AAA Asset- The Finale.

With the hand in date today I though I would throw up all screenshots and what not for the nearly completed object on its own post.

The cannon on its pier with some of the lighting twiddled to achieve a more atmospheric effect.

I created some cannon balls to add to the scene. They are just Unreal's default spheres with a dark rusty cast iron texture thrown on (although I'm unsure how well it shows up on them).

Quixel 3Do image with the UVs and ambient occlusions thrown onto the model to show how everything all works together (or something to that effect). 

A top-ish view. The UV's were triangulated so that they would cooperate with the .obj exported from zBrush better.

Over all I am fairly pleased with how it turned out. It is far from perfect and could be far better but it looks the part, at least to one degree or another. I learned a lot about them processes required to make a game asset, skills and knowledge I am thankful for.

I have had several problems with the project. My overall time management could of been better which would have given me more wiggle room later on to fix completely fixable mistakes which I have had to forgo correcting to try and get everything else done.

I have mentioned above that my UV layouts were sub-par. Having previously negative relationships with UV's in the past led me to just get one out that worked. It is far from perfect but I stand by the fact that it (mostly) works.

Adding materials and textures in Quixel Suite gave me some issues. It can be seen that the metal looks a bit flat and let us not forget the colour map "shadows" (which remind me of nuclear shadows, hence "shadows").

My experience in ZBrush, however, was overall a positive. it went smoothly for me and produced some decent detailing and colour maps. The normal maps were functional but there was room for improvement.

My Maya modeling went well. There were a few problems with vertices but I was able to fix them and carry on with no detriment to the final model.

It seems, reflecting on the whole project (read: ordeal) that I am capable of learning and implementing the techniques necessary but I am far from a natural. 

Did I enjoy the project? Yes-ish.

Am I happy I did it? Yes. Would I do it again? No.    

I am and will forever be a 2D artist.

AAA Asset Production

As one of our projects to have completed before Christmas we have to model and texture a realistic asset which is to be rendered in the Unreal 4 engine.

For my project I decided to model a 19th century naval cannon complete with carriage. As with anything ever a moodboard came first.

I looked at many different types and shapes of cannons, from the real deals to contemporary scale models.

The first thing I started to model was the side of the carriage, the wooden frame with attached trucks (wheels) which holds the cannon. The semicircular notch at the top for one of the cannon trunnions was made using a cylinder and subtracting it away from the side of the carriage. This produced edges that needed to be connected and looped around the model.  

Inside of the carriage. When completed it will be mirrored over so some faced needed to be deleted.

Forming the fore support of the cannon.

The trucks. These are separate objects from the rest of the carriage.

Modeling the main cannon. It's simply a cylinder with edge loops added to created the appropriate tapering shape with a flared muzzle.  

The trunnion clamps were modeled separate from the carriage on which they sit from a cube that was shaped and extruded before being cut in half and mirrored a achieve the symmetry required. 

The cannon sitting in the carriage. Note trunnions added to the barrel.

A progress pic of the cannon showing detail on the trucks and rivets on the sides.

A side view of the cannon with the barrel at a more realistic angle.

Top view of the cannon.

A back three quarter view.

The high poly model subdivided with creased edges showing. These creased edges are not permanent.

  A top view showing the same.

Adding in wood grain textures using alphas in ZBrush to give the cannon's carriage a more realistic finnish. This was achieved with a selection of alphas made from simple Google images and stamping them on with the brush's drag feature enable whilst the surface was masked appropriately.

The carriage all wooded up.

The full cannon detailed in ZBrush. The untouched surfaces are all the cannon's metal parts which do not need any detail added ZBrush. The detail will be added in Quixel SUITE.

A three quarter view of the cannon in Zbrush.

The "low-poly" version of the cannon's Maya model ( I use the term "low poly" loosely, It could be much lower but it isn't necessary for it to be so). Note the slightly highlighted areas where the UVs have been cut. 

The UV sheet. Poor use of space but practical. The somewhat crude layout should not interfere with the processes to come. Next time I would be good to take the time to arrange the UVs more efficiently, which, of course, is expected of you in the industry.
From here I went back to my ZBrush model to add colour using Polypaint which is to be extracted later to form the objects colour map.

