Low Poly Modeling Shenanigans

Hey kids, remember those individual urban props I mentioned that I would be doing for my next project? It's happenin'. Some screenies:

There's no big underlying theme or meaning behind this project. The main focus is to take something found in the real world and make it look as good in a game engine as you possibly can. I'm going to really be focusing on texturing for this project more than anything. I feel as though it's my biggest weakness as an artist right now. So I'm giving myself the challenge of making all four objects be entirely hand-painted in Photoshop. I don't care too much about how long it will take either, it's going to be a learning experience more than anything. I took alot of good pictures of these guys from a bunch of different angles, so that'll make for a more accurate reading of scale, texture, color, etc. As always, I'm not trying to really skimp on the polys as if it's for a mobile game. It's more to be used in an engine like Unity or Unreal.

Speaking of Unity, I've been really reading up on it as of late. This project will be the first thing that I've done in Unity. Since it'll be these four objects in the scene with nothing else, it's a good simple start. I'll get the hang of importing, set up lights, etc. I think I'm going to add a chunk of ground for the objects to sit on as well. It'll be a big chunk of some really roughed up pavement to help make the screenshots look more interesting than just putting the objects on a flat gray background.

Right now, I'm getting started on the Zbrushing. More pics to come.

Tweaking That Stuff

So I took some advice into consideration and made some changes to the deco environment.

These include:

1) Added more contrast to the skybox.

2) Tweaked the cubemap reflection so that there's less white.

3) Upped the contrast in the lighting so that shadows are more noticeable as well as highlights.

4) Added some curtains for the windows.

5) Made the horizon line higher and added water to add interest.

Let me know what y'all think! ;)

Deco for the New Year

It's been awhile, hasn't it? Things have been beyond hectic for me throughout the holidays, so this post is coming a little later than I would have liked. But I'll get to the actual point of showing you all what I have on the Miami Deco environment, and save the personal stuff for later. In a word, its' done! Well, for now. Once I get some feedback, I'm sure I'll make changes. It's definitely close though.

Here it be:

Now that I look at the last post, it's amazing how different it looks. Polish goes a long way, eh? I really focused a lot on lighting this time around. I originally had a simple directional light set up to represent the sun, but it wasn't getting me the results I wanted. It still looked

very flat to me. Instead, with the advice of someone well versed in lighting levels, I used a 3 point lighting setup. A key light, back light, and fill light. 3 directional lights all with different intensities and color tinting. Other than that, nothing really changed from my last post other than using those purple arches all around the bottom. It just seemed better than breaking it up with two different arch models. The switch from one to another was too abrupt and just looked awkward. I also increased the amount of palm trees for added visual interest and added in the cubemapping to the windows for a nice reflection.

The only main thing I have to do as far as touch up goes is remove all the seams between pieces in photoshop. It pains me to do it post engine, but I (as well as everyone else that's experienced this problem on the internet) couldn't figure out how get rid of them. Apparently, it's a limitation with UDK. Kinda crappy. Next time, I'll have to design around it.

As I mentioned earlier, lots of craziness over the past two months. The usual holdiay hoopla, combined with longer hours at work. And oh yeah, my computer died. As I said earlier, I had plans to buy a new one already in motion. But I decided to wait until Cyber Monday to get one at a cheaper price. So a few weeks before that, it died. Literally two weeks before getting a new one. After having it for 6 years. O_o

So now I make any needed changes to this project. After that, I'll be going through tutorials on how to use Unity and I'll also be brushing up on some of the programs I already know. Speaking of which, that's what I'm gonna be using for my next project. I think it's just gonna be some urban prop work. I don't really have any individual props in the portfolio, so I'm thinking that's the next logical step. I'm not sure how fast it'll get done though, as we might be ramping up on that indie project I mentioned earlier. It all depends on how that goes.

