Thoughts
I feel that this project will be a tough challenge but with the knowledge experience and challenges I have overcome throughout my time on this course I am confident that I will be able to complete the task that I set out and achieve the grade I want.
What to do ?
The first stage of the project is to think about what you can do or think about creating. When I was told that the FMP was going to be a free reign project again I started jotting down some quick ideas of what I would like to do.
Time-plan
This is my time plan I tried to cover every corner of the project and process I would have to go I will also be adding little checkpoints throughout the project along side to keep track with my work and see I am progressing through the project successfully and hitting the targets I have set myself.
Week 1-2
In week 1-2 I hope to find a good idea of what I want to do for the final major project while exploring the different routes I can go down and what I will be developing for the rest of this project.
Asset Character Environment
I wanted to look at the 3 options I have when developing my idea for this final major project before I even start to consider my mind maps. I have created some mood-boards grabbing some of my favourite characters environment and assets and talking a little bit about there roles and overall how comfortable I am with developing them.
Characters
Characters are a big part of video games and other media and they can be very varied and unique from the main character to the shop owner that sells you items. They can be wacky or realistic, beautiful or ugly, non human or human and they are all designed to fit the right role in the games they are for. I have done characters before but not to the standard that this project is asking for. I enjoy developing characters with 2D aspects such as drawing and sketches but the side that I struggle with is modelling and from many conversations with peers and others characters can make and break a project so I will take that into consideration when developing my idea.
Environments
Environments are what build up the game and really set the tone and atmosphere. The right environment can make a good game into a great game and are most of the time something that people judge the game on.They can be very complex or very simple but still effective and one of my favourite environments is the dead and corrupt city of dunwall from dishonoured because it only uses a small palette of grey colours.I have never developed an environment and I do not know how it would turn out. It would be interesting challenge to try and tackle in my FMP.
Asset
Assets work with environments to help build up the theme and surroundings of games and can range from a sword to a bench you sit on to rest they have a massive range of what you can do with an asset. They are simple and usually quite easy to do without as much work as say a character. I have developed a lot of different assets to completion and I feel confident building them it is something i have done quite a lot and I am always advised when deciding what to do for a project with this sort of creativity.
Mind-maps
character
I first thought about characters and I took the simple traits such as good evil or human or non-human. I then went into more detail with a second mood-board picking out the jobs or roles seen in a lot of games such as sci-fi and fantasy the types of games I would look at when developing a character something I have not done for an FMP and I personally enjoy doing characters in my free time as an artist. I liked the sound of an assassin character and felt it might be interesting to do. I chose some of the most iconic assassins such as ezio from assassins creed because when people now think of assassin they think of the typical white robes and blade underneath the wrist its a menacing and quite intimidating look but I don't like that style since it goes against being stealthy and blending in with the pure white anyone would spot you compared to the rest of the other assassins who have a dark look to them to keep them concealed and hidden when sneaking around.
environment
Deus ex
From the outside you can tell straight away that this city is a monster that just consumes also the fact that you can see the different groups of people who live here the poor the average and the rich. The game also plays on that by making you visit the multiple different sections. This is the sort of city I would like to create with the intimidating look.
In the poor area its dingy and dark even with all the bright and flashing ads and the colours and atmosphere lets you know that you are being watched from every angle in this hornets nest and trying to create that would be a very fun and interesting challenge to tackle because its all in the lighting and the colours. The design is a lot as well when developing an environment.
Assets
My last idea for an asset was a magical staff with a staff it could have multiple purposes from healing to defence to combat magic such as fire ball spell or a shock ability staffs are seen a lot in games and movies as the weapon a mage or someone wise or powerful uses. Staffs or staves as they are known can have multiple designs and be built from tonnes of different materials mostly wood or metal with a stone or gem powering it. I like the sound of doing a staff with multiple different aspects to it and the creativity I would have developing it.
