Handheld

Well as it was a module to make a scene for a handheld device I had to test it out.. so with a bit of help I got it running pretty smoothly on my iPhone, which is great! Did a little mock-up presentation piece as well for the sake of it.

Throne Room: Christmas Update

I started a thread over at Polycount while I continued to try and fix up my Throne Room scene and got some really great feedback!

I've changed an awful lot as the destroyed bricks and tiles along with the huge amount of emissive lighting was making the scene far too busy. Most of the textures have been reworked and the emissive textures have been turned off in most cases bringing a lot more focus to key objects like the throne. I'm much happier with how the scene stands now.. one to prepare for the 'folio.

Environment #2: DONE!

Well the deadline is in a few hours so I'm going to have to call this one done and get some sleep.. I'm pretty happy with it turned out but I don't think it's as strong as my Egyptian Ruins piece. I'm going to come back to this one over Christmas and polish it up some more.

.. and some more ..

Finished texturing all of the assets for the Throne Room scene, everything's in engine I just need to start doing some shader, lighting and post-process work.. easy, right?

More Assets

I've been doing about an asset a day so far, depending on their size or importance, from unwrapping to doing the Diffuse, Normals and Speculars.. here's a couple of the most recent ones, I think they're a bit noisy in areas so I'll try to fix that with a second texture pass.

Vaulted Ceiling

Working on the vaulted ceiling.. think I'm gonna have to work on the saturation of the wall brick tile texture and the floor tiling texture as I think they may be a bit too yellow/orange in areas.. Although I'll make final calls once everything is in-engine together.

Floor Tiles

Updated the destroyed version of the floor tiles for the scene, the idea will be to mix these, or mesh paint (hence the extra triangles), in with the non-destroyed versions to give some variation.

Handheld Assets

With my Egyptian Tomb finished it's time to push on with my Throne Room scene, only a few weeks left now!

First Environment: COMPLETE

Half way through this project I thought it was really going downhill, especially after I was getting some really boring colour tones with some of my first lighting solutions in UDK.. but after doing some research and putting in some more hours I'm really happy with how this came out!

Asset Presentation

I've finished up all of the assets for my Egyptian Ruins scene and tried to work a bit on my presentation skills.. it's still not quite where I want it to be but I think it's better than previous attempts! Presented with a 3-point lighting system in UDK.

Egyptian Ruins: Progress

Some progress from over the last few days.. there's no specular maps on anything yet.. I'm not sure what I think about the scene right now. I'm going to finish off the last couple of assets tomorrow and apply the speculars.

I'm considering moving away from the typical Egyptian "sand-stone everything" which is very apparent in photos and trying to add some colour to the scene to bring it to life some more.

More UDK

Here's a quick screenie to show how the scene currently sits, working on diffuses for everything as well as going over my normal maps to fix some errors. The statues aren't unwrapped or normal mapped yet.. Lighting is just basic point lights for an idea of what I'm going for (bowls on the walls will hold fire):

Egyptian Stage

Took a break from unwrapping/normal mapping/light mapping to do some work on the platform.. Normals are pretty sorted and the diffuse is about half way there but the spec is just some adjustment layers along with alterations on each of the individual layers.

The Throne Room

I made a lot more progress with the design of my Darksiders inspired Handheld scene, I decided to bring the steps further forward and change the demon circle in the centre to a throne, I think it adds a lot more interest and story to the room and helps break up the modularity.

UDK

Really starting to get to grips properly with UDK for the first time, although I've used UE3 before and this is quite similar it's still a different tool set to get used to. Here's my Egyptian Ruins scene thrown into UDK.

Egyptian Ruins: More ZBrush

I managed to finish up the ZBrush sculpts for all of my assets in the Egyptian Ruins scene, I learnt a lot from some of Orbs sculpting tutorials and his brushes were extremely useful for adding damage and destruction to my pieces.

  

      

Handheld Games Design: Environment

Time to start another module! The brief states that this environment must be Darksiders themed/inspired and needs to stick to various technical limitations as it's aim is to be used for a mobile device. I started off with a very basic blockout and built my ideas from there.

ZBrush Statues

Over the last few days I've been ZBrushing my Anubis, Ra and Sobek statues for my Egyptian scene, definitely learning more about the program although I think I'm still lacking when it comes to characters and missing too much on the anatomy and form.. something I'll have to work on!

Egyptian Ruins: Base Meshes

I settled with the circular design for the whole scene, and created base meshes for all the assets to take into ZBrush and start sculpting.

Egyptian Ruins: ZBrush

I've been dying to do some more ZBrush work so I thought the Egyptian Ruins scene would be the perfect place to try and expand my skill set with it a bit.. here's the first piece of work I've done with the scenes centre stage.

Advanced Modelling: Environment

I picked Soul Caliburs 'Egyptian Ruins' stage for my Advanced Modelling Environment, after gathering some different concepts I blocked out a few basic layouts to see which I wanted to work with.

Beginning of the End

This year is my last one at Staffordshire University so I really want to try and push myself as much as I can.. I'm going to be creating an environment for each of the core modules and taking optionals that I think will help expand my skill set as an Environment Artist

Here's some work from one of my optional modules; Lighting Techniques. We were given a scene and we had to work the material definitions to suit the scene we were trying to portray as well as apply an effective lighting solution.. this is what I managed to come up with over the last week:

TDotW: Pitch Video

At the end of this semester we have to pitch ourselves to our peers, showing what each of us has done towards the project as well as a short video of how the level has turned out. This is my section of the vid with my work:

3D Graphics Technology for Film

This is part of an optional module that I took this semester, the idea was to project an image onto some basic geometry and then animate objects as if they were in the scene, specifically using particles where possible. I decided to make a short animation of a 3D Equalizer.

Character Animation: Video

All of the pieces finally finished rendering, here's the vid:

Character Turntable

Also rendered out a turntable of the character.

3D Character Presentation

Finished up my character now and decided to do a very basic rig for him so I could pose him as well.. the module was fun but I want to try and stick as much to Environment work as much as possible in the future for sure.

Character Texture Update

I went back and did a second pass on some areas of my characters textures and tried to do a slightly better 3-point lighting set up in 3ds Max.

Character Animation Scene

Another module this semester has been Character Animation which has been quite.. different. Although I enjoyed the project so far, mainly due to building up an environment and a bit of a story, animation is definitely not something I want to really pursue.

Here's a few renders of the scene so far, video to come soon..