Toy Story Film Room: Full Post-Mortem

The film room project was a 4 week long group project that required us to recreate a shot of a room from a film in 3D. This project was designed to test us both technically in our skills; picking out an interesting room to model as well as testing our people skills by working in a group. Our project ended with some success as we recreated the chosen shot with good accuracy although there were some troubles along the way. This post is to review how our group worked and how well the project went.

My group was made up of Calum Bellis, Dom Shaw, Joe Shaw and myself and we started by finding what films and rooms to make. As a group we quickly established a good work ethic and kept communication open between us by staying in labs at the same area and also using facebook. This came in handy throughout the entire project and played a part when choosing as we voted for what scenes we would make and iterate more if we couldn't all agree.

We planned our work well and spread out the assets between us quite fairly. It was hard to spread out larger or more complicated in an equal fashion but I think we made up for it by how we spread out the smaller assets more to some people (me for instance). We kept under the 20,000 tri budget because of the table we made setting approximate limits for each asset so we knew if we were going overboard on some assets. most of the assets went under and some went over balancing it out to around 15000 tri total used. 

We also planned the timing of the project so each stage had it own time constraints.  We kept to these time frames well with each stage which was fantastic but as we discovered we probably should have started the engine stage earlier and spent less time on the design and choosing phase. We had troubles lighting the room and if we had the time we could have got the scene much closer to the shot.

Reviewing was a major part of how we interacted as a group and after every stage we made sure each others work was of a high quality as well as checking we had remembered the basics (no ngons, pivot centered etc). We did this with models, unwraps, textures as well as helping out during the engine stage.

Technically I think we succeeded with the project and did well and our group ethic was good. There were problems with time management in our initial plans and the other problems were people related. The few problems encountered were very minor but could effect progress in other projects if things carry on. The first is that me a Calum would occasionally disagree about the direction of the project and later about how to get the best results during production. This would border on heated but we always kept control and diffused the situation to cool off meaning we were not wasting time. We were also just putting our ideas further and both trying to get the most out of our performance it was just that we were being hard headed in how we put them forward (because we cared about the project). The other problem I saw was that one of our group members felt left out during the engine and modelling stage which bothered me. This was because he felt like he wasn't being given enough work. Whilst I do see this as a problem because it effects his willingness to contribute to the project and how happy it is with it. I do feel though that throughout the project he was welcome at all times to contribute if he wanted but maybe we should have proactively asked his opinion more often.

Overall I am very happy with how the project went and enjoyed the experience. I have learnt what I can improve on both technically and in how I react to problems that are encountered on a project like this.

Continuing my self directed studies

After the hand-in of the Film Room project on Thursday I've had the luck of having a short break before we are given the brief for the next project, which is the Turret project (sounds awesome). This space has given me the time to mop up a 3D personal project I have been working on and unwind over the weekend.

During the film project I started working on a personal 3D project that takes me through some of the elements of 3DS max including high poly modelling, animation, particle effects (in max) and rendering. I've been following a digital tutors video to make a drop ship animation but now that I've finished I am going to apply some of the knowledge learnt into the turret with a high to low poly bake for the finer details. I will also start my next 3D project which I haven't fully decided on yet but might be a more organic model to also test high poly modelling, rendering and baking on.

Here is the finished animation of the drop-ship. (I didn't texture it because I knew the rendering would take a while and my laptop couldn't cope with the unwrapping of a high poly model.)

The other thing I did this weekend was on Sunday I carried on with  my side project to redo exercises from the first year in a couple of hours because its possible and very fun. This week it was the New Walk Museum rendering exercise using the bones on display to study light.

I've been having lot's of fun with these projects and it has definitely recharged me and allowed me to relax more in the face of the new upcoming project and the prospects of being essential industry ready for possible intern-ships at the end of this academic year.

Toy Story: It's finished!

I left you with some shots of our assets textured and and preparing for the engine stage of the project. We have now finished our project and just done a presentation to the course lecturers which was quite successful as we showed the process of the project from beginning to the end.

Once we had our assets all together and textures finished It was my job to make sure they were all the same size, their pivot points centered and exported into engine. I also made sure that the right ones had collision meshes so that the scene could also be a playable level which was one of the groups stretch goals. Once we had it in engine the long process of putting everything in place, Importing textures and making materials (lots of adjustments too were made by all of us) began which was split between me and Calum. Lighting was done mainly by Calum but with me as a back seat driver reviewing and offering help and suggestions as we tried to figure out how to get the bounce lighting working in the scene.

Original lighting

After the many, many complication with lighting we decided we were as close as we could get with the lighting and decided to create a colour look up table to adjust the scene brightness and colour hues. This was made by Joe Shaw who then imported it back into engine before we all used some post processing volumes to adjust the ambient occlusion, exposure, saturation and added a slight red tint to the scene to match the scene to the shot as much as possible.