Recap of week 1-2
Through the two weeks I looked at multiple ideas I knew from making my first basic moodboard that I would like to explore every element asset character or environment because each one would take me on an interesting process with different and interesting challenges. This also gave me a chance to discuss some of my favourite locations assets and characters. I narrowed the moodboards into 5 ideas I really liked and went into further depth with what I would like to do and what I would like to create. After some thought I decided to go with the 3 assets and have done silhouettes for each one of the three ideas I enjoyed the staff the most while doing the silhouettes and I will soon decide upon the final idea. The reason I didn't go with the character or the city is they are in the unknown for me I've never properly developed one of each to the extent that I am being asked to in my final major project and I would like to play it safe and go with something I know I can complete to a high standard
Project proposal
When I was given the project proposal I had a good idea on what I wanted to do which was my staff after all the comparing on what would be more fun to develop as a final piece I came to the conclusion of doing a healing staff that you would normally find in an fantasy rpg. I am excited to be doing this because personally I always enjoy the role of a mage in fantasy games.
The bibliography gave me a chance to talk more in depth with what I want to do with my staff and this project. I spoke about my first influence the second I thought about doing a staff which was mercy's from overwatch. I spoke about my backstory for my staff and how it is used in its world. I also evaluated what I will throughout my project from keeping track of my work and blogging it for marking and I developed a small timetable stating what programmes I would be using and how long I would be using them for as well sort of tasks I will be doing throughout the project from blog updates to texture.
Personal images
Weeks 3-4
In the next two weeks I will look into staffs and start to develop some initial sketches that I could further develop. A college trip is coming up in the next couple weeks I will be looking for as much reference and influence I can find to help me with my development of the and give me some more ideas. I also hope to further build up a collection of staff moodboards to help with my initial sketches.
Staffs
I looked at a massive range of staffs from multiple different franchises and series to help give me some ideas on what I want my staff to look like and what features it could have. These moodboards help me look at what's been made and see how I can develop mine to be better.
When looking at the different staffs i came upon these staffs that had jewels in them and i was informed by a peer that they looked very familiar to the bejewelled saints and they would be good reference if i was doing gems and jewels in my staff which was helpful because it gave me good indication what sort of stones to look for reference and i good look into the inspiration that the creators used when creating those staffs. i am also fascinated by the contrast of bones of the dead been covered in gem and crystals and it gives me some ideas of what i could do with the staff such as have the staff be made out of bone and be covered in magic gems just as the bejewelled skeletons are.
College trip research
The college went on a trip to the Tate gallery and the national history museum in London as part of another groups project throughout the national museum I took photos of all the gems and minerals I saw throughout the museum because I knew I wanted to have some sort of of crystal or gem powering or directing the energy of the staff. I also really liked the design of some the natural gems since it gave me some ideas on what sort of shape my own in my design would have. Looking through my photos I don't really like the mineral rocks because they don't look like the type of rock that would channel power.
I like the colours of these minerals the dark blues show a strong connection to the stereotypical colour of magic or mana and that would suit the theme of my mage staff but the only issue I have with the minerals and rocks I photographed there form and shape.
This is the stereotypical mana colour sometimes in a few instances it is a different colour. With my staff I want it to heal so I might change the colour of the energy the stone is on the top so it would fit in more with its purpose.
I found this stone in the middle of the crystal hall and really liked it. I liked how simple it was but the colour was really mystical and magical and I know it would be found at the top of a really powerful mages staff in a game or movie.
initial sketches
These are my initial sketches for the my staff I took a lot of influence from the staffs I had researched and have decided I really liked the idea of having a crystal powering the staff or being a major component of the staff and its power as well as the mage wielding it. I will look into crystals and gems for reference when taking my designs further. I really like the designs where the crystals are levitating around the staff it shows that there is magic at work and that the staff is unnatural.
Test day
Today was bit different to the usual plan I was tasked to build my asset I was doing for the project to see how I would do with my modelling and how quick I would complete it and to find issues for when I come to model my staff properly. I also had to pick a staff to work on since I have no proper ideas yet for my staffs design so I chose mercy's staff which is the original staff that sparked my idea to do a healing staff.
