Week 9 - Village Blacksmith House & Life Drawing

Village House - Blacksmith

Following my aim from last week, I managed fit within the set traingle count. My blacksmith house model used 4,471 triangles, out of the 5,000 triangles allowed.

Close-up of details

Close-up of details

Eventually I tried to export my model of the house to Unreal Engine. I immediately encountered problems which I wasn’t sure of how to fix, since this was my first time working in Unreal Engine. I eventually managed to figure some of them out. One problem being that, I needed to rebuild the lighting in the scene after I imported my house, as it wasn’t rendered correctly. 

Additionally I unknowingly managed to flip certain polygon faces on my model, what made it partly see-through so I went back to 3DS MAX, to flip them back. I hope to work faster on the next project, this way I’ll have more time left over for fixing the errors in my model.

After sorting out all the problems and correcting any remaining issues with the model; I was able to capture a few renders, to see how my house looks like in the village, in engine.

Life Drawing

During this week's life drawing, we were doing something slightly different. We were asked to draw our subject's outline in the first 2 drawings, to focus on her outer shape/space. The following 2 sketches focused more on  trying to fill in her bodies shape, to draw her as a silhouette. This process has really helped me look at the life drawing model differently, as I was now trying to perceive the whole body as a flat shape, instead of a three-dimensional object.  

As a preparation for the following task, we needed to draw the surroundings/scene around the model. It only needed to be a quick drawing. I tried to keep my perspective as accurate as possible, to make sure my drawing had enough depth to it. It specifically needed to be a landscape drawing as well.

The following exercise took this idea further, as I then needed to cut out the silhouette of the model. It was very tricky as normally my paper would be mounted or attached to n easel, but this time I had to hold it in my hand, while I cut out the silhouette using scissors in the other hand. I managed to roughly cut out the shape I saw, but I think I could have  done better if I was more careful when cutting. A few times I cut too deeply and removed too much paper from the silhouette. There was no way of reverting these mistakes and I think that was the point here; To make myself think about what areas I cut and plan my actions ahead. The last thing to do was to stick our silhouettes down on the landscape drawing to see how well we managed to make them fit in with the surroundings. The key here was to get the body size correctly.

Week 8 - Bradgate Park Studies, Village Blacksmith House & Gurus Project

Village House - Blacksmith

During this week I had began working on my concept, as well as modeling my blacksmith house. When it came to modeling, I focused mainly on using vertex and polygon selection for shaping my building. This wasn't the fastest way to model it, but I went with it, as I was fairly confident in using these tools. It was important for me to finish by the deadline, so I needed to make the right decisions, to save more time for any necessary corrections at the end.

One of the first changes I applied was a new side roof, as the hood shaped one (shown on the smaller black silhouette) was too complex and didn't seem to fit my idea when I tried to model it. As I worked on my concept and modeled the base section of it, I noticed that it wasn’t very functional or space efficient, so I've decided to change the base of the building. I used another base, from one of my previous ideas and merged it with the top section of this one. This meant, that the door was basically pushed back further, to allow more walking space on the bottom. This gave it more of a workshop appearance, just like I wanted. 

The first image of my model's progress shows an experiment I did by painting over as render of it. I was interested whether I could add an additional section/room just above the entry area (where I planned to add stairs). I scrapped this idea, as it overcomplicated the buildings structure, making it appear too busy and detailed. I wanted to keep it looking simple and clear to understand.

Following the triangle count limit was tricky, as I wanted to only model a section of my house. Then texture it and clone the sections to fill in the empty parts. The problem was that I had to calculate how many triangles that may require, ahead of making my building to prevent going over the triangle limit. 

Unwrapping was fairly simple due to using tillable textures, although it was fairly problematic when I moved onto the wooden beams and the unique elements. They took me a lot longer than expected. Even making them in low triangle count didn’t help much when it came to unwrapping.

Tiled Textures

Unique Elements Texture

exture

I tested the textures on my model while I was making them, to make sure they tile correctly, then I added any necessary colour or pattern changes when necessary. This way I prevented my textures from looking out of place too much.

Texturing Project - Plant pot

Eventually I completed the remaining areas of my texture from last week, such as the leaf and its stem. Since it was already unwrapped, all I had left to do was to apply my texture and check for any mistakes or visible seams. The leaves turned out much better than expected, they looked lively and the texture presented clearly.

The only thing I would have corrected here, was the pot's texture, as I only painted a simple pattern onto it, whereas I could have done much more about it. For example, I could have added scratch marks or cracks on the edges, maybe even areas of scratched off paint to make it look older.

