the design worked, which was very helpful. I then changed the design slightly to make it seem a bit more logical:
The first thing I changed was the position and attachment of the chainsaw. The way it was attached in the original design would've not enabled the user to relaod the shotgun, as it was directly attached to the fore end (the sldie bar used to reload a pump action shotgun). Instead I decided to move it further back a bit and attach it to the body of the shotgun instead. That was the shotgun will be held in place.
Another change I included in my design was the introduction of a bicycle mud guard, which I decided to re-purpose as a hand guard, to protect the users hand from the chainsaw's dangerous blade. A slight problem I encountered later on was the fact that a chainsaw's blade is actually located on the side of the body and not in the middle, which means that this addition is not as useful as it was meant to be. I decided to still include it in my the design, as a bit of protection is better than none.
After spending a short time on designing I the went straight into the modelling phase and tried to get the low-poly model done by the end of this week. Unfortunately, I also had loads of other appointments during the week, which meant that I didn't quite get done. Here is the model so far:
While I have the main shape of the model finished, I am currently only at 5,107 tris, which is about half of the 10k tri limit that we have been given for this brief. My first step for the next week will therefore be finishing this model by making it a bit smoother. I also haven't assigned all the smoothing groups yet (which is why I didn't bother rendering out what I have so far).
In addition to that we have received feedback from our tutors. My main feedback that I received was the fact that from the front, the silhouette of the model looks a bit flat. So I will have to go forward by bulking it out a bit. An example to that woulkd be the little extrusion of the case where the motor of the chainsaw is fitted, which I have already included in my model. I will further pull that part out to give the chainsaw body a bit more shape.
Another bit of feedback I received was regarding the metal handle that's wrapped around the chainsaw. It was a bit too close to the body of the chainsaw, making it difficult to wrap your fingers around certain bits of it. The reason I had placed it so close to the chainsaw was because that's what it looked like when I checked my references and the video I linked to above. I adjusted the handle a bit to be slightly further away from the body, which also helped bulking out the model a bit already.
Finally we talked about the other 2 briefs that I had picked. Since I am aiming to become a technical artist, none of the briefs were really that suited to me, so I instead focused developing my 3D skills (as I want to keep 3D modelling as a backup plan in my career). My tutor mentioned that there was a more technical brief available, however they had previously removed this brief as there wasn't really any supporting teacher available for it.
Our course is mainly aimed at teaching the art side of game development, which makes it a little harder for technical artists. Therefore a lot of self-study would be needed in order to complete a brief such as the one that they removed from the curriculum. I'd be happy to tackle something like that though, since I am a quick learner (especially when it comes to technical things), so my tutor said he'd see if we could get the brief back in for me. If this would go through, then I'd probably replace the character brief, as I am not really intending to be a character artist and I only really chose that brief to enable me to create a broad portfolio.
My aim for the next week is to finish the low-poly model, unwrap it and then create a high-poly model and bake down a normal map. This would leave me with textures and presentation of my model for the final week. I am aiming to use marmorset for the presentation, so that I can embed the finished model in my blog, however I have previously not used it, so it'll be an interesting experience to find out how it works.