Overall with a bit of support at points I felt really comfortable when modelling the staff and nearly fully finished it by the end of the day showing that the modelling part will be quite straight forward giving me a lot of time to UV and texture and work on getting it into unreal engine when it gets to the proper final model. Through this I will have to consider my time plan and make some changes in different places to help get this project. I feel a lot more comfortable now knowing how quick I can model if I fully focus.
Research
When looking into all the different staffs from games and movies I completely forgot about staffs from life.
I looked at modern day staffs such as canes and I looked at African tribe staffs
Developed sketches
I started on my developed sketches by taking the aspects from some of my favourite staffs that I have found while researching and developing my ideas of what I want. From this I took my favourite idea and started sketching that out by itself.
Backstory
I first thought about what my backstory would be and I thought of making a diary that the character who owns the staff would write but after some consideration of that writing a entire diary would take some time and I wanted to be a bit original for the backstory of my staff by switching the typical old man with someone a bit more unexpected and making the diary into a list. I will be creating this physically so there will be something to pick up and read and give some insight on how the staff was created.
The staff is wielded by a mage
companion you will encounter during your first fight with a strong enemy and
they will accompany the main character throughout the game with their staff
using it to boost their damage and heal there wounds but not getting into
conflict themselves. The staff has no offensive capacity and no violent nature
to its abilities and keeps the mage safe from threats that reach them and those
around them. The mage is young and is not accustom to using the staff as she doesn't know much when it comes to spells and their healing properties, She had to build the staff herself by using an old scroll that told her how to build one but a lot of the
pages where removed only leaving the basic items to build it which she had to
collect herself. Due to her using mismatch magical items to construct the staff
it has some secrets and hidden surprises which she will discover throughout the
course of the game.
Artists
Recap of weeks 3-4
overall in the past two weeks I did a lot more than I expected the trip out yielded a lot more real life research than I expected also we had a day where we sat down and modelled our idea this gave us a chance to see how long it would take how difficult it would be and what issues we would encounter.
2D Texture experiments
overall in the past two weeks I did a lot more than I expected the trip out yielded a lot more real life research than I expected also we had a day where we sat down and modelled our idea this gave us a chance to see how long it would take how difficult it would be and what issues we would encounter.
2D Texture experiments
These are my texture experiments I already knew what I wanted to do for my staffs textures. So I looked up leather metal and at the point I had experimented with maybe having a flag on my model. This will give me a good on how to develop my colour maps for the staffs textures when I get to that point to start building my material.
2D piece
2D piece
Photoshop is the software I will be using to develop my 2D promotional art for my staff I have used Photoshop for the many years but I still struggle with certain tools and techniques. Throughout the year I have been learning multiple techniques with my tutor to help better myself in Photoshop.
I started on my 2D piece I knew this was going to be a part of the project I would have a couple issues with making an interesting 2D promotional piece of artwork for my model but I have high hopes with what I produce.
I sketched out my staff from my sketches but while looking at it the staff seemed boring void of interest something that staffs never have so I decided to edit the design by making one of the prongs shorter than the other also adding bindings to it just to make it pop and be a lot more interesting than what it was.
I also already planned on having an orb but I also added three rings to one of the prongs just adding more to the staff would be better than going forward with something quite dull I am happy with its new design.
Art styles
I looked at different art styles that I could use for my staffs overall I looked at three that came to mind Manga noir and cell shading.I then looked at the style I used which was realism.
For my style I went with realism I wanted to show my staff with realistic colour and to not have any cartoon or animated style to it since going that route would add a lot of extra work on my plate if I was to go with another style and I already know how to go with a realistic style when in the texture and unreal phase of this project. But with this staff there is no real life version of this staff so I can use it to my advantage.
Manga
I looked at my personal favourite art style manga only being composed of two aspects white and black the way that different artists use different tones techniques and styles to create such unique and original creations. Manga can be crafted into any genre and class because it is such a flexible art style you can go from two spirit samurai fighting to a story about a girl learning to play a violin. The style manga was developed in the late 19th century japan and has a long complex pre-history in Japanese art. A lot of early manga written and developed all saw heavy references to bombs or destruction
and death due it being hot off the heels of Hiroshima a tragedy.
