Week 1
For week 1, we were introduced to our semester-long game design project. We will be designing a scene with a group to fit into the game Roki. We will use the Roki art style but create our own indoor scene with a character. We quickly decided who on our team would be a character designer and who would be an environment designer. I am taking the role of environment designer. After spending some time in class researching and looking into the Roki game deeper, we used a Miro Board to start getting our ideas flowing. Most of the individuals in our group will be attending the Roki game-playing session on Thursday of week 2 and we are hoping to gain a bit of a better idea of the game style and concepts from this session.
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Starting off our general idea is to create an indoor scene from a fallen down log in the woods. The interior will be very organic with leaves, moss, and wooden items. Our character is going to be an older woman who lives in the log. There will be mushrooms and other plant/fungi items around the scene. A few of the reference images I have collected so far are attached below.
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Week 2
During week 2, our group meet again to set an even stronger plan
for our scene. Our final plans can be seen in this screenshot of our
miro board.
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We were tasked this week to sketch and some rough thumbnails and
concepts for a prop. I chose to work on creating a simple potion vase. I
went through a few different sketches to start which can be seen in
the screenshot. Once the sketches were complete, I took my idea to Maya to develop the prop. This being my first time using Maya, I'm glad a chose a simple prop to develop as it took me a bit of time to get used to using many of the basic tools. I played around with the sizing, beveling, adding edges, and trying out some of the different materials. Ultimately, I ended up with a basic scientific vessel that I think will fit well into our scene as a container for one of the potions that will be sold in the shop. I might have to do some further playing around with the material, but liked the way that the metallic green felt mysterious but also organic.
Week 3
For week 3, our group worked independently to continue making props and just overall progress on our ideas for the scene. On Friday we meet with Sabrina for her to give us feedback on the props we developed last week and on how our ideas have evolved since we met the first week of classes. She had very positive feedback for us and told us that she thinks we are a bit ahead of some of the other groups based on our 3D modeling experience.
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Individually, Sabrina gave me feedback that the metallic material of my vase would probably not match with the roki theme. I took note of this and went into Maya and changes the material, as well as added a few more details. I also wanted to knock out a second prop this week so I spent some time getting going on the leaf using some of the reference photos. I attempted to use a rounded square to start for this prop since we talked a lot this week about how it is a good shape to start with for organic items. All of the screenshots of my work can be seen below. I am looking for a flattening tool to continue my work on the leaf rug. As our group as been working, we have been effectively adding our props to codecks to store and show each other how our work has been coming along.
Week 4
This week, I wanted to continue making progress on my leaf rug. I spent some time trying to figure out if I could somehow flatten the object I was making from last week but ultimately decided that it just made more sense to start over and just use a flat plane instead of using a rounded cube. I started out with a circle and shaped it into more of a crescent leaf shape. Then I started playing with different vertexes and edges to get a similar shape to the reference image I was using. After that, I deleted all the original edges from the circle and created my own to match what the veins of a real leaf look like. From here I want to speak with my group and decide if we want to have these veins shown with a different color and if they think the leaf should be any more detailed. I also spent some time this week getting more comfortable with code decks by adding and updating some of my work there. Next week I'm hoping to get started on another prop and finish any details of the leaf based on feedback from my group.
Week 5
This week, I wanted to play around a bit with the sizing temples that Lucas created and put on codecks and made a few more small props that we will need to fill up the shop's storefront. I pulled the sizing temples into my Maya and looked around trying to notice the scale and get a better idea of what the sizing of the props I wanted to create today should be. This week I was not able to be in class and I didn't want to start a large project without consulting my group so I just decided making a few more small vase props would be a great way to add a small contribution to our project. I made one that was more cylinder shaped with a wavy stout, one that was more circular at the base, and one that was very close to a cylinder shape. My next goal with these is to get them to look like they have a liquid of the same color in them. I made these all in the same file as the original vase I made to keep them in the same place and be able to compare their sizing as I was working.
Week 6
In class this week we learned about how using the multi-cut tool can help our modeling look more organic. From what I learned I decided I wanted to work on adding some more details to the vases and the leaf that I had created. I was able to use the new information I learned on materials and make a slightly darker shade material for the vases to look like there was liquid in them. For the leaves, I again added a slightly darker shade to add some dimensions and detailing to the leaves. We now have a collection of multiple of these props that we will use throughout our scene. After class, we also had a team meeting and set our expectations for who will be working on what props and who is responsible for different aspects of our scene. This helped a lot to get us all on the same page and I feel very confident with our team that we will be able to get our desired outcome for the project.
