Shop Front: Week 2, Wednesday

I modelled the electricity pylon, after talking to some peers I decided that it was unnecessary to make this out of modular pieces. As long as I made it Low poly it should be fine, this is a stylised brief after all.

I modelled a quarter of this mesh and then used symmetry to create the whole complete mesh.

I have already spent almost 7K of this projects budget on one prop, the truck. So I was very wary about creating a second large core asset. This couldn’t also sit at around 7k as that would be my entire budget gone. So I simplified the design of the pylon and also dramatically culled tries past a certain height.

Then by using the bend modifier, noise, melt and generally breaking up the mesh I tried to create dynamic shapes. I also altered the scale of the Pylon, I also altered the thickness of the metal by using the Push modifier

The Mad Max world gives me allot of room to really push forms and make them extremely over the top. 

Creating these pylons was really quite a challenge. The noise modifier in particular is really quite unpredictable, and there’s a fine line between the chaose /tangle of a collapsed pylon and an unreadable mess.

One of the Tangles I created was reminiscent of an insect/scorpion in an attack/defensive stance. I decided to then go into this model and really exaggerate the features that were causing this. I then also added a large tail like spike to the form.

I then began to clad the outside of the Pylon. I did this to really push the insects form. And to make this structure in the wilderness obviously inhabited. Also creating a large monolith like structure implies an early tribal style culture.

I then continued to dress the scene. I’ve pulled apart the truck and create a lived in mechanics garage style scene.

I still need to add some tools, and evidence of this area being a dwelling. Amazingly I am actually considerably under budget. Pulling apart the struck saved allot of tries, also looking at the pylon now it’s actually far to low poly. I’m now trying to hide allot of the pylon with the panels, as it has terrible geometry that was never meant to be within your eye line. I might have to go back into it and remodel large areas of it, this could quickly get costly, in tri budget and time.

These are all my current props. As you can see I still have 5.5k to use, although I think I might already be pushing the texture budget. 

Shop Front: Week 2

 I came up with an idea for the environment. 

I still need to try it out though and test it.

Using the above ref I began modelling the engine. Although the engine is going to be exaggerated in its proportions I was determined to make shore that it made sense. So I’ve been doing research into what various parts of a car actually do and there for where they should sit, and what they need to be connected to. Looking at the above ref you can see that the most important forms are caused by turbos and how the exhaust is connected to them. A large scoop and or general air intake on the top of the engine would be a super charger blower. As this is an exaggerated engine I decided to include both of these forced induction techniques, as well as a twin turbo set up as this would require twice the manifolds etc., generally adding more complexity to the engine.

So the exhaust manifold (the four tubes exiting the engine on both sides of the V8 I have modelled), have to make their way to a Turbo (A turbine that the exhaust gas spins) the exhaust gas is then normally simply exhausted. This first turbine is connected to and there for also spins a second turbine that draws in air through an air filter. This second turbine will only release it’s sucked in air once it has reached a certain amount of pressure ( PSI, Boost). This air will be heated by the turbo due to the heat caused by the exhaust gasses running through the nearby other turbine. So this now hot fresh air will need to pass through an intercooler (the large box at the front of the engine) which will cool this air down. Cool air is allot more predictable (is less likely to prematurely combust), is allot denser so has more oxygen and will have a greater difference in expansion when ignited than already hot air. This now cool pressurised air will now enter the engine through the intake manifolds at the top of the engine. But I have also included a super charger that sits at the top of the engine. So my cooled down air from the intercooler enters straight into the super charger.

A super charger is allot simpler. The type I have used is simply a belt driven turbine that draws in air at the top of the engine through the two air filters I have placed here. Inside the block that sits below these air filters and above the engine is where these turbines sit. These turbines will pull in air and will also pressure rise it and then feed this air straight into the engine through the intake manifolds.  A super charger has to be powered by the engine so has a parasitic draw on power, but you don’t have to wait for Boost to build up as the super charger is always running. A super charger is what Mad Max famously runs on his car. His is switch activated so he only turns it on when needed, due to this particular function of his super charger apparently it was never actually functioning in any of the films as this isn’t easily done or maybe even possible.