I'm also thinking about branching out from just doing game environments for the sake of making myself more well rounded for the dried-up job market I'm facing right now. Just limiting myself to games isn't the best idea with all the studio closings and layoffs I've seen as of late. Which of course makes it even harder than it already is to break in. Such is life for an aspiring dev.

I guess we'll just see........ :D

Deco Coloration

Howdy partners......

Not much new here on the home front. Just plugging away at this and that. I'm done working out the overall color layout. Things may change, but it's pretty solid.

It's kinda funny how the lighting almost looks kinda Team Fortress 2-ey. I'm thinking that its mainly due to the lack of shaders and color texture though. Hopefully. If not, then the lighting will need some adjusting. You'll notice that there's a bunch of whites and dark blues. As in, A LOT. Much of this is just transparency that hasn't been applied to the balconies yet. So everything will make a lot more sense visually when that's done.

I'm also very happy to say that I'm finally able to get a new computer! I've been looking at several options, and I'll probably know by next week what I'm going to get. Rendering out those extra millions of polys in Zbrush won't be a problem any longer. :)

Architecturally Speaking

Okay, so I'll admit it. It was pretty freaking awesome being able to relax for a week or so after the portfolio was finally up to snuff. But, as always, I got bored pretty easily. It reminds me that I'm one of those people that starts to lose my mind if I'm not being productive. It's very hard for me to be one of those people that just goes home every night after work and parks it in front of the T.V. Needless to say, it was nice to get back into what I like to call "creation mode".

So about that art deco-ish building I mentioned. Well, I've been plugging away at it. I'm done with planning, low poly modeling, UV layout, and world building. Observe:


There's some key things that I wanted to achieve with this project.

1) Make a modular environment.
2) Make something architectural.
3) Make something clean looking, and not putting a crap ton of grungy detail into it.

These are all things that I think about and wonder why I haven't done any of them. But no longer!

I'm working in unreal units and exporting from Maya with the model already at the proper size, which is something I haven't done until now. Making things modular is actually pretty easy, and snapping them together in UDK is pretty painless as long as you have Maya's measuring units set accordingly.

I originally didn't have the fountain, steps, guard rail, parking lot, or trees included as I thought that I could have a tighter angle that only shows off the building. This made for a pretty awful composition, so I scrapped it, and decided to put in the extra work to make more props for a wider view.

The water fountain will have water effects, with the water being handled by mostly transparency and specularity.

The overall lighting will be pretty similar to how it is now, with some tweaking most likely to follow. Especially after the texturing is done.

The trees were made fairly quickly in Speedtree and the terrain was sculpted in Maya. I tried using UDK's terrain editor, but it was giving me all sorts of problems. Basically, the terrain I generated would only appear if the camera was 200 miles away from it. Lame? Doesn't matter though. The trees and terrain are far off in the background, so they don't need to look stellar anyway.

I won't be doing a whole lot of Zbrushing this time around as I'll be testing out Crazy Bump. I must say, it's pretty awesome so far. One of the main reasons the bike took so long is that every single object was Zbrushed. It was a project I used to show that I have high poly sculpting chops. Typically, a lot of environment props will just get crazy bumped and generally take less time. As is the case with this project.

I almost wanted to do a night scene, but everything else in my portfolio is really dark/ sunset-ish. So, I opted for some daytime lighting to mix things up a bit.


So at this point, everything is set up in the editor. All I have to do is make all my diffuse, spec, normal, and opacity maps and import them in. And make adjustments to the lighting. Shouldn't take more than a month as long as my life doesn't get too hectic. Then again, I'm making trips to both Wooster, OH and Rochester, NY in October. Which will eat up some of my time as well as being generally awesome.

New Workings of Times Past Volume Three

Hey peoples, how we all doin?

So, I decided to redo the Pripyat environment once again. Third time, I believe? The good thing is that each time the improvement ends up being huge compared to before, which lets me know that I'm improving. And that's nice.