The result was a rather funky-looking green and purple cannon. The green for old, battered wood and the purple for a sea-beaten cast iron look.

Using XNormals I created the colour and normal maps to place on my cannon in Quixel Suite.

A bit rough. Given more time I would have been able to neaten it up.

Some neatening out was required for the colour maps but as can be seen I got it mostly under control. I, in fact, had to produce three of each maps, six in total, for the cannon's carriage, trucks and (naturally) cannon. These were all combined in Photoshop to produce final, all encompassing maps.

The penultimate stage is to place the object in Quixel Suite. To make sure the maps operated smoothly I did a few tests before hand.

The carriage as it appears in Quixel. The normal maps appear to work fine. The colour  is, of course, not final.

The trucks showing both normal map detail and some wood and metal texturing thanks to the colour maps.

Tilt shift blurring (so artistic).

Shiny lens flare (wow). 

Top view with no camera nonsense (boo!).

These shots show the cannon in Quixel's 3DO viewer. With the textures and materials established it was time to take the model into Unity 4.

I could have done with better seam placement along the cannon.

A series of screen shots of the cannon in Unreal, sitting on top of a quickly pieced-together pier overlooking the sea. Fitting, perhaps, for a naval cannon.

To get the cannon into Unreal the Quixel textures are exported so that they can be applied in engine. These textures are then placed on to a material which is then thrown on to a .fbx export of my low poly Maya model.

The model is, however, not without it's flaws (of course, I made it what else was to be expected).

As can be seen, because of the nature of my colour mapping metal "shadows" can be seen on the wooden surfaces near this rope loop. In retrospect I should have payed more attention to the details on the normal map. I would be pressed for time to fix it now so I feel that, in future models, carefully surveying the normal map for flaws should be done straight after baking.

The same can be seen here on this loop on the side of the carriage.

That's Not an Unimaginative Popular Culture Reference! That's an Unimaginative Popular Culture Reference!!!

The title makes it quite self-evident that this post is going to be about a knife. Doesn't it? Last week our homework given to us by Phil out Maya tutor-technician (tutnician or technitor, if you will) was to finish modeling the combat knife we started in class, at least to a certain point.

The base image (duh).

We were given a base image to place onto a plane with which to use as reference. With the image in place we began by using the quad draw tool to create planes which were to become the handle.

The plane was then extruded to create half the handle (the knife will be mirrored and stitched together later) and the knife's button was added.

Knife handle with button visable.

Afterwards more edgeloops were added so that the screws could be added into the handle.

The inner faces of the handle were also extruded and beveled to add more depth and detail to the grip.

The screws (highlighted for your convenience).

Next was the knife blade. It was much the same as the handle in regards to all the quad drawing but made slightly more complicated but the blade's serration.

Knife blade with more edgeloops than sense.

With that done all that was in order was adding a cylinder for the round thing that can be seen in the upper right hand of the above picture. Also added was some detail on the blade near the handle which was extruded and beveled.

Next was to mirror the handle and buttons.

Moving on from there I had to mirror the knife's blade.

The Tassle That Never Was and extras

When I first began my project I came up with ideas for Tassle that were a little different than what I finally chose to do.

I did quite like number 6's armour-dress-thing but it probably wouldn't have worked for the main character of a game.

These were the first set of thumbnails I did for Tassle. I combined aspects of the second and third sketches to create a more finalised concept. 

This was the result, note the silvery and strongly geometric designs.

There were two reasons why, already into the project, I chose to redesign my character. 

The first reason is that I though that the complicated geometric armour would be too difficult to model. Of course you could just call it "challenging" but I had no interest riving myself insane with difficult and demanding geometry.

The second is that I just go a bit bored of it. I don't know why I did but now even looking back at it I recall thinking that I could just do something different, something that wasn't along the lines of the first thing that popped into my head.

Now some extras.

This is a screen shot of one of my models of Tassle. I had to abandon it and start again because of geometry problems way above my pay grade, which was a shame because it didn't turn out too badly.

Gold and shiny! This design was done with a gold foil texture to make you think wealth.
which the Edwards certainly have

This one was toned down a bit more.

These are the designs I drew up as the symbol/logo for the Edwards Corporation who de jure own Tassle. It's just a circle with some liney nonsense and a barcode design beneath it and it can be seen as the background for the synopses write ups.