Image Research

Mood Boards of Castles

After receiving our project brief, I set to work on finding lots of different images of castles so that I could enhance my design ideas and to see if they inspired any new ones. I tried to get a wide variety images, such as real life castle, digital painting of castles, animated castles found in movies and video games and also sketches and concepts of castles too. I wanted to make sure I had covered nearly every aspect so I could have a wide variety of references images.

After this I made sure to look into different styles of castles too such as Germanic, Asian and Middle Eastern so I could look into all different structural themes within the castle to try to link it into my work. I then looked into the themes of fantasy themed castles and found lots of different designs that I found appealing and beautiful.

Before I created these mood boards, I had a very basic idea of doing a Japanese castle that is high up on a snowy mountain side or a fantasy castle on top of a cliff looking down over the ocean, but whilst I was doing my image research I found a couple of images that really stood out for me so now I will have to do more research into this concept.

 

  

I also had a brief look into different types of castle bridges on existing structures and some digital painting as well just to get a brief idea of concepts and how they are supposed to look and how I could incorporate them into my design. As my idea is still being developed and I need to do some further research into it reference wise I may do a second mood board on bridges just for more development and ideas to fit with my theme.

 

 

 

 

Project Brief

Creating a Castle in Maya

So this week after our tutorials were over we received our new project brief for BA3. The assignment is for us to create a castle of our choice as long as there is a bridge linking to the structure and a terrain of some sort. This means that this time, even though we have a set model to produce, the era, style and concept are completely up to us so we can create whatever kind of castle we want. The important thing to do now get lots and lots of images for referencing and ideas to work off to try and produce a interesting design and concept. I already have a few ideas floating around in my head about this project, now I just have to do some research to see if they are possible.

Bellow is the project brief and requirements for this assignment



BA3 PROJECT BRIEF

Asserts Creation (Design your own castle)

• Re-design castle model based on the layout of Norwich castle keep (Include a piece of base terrain and the bridge)
• Specific time of the day, sunrise, sunset and noon

• Research and study of the different castle concept needed and make sure everyone works on the same unit size

• Research into modularized mesh and tillable and repeatable texture creation methods 

• Research into Normal map baking methods

• Research into game editor, import and export asserts between Maya and game editor, terrain generation tool

Submission

• Final model render with different time of the day from Maya in JPG format
• All diffuse, specular, normal map Textures in TGA format with game ready standard

• All assert models in OBJ file

• A walk around video with all asserts in game engine

• Research portfolio

• Reflective journal (Blog)

Creating a full model in Maya

The pocket watch

I knew we had to choose something to model and I had a few ideas floating around in my head that I thought we be interesting such as a Japanese vase, ship in a bottle or a Victorian music box so it took me a little time to settle on something. After a lot of scrolling through images on Google I finally decided to go with modelling a Pocket watch. This was because I thought it had a lot of aspects that would help me improve me skills, such as curved shapes and there are a lot of different varieties for me to research into as well. These are a collection of images that really stood out for me, I knew there were all different types that had intricate designs I could create but I knew they would be a little too challenging for me in these early stages so I decided to go for a station masters pocket watch which looked simple and elegant.

  

 

 

Modelling

 

After my image research I had a crack at working on the model on the pocket watch, making sure everything was in proportion to each other and the right shape. I found this stage fairly easy as it was similar to work I had done before and having the reference image in the back certainly helped. After this was completed I quickly went on to adding the colour to the shape as I wanted to show the separate pieces of the model but I soon noticed that I had created a dome for the clock face and not a flat one with glass over the top so I had to go back and tweak this and I managed to sort it out fairly quickly.



  

 

 

  

Textures

 

After adding basic colour to break up all the pieces I was working with I decided to add the number grid as a texture to see what the UV mapping was like for my model. The front piece seemed to be perfect but the areas I had pieced together on the back were a little rough but I wasn't too worried about them as I knew I wouldn't need a texture for the metal of the watch itself, I could just use one of the lamberts used in Maya and change the settings of it to make it look realistic.