This is an example of what I mentioned in which even though its developed the same most of the time. If you look further you can start to see that not every one is the exact same which is a common mistake made by a lot of people who don't bother looking into it with more depth.
Noir
I then looked into noir through researching I learnt that the style comes from Hollywood crime dramas and is the stylish term for it. It's films and art work is mostly composed of black and white visuals quite similar to the previously mentioned manga and has roots in German expressionism. In recent years it has been used in games and movies as a way of giving it a unique look and showing off the date its going for. It used to be primarily black and white but recent to spice it up a bit in games they have added a single or multiple colours.
Cel shaded
Cel shaded is a type of rendering that makes computer 3D graphics appear to be flat. But it is its own style now and used a lot when creating a style for a game and gives everything a very cartoon look to it. The way it is mostly presented is that video game characters have thick black lines surrounding them giving them a very cartoon look like they had just jumped out of a comic book. When someone mentions cel shading people think about the Borderlands franchise and many telltale games.
Realism
Realism is a style of art that came around in the early 1850s in France and consisted of images painted from real life like a photograph and was against the subject of exotic subject matter and exaggerated emotionalism so basically when doing something in the realism style you paint or colour something exactly how it is with no unnatural or added elements that are not in the original image.
Art styles
I looked at different art styles that I could use for my staffs overall I looked at three that came to mind Manga noir and cell shading.I then looked at the style I used which was realism.
Manga
I looked at my personal favourite art style manga only being composed of two aspects white and black the way that different artists use different tones techniques and styles to create such unique and original creations. Manga can be crafted into any genre and class because it is such a flexible art style you can go from two spirit samurai fighting to a story about a girl learning to play a violin. The style manga was developed in the late 19th century japan and has a long complex pre-history in Japanese art. A lot of early manga written and developed all saw heavy references to bombs or destruction
and death due it being hot off the heels of Hiroshima a tragedy.
Noir
I then looked into noir through researching I learnt that the style comes from Hollywood crime dramas and is the stylish term for it. It's films and art work is mostly composed of black and white visuals quite similar to the previously mentioned manga and has roots in German expressionism. In recent years it has been used in games and movies as a way of giving it a unique look and showing off the date its going for. It used to be primarily black and white but recent to spice it up a bit in games they have added a single or multiple colours.
Cel shaded
Cel shaded is a type of rendering that makes computer 3D graphics appear to be flat. But it is its own style now and used a lot when creating a style for a game and gives everything a very cartoon look to it. The way it is mostly presented is that video game characters have thick black lines surrounding them giving them a very cartoon look like they had just jumped out of a comic book. When someone mentions cel shading people think about the Borderlands franchise and many telltale games.
Realism
Colour palette
I took my staff and experimented with many different colours and see what sort of results I would come up with and which one would best represent my staff and its purpose.
I started with going pure red for my first one red usually conveys anger evil fire danger and for my staff I didn't like that put red can be used to show and health so I won't throw the red outta of the picture. After red I went with a green/emerald.
I took my staff and experimented with many different colours and see what sort of results I would come up with and which one would best represent my staff and its purpose.
I started with going pure red for my first one red usually conveys anger evil fire danger and for my staff I didn't like that put red can be used to show and health so I won't throw the red outta of the picture. After red I went with a green/emerald.
I started off planning where I wanted my staff to be and what it would be doing or what would be surrounding it in my piece. I liked the idea of it being on the cliffs next to the sea I also thought about it being in a case in a museum but I preferred the Idea of doing it next to the cliff giving me the chance to do some environmental art.
I started out by sketching out some mountains I started to feel like it was looking more like the beach and how sometimes further up a beach grass and plants grow. So I decided to start crafting my mountain into a beach.
This is an example of what I meant by grass growing on a beach.
I then started painting in the ocean and starting with the clouds I wanted the sea to be quite dark and moody since it reflects the scene of how the staff is the only remaining aspect of the mage and how miserable it is.
I then added both of the layers together the seas and the sand is looked decent but I knew there was still a lot more to do with the sky to make it stand out.