Basically a whole load of alien looking pipes.  

I then included and exaggerated some other features like many additional belts on the front and a large front cooling fan to the engine. The large front fan is a throwback to very early engines, it would probably have little to no effect on an engine of this power output.  

I then modelled the rest of the truck. The suspension set up is also theoretically functional.

The truck is actually a highly modified 1930’s Ford Wrecker.

I removed the role cage from the design, I didn’t want to obscure one of the only original part of this vehicle, the Cab. Apart from this the rest of the truck is a combination of various metal girders and pipes welded together from the waste land.

The chassis is probably from a larger truck, and the cab sits allot further back to accommodate the engine. There is no longer a front or any Fairings remaining, it’s basically an engine a frame, a simple tow truck system and a seat.

This is the mesh of this Model.

Many of the parts are duplicates, e.g. many of the tubes, the metal girders, wheels etc. This has saved allot of modelling time and UV space, as for example there are 8 Girders but only one is unwrapped.

I’m currently not shore how to pack these meshes. This project has a budget of only 4x1024. Putting this whole vehicle on one 1024 doesn’t seem like a high enough pixel density, but using two would require half my budget. For now I am going to proceed and create other assets and maybe pack other assets with half of this vehicle.

Shop Front: Week 1

Gp_Highly Stylised Environment 

15k, 4x1024 and 3 weeks

This brief is to design and create a highly stylised shop front for use in the Unreal engine.

I picked this project because I wanted a project that gave me room to make a vehicle. My portfolio currently doesn’t have any pieces to show interest in this area. Also I am planning to do a vehicle project for FMP and I have never done one to fruition. So I really need to do at least one before I delve into a 22 week vehicle project.

I can easily work a vehicle into this project. The focus needs to be the vehicle then I will also create an environment to give it a setting and also to comply with the brief.

I have already chosen a world to put my vehicle into due to the huge amount of resources available for reference. I am going to design a vehicle based shop for the Mad Max universe.

These are my initial designs. I immediately lost focus and started creating a larger scene. The Tri budget for this project is only 15k if I want to create a reasonably detailed vehicle I will not have many tries left for a large scene. During these concepts I was trying to push the silhouette so kept adding large structures to the design.

There are some good forms and ideas here. Although I do need to concentrate on what I want to get out of this project. I can use the large draping tarpaulin designs on a smaller scale on future designs maybe.

This is the second mood board I created. This is to help me focus on what I want out of this project. I really want to create a vehicle with an elaborate visible engine. These complex forms are mostly created with super charger and or Turbo set ups, and the general shape of the exhaust manifolds.

I will also continue to design a simple environment. 

Environment Brief: 3 week hand in

This is a 43k environment in Unreal. I used 5x1024 and 2x512. The Project was to create what is on the other side of the following door.

I used 3DS-Max and or Z-Brush to model the assets, including creating High polys for bake using X-Normal. I unwrapped the Meshes in 3DS-Max, except for the Megalith which was unwrapped in Z-Brush.

I used Photoshop and Substance painter to create the textures. Some of the textures have been created in engine due to variations in tiling. 

The environment was then built in the Unreal Engine.

Screen Shots

Conclusion 

This project has not gone well. Even at this late stage I am not happy with the scene. I believe the environment needs Decals, Particle effects, Matinees and much better lighting before its portfolio ready. I have never successfully done any of these tasks so I still need to learn how to do them. So although these task could get sorted relatively quickly, the learning stage for anything new is always steep. Because of this these aren’t a feature of the environment at this point. They will be added in the future.

The environment though is truly modular and can be infinitely and efficiently expanded and or altered easily. The assets with only a few exceptions (the tree Alphas) are to a high standard. I am also happy with my efficient use of texture space and assets. Bar the centre of the room, all the assets that make up all of the container only add up to a 17k. Without the Lab assets this is only around 10K. Also all these assets only used two 1024s.