List of improvements:

1) Lighting is the big one. Window has more of a glow to it now, which I tried to get before, but didn't know how. Shadows have more contrast, and the room is less evenly lit. SO much more atmospheric now. Lighting just wasn't doing it justice before.

2) Gurney cushion has specularity to it now, stands out more.

3) Less saturation all around. Fits the mood of the piece better.

4) Ceiling texture is improved. Texture isn't as plain as before, and there are now decals on the ceiling that help to break things up more, especially where the ceiling meets the walls.

5) Floor isn't nearly as noisy as it was. You can actually tell what's going on with the objects placed there now.


So now, a couple of things are happening for me.

First off, I'm working on a new portfolio project. It's an art deco-y building. That's all I'm saying for now. I'll have a post soon showing the first of the low polys.

I've been more active in the local games community. Didn't do enough of that in the past. Been meeting some great folks. :)

Trying to get an independent game project going. No details yet, we're in the early brainstorming stages. Should be fun.

Just gotta keep movin'.......

Day of Glory

Guess what folks? MY PORTFOLIO IS FINALLY COMPLETE!

That's right. It's been a LONG time coming, but that day has finally arrived. I finally feel like I'm ready to start shooting out those resumes. Huzzah. I just pulled an all nighter on the bike, just to make sure it got done. And done it is. It turned out to be even better than I could have hoped for, which is very exciting. Very exciting indeed. A definite shout out of thanks to my greatest ally Joe D'amico for coming through with an awesome concept to work off of. Thanks to you sir. And if ya'll want, you can check out the website for higher res pics. It's fancy.

www.ryansanderson.com


Without further adieu, I give you The Blue Bomber:




Texturing went a lot faster than I thought it would. When you have the groundwork laid out from the normal maps, it's surprising how fast you can work out all the other details. I tried to keep the colors mainly neutral, with some accent colors thrown in. Having certain parts of the bike painted blue, yellow, and white allows a conceptual reason for this to happen. You'll see little dabs of red here and there, but it doesn't overpower by any means. I also was trying not to put too much detail into the maps, which is a problem I've had in the past. This project taught me that sometimes less is more. There doesn't seem to be any part that overshadows another. You honestly don't want to know the total amount of layers I used in Photoshop for this project. I'm guessing at least a couple hundred.

The cardboard, toolbox, and wrench were thrown in last to help fill out the scene, and also to help with a little narration. I'm pretty proud of the lighting setup as well. It gives me some liberty to not worry about the background so much so that I can focus on showing off the bike. I didn't want to have a blank background for it to sit on, but I also didn't want to overcrowd the scene either.

You also might be able to tell that the normal mapping detail pops out more as opposed to before, with the overall lighting having better contrast. Messing with the shadows parameter in the postprocess editor helped to achieve this. However, you'll also notice that the shadows aren't as dark at the same time. With the amount of light that's hitting the bike, they were way too dark before. MUCH better now, I think.



Some wireframe pics thrown in for good measure to show that I model nice and clean. :)

Overall, the polycount comes in at 10k. Considering that this would be onscreen constantly, almost as much as the main character, I think it's just about right. I must say that I'm impressed with the amount of polys I was able to cut out. It was HEAVY before.



Since my computer is a total fail when it comes to rendering a lot of polys onscreen at once, I had to export each part out of Zbrush individually to composite all together in Photoshop. With a little shadow tweaking, it turned out pretty well.




And finally, some of my best sculpts individually rendered. The engine turned out REALLY nice. Added in some sexy blue. Who doesn't like sexy blue?




And that's it. DONE. So happy. SO HAPPY. Now, I go into work and try not to pass out. Coffee don't fail me now.....

What's next? Cover letters, cold emails, resumes, looking for a job. All that good stuff. Be on the lookout for some possible progress pics of a robot looking thingy for my RPG Meetup group.

Also need to order new business cards. Also need to shave. And get a haircut. I've been very bear-like lately.