I added a black background layer to the piece and that made the sky look a lot better and more what I wanted. I then went at it with blend tool making the clouds look natural.
After I added in the staff which I had coloured and removed the blacklines around it because I was only using them to give me a good idea of where to place the staff and to colour it. I feel like there is a lot more I can add to it.
While I was finishing off my piece I was reminded of the golden spiral and I decided to put it over my piece and I saw that my piece didn't follow it so I decided to start change a couple things to it. I was happy that I was reminded because I thought my piece wasn't the best but hopefully with this new guide I will be able to make this a lot better.
The golden spiral
The golden spiral is a mathematic ration usually found in nature it is a good show of structure and design.it naturally follows the human eye and helps make an appealing image. Here are some examples I found of the golden spiral. This process is used by many artists and has been around since 3000BC.
When I look at this image I instantly am drawn to the light in the top of the hut and then I slowly unwind from there following the spiral.
Using the golden spiral I removed a lot of the beach and started smoothing down the beach and blending making a nice refined sand slope that follows the spiral. One thing I removed after some peer advice was the grass slopes I told my peer what they are after they mistook them as a thick black mark and they explained that they would of never said that was a grassy slope. I will admit I am happy I got that criticism because I feel that changes where great. My only issues was that I spent a lot of time on the original and I could have spent that time on something else within the piece.
It was time to add a shadow to my staff I had quite a simple idea on how I was going to create it without going through all the process of redoing the staff but in black. I took my original staff outline the black on I duplicated it and filled the holes in with black.
After it was pitch black I span it around lowered the capacity of it and placed it under the staff giving my staff a shadow it looked really good and was quick and simple to make.
Looking at my piece the focus was the staff but the staff was still bland and part of the environment I still liked everything about it but I felt there was something I could add to it. I then thought of adding some sort of effect to the staff to make it stand out and the focus the second you looked at the staff. I wanted healing energy as seen in the picture from overwatch of the character being healed.
I then got a reference image and started to sketch out my own little healing symbols and healing energy for the staff. I really liked it and it really brought the focus to the centre of the staff which is also the centre of the golden spiral in this image.
I made the colour of the healing energy red because of my staffs orb being red and it really standing out.
It looks nice really close up to the top of the staff.
But when zoomed out it still is very bland the colours very pale and boring even my energy.
I zoomed out and took a proper snapshot of the image.
Experiments
I used some different tools and options to see what I could do to my piece to make it stand out and more interesting.
I used hue/saturation colour balance and vibrance etc. to experiment and see what I could come up with.
I didn't tamper with this one too much but the little changes to saturation really brought out the blacks and greys of the clouds and showed more of the sand blowing in the wind around the staff. The colour of the glow from the staff is a very nice cherry red but I feel like I could get a lot more out of the tools.
With some help from peers I was shown how to build a brush made of my little healing orbs. I then went wild with the different variations I could make with the healing brush.
I faded out the healing orbs for his one and I liked it but felt they where too many and it ruined the different aspects of the piece such as the beach and sea.
With this one I removed the background and left the staff by itself I liked it but without the background it lacked something but still an interesting experiment.
Final 2D piece
This is my final pick of my 2D piece this is the one I'm going to be using in my final exhibition. I really liked the way that when I was experimenting with the features of Photoshop I made the sky look like night-time and I thought there was some stars but after checking it was dust on my monitor I knew what had to be done I added in stars in my piece and it aided it so well I knew it was the one I would use for my final 2D piece.
Modelling
Modelling time
Both prongs 20 mins
box 20 mins
shaft 30 mins
muzzle 15 mins
support 15 mins
bindings 1-2 hours
orb 1 min
I then started on my model blocking out the simple shapes of my staff. I didn't bring in an image because I knew this would be a simple and easy build with an image I still kept my sketches and references close at hand while developing this model.
I built the two prongs first using a new tool to me the multi-cut helping me put in straight lines all around the model for easier extruding.
This multi-cut tool is very enjoyable and useful to use due to the amount you can use it to create edges and cut apart models I wish I could have learnt of it sooner. Thinking about how many other projects if I used this my models would be a lot cleaner. 