I’m also happy with the quality of the tree sculpt, retopology unwrap and texture. And I am also happy with the rock texture, although it is a bit shiny, it still needs to be roughened up a little bit.

I also learnt about the bump off set node and also further increased my Substance Painter skills.

The main problem with this project is that I spent far too long constructing and modelling the Tank in a manner that eventually tuned out to be disadvantages. I then had to re do this entire period of work in a better fashion. This led to the whole tank being made from small modular pieces which now I now allot more about. Generally all parts of this project were over worked. The walk way was modelled, unwrapped, Textured and constructed in scene four times before I settled on a high enough quality, yet efficient design. This constant reworking of assets is true of many aspect in this project.  This may have resulted in generally high quality assets but many vital features to the environment are missing. Also due to time constraints at the end some assets that I know need further work (Rock Roughness and form, Door Roughness and normal, Tree Alphas, Grass Height etc) have not been altered.

Over all I have never done anything like this before so I am happy with what I achieved in the time. I am not happy though with the finale lighting, composition and lack of particle affects and matinees.   

Environment Brief: Week 3 Blog 2

I finished modelling, unwrapped and packed all the assets that I started to model on the first day of this brief. Thursday of week one.

 Here I’ve started to scatter branch planes around. I created these planes using the same technique I used for the grass planes. I made the entire branch in 3DS-Max and then projection mapped it onto the same plane as the grass. Like the grass I colour picked the colours and applied a gradient in 3DS-Max as the texture for the branch pieces. In this image you can also see that the Door mesh that I made was modular and can take the place of any of the wall squares. In this image you can see that I have also made the modular lighting rig. For future reference all of the assets that have to sit at a particular angle, and or height relative to other assets are modular and will snap in place. This also means that in unreal if you have an object highlighted in your contents browser and then right click on an object in the scene, you can the select the highlighted asset to replace the clicked on asset. This is an extremely quick and easy way of altering the environment without having to ever use the move tools.

Here I have added more branches to the tree. I had allot of trouble trying to get these to sit correctly. There is a very fine line between not enough leaves and making them far too dense. This is a very long process of trying many different densities within the texture, and or geometry. In the end I’m still not very happy with the foliage for this tree.

Here you can also see that the lighting broke for the grass directly in front of the starting point for the player. I tried to fix this by altering Light map sizes but this didn’t work.

Another annoying thing about foliage is that you really need to have the lighting built to see what it will look like, and this can take a very long time, and is extremely inefficient to do frequently.

Wall Texture 

Here I have multiplied the roughness with the AO in order to add greater variation to the texture. I have also multiplied in a second normal map.

Propulasion

I spent a long time playing with lighting, laying out props and generally working on the composition of the environment. I never really found a point when I was really happy with it.

This is the first project within which I have altered lighting and actually built the project, in all our group projects this has always been some body else’s job. I have always been an asset monkey. As a result I currently don’t really know how to push the level. I know that it’s missing allot, but is this something that can be saved with improved lighting. Is it composition? There are processes that I know I need to add to the level but simply don’t have time to learn how to do and then apply to the level. These are matinees and particle affect. I think if I were to do some basic matinees, some flashy particle effects and better lighting the project would be completely done. For now though I must continue doing things that I already know how to do.

Further propulasion

I tried a bunch of stripe variations on the whole room.  I tried multiple divisions and multiple widths, and shades, but eventually chose not to continue in this direction. 

 These are all my finished assets in one seen. I am well under the 80K budget, all these assets currently sit at 43K. 

Hand In

This brings the project up to Monday. On this day my plan was to hand all my work in and do all the documentation. Sadly though I spent the entirety of this day simply trying to get the engine file to run.  I didn't know that it's bad practice to copy and paste an engine scene. This can deteriorate files which can cause many issues in engine. 

