Whats my opinion: An Artist Masterpiece.

I’m here to explain about concept art, a very important process as it is the beginning of any idea. It strongly implies that the idea is visually possible to imagine and create just as characters are visually imagined by J.K Rowling.

My choice of concept art is from Bioware’s art director for dragon age inquisition Matthew Goldman, his work in my opinion shows immediate structure of his art and in addition; How he tells the story in his pieces.

Bioware’s Art Director ‘Matt Goldman’

 

 

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Lighting in video games (Unity)

This is partially linked in with the project that I’m working on in college, and its to do with the lighting.

Now other than, animations, textures, sfx etc. It’s nice to take into consideration lighting because it can drive the mood equivalently to other branches of aesthetics. I have some examples of what I mean and some technical how to’s, so let’s get started.

Lighting in my opinion can be done at the beginning of development during the blocking process to get a feel of how the game will look with lighting and as a positional placeholder in case you may want to edit lighting further or later into development.

Or leave lighting till later in the midst of development therefore you may get a sense of how it may affect textures or the idea of getting other assets out-of-the-way first such as environmental assets, scripting A.k.a ‘making the game work first’.

You choose…

Synoptic Update – New Title = Solid Story

Now I usually come across a project and have a somewhat idea of what I’m doing in terms of story, character, environment and timeline…

But this has not been the case.

Because the story would have been harder to take in if the way my two characters had just met the way they did with no meaning or solid moral at the end, so I had to find a creative way to introduce the ‘What If?’ meaning and this is how I did it.

My pipeline of working on 3D models…

Coming to the last year of college I have come to think about how far ive came in terms of 3D modeling, from my first ever 3D barrel to an entire game filled with clusters of assets and they all in themselves help me progress further in my specialisation.

Over the past two months of making assets, my modeling development pipeline has become ever more structed in what application I carry my asset over to for further texture or modeling altercations.

Technical and creative Model & Workflow of 3D modeling

PowerPoint Link: Pipeline for Technical 3D modeling

I have left this blog till later on so I can therefore add more to it such as images, renders, close-ups, and reference photos.

My choice for technical Model is a Cosmic 35 USSR point and shoot camera that according to a blog written by ‘Tim Irving’ suggests that this camera is to avoided by all costs.

This camera stood out for me as it had so much character, age and also had some use to it and this was such an advantage to me as it also gave me much more to work with and experiment throughout the workflow.

Speaking of the workflow, I have to delve into that prior to going to the creative … stuff.

Firstly the low poly model on maya was quite simple as I planned forward and used a blocking method to shape out the camera, when I say this; I mean that get the closest shape to what the actual camera should be like so later on I can move into the modeling and keep check on what my borders are with this model.

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Later I went through with the low modeling keeping the simple shapes then modling, stretching & beveling them out to therefore get the shape I want it to be or the way it needs to be to become the closests to the real Life object.

Later I started on the High poly model, and to do this I started both beveling the edges that were neccessary or either creasing the edges as a secondary option. This can work but it may mess with both the ambient occlusion and the world space normals in Substance painter.

Now its the creative and cool stuff…

I will be adding to this blog later, going further into what I did to create this work of digital art. How easy it is to accomplish with the right tools and how to get the right composition whilst rendering alongside the effects in different renderers.

 

 

Decals and adding characteristic detail…

Going further into substance painter, I have suddenly come to the thought of actually adding detail to my models to give them that more realistic outlook to who ever is viewing it.

Let me start with a dustbin…

Now to the untrained and simplistic eyes to an everyday consumer, this is a household Dustbin. But to the more detailed eye of someone like an artist or modeller alike, you may see the details which are peppered on the surface such as how the metallic lid stands out from the top but also curves into the shape of the upper bin lid. Followed by the slight indent of the word ‘PUSH’ placed on the board. Finally the Scarlett red logo standing out from blue coating the bin shows the make of the bin and what kind of style it may be trying to imply.

How is this done?

Let me show you via substance painter and Photoshop in synergy with each other to create something which looks quite bleak and then add the realism to further give even a bin a slight hint of coolness.

These alpha maps which were created in either Photoshop & Illustrator combined to create the crisp decals which were applied to the models later on as normal, height maps, or simple color maps.

This Bin which was followed from the concept that I have placed above has already been given the TLC it needs in a completely different way. Apart from giving this assets beautiful glistening metals, instead I have added some rust, dirt and more importantly … DECALS!

Like I mentioned before, like the reference above I have used the ‘PUSH’ decal created in Photoshop, and applied it onto the lid of the bin as a height map and changing the parameters inside to convert it from on outer dent into an inner dent.

Drawing In dimensions – Google Sketch-up

Today’s blog is introducing us into the world of both art & 3D modeling/design…

3D Sketch_up

Google sketch up is a 3D modeling software that can be used like any other similar acting software yet is holds specific characteristics which make it more artistically related. Firstly, I imported a Mansion model of which I could place into a 3D environment and render out different angles with real-time views.

After placing my camera where I wanted it to be, I then changed the style (Filter) of my camera from a simple mesh like look to maybe a pencil sketch filter, shadow added filter

… let me show you.

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Watercolour filter

Besides the pretty filters, Google Sketch-up can be a very important tool for digital concepts. If I was to export this and move it over to Photoshop, I would then apply another layer and draw over the image making it easier to create scenes in addition to this there would be no need to re-create an entirely new scene as I can render a new perspective from within Google Sketch-up.

I have placed some current sketches below to show how easy it can be to sketch up an entire scene…

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Rule of thirds

Now the reason I have placed a rule of three in the composition is because I am currently learning about how to create the way a story is told from within an image. How to make the audiences eyes move to where you want them to move, for example…

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In this example, I’m trying to show how the photos composition in the rule of thirds view explains how the eye can be lead from one point of interest to the other. The helicopter on the left is swooping throughout the image with vibrant colours the eyes should follow the direction towards the next point of interest which would obviously be the ship.