After developing one I duplicated it and worked a bit more into it so I could save a bit of extra time modelling but use that time to make sure both prongs were the right size and put in some edge loops to make the model more natural when hitting the 3 key to smooth it.
This is the top half of the staff with the box and prongs attached to it. This is non smoothed version of the staff.
This is the smoothed version of the staff. It looks a lot more natural even for a metal substance. My only issue is that I do not know right now how to import my model as smoothed into unreal.
Then I moved onto the shaft of the staff I extruded a polygon cylinder and added in multi-cuts so that I can extrude out the parts used for the top and bottom parts of the grip.
I then went in and added a lot of multi-cuts to the center of the grip using the middle mouse button it exactly puts in a symmetrical cut between two cuts. Doing this allows me to create a clean grip for the staff even though I did put in a mess up on purpose because this staff is meant to be pulled together using random metal and put together by someone not that skilled in crafting.
I added in more multi-cuts to the grip so when I smooth the staff they will give off more of a grip look then when it was just flat.
This is the comparison between a smoothed and a non smoothed staff both the exact same model just duplicated. The smoothed just look cleaner and more suited to be seen in a game and follows more of natural look. I can see where it may look odd since it is metal and the sort of design looks like a plastic grip with padding and that wouldn't be made of metal.
Soft select
I started off with a simple polygon pipe scaled it until the inner edges where thin. I then used the soft select to move the binding to look more like a binding. Then duplicated them a couple times then combined to save time when all I need to do is duplicate the group and soft select some edges to make them all look unique.
I then added the bindings to the staff and smoothed one to compare them both I am happy with how this build is going along simple but when put together properly really stands out my only concern is the fact I wish I could have added more to the staff when initially designing it.
I then developed the muzzle where the orb of the staff will float above.
These are my first attempts at trying to create bindings for the top part of the staff they didn't go as well as I thought I knew I had to try different options and building them from scratch had some major problems.
I then tried taking one of my bindings and scaled it out then modelled it extruded and scaled it around the box the connects the two prongs at the top of the model.
This is what I managed to come up with duplicating some of the bindings and scaling them and with a bit of extruding and soft select tool was able to make some decent looking bindings. after that it was not that difficult to duplicate them and repeat the same process to build up my bindings.
If I take a step back and look at all the modelling so far it is not as difficult as I thought it was gong to be. It is down to a couple tools and methods and that's how simple it is to build something that if myself from last year looked at I would be like that is impossible.
The bottom support was quite easy just build up with multi-cuts and extruding.
The rings around the staff was easy same method as the bindings but just flatten the polygon pipe and from there duplicate three times.
The orb was as simple as pressing the polygon sphere to create one.
My base staff is now fully finished onto the hard part the area where I always struggle no matter what the uving it has always been a struggle .
UVs
I was honestly worried about the UV stage of this project but after finding a really simple way of taking apart my model with the uv editor my UVS where not as scary as I imagined. I had 2 methods my first way was selecting the faces cutting them than unfolding them and optimizing this worked for the first couple quite nicely with no issues then while I was doing this process some parts just seemed to get a lot harder and more complex to do and I started to panic and lose focus until I was shown a really simple method of just cutting straight down the centre and unfolding and that was it really simple and quick to do I got my uving over and done with in a decent amount of time and it allowed me to then move on to the next section of the development of my model. Overall I would still say my uving is my weakest aspect when it comes to 3D work.
Texal density
Texal density is the process of making your meshes and textures the right height width and depth which help the materials added onto the mesh be clean and crisp. The way I went abut making sure all my Uvs are correct is by adding the checker material to my model and seeing if all boxes fitted the same shape as each other.
An example of a bad and a good map from Tim Diaz who put up a small helpful info guide on 3dtotal on what texal density is and the difference between good Uvs and bad Uvs and what they do to the material when put on a model. The guide was for 3dsmax but I could clearly tell how his guide could be translated to Maya.
