3D Art III, Project 3 - Week 3 Milestones (Game Resolution Model, Normal Bake, and Textures)

 So, first things first - as my last few schedules have shown, I thought we had the regular full four weeks for this project, which was not the case.  Fortunately, I was able to adapt just fine and pick up the pace appropriately, so I haven't really fallen behind.  In any case, this time around, my tasks were to create the game resolution model, bake the normals in substance, and create the textures, all of which I was able to do just fine.  Because I had kept around so much WIP geometry over the course of making the high-res model, it wasn't too difficult to create the game res version - I just had to go in, trim away some of the excess detail, and clean up the topology, and I was ultimately left with a nice, clean model that, with the (not pictured) glass dome, sits at a relatively comfortable 11.5K triangles.  The bakes and the creation of the texture weren't much trouble, either, and it was pretty smooth sailing to get to this point.  I'd consider the textures complete at this point, but the last few days of the project I'm leaving open for any tweaks needed, and to create a very simple translucent material for the dome in Unreal, where I'll be taking the final screenshots.  So, with that all out of the way, let's see how I did.

Week 1 - Proxy model, start high resolution model - Deadline Met!

Week 2 - Finish high resolution model - Deadline Met!

Week 3 - Game res model, UVs, initial bake (and also work on the textures) - Deadline Met!

"Week" 4 - Finalized materials and textures displayed in-engine - Final Deadline

3D Art III, Project 3 - Week 2 Milestones (Completed High Res Model)

 This week, the task was to finish off the high resolution model for the Destroy All Humans! flying saucer.  The biggest change I made this time around was my decision to model the cockpit of the saucer, with the chair, screen, controls and all.  I figured I might as well add that in, since it didn't add too much extra work and elevated the model a bit more.  Making this decision also led me to make the dome its own separate model - I'll be giving that one a simple material that's partially transparent so that the cockpit can be seen faintly through it.  In any case, once I had my cockpit model, I was satisfied with the shape of the saucer, so I converted the smooth mesh preview to polygons and exported the model to Zbrush, where I finished the process.  This mostly revolved around filling those two long gaps on the saucer's top with miscellaneous mechanical components, to create the visual clutter that would be filling those areas up when I bake the high res normals onto the game res map.  In any case, let's see how I did this week.

Week 1 - Proxy model, start high resolution model - Deadline Met!

Week 2 - Finish high resolution model - Deadline Met!

Week 3 - Game res model, UVs, initial bake - Next Deadline

Week 4 - Finalized materials and textures displayed in-engine

Common Art 3 - Sprint 5 Updates

 For this sprint, there wasn't that much that needed doing, on my part - the environment was mostly done, after all.  But I did go back and make some modifications to the door model, to smooth it out a bit.  I also created an animated texture for the computer terminal's readout, and I went in and created some titles for the spines of the books on the bookshelves.  You can see all of that stuff in the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSluC2d_jeU

World Machine Research Project Presentation

 During the last project, the castle on the mountain, I was tasked with doing a research project on a new software as part of the piece.  I decided to use World Machine to create the mountain on which my castle rests.  I have created a PowerPoint presentation to document my use of the World Machine software to create my mountains, and all the processes and tools I used.  You can see what I did at the link.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/12Omd6s1KqbZreg2BC5deOlDB5i6WpJE3/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=116229336121115918928&rtpof=true&sd=true

3D Art III, Project 3 - Week 1 Milestones (Proxy model, WIP High Res Model)

As I established in the previous post, for my final project in 3D Art III, I'm going to be recreating the flying saucer from the Destroy All Humans! game series.  I elaborated a bit more in the planning post, I'm going to be making a recreation of classic design of the saucer from the first two games, I'm not going to be aiming for the extremely high resolution of the remake version, and I'm not sure I'm going to be making the cockpit as well.  Anyway, things went pretty well this week, and I was able to finish the proxy model and make significant process on the High Res model.  Next week, I'm going to be finishing it (and making my final decision on whether or not I'm detailing the cockpit interior), but for now, let's see what I got done.

Week 1 - Proxy model, start high resolution model - Deadline Met!

Week 2 - Finish high resolution model - Next Deadline!