 

 I then moved onto the clock face itself which was very simply done and I was able to line up the image nicely without too much trouble with the UV mapping so I was pretty pleased with how this piece turned out. I did actually have a go at trying to add a brass texture to the watch to see what it would look like but it didn't have the right effect and ended up looking like sand so I decided to remove it and stick with my previous idea of just tweaking the lighting and lambert options to give the right effect.

 

  

 

 

 

 

Lighting and editing the texture

 

Once I was happy with the colours I had chosen, I went onto working with the lighting. I have had experience with lighting models before in 3D max and I thought it difficult so I thought, that again I would find this a hard part of the process but I actually really enjoyed it this time around. Once my tutor Lothar had explained it I found it fairly easy and actually quite fun placing all the lighting and changing there strength and positioning, it helped give my model life and a more realistic feel. This also helped when I edited the reflectivity of the textures to make sure that whatever was near by could be partially seen in the glass and metal and also that the glass was opaque but still slightly visible.

 

Overall I am very happy with how this turned out, I think it looks really good for a first attempt and modelling a complete object. Next time I would like to have a go at modelling something a little worn and broken to try out new texture and lighting options.

 

Maya Tutorials

Quick practices of 3D modelling

During the past couple of weeks, to prepare us for our new project we were given more Maya tutorials which was a huge relief I think to most people, including myself as it had been a while since we had used it. This time we were focusing more on the aspects that we didn't cover in the tutorials last time so that we had something new to try and figure out how to use and incorporate into our designs.

The tutorials included going over some old material like how to round the corners of a shape and other techniques that would help us actually build the basis of the model. Then we looked into one of the most important parts of creating a model, texturing and lighting. These are key to the creative process as they can really help to bring a model to life and make it into a certain style. Without these aspects your model is pretty much worthless in a game engine.

Below are some examples of texturing and modelling I completed during the tutorials. I soon learned that texturing isn't an easy thing to do and takes a lot of time and practice to get it right and as I got a little lost during the lesson I wasn't able to complete all of these quick models but I can always go back into the file and keep working on them for practice. The square pattern on the last image is used to help you line up and see the distortion of the texturing when you add it on but as this is a square shape it comes out looking perfect without having to do anything to it but on a more complicated shape the image would be stretched and messed up and that is something that as a modeller, you would have to go in and fix.

 

Maya Modelling

The Beginning

So for our new project we were told we would be modelling an object in Maya which is a 3D software that is used to create concepts and designs and is also used by a lot of Gaming company's and people in the industry. Even before we were told about what our BA3 project would be, we were being given tutorials on how to use Maya, this was way back in the beginning of the year, just after we completed our BA1 project. We started from the basics and progressed from there. The lessons helped to show us lost of different tools and shortcuts to help us create our designs.

The first thing I created In Maya was a living room. I had used a 3D software before called 3Ds Max and both programmes were fairly similar but had some core differences that I had to get used too. I did end up looking from something from 'The Sims 2' but it was a very rough design and I simply created it just to get the hang of modelling something in 3D. This was also way before I knew anything about lighting or texturing so everything does look a little plain.

 

 

 

Emailing different gaming companies

After getting all my key research done I decided to should email a couple of people working in gaming companies and ask them a few questions as It would be nice to hear from them personally.
The first person I emailed was Ken Wong, the art director who worked on the game 'Alice Madness Returns'. This was a little nerve wracking for me as I am a huge fan of this game, but I wrote a polite and, as professional as I could make it sound, email about a role of a concept artist working at 'Spicy Horse' and then waited for a reply. Ken replied surprisingly quick explaining that as he was the art director he only did a small amount of the concept work and gave me the email address of his friend Luis Melo who was one of the artists who worked on the game as well. After thanking Ken for his response I set about emailing Luis. Unfortunately I still haven't heard anything back and I knew I couldn't hang my whole essay on waiting for his response so I had to move on.