Bradgate Park Trip

Just like I mentioned in my previous posts, I wanted to focus more on improving my digital painting skills. So during my visit to this park, I tried to spend most of my time on looking for interesting spots, which I photographed and sketched quickly to help myself understand their structure and arrangement. 

Then when I got back, I used my collected reference to paint digital studies.

The first few thumbnails have turned out well in my opinion. The only problem was that they lacked a lot of depth and that was what I tried to pay more attention to on the remaining few. The last of the small, digital studies eventually shown my progress, the depth of field, of the area I depicted, was much more visible on this one.

I have also done a hand drawn study too, but I used markers for this one, mainly to try out something with a permanent mark.

Later I moved onto painting larger and more detailed studies. With the first one, I followed a similar idea to the last thumbnail study, done previously. I began by picking a colour palette for myself to use. I immediately noticed that my colours were not too similar to the ones on my reference photographs. This caused this study to partly lack depth, although that also happened due to me adding too much details in the distant objects, which should have been blurred/out of focus.

On the following study I decided to colour pick a few base colours, to help me paint. This way I'll at least understand where I went wrong with my colour choices. Then I eventually started picking my own colours for the brighter, as well as darker areas of the study. The key here was to replicate the colours and detail of the background, and the sky to create a stronger sense of depth. For the most part, I felt I did it right, but there were still a few slight problems. The grass area behind the three large rocks should have had a paler colour, to push it further back. Then the top of the small hill needed a slightly brighter peak/top, to make it stand out from its background.

Week 7 - Village Blacksmith House & Gurus Texturing Project

Village House – Blacksmith

This week I began the Village House Project, for which I had the choice of designing one of many types of houses. The requirements were to design a stylised house (which would fit within the village), with hand drawn textures and it needed to modelled using a maximum of 5000 triangles. For that reason I was given a style guide to follow through the whole project. My house needed to be textured using 4 tiling 512x512pixel, 24bit Targa’s for the tiled sections of the building. For any other unique elements I had an additional 1024x1024pixel, 32bit Targa with an alpha channel. Also to add, we were put into teams of 10, to then decide on who would work on which house. After we voted, I was happy to find out that I ended up with my first choice, which was the blacksmith’s house. I knew this one would be a good challenge, as I’d have to model many props, such as tools and an anvil to give it the right appearance.

My mood-board containing various images related to my project as well as my photographs from the guildhall.

I needed to have a very good understanding of the structure of such buildings, especially since my ideas need to look convincing, stylised and at the same time, functional. Other houses in the virual village featured exaggerated proportions like: thick wooden beams, oversized/tilted chimneys and also warped sections including large-than-normal roofs. The short talks given my one of my lecturers were a big help during one of my guildhall visits. He helped me better understand a few details that I may not have noticed before, such as the reason behind the deformation of the walls and how the beams in walls were not just there for their function, but also to improve the overall appearance of the building.

I began by capturing a few screenshots from the village in Unreal Engine, these would help me understand the area, foundations and terrain in which my building will need to placed.

Then I started practicing photo bashing of different house ideas, in Photoshop CC. For this process I used a house pieces kit, which I’ve previously made from photographs of Tudor houses and structures. This process of design helped me produce fairly detailed outcomes, but it proved to be very time consuming. It took me too long to combine the house pieces and align them correctly. I ended up moving onto silhouettes fairly quickly instead.

The green space under each silhouette is a rough shape of the Blacksmith's houses foundation.

Drawing silhouettes proved to be the better choice, as I produced way more ideas with sufficient amounts of detail. They were just as usable, as the photo bashed ideas and took me less time to produce. I should have used photo bashing to develop my ideas/silhouettes. Due to not having enough time at that point, I decided to partly skip photo bashing and have moved onto developing and refining my ideas instead.

Eventually I asked for some critique from my group, I thought I’d strongly benefit from finding out which ideas they find to be the strongest, if any. It turned out that I needed to try and use sections from a couple of my design ideas to produce my concept. Neither of my designs seemed good or strong enough to work from alone. So I made the decision to pick a few of the most successful ideas and I plan to merge their best features when I start developing my concept. I would still have an opportunity to add any necessary changes/adjustments when I start concepting and modelling. Therefore I didn’t feel that I needed to go back to my silhouettes and rework them completely.

Texturing Project – Plant pot

There was another project I worked on as well during the week. It was a texturing project for my Gurus and Grasshoppers. My Gurus in the 3^rd year had given me a model of a plan in a pot and my job was to unwrap and texture it. The most important part though, was to make a texture that also had an alpha channel for the plant’s leaves. I have decided to hand draw this texture and already have made some progress on it. The reason being that I still lacked experience in digital painting; I found this to be a good way to practice along with my village house’s textures.