Week 3 - Game res model, UVs, initial bake

Week 4 - Finalized materials and textures displayed in-engine

3D Art III, Project 3 - Planning and Schedule

 For my final project in this class, I've decided that I'm going to make a recreation of the flying saucer from the "Destroy All Humans!" game series.  Specifically, I'm going to be recreating the original design of the saucer used in the first two games, and their modern remakes.  Speaking of the remakes, I'm not necessarily going to try to recreate the high fidelity graphics of the remakes, but I'm also certainly not going to go as primitive as the original games, either.  I'm looking to create a decent level of resolution that looks great, while not taking a prohibitively long time - this is a pretty detailed design, after all.  I'm also a bit up in the air as to whether or not I'm going to try to recreate the cockpit interior - I have half a mind to just make the dome opaque, since the cockpit is a bit hard to see, anyway, and will only add further complexity to the project.  In any case, here are some pictures of the saucer for reference.

With the references out of the way, it's time to discuss the schedule.  As I have on my previous two projects, I'm sticking with my tried and true schedule layout.

Week 1 - Proxy model, start high resolution model 

Week 2 - Finish high resolution model, including World Machine component

Week 3 - Game res model, UVs, initial bake

Week 4 - Finalized materials and textures displayed in-engine

3D Art III, Project 2 - Week 4 Milestones (Final Textured Model)

 This is my final turn in for the castle scene project, and I think I'm pretty satisfied by it.  The weird baking errors that showed off in my last turn-in didn't entirely go away (no matter how hard I tried to clean up the model and the UVs), but they did get pretty well covered up by the tiling textures I created for the project.  I do like how said tiling textures worked out in the end - really make the model have some extra depth, and they even don't have many of the issues that tiling textures usually have.  Even then, I did create two variants on the "stone brick" texture to mix and match for the sake of variety.  In the final unreal scene, I also added some rocks and grass models (from previous projects at FIEA) around the bases of the castle to help hide the hard seams from where the castle intersects with the ground.  In any case, let's look at the final scene and see how we did.

Week 1 - Proxy model, start high resolution model - Deadline Met!

Week 2 - Finish high resolution model, including World Machine component - Deadline Met!

Week 3 - Game res model, UVs, initial bake - Deadline met!

Week 4 - Finalized materials and textures displayed in-engine - Deadline met!

Next up, the final project of the semester begins!

Common Art 3 - Sprint 4 Updates

 This week was mostly focused on polish.  As I said in the video, the only real new model I made was the new version of the hanging picture frame, finally bringing it up to speed with the rest of the environment.  Otherwise, I just went around making some stuff look nicer - smoothing out the coffee table and wheeled chair, giving them updated textures in the process, and adding some more surface detail to stuff like the desks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTOh8OcHFuo

3D Art III, Project 2 - Week 3 Milestones (Game Res Model, Initial Normal Bake)

This week, the goal was to get a game resolution mesh of the diorama and do an initial bake of the normals in substance, and I achieved just that.  I'm fairly satisfied with the results - ultimately, I needed to make the mountain and the castle two separate materials, in order to make sure both parts of the diorama had sufficient UV space.  The most arduous part was manually creating the UVs - the sheer complexity of the model made it so that automatic UVs simply weren't an option, so I had to go in there and  manually, thoughtfully lay out all those seams.  In any case, I'm fairly satisfied with the results - I managed to get the polycount for the game res down to a fairly reasonable level, and the model ultimately preserves the shapes of the scene pretty well.  The bake, I feel slightly less good about - the bake came out kind of muddy looking, and none of the various fixes I tried wound up making it look better.  I think I might need some assistance, refining the bake on that one.  Still though, feel pretty good about it.  Going forward, my next tasks, after trying to refine those normals, are to texture this model - which includes making at least two tiling textures in ZBrush (one for stone walls, one for roofing tiles).  For the final light and display, I'll also be placing some rocks and bushes around the bases of the towers in order to break up the lines and make things look more natural.  In any case, let's see how I did this week:

Week 1 - Proxy model, start high resolution model - Deadline Met!

Week 2 - Finish high resolution model, including World Machine component - Deadline Met!

Week 3 - Game res model, UVs, initial bake - Deadline met!

Week 4 - Finalized materials and textures displayed in-engine - Next Deadline

Edit - I will be using the following download for my technique to create tiling wall/roof textures:

https://nickzucc.gumroad.com/l/FEsyI