Week 7
This week we were tasked to follow along with some tutorial videos made by Alec. As an environment artist, I had to create the Dice, Cylinder, and Barrel Props. I started off with the Dice tutorial and I was able to follow along well and finish all three dice the same way that Alec did. I then worked on the Cylinder tutorial. I felt like I learned a lot of valuable information during this tutorial while Alec talked about the importance of waiting to UV map until you're done with all modeling and so many helpful hints and tricks that apply to these processes. The third tutorial on the barrel was also very helpful and was a great insight for our team project if we will be using any photoshop or other techniques where UV mapping will be necessary. I was very happy with my skills while following along and am really starting to notice how well I'm progressing throughout this course.
Week 8
In class this week we reviewed more concepts that apply to UV editing. We did a bit of a challenge where we got to edit and play around with the colors of the clothing of one of the Roki players. I'm not really sure yet how much UV mapping I am going to be using as an environment artist, but I am enjoying learning new techniques and skill. This week I also wanted to knock out another prop. I was tasked by the group to create a table for the inside of our scene that the character will be using generally as a kitchen table. I started off with just using very rectangular shapes and then once constructed the basic shape, I went crazy with the multi-cut tool adding dimensions all over each of the legs and tabletop. After going around and adding all the different lines, I went through and moved many of the vertices to again add more dimension and make the table look more natural and rustic. After this process, I used the materials our group has created as "wood" from codecks that have all different shades for light/dark/medium and I colored different faces according to where light might hit them differently. I'm very proud of this prop and am now even more excited to continue sculpting my next few props after today's work!
Week 9
In class this week we learned about different ways to show off our work such as turn tables. I tasked myself to complete the chairs for the table. I used some different aspects of the table and rotated, and changed the sizing on each piece. I made a couple of different variations of the chairs so that we can put them all together around the table in the scene. I was finding it difficult to keep adding more details with the multi-cut because I didn't want to do too much that the chairs were unrecognizable or didn't fit well with the table. Once I had finished modeling them I decided I wanted to create the turn table of the chair and table together but wasn't able to get the spin to work. A goal I have for myself this coming week will be to get that working. After Easter break, we will be meeting to put together the presentation and film the voice recording.
Week 10
This week our group mainly focused on getting our presentation ready for Holly to critique. I was able to get some high-quality rendering done of my potion vases through Maya and tried using adobe after effects to create a turn table but was not able to fully get the turn table working. I'll include the low-quality video from Maya on the blog here. Overall, we got positive feedback and lots of attention for being a fully international student group with a wide variety of backgrounds in game design. Some of the comments I got directly on my props included that I should try to break apart the liquid from the bottles to make them look more 3D because right now they look pretty 2D. We also got lots of general feedback that our scene was very dark, so we need to add brighter colors. This weekend and into next week I will be working on improving the bottles and making them just a bit more detailed so they appear more 3D.
Week 11
For work on our project this week, I started by updating my designs based on the feedback. The main feedback I got was that the bottles looked flat and 2D so I went in and duplicated them and then shrunk them a bit to fit inside of the original bottle and applied the darker liquid color. I also played around with the top of the liquid to add dimension to it and depth by pulling down the center. The next thing I did this week was model the shelf. I ran into a lot of issues with my computer crashing but eventually was able to get a shelf I am proud of. I used the same styling as the table for the shelf, and played around with the ropes Lucas made to use as the hanging feature. Next week we will be focusing on adding lighter/darker colors to add the lighting for the scene.
Week 12
Our team's main goal this week is to complete lighting in our scene. We communicated via Discord that we would separate the scene into objects so we could each work simultaneously. Each group member went into the scene and updated their props and then added them back into codecks. I did the lighting on all the leaf rugs, the table and chairs, the shelf, and the bottles. As an example, I've included 3 different views of the table where you can see the different shades of lambert that I used to detail the different lights on each side of the table based on the lights that are coming into the scene. This week we also went though and discussed everything left that we need to complete for the scene so that we will complete the work together by the May 17th deadline.
