Trip to Warwick Castle... plus some life drawing

To follow up on my last blog post which was more of a catch up of my personal stuff I thought I would tell you right away whats been going down in that department this week and also to talk about how the problem of unfinished finals (ie car) will be solved in the upcoming weeks.

This Saturday my good friend Denzil Forde and I went to the nearby Warwick castle to gather some reference material for his character project and do some drawing. After some panicking and train stations and many minutes of running we finally got to the Warwick station and walked through the town to the castle. Even though I live in a small village in Worcestershire my family comes from Warwickshire (mainly Kenilworth) and I have been to all the spots many times. Almost weekly visits to Stratford-on-Avon in the summer. I've visited Kenilworth Castle, Warwick castle Kenilworth Common and many other  places time and time again but not much since I started the course a year ago and see the place in a new way. We visited the amazing collegiate church in Warwick with its magnificent vertical stonework from its Perpendicular Gothic style which took the eye upwards and toward the stain-glassed windows.

We also spent some time in the crypts which have some awesome dark Norman Gothic arches and could really work well as a game environment.

After the church it was a short walk to the castle which was very much how I remember it (apart from increased ticket prices) walking around the grounds and along the ramparts was fun and there were lots of chances to gather plenty of texture references and character reference photos both from the costumes and creepy mannequins they had there but also from some epic poses.

When it came to drawing we didn't have much time and because of rain we couldn't get drawing outside the castle for long so most of my thumbs were of the great hall were the crackling fire warmed up and cast some lovely lighting conditions on the room with all the intricate ornaments lit up.

I didn't get time to do a final and this brings me on to my plan to not do this personal project blog post next weekend and possibly the weekend after that. We have started our new project which is to make two dichotomous characters which work together as a pair. for a 3 week time frame this is a big project and because of its nature I really want to hit all the stretch goals so I wont be developing finals for two or three weeks for my personal work and plan to bash them out over the last week of term/Christmas. I also did this post now so when I do the blog posts for the character project they all sit together and tell one cohesive story for the project.

To finish up here are my latest life drawings. Enjoy.

Catch Up Time: Life drawing and personal project

Now that the sentry turret project is finally over I have the chance to update you on how I've been getting on with my personal projects of the year 1 redo and how my life drawing is getting on.

We will start with the weekly personal Sunday drawing session. I missed out on updating you last week because I was too busy learning how to bake normal maps and ambient occlusion maps and I didn't show you what the subject was. Last week I went out to repeat the Car project from last year which is just a use of boxing and perspective to generate cars that sit well. I never finished the final to this project because the car drove off early on leaving me freezing and annoyed. I will do a full final this week if I get time (which I think I will).

The project this Sunday was the space center project which involves going to the national space center in the outskirts of Leicester. I walked and did some thumbs of the outside before moving in to do some sketches of the items in the lobby and a final of the Soyuz space capsule on display their. Its amazing that they still use these machines that were designed decades ago. It also fits the space theme recently with the Philae lander touching down on comet 67P after leaving the Rosetta probe.

First launched in 1967 the Soyuz capsule is the most widely used and safest space craft and is still used today for ISS missions.

This now brings me onto the next topic of this post which is Life Drawing. Last month I said that I would compare my life drawing progress every month and now is that time. Over the month I continued to do life drawing often always at least three times a week and during the first weeks I did it every day. However as the projects have heated up I must say I have been slowing down and the last 2 weeks I didn't really get enough time. I did however get selected to life draw during the Leicester Media schools opening which was an interesting experince as I got to draw a model wearing some costumes which really made me feel like I might be drawing a game character.

I really like this pose and costume it had an air of authority.

So after looking at these most recent drawing I would say that I am improving. My knowledge of how to plan hands and feet has definitely improved due to life drawing on thursdays with Jeff he has a nice feedback technique where he really analyses your work and taking this on board has allowed me to improve in these areas. I would say that I still really struggle with 30 second and 1 minute poses and I should get out of the habit of drawing a circle for the head because it looks quite silly (besides nobodys head is a perfect circle).

I am improving but slowly. I know that I should increase the amount I do life drawing and keep the routine strong.

Knight Turret Part 3: Finale and post mortem

I have now finished my knight project and this last week I have been texturing my turret, making particle effects and editing blue prints to make sure that the sentry gun shoots correctly at the player with the correct sounds and particle effects showing and following along.

I left it last week with me finishing the modelling and baking a high poly model. It was the first time I had attempted baking for Normal and Ambient Occlusion but it turned out quite well and it also meant that I could now  help and teach some of my fellow student how to bake normals improving upon their work and feeding that studio based mentality that is crucial in the workplace.

Once I had the bakes I started making some quick color thumbs and making the basic block-out on the albedo texture. Even though I had some idea I still experimented in engine so I could make sure that it would look right inside a game environment. What I found quite interesting about how I made the textures on this project was that instead of making one at a time I made the textures in parallel so I could understand the how the base colors would effect the end result when combined with certain roughness values and if they were metallic or not. This also helped me further understand how to make roughness maps that would effectively create the reflective quality of polished steel.

I made Albedo, Roughness, Normal, Metalness, Ambient Occlusion and Emisive textures. To save on texture space I combined the roughness, metalness and ambient occlusion onto one sheet in the RGB channels.

I made multiple height maps that would be combined with my baked normal in vary levels of detail so that the end result would have the correct surface properties. These included basic shape and dents, going down to scratches and rust before a final feint grain layer. These normal maps would be merged in crazybump to generate the normal map which would be used on the turret.

The three heightmaps

I also made and textured a bullet and bullet casing for the sentry to fire and eject. The process was very similar to the turret but took much less time. Making a baked normal map and ambient occlusion as well as a simple albedo, roughness and metalness. These textures were 512x512 in line with the brief.

The next step was combining everything in the engine and making sure that it would correctly track and fire at the player. Because I had already tested this during modelling it didn't throw any complications in my way and once the sockets were added into the correct place and the meshes switched I had finished the required section. I then had the chance to pursue some stretch goals and decided that I was going to change the particle effect, add some extra effects and add sound to the gun to bring it to life. One of the particle effects I made was a smoke effect coming from an exhaust on the turret where the ejected shells would come from. This texture would be a 512x512 texture that would be plugged into a material with a rotator and sine so it would swirl like smoke would. This was then plugged into a particle emitter which would slowly rise like smoke and added in a socket into the component blue prints of the turret and spin with the gun.

The second effect was to replace the muzzle flash of the gun with my own. I looked at what muzzle flashes actually look like and created a 512x512 texture which was a white yellow burst. I then made the material translucent and see through which when combined with a very faint fast flash would look like a real guns muzzle flash. The main reason I changed the existing one was that it was too stylized for the turret and would fit. I also experimented with adding a laser sight which didn't work at all despite following multiple tutorials. I eventually decided not to add it which is just as well because I'm not sure if it would fit the rest of the turret.

Finished Model

I also made a physical model out of materials I had lying around (old animator newplast) and a promotional poster for the turret.

Overall I would say that I'm not sure that I'm happy with the results because he textures seem too noisy and crowded reducing the readability of the turrets design. This also broke up the silouette too much which was quite dynamic. I also think that th legs didnt fit the turret and looked too slender and effeminate. On hindsight I would have made them industial bulkt struts rather then try to force the idea that its a knight and let it subtly convey that idea.

I would say though that I have learnt an increadible amount from this project in all areas of asset creation trying many different tachniques to improve the turret and this knowledge is much more valuble then the end result. This has uplifted my spirits and pumped me up for the next project which I a character project.