Renders
After finishing all my modelling and uving I added a ambient occlusion to the model and started taking some quick renders of my staff to test if there are any issues with anything. I took the renders while the staff was smoothed. overall I was surprised on how nice my staff looked and how well the development went of the model itself. My main issues as with any project was the UV's when uving I felt like all my other work was at a stand still and that I thought time was being wasted. While taking the renders I started to compare my staff to other staffs in games
I took a render of what the staff might look like if the character was looking in first person using the to cast a spell or ward off an enemy. Seeing this makes me very happy with the way it looks because the way it looks in other games when using or carry staffs in your hands on games especially in first person it works. I knew instantly what game my render fit into elder scrolls v Skyrim but with the exception that my design is a lot more.
Ambient occlusion paint over
Texture maps
I saved out my uv map for my staff out as a targa and then took it into Photoshop to paint over this process is used to make all the different types of maps such as colour normal and specular the three main maps I'm going to use for this project.
This is my colour I already knew that I was going with the colours from my 2D piece and even before that I knew that I wanted simple colours that still stand out.
Normal map
With my normal maps I wanted to focus on the straps and making them look like proper leather bindings plus the metal didn't need any normal maps for my metal I could have come up with some but at this stage in time I need to move on with what I have.
Maya render
I rendered out my model in Maya using some help I don't think it rendered properly it looks very drained of colour and hopefully if I get a chance to re render it might come out a lot smoother than last time. To also state idk that well how to take a render in Maya I know how to real time render using Arnold in Maya 2017.
Unreal
Now to unreal I have had some experience recently using unreal in some previous projects and I know the basics and how to use some features. I started by importing in a non smoothed version of my staff to see how it would import over and it did but was very small so I had to go back into Maya and size the staff up properly so it would be proper size in unreal.
Once imported in properly I imported in my maps which I turned into targas so that they would work with unreal engine.
Unreal high resolution screenshots
After that it was time to start taking hi res screenshots I added in lighting and made the floor into tiles that I made in a previous project to show that the staff was not just floating in a random area and give it a place to cast its shadow onto in the screenshots.
I really liked these screenshots but the shadows in two of them was a bit glitchy and the third one cut out the bottom half of the staff so I decided to not go with these I still really liked the shot of the first one aimed up at the camera.
Final render for exhibition
This is the final screenshot I took and it is my favourite one this is the one I will be using for my exhibition when I retook it I knew instantly that it was one I wanted just the angle is so in your face and allows you to see the detail when screenshots that are zoomed out you lose the detail in the model and cannot see some of best parts of the staff. I also like that shadow is clean on this screenshot and the metal look to it I'm very happy on how this turned out the staff the renders. Every time I see something of my own creation in unreal properly textured and nearly game ready it makes me very happy.
The redo
After looking at my final render I was going to use for my exhibition piece I felt like I was not properly selling my staff and that compared to my fmp final piece last year that I used for my level 3 I felt that I had not really improved my work or presented that I had except it looks a lot more cleaner and the angle was nice but just didn't I just did not feel it showed off how much work and time I had put into this project.
I started off by going back into Maya I had originally planned on going around and not focusing on my Maya render because I was taking hi definition renders of my staff in Unreal so my Maya render was very weak I felt I could change that.
Here is a quick snapshot of my set up I added a border for my perspective camera so when the render is taken it will be inside the frame and make it stand out.
My first issue with my original unreal render is that I shot the entire staff and it came with multiple issues such as it was not allowed to focus on the small details like the straps or the orbs even the scratches in the metal so I went with having one not very interesting shot to having three which I even had one of my peers really like. With the different lighting I changed the temperature of a couple of the camera angles so that there would a very warm light hitting the bottom of my staff and a quite cool light hitting it from the back of the staff. I hit render on it to test and before I could fully render it out due to time I stopped it and took a quick snap to see how it turned out.
This is what turned out when I stopped my render and I was very happy with it and knew instantly what I was going with for my final render. It was very dark but with some edits through the colour toolkit messing around with some options I came to the result. These where defiantly the settings I was going to use when finishing off the other snapshots.
I fully rendered out the first person view render but when it was complete I threw it into Photoshop and messed around with it to give it more of a a darker backdrop not dark enough that it would ruin the colour when printed out in A3.