The second company I emailed was 'Split Path Studio' as I wanted to know a little more about the role of a concept artist working in a indie company. Similarly with my previous emailing attempt there was so sign in getting a response soon so I cracked on with my essay, working with all the information I had already collected and I ended up with a word count of 1098. A day after writing my essay, Dom Littler from Split Path Studio finally got back to me. What he told me was really good solid information that I knew I needed to add to my essay but as my word count was so high and I wanted to keep everything I had already written I had to do some serious editing to squeeze a little more information in bringing my word count to exactly 1100.

Dom was very kind and said that I could pop his email to me on my blog as reference to research so here it is,



"Hey Harriet,

Sorry this reply has taken a while :) we are all mega busy. if i miss anything or if you have any more questions though do ask!
We are quite big for an indie start up (there being 7 in the core team with a couple of extras for contract work), so we are by no means a typical example. In fact, there is rarely a "typical example" at all when it comes to indie studios, you just do what you have to to make it work. :) We don't have anyone who's job title is "concept artist" because like i said, the team does what they need when it is needed. We have two people who are designated as "2D artists". which is probably the closest thing to concept artist. There's myself (Dom Littler) and i'm lead artist (but that means i guide 3D as well), i think i went over my role a bit at our talk to you guys, and Lee Gregory who is a 2D artist. However we both do our fair share of 3D modeling now the "concept" stage of our pre-production pipeline is done. it all depends what part of the process the game is in. most of the concept art for a game is produced before production of the game itself stars to get the visual design and art style worked out.
We still do mood paintings and sketches occasionally when they are required to put an idea across quickly though. We call ourselves just "2D artists because we don't just produce concept art (by which i kind of mean mood paintings), i also gather reference images, determine the art style of the game, thumbnail and silhouette painting, everything a general concept artist would do. but we also do texture art, Character/ creature design and sculpting. 3d modelling, we all have a bit of a hand in the story and game design, though being a lead i'm a bit more involved in that, in fact i end up spending less time actually doing art than the other 2D and 3d artists. We also handle the visual aspect of stuff like UI design, logo design, art guides for stuff like the website. Lee also animates the animatics for in game cut-scenes and trailers which we both do the storyboards for.I hope this helps, sorry it might be a bit jumbled up, i just rambled onto the keyboard.

Dom"

Contextual Studies Lectures

During the course of our project we were given the opportunity to attend three lectures to help us prepare and collect research for our essays. I found these extremely useful as it's always nice to hear information from people who are right in front of you instead of digging around on the internet.


Split Path Studios

Our first talk was from the group 'Split Path Studios' who are a small independent (indie) game company still attending Norwich University of the Arts and are in the middle of producing their first game. I had no idea how a indie company worked and until I went to this lecture, for some reason I believed that everybody worked together to create the concepts and animations and programming but what I didn't know is that the group is actually split up and different people are assigned roles that cover a lot of key areas in the game creation process. This is information I really wanted to put into my essay as it would help show the work load that a concept artist has to complete working in a smaller company. Also an Indie company is where I could essentially end up working in the near future so I got down lots of notes on the advice they gave us.


Lothar Zhou

Our second lecture was from one of my teachers who works at the University. Lothar has had a lot of experience in the gaming industry and his knowledge and advice was really good to hear as it would help prepare me for my possible career in the gaming industry. Lothar told as about his experiences at the many different companies he worked for as he progressed as an artist and how this helped mould and shape him as an artist and a person. It was really interesting to hear what he had to say about the difference of working in a bigger company compared to a smaller one and also companies from abroad in which Lothar said he has the best experience working at.


Chris Goodswen

Our last lecture was given by an Character artist working in the large gaming company 'Crytek' which is also where Lothar spent some time working at. I learnt from this lecture that there is a big different from a character artist and the concept artists at 'Crytek' which I didn't know before and just assumed they were the same thing. This also helped me learn about how many different roles there are in a bigger companies compared to smaller ones where one person would take on a multitude of responsibilities, which gave me the opportunity to do a little comparison work in my essay between 'Crytek and 'Split Path Studios'. Chris's also spoke about the industry and gave us a lot of advice for the future which I wrote down. I was going to upload all my notes I took during all three lectures but I wasn't sure if any of the information I wrote down could be shown on the internet due to the topics covered, Chris's lecture in particular so I decided to leave them off.