My engine file on one computer would open but with no light in the scene, and with the entire Unreal interface inoperable. I then tried another computer where it would fail right at the end of an extremely long loading time. I then tried to open it directly off of my External hard drive. This version appeared to work at first and I was able to try and get screen shots for about an hour, then during a lighting build it blue screened the computer. I called it at this point and began work on my Shop Front Project. 

The following day I decided to work from home on the environment where the only working version existed. I thought as I would have to wait for a new Hard Drive to arrive so couldn't hand in yet that I may as well do a little bit more work.  During this day I changed the lighting and general lighting and composition again. I also tried to create some Decals for the scene, as this is something that the environment is desperately missing. Sadly though even with a peer who was current using Decals in their own scene, and Tutorials we could not get them to work in my scene.  We concluded this must be a result of the deterioration of my engine files. I then also tried to make a post processing volume but with the same result.

 On Wednesday I was finally able to load my work up onto the K drive for submission. I didn’t do anything special, it simply was functioning this time after being dropped just like before onto the K Drive. Maybe at this point other features have fixed there selves, hopefully they have. But I now have to move onto the next project. If I still can’t use Decals and post processing volumes the only solution is to re-build the hole seen. Only then will this work be to a truly finished standard.

Environment Brief: Week 3

I modelled the door and then made high polies and baked it down. I also baked the Floor Slice.

I textured the door in Substance painter.

I also baked the steps, and then textured these in substance painter. I’ve also used a little bit of Bump off set in engine to Parallax these slightly.

I also made the rocks at this point. I sculpted these in Z-Brush starting with a single sphere, using the move tool and Dyna mesh I deformed the sphere into the desired shape. I then used a combination of clay tubes and the Trim tools to create some more rocky forms. I then used the Surface Modifier to add some Noise to the surface. This sculpt was then saved as the high poly ready for baking. After I decimated this and then unwrapped it in Z-Brush I then exported the result as the low poly. These were then baked in X-Normal. I then created 3 tileable rock textures in Photoshop, these were then applied to the mesh in substance painter. I also colour picked some moss from pictures of megaliths to add variation and some colour.

 The above picture includes the finished rock. I have since realised that the large edges are too smooth, they need to be sharpened. There also needs to be more visible breaking planes, delamination’s and or cleavage planes.   But as they sit they will have to do for now.

The above image shows a developing grass material. This image demonstrated the fine tuning that has to take place when creating foliage of this type. The above grass looks alright but there is a single blade of grass that is visibly repeating. This particular slice of grass will have to removed and or altered and then the projection map of these assets will have to be repeated

This is the result of the following re bake.

 This is the finished grass texture, this is actually still a repeating blade here as well, but I had to move on.

So this is where I’m at with the centre of the room, I have finished the rocks, the tree and the hill including the grass alphas.

The Tank: Environment Brief

After getting some feedback from a peer I decided to do what I have been avoiding, that is to rebuild the entire oil tank out of modular pieces. The whole point of giving the space a complex surface pattern was so that complex shadows could be cast. The way that I initially put time into was to parallax a texture that would then be applied to all the surfaces. At the time I didn't realise that paralaxing didn't cast dynamic shadows as a result I am not happy with the tank as it currently sits. So I am now going to rebuild the entire tank.

After about 4 variants this is my final modular kit. The whole kit only adds up to 1.250 Tries.

 In engine these pieces (minus the centre cone) are rotated round and snapped vertically into place.  In height the pieces are a multiple of 10 in Max units, which means that they will also snap in Unreal. The rotation angle is 11.25%.

This is one of the variants, for this one I found the forms were much too large.

 This is the current set up for the tank. I think that this is a vast improvement from the paralaxed tank, particularly with the floor and ceiling which now have a concentric pattern.  Also I am very happy with the addition of the ceiling fan. These forms now as they are physical assets with geometry will cast shadows and catch light correctly.

Reminders

I am now going to move on from the tank, as I really should have finished this right at the start of the week. Here are some reminders for future alteration I may make to it.  

I may have thought of a way to make the randomly generated normal texture work with these new modular wall assets

I may also adjust the blades by raising half of them up. This may look more realistic.