Evaluation
I was given 13 weeks to complete this project and I set my own timetable guidelines and tasks to complete throughout the project but there was basic set guidelines to the project to keep the project on track and a basic idea of what they wanted me to show at the end of the project. I stuck to theses guidelines because they was simple and easy to expand on with my Idea and I knew throughout the project I would have slow stages of developing and would need guidelines to get me back on track.
The first thing did is find something I was interested in developing for my project. I started off with multiple mood-boards filled with the three main ideas you have when doing a project an asset a character or an environment from there I explored the first things that came to mind when after lots of different ideas I narrowed it down to five. I thought of the main big three such as a city an assassin and a shield etc. Through this process I kept narrowing down until I came to the idea I wanted to develop this was a quick process that allowed me to research every idea and have fun in looking at each one in depth. This is personally one of my strong suits is research it is always one of my favourite things to do this project though I feel I was a bit lost in what I wanted to do so my research time was very jumbled and I feel it affected my performance in other sections of the project.
After research I moved onto the 2D part of the project which required me to sketch and look further into my chosen idea which at this point was a staff. I started out doing some initial sketches I have not drawn in a while so sketching out these initial staffs was a drag since what I wanted to draw wasn't coming out I knew I needed more practise. During this stage of the project we was asked to stop everything we was doing and for whole day at college was to model our idea even if we did not have the idea yet so I went with mercy's staff from overwatch and in the day nearly fully finished the model showing that my modelling skills are not as bad as I made them out in the beginning of this project doing this exercise also helped with finding bugs or issues when it come to modelling the real thing. This gave me the boost that I had picked the right idea for my final major project. After this there was a college trip this allowed me to gather so much real life reference of stuff I would need to continue with my initial sketches.
Overall I feel like my 2D sketches and further research stage of this project was very overshadowed by the 3D and I feel like I could of done a lot more. One part of my 2D work which I thought went really well was my promotional piece I enjoyed doing it because I have never really enjoyed Photoshop painting properly but this time I felt confident in my abilities to do it with only a small pieces of advice from peers and that was only when I was done and how I could improve it showing my skills have improved from back when I thought I couldn't do anything in Photoshop to high standard.
Now onto the 3D a 50/50 section of this project where half of it was quite easy and enjoyable to tackle its challenge then you have the other half that is down right challenging and difficult. through the modelling phase of this project I learnt a lot more to do with such as some interesting new tools that will defiantly help when using Maya in the future. The modelling well and showed that dong the test day earlier in the project helped I was able to counter a lot of issues from that day while modelling. My most challenging part of 3D was Uving I felt while completing them that I was not doing everything and at points I would struggle so much with certain UVs cause they would not unfold properly or cleanly. But after some tips from a peer I got all my UVs done and it became simple but if I was asked to uv tomorrow I would know how too. After that I was too move over onto texturing and getting my model into unreal engine this was easy because I am quite good at the development of textures and then getting it into unreal was very easy. After getting it into unreal importing my textures was easy and attaching them to my model was simple and I had very few issues in this process. Having done all of that I took hi-res screenshot that would be used for my exhibition I had to make sure it stood out and showed all the detail that I put hard work into. One improvement I could have is that I needed to take a proper render of my staff in Maya when I did it seemed really drained of colour and with enough time I would of been able to correct this issue.
Overall this project has been a very mixed bag of thought on my performance and how it has gone I am very happy with my final product but I feel like time management on my part was bad I had developed all these timetables to keep myself in track but I didn't stick to them but there was also the issue at the beginning of the project I was really slow with any work I didn't feel like I was doing the right thing for my project but after some advice I stuck with it and I started to get into and developing some interesting work but my research phase of the project was over when I got into the right gear. In this project I have developed some good work and had a lot of issues that I have overcome and I'm happy I had those issues cause now I can overcome them with ease and confidence. I love how my 2D piece and my unreal piece came out I was happy with them and confident they will look good at my final exhibition. After this project I am very confident that I will do well using the software and processes elsewhere university of a job etc..
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