Week 9 - Beginning to hand paint textures

Starting last week and continuing this week I've been practising hand painting the textures for the assets in my environment. This is the first time I've properly had to create hand painted textures for a scene. I started with watching tutorial videos from the internet showing a step by step process. Here's one of the videos I watched. The video relates with hand painting brick textures. While watching the video I followed the steps and ended up with this result. More work is needed of course.

Figure. 1. Picture Frame Texture

I began with the picture frames in the scene where they would be used as windows and have curtains in side them. I started with a base image from the web and used that to help me plot the key dark and light areas when painting. The figure below shows a screen shot of my first attempt of painting the picture frame.This will not be used and is no where near the quality I want it to be at.

Figure. 2. Happy Meal Box Texture

Still practising I started with other assets like the happy meal box. This asset is high up in the scene and I started to paint in the shadowing around the model and began to give the model a sense of 3D by high lighting key areas. 

Firgure. 3. Brick Wall Texture

Video References

corderocraft. 2012. Tutorial: Hand painting tileable brick texture in photoshop. [online]. [30th March 2014]. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cjgZA_YKCg

   

Week 8 - Alpha Deadline

Week 8 marked the Alpha landmark in the module, this meant all assets had to be in place in the scene and to be all textured to an extent. Also a new cinematic pass should be created improving upon the last on we presented in week 3. My deadline for getting all the assets done was week 6 and I achieved that, however like wrote in my last blog post I did spend a lot of the time last week reworking the UV mapping on all the assets and having to start all over again with the textures. The whole process of going over the UV mapping had to be done and I'm glad to have sorted it out even if it put me a week behind from texturing but this has aloud me to improve the textures. When showing my work to Jon the textures being very basic to the point that they are just one colour in some areas. I do need to move on with the textures quickly. Comments on my last cinematic were that it was really short. In my newer version the cinematic lasts around 55 seconds. However the feedback covered on Monday recommended me that I should cover a high up perspective instead of just giving the audience a rats point of view. I also need to work on the camera movement as my camera angles and the movement looked like the camera was drunk.

Week 7 - Week before Alpha

With 1 week till Alpha started to begin finalising Assets and mock textures for the deadline. By the end of week 6 I had finished all the assets I needed for the scene and I had also pretty much finished all the key UV sets for all the assets too. I did want to go over them again as some bigger assets were sharing space with a lot of assets and some smaller assets had a whole UV set just to themselves. This I am changing to the point where all the big assets like the KFC box and happy meal box now have a separate UV set. Also by the end of week 6 I did apply basic colour textures to all the assets, however for the alpha deadline I do want increase the detail with the textures too. Here's how the scene is looking so far.

Figure. 1. UDK Scene Screen Shot

Figure. 2. UDK Scene Screen Shot

For Alpha I will also need an updated version of my cinematic to present. I did find a website from a past lecturer from CGMA Dave Wilson. I have never had to render a cinematic in UDK before and this webpage contains step by step videos on the process.  http://ubudave.weebly.com/udk-creating-a-video-sequence.html. 

For the last cinematic pass I used the camera system in Maya, this was because the block out I presented was all done in Maya. Working on the camera set up in UDK I'm finding it a lot more complicated than the camera system in Maya. In the end I did figure out how to use the camera tools, however I  have struggled trying to render the scene out. Instead I played the camera animation in my view port and I used Fraps to record the footage. I don't intend to use fraps for the final cinematic. I took notes from my last presentation about my first cinematic. I was told it was short and it needed to be in the length of 1 minute to a minute and a half. My cinematic now fits that time bracket and I've still kept the rat point of view with the camera angles.

Week 6 - Reading Week

Week 6 was a reading week and meant that no lectures were taking place for any modules. This gave us time to catch up on work that we may have been dragging behind on. Last week I had started placing already made assets into the UDK editor and this was to continue this week. With our Alpha deadline in Week 7 this would mean after reaching that landmark no more assets should be added to the scene. As this blog post stands there are a few more assets needing to be made however the scene is starting to take shape in the UDK editor and walking around in the scene in UDK I feel that all the sizes for the assets fit fine and gives you the view of a rat's perspective. For reaching the Alpha deadline I'll also need to add basic textures for all the assets, which I have been UVing as I go along making them.

Website References

Wilson, D. Dave Wilson 3D Artist. [Online]. [Accessed 4th March 2014]. Available from: http://ubudave.weebly.com/udk-creating-a-video-sequence.html

Week 5 - Changes to my Flow chart

Over the week I've been carrying on creating and working on my assets for my scene. As it's the start of week 5 and looking back to my original work flow chart this week would be the last week of working on my assets. At this moment in time I won't be able to achieve that goal. However I have changed the structure of my work flow chart to work like this, see in figure 1.

Figure. 1. Work Flow Chart Updated

I have moved the final week of model creation to week 6 instead of week 5, this is because in week 6 it's a reading week and I'll have more time to get on with my work. I've been getting on with a lot of the assets 

Week 4 - Building the Assets

The day after the presentation last Tuesday I started to begin building the proper assets for my scene. I started with the telephone booth (milk carton), picture frames and I began modelling the Oven building that's centre of my scene. I have been going back to my block out scene and changing round a few buildings like the fast food store. Other adjustments to the block out was the sizing. When importing the whole block out into UDK I noticed the size was a little off with the whole scene. I simply increased the size in UDK and then took note of the size change and copied those figures into the Maya scene. With these adjustments made I'm happy with the scale of the scene and I think it captures that 'worms eye view' feeling like your a rat in this world.

For the Dynamic effects in this scene I've been looking into cloth effects I could use. On a few of the buildings I have covers attached. These could use the cloth effects and adding to the realism and make the scene more interesting.

Video. 1. Unreal Development Kit Cloth Basics Tutorial Part 1

In the video above it gives a tutorial 

Video Reference

Video. 1. raven67854. 2009. Unreal Development Kit Cloth Basics Tutorial Part 1. [Online]. [11th Feb 2014]. Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwXsHvlVryE 

Week 3 - Presentation

On the Tuesday of week 3 I presented the concept piece to the class that I wished to create for this module, In the presentation we have to present the research we undertook to build build from our chosen concept piece. A lot of the research images I showed in the presentation, I've already showed in my blog apart the mood board images in figure 1 which contains screen shots from the Studio Ghibli film Arrietty.

Figure. 1. Arrietty Film Screen Shots

Figure. 2. Arrietty Film Screen Shots

For the presentation a workflow had to be made to show a brief plan of how you expect the term to roll out. In the workflow plan I tried to key the select points in the process of the production and planned out how many weeks I would spend on each stage in the production.

Figure. 3. Workflow Chart

In the workflow chart I've tried to pin down all the key stages starting with the concept research back in week 1 and moving through landmark goals like this presentation and next the Alpha deadline in week 7. This is the second draft of my workflow chart and I plan to keep check of this everyday and modify the chart when needed throughout the rest of the module. At the minute I am keeping to my workflow plan with me beginning to start modelling assets for my scene and I also would like to note that in my plan so far I have down that I will start UV Mapping the assets in week 5. What I'm doing at the minute is UV map the assets as I'm making them. So this would need to possibly be adjusted in my workflow plan. 

Picture Reference 

Figure. 1. Arrietty Film Screen Shots http://www.dvdactive.com/reviews/dvd/secret-world-of-arrietty-the.html [Accessed 03.02.2014]

Figure. 2. Arrietty Film Screen Shots http://www.animationmagazine.net/features/arrietty-a-tale-twice-borrowed/ [Accessed 03.02.2014]

Figure. 3. Workflow Chart