I have made some progress on the pot's texture, I still need to add more detail to the leaf and its stem.

To make the most of my texture space (1024x1024 32bit Targa), I unwrapped the leaves onto the same area and layered them on top of each other to use the same space. Although these leaves will look the same, it was still beneficial, as this technique allowed me to have a larger area to draw my details on. I wasn’t aiming for a realistic appearance, so the identical looking leaves didn't seem like a bad choice for me.

Week 6 - Guildhall Visit, Life Drawing, Stylised Rock & Gurus Project

Guildhall Visit

This week I continued on visiting the guildhall and have completed more studies, and drawings of textures. I didn't capture enough surface detail in the first  3 drawings, as I picked incorrect distance to draw from. 

On the next 4 drawings I started to look for some more interesting surfaces, with unique details such as cracks, nails and cut marks. I also drew the surface of a sofa chair, which had buttons positioned inside these indented, circular areas. It is the 3rd drawing below.

Below are a few more drawings of certain areas and spots around the guildhall, thayt caught my attention.

After drawing these studies, I’ve spent some time on selecting the most interesting area of this guildhall. Then gathered additional reference to paint it digitally. I was fairly inexperienced in digital painting, which was why I decided on doing my work this way. I wanted to challenge my skills, to push myself further, as I could have only improved by practicing more.

My final digital study turned out pretty accurate, although I think I could have worked more on its colours, as they looked faded and desaturated. This caused my study to look like it was partly in greyscale.

The brush strokes are not too visible either. It may be a good point as it adds more realism to this painting; but I consider it a negative, as I was not trying to lose the painted style and yet I did. It may have been caused by me being more adapted to painting on a real canvas, with a physical surface finish and texture. I will need to work more on transferring my traditional skills into my digital work. Apart from this, I should consider working with a larger brush, or maybe using lower canvas resolution to make my marks and details more visible.

Life Drawing

Since the past week, I have drawn additional 12 studies from observation. Most of those were drawn with a 2B graphite pencil and focused on people walking through a shopping mall in Leicester. A few others were drawn using blue and red coloured pencils. The subjects in some of these were my class mates, who joined me on that drawing trip.

In most cases I didn't have enough time to draw anyone properly and I resorted to using continuous line, which again proved to be a quick and effective technique. The studies drawn in this style lacked depth, but depicted a lot of my subjects’ figures. 

A few of the last drawings I’ve done while sitting down in a coffee shop. These were more accurate and rendered as I could take more time on those, most of my subjects stayed in their positions for a longer time. I still felt that I could have done better with some of those, if I just spent a few more minutes on them, but I didn’t have the chance to do so since my subjects moved eventually. I will try to improve my timing on these kinds of drawings on my next trips.

Stylised Rock

Concept & Hand painted foam model

I decided last week to go with the teardrop shaped rock idea. It was not easy to make a model of it, as I quickly learned that producing something stylised was a tougher challenge than expected. My problem was mainly in digitally producing a hand painted, stylised texture as it is something new to me. I think I have managed to make a better physical model, than the digital one. The reason is I felt more confident painting with a physical brush and applying it to a hand-carved surface. I will need to experiment more with digital painting, in order to have a better understanding of it and develop more confidence in using it.

Lastly, I wanted to create a gloss map for the gem stones, in my digital rock model, but I couldn’t find the right way of making the look how I wanted; painting the gems correctly was much easier to me on the physical model. Eventually I decided to not use the gloss map, leaving the gem shapes look empty and fairly flat. I think this will be another area to work on, to experiment more with creating gloss and specular levels in my textures.

Unwrapped texture of my stylised rock model.

Portal Inspired Arcade Game Cabinet

Continuing on my project for Gurus and Grasshoppers, I moved onto modelling in 3DS Max. The beginning was tough as I needed to plan out (using my concept) how many segments I would roughly need, to get the right arch on my arcade cabinet’s back section. Apart from that, I needed to make sure the polygons were arranged so that I could fit the robotic eye shape there, without any obvious seams or edges showing, as it needed to resemble the Portal character, GLaDOS.

One part that I found easy was modelling the display; it was fairly easy and straightforward; however deciding on how it should be positioned and fitted into the main body was not. It required being at a certain angle, that would be comfortable for the user to view. It was an important aspect that shouldn’t be avoided, as adjusting it correctly would greatly improve my model and make it more believable.