The Final Shot

I felt there was more we could have done and rather then write a review of that now I'm going to wait until next week before I can dissect this group project with less bias because Im still feeling buzzed from completing this awesome project.

The assets I made were: the office chair, the lamp, the matress, the ceiling, the tape dispenser, rhe broom, the bin bag box, the coins, the spray, the small cloth, the plug and the lightswitch. 

Week 3: Continuing the Film Room

Most of the new week has been spent continuing the film room project which has been going quit well actually. The group was UVW unwrapping and texturing the assets this week, as well as correcting the models smoothing groups, pivot points and other minor changes to the geometry. This is a long laborious process but what it is still fun to be continuously testing and adjusting the textures in UE4 to create that perfect looking PBR magical texture. It's quite hard and throughout this week I have struggled with texturing while trying to make sure that the group regularly stays communicating with informal scrums and constant feedback to ensure a high production quality. Something about that side of these projects has really intrigued me though because you get to see all the aspects of the project being made and help them come together rather then just going off and making some bits feeling like there is no real end goal.

The final shots of our assets in a scene, the lighting and textures still need changing.

We have finished all our textures on schedule and actually started the engine lighting steps early which means that on the last week all that will be happening is some engine testing, lighting and re-sizing. This leaves us open to chase some stretch goals which we set ourselves like making it a full playable level which we can take some beauty shots of for our blogs and portfolios hopefully. I'm going to be experimenting with Look Up Tables (LUTs), Fog (it may come in handy for our scene) and Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) because we decided as a group that we wouldn't use up more time in creating ambient occlusion maps when the engine does a good chunk of the work already with PBR and SSAO can help give that natural shading look. As a secondary stretch goal, if I get the time and we make the level playable, I intend to put some ambient sounds into the background of the scene to add a level of immersion to the scene.

A quick paint over of the modeled assets helps with texturing and keeping ourselves focused on the colour palette of the room.

Another thing that I am happy about is that our group has been tying together really well as we have kept up a high work level and had some positive response during the presentation sessions as well as from fellow students which makes the hard work feel like it has been paying off. The key now is to not let it slow us down. Calum Bellis, who is fills our technical artist role (I geuss) has figured out how to change the camera in our engine so it looks much closer to the type of lens in our shot so we can get our renders to look very similar  to the final production 

Some examples of textured assets

As I continue this project I have grown concerned with with texturing abilities and have seen that I am definitely fallen behind in the 3D department of my education and should redouble my efforts to improve. My aim is to learn how to bake high to low poly models in 3DSMax by the end of this month as well as improve upon my knowledge of texturing as I feel like I don't fully understand how to get some of the finer details into the texture in a way that doesn't look bad (ie: crazy bumpmaps)

I have also continued with my side project to redo first year exercises on Sunday as a nice relaxing exercise. This week it was 2-Point.

              

                         It was quite windy today so I found it hard to keep the page flat so I kept it quite rough and loose.

Past Experience: A side project

Today whilst walking home after purchasing my new sketchbook from the art shop (my last one is full already) I spied some of the first years finishing off their Archway hidden-point perspective project before hand-in on Monday the next day. This made me think of how during the first months of my first year sometimes I would do the same and rush to finish because of the "large" workload required. It was only later on in that year when I would be repeating one or two of these projects a week whilst doing the rest of my work did I realize that I was just being lazy and that I have changed a fair amount on this course. However the thing to think about is that this change in attitude toward work and output was accomplished during my first year, how am I going to change this year? I've already seen the foundations start falling into place and as I've mentioned in previous posts this year is about becoming self directed by pushing my education further as I continue my journey as a student and artist.

What popped into my head and stuck though when looking at these hopeful aspiring game artists is that the required amount of them is easily accomplished in 3 or 4 hours not 7 days. So, I sat down with them and just drew the archway as required 12 thumbs and one final. I was surprised that what I thought was right and not just me being a cocky second year but it was accomplished in the time frame I set.

As you can see they are just rough basic sketches but still better then my most of my first year stuff.

What was fun though was it also gave me another chance to meet some of the first years and talk to them about how they were finding the course. I've already met some but just like how my years was there are tonnes of them. Talking to new people is a good skill to have so while I was introducing myself I saw this as a good opportunity to practice confidence talking to new people which is an essential in such a close knit industry.

Anyway the point of this post is really to say that I have began a year (or so) long project, which is to repeat the exercises set in visual design last year in the Sunday of the week. So while this week I did the archway next week I shall draw 2 point perspective images (12 thumbs and a final). This is what I did constantly last year after Christmas and I also did this during the summer but the next step is instead of taking 3 or 4 days to do it to compress that down into 1 day on the Sunday (rest day), instead of worrying over deadlines and second year work to just go back to basics.