Week 5 - Guildhall Visit, Life Drawing, Stylised Rock & Gurus Project

Guildhall Visit and Life Drawing

I was pretty excited about that week, as we made a visit to an old guildhall in Leicester. It was a roughly 400 years old building, which has been partly renovated, but some of its damaged/aged sections were kept, like some uneven, wooden beams, partly dented or collapsed walls and slightly deformed windows. As I went inside this guildhall, I was immersed by its charm; the atmosphere on the inside felt odd and different to me. This was partly due to its older appearance. Even the flooring brought my attention; it was made up of large, smooth stone slabs. The ceiling had these huge, chunky, wooden beams, which supported the roof. In other words, it seemed that the appearance of this guildhall strongly relied on its internal structure being exposed and the arrangement of wooden beams.

During this visit, I also drew many studies. Some of those were quick drawings, focused on the actual structure and surroundings of this guildhall; while other drawings described the various surface properties and textures of the many materials used to construct this guildhall. 

As an additional form of reference, I took some photographs of textures and areas around the guildhall. All of these studies were essential, as on the following week I will be starting a village project, in which I’ll be designing a house. For this reason I will need to gain a basic understanding of how older Tudor buildings, such as the Guildhall, were constructed, as otherwise I will be struggling to come up with any strong or convincing ideas.

Apart from this trip, I’ve spent a few days during the week on visiting local areas, such as public parks and a canal to draw people from observation. This was partly a task set for my Life Drawing section of the course. The aim here was to time myself; to draw someone and describe as much of their appearance, and pose as possible. The toughest part of this task though, was that I did not always know how long someone would keep their specific pose. My subject could suddenly walk off or get up from where they were sitting, so I needed to mark down their proportions and pose very quickly. A technique that worked well for me during these drawing trips was continuous line. It made me focus more on specific aspects of my drawings, like body proportions. This is because I limited my movement by not taking off my pencil, what in turn made me think more about the direction in which to draw my line. It allowed me to instantly fill in my page with a shape of my subject’s body and basic pose too. Then if my subject hasn't moved or re positioned, I continued on that drawing more. Also these studies were meant to be drawn using at least 4 different mediums; I used a coloured pencil for the first few and then moved onto a black marker pen for the next 5. I planned to repeat this visit in the following days, to continue my drawings, as there were still two other drawing mediums that I wanted to use: a graphite pencil and a different coloured pencil.

Stylised Rock

I was tasked with designing and modelling a stylised rock, using no more than 600 triangles in 3DS Max. I began by making silhouettes in Photoshop CC, which were inspired by my research into textures and my mood board/reference sheet.  The modelling was more complex this time and I needed to make a physical model of my rock idea, in order to better understand it and apply any necessary changes before I make a final model in 3DS Max. Part of that problem was also the texturing/unwrapping, as I needed to make a physical stylised texture to see how it turns out on a physical model. This way I would have something to base my digital texture from.

Rocks have a lot of different combinations of shapes and sizes. This is why I think designing a model of one was fairly simple. It was meant to be stylised and at the same time believable. This is where I encountered the most problems though, as I needed to find the right balance. One way of doing that was to add a form of history to the appearance of my rock ideas. For example, one had a carved top section, shaped like a tear drop, with a gem stone sticking out of it. Also a message was left on it, which I wrote in Traditional Chinese; saying “here”. The purpose of this message was to strengthen the sense of history behind this rock. Someone may have been here, and marked it for a reason or maybe it was decorated in memory of someone. I tried to apply this style of thinking to most of the ideas that I chose to develop further.

Portal Inspired Arcade Game Cabinet

As an initial project for Gurus and Grasshoppers, I was tasked with designing an arcade gaming cabinet. It was up to me to choose what game to use for this project, including the style in which to design my cabinet. I have decided to use “Portal” as my game for this project, partly to make it more difficult. Choosing a modern sci-fi game was an even bigger challenge to me, as apart from coming up with ideas inspired by this game, I also spent time thinking of ways, of making my designs look modern and futuristic. By “modern” I meant that Portal was a fairly modern game, set in a futuristic, scientific facility, full of clean, open areas and my game cabinet needed to clearly resemble this style. I included some of the in-game objects/robots, in my mood board. This was because I needed to have something to compare my designs to, so that I can really see whether I was heading in the right direction with my work. This improved my ideas; they were more recognisable and at the same time fitted into the Portal’s world more.

Concepts

When it came to my colour palette, I immediately noticed it was going to be fairly limited, as white is used primarily in the environments, in the first Portal game; there were only a few blues, reds and oranges. The only way I thought worked in designing my game cabinets, so they resembled the game, was to stick with the clean, dominant-white appearance. So far my concepts resembled the game fairly well, they still lacked the white colour, as I was still deciding on their final shape and didn't want to over complicate them.