PS I have forgotten to upload my summer 3D projects so here are the 3D Images for my environment project. I made this in 2 weeks from start to end with concept sketches and then modeled in 3DS Max 2013 before importing it into Unreal 3. I had a 9000 tri budget with two sets of 1024x1024 textures (diffuse, specular and normals generated from height maps) and a set of 512x512 alphas

Week 2: Films and the rooms in them

So the first warm up project has finished, the Asset swap scene handed in, and the new project is well underway which is the infamous film room project. this project is to make a room from a film as best as possible with 20,000 tris and 1024 textures in the new engines, giving us an opportunity to use PBR! I love films so having the chance to recreate the room from one of our choosing is very exciting; not just because of the fun involved but also because it's a chance to really push my skills further in all areas of a project.

One of the many moodboards made for this project. I hope this shows that I like watching films.

At the beginning of the project we spent alot of time trying to decide what to do and after a meeting with the course lecturers where we were told to look further and push forward it hit me just how much this can change an "alright" idea into an awesome concept if your willing to iterate. I became a little obsessed with the search for a new idea and every time the group found something I would see if we could look further and find something new. I found that this pushing whilst fun wouldn't get us far and while I've decided in personal projects to push that little but further every time to not try to force others to do the same.

We eventually decided to go with Andy's room from Toy Story 3

Our group decided to go with Andy's room from Toy Story 3 which is an awesome choice especially as Pixar make some fantastic films filled with colours, beautiful lighting and the intriguing mix of stylization with PBR rendering for realism in their design choices. We then got planning and starting our studies of the room to get an idea of what object are in the room and their placement as well as colour studies so we can understand the lighting.

Some of my layout/value thumbs

My Colour Thumbs. We each made our own colour thumbs and moodboards building up to alot of work.

We now have the long road of production now that the planning has been acheived and making these assets and sliding them into engine should be a blast. An ambitious project like this will take lots of effort but should be well worth the reward.

Early enging light test made by Calum Bellis our group lighting man

And early pass of the props that I have made in-situ

Outside of the set projects my mood has changed and now I'm feeling much more positive about group working and second year. Realising that the nerves and stress of starting a big year in my progression were just the shakes, has allowed me to calm down and start a new push. My next step in improving myself starts with a more structured and planned approach to my learning as I become a self directed learner. Learning discipline is a key element in this as it allows me to allocate timescales for my days and when I should be doing certain exercises. These plans are still forming but the first bricks have been placed in my new work ethic. Last year I learned how to work hard but this was mainly against strict course structure where I just learned things like perspective (draw canal 60 times) or rendering (visit new walk every fortnight). This year I'm trying to take this process into my own hands as I have to learn skills towards my future goals. Improving my figure drawing is a major part of this and I have started doing more life drawing in my own time as this is something I avoided before because I wasn't particularly good at it. This is precisely the reason why I should practice it and become much more confident and competent with my line work and anatomy.

Practicing every day has began and Im sure there will be a marked improvement soon.

Quick painting of some rocks. (digital painting is another thing I'm working on)

I will compare these to ones done at the beginning of November.

Year 2 Begins...PBR, Flims and Group Havoc

Right, so first off I'm sorry that I haven't updated over the summer holidays but, it's also a good thing because it means that I have been busy doing work, research and going to events like industry workshops in London. I have also been drawing as much as I can to push myself further forward and I even got to do some Life Drawing!

However the Summer has ended, so I have returned to Leicester where the first week of my new academic year is almost over and we have already been given some big fun projects. The first project is an Asset Swap Project where we work in groups. The purpose is getting us used to working in the same styles, use naming conventions and the new PBR (Physics Based Rendering) system in UE4. We each had to make a section of an object before passing it on, this could be a texture, model, feedback and other stages involved in the creation. As you passed on that asset you would be tasked with doing the next part of another object in a round robin format.

While this project was fun, because we learnt about the new roughness and metalness textures which are used to create the materials in UDK, it was also annoying in some ways as you could end up waiting for other people to finish or they might wait for you to finish your section before the project could move forward and we couldn't see it come together until the end of the project.

The next project we have been given is the film room project which is to accurately recreate a room from a film, looking first at what makes a room in a film interesting weather it be the lighting, colours, identity or atmosphere. The group I was in actually spent along time deciding and couldn't agree for along time settling on some things before changing our minds. We have however now chosen our final film room which will be Andy's room from Toy Story. The natural lighting and opportunity to make awesome PBR materials is a strong element of the room. The stylization in some of the props is also a good opportunity to learn about how these styles can make assets pop which can be transferred subtly into other projects even if they are hyper realistic.

Made by my group mate Dom Shaw

So far I'm Happy to be back and excited to do some awesome projects this year as well as learn the more technical aspects of visualization and asset creation on some ambitious projects in groups. I would prefer much more single projects though only because after a group project it can be hard to identify the input each person has made and would rather be marked based on my own skills instead of someone else's whether its for better or for worse.