Advanced Game Characters

This month, as I near the end of my Game Art degree, I am in two classes. Advanced Game Characters and Game Animation. For the Advanced Game Characters class I started out on a project about a week ago. I did most of my research on Pinterest and compiled it on a board for easy access while I worked on this project (see previous blog post for link to board, if interested). I won't lie, characters are not my strong suit. I struggle with anatomy and out of all the programs I have learned to use over the past year, ZBrush is by far the one I am least experienced in. I worked with my character in ZBrush, using basic tools and alphas to come up with a "basic" model for my character. Here was my first milestone turn around:

I think I did a decent job at making his chest and veins very defined. I wanted them to stand out and make his skin appear to be very tight and stretched. His face on the other hand isn't as stretched, but is more scaly. I still need to work on defining the eyes and ears. The next step will be to model his shirt and armor. I plan on having a full bust from the chest upwards. I think at this point a lot of the details will be more evident and apparent once I start to work on it in Substance Painter. I can use different colors and shaders to draw a contrast of his features. More to come soon!

While You Wait...

Hey ladies and gentlemen! I wanted to apologize for the slight gap between posts. Last month was very time-consuming for me and it didn't leave much time to focus on anything non-academic. I have a lot of exciting posts I am working on pertaining to the level I built last month in Level Design and Lighting Class (using Unreal Engine 4). I plan on getting up some good entries over Thanksgiving Break, but in the meantime, check out my Pinterest board to see the latest project I'm diving into. This month I am taking Advanced Game Characters and Game Animation 1, so I look forward to really learning a lot this month. Hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving!

Visual Effects (Project 3, Soft Bodies)

For my final project in Visual Effects class, I set out to complete simulation in Maya using "Soft Bodies". Soft bodies are geometric objects in Maya that have been manipulated to be flexible objects. They can bend, ripple, bulge, and more. Soft bodies can be used to make a mesh move towards a goal object, deform and distort the mesh with springs, and to emit nParticles from the surface of a mesh. 

For my project, I decided to simulate meteors striking the ground near a city. Some of the meteors will strike the ground and the ground will absorb the impact. Others will hit a force field that protects the city and bounce away. I also wanted the force field to ripple upon the impact. Here is a quick summarization for what I had planned. 

I set out by creating the environment for the scene first. I made the ground and the shield soft bodies and then created a particle emitter for the meteors. Once I had the particles resembling the appearance and physical attributes of meteors, I made them collide with the shield mesh. This way the particles would bounce off and ricochet from the surface of the shield. Here is a motion test I completed before rendering to test all of the attributes. 

Once I was happy with the results of the soft bodies, I cached them. This allows Maya to store their movement in the XYZ space. Once it has the cache, it can simply replay the simulation and not have to compute it again on every play-through. It also helps with the rendering process. After that, I rendered the scene out using Mental Ray in Maya 2016. Here is the final render.

Overall, this project was a great introduction to soft bodies in Maya. I look forward to learning more in the future.

Texture Painting (Substance Designer #1)

This week I got to explore Substance Designer 5 for the first time. I did some procedural textures and really enjoyed the interface Designer provided. I did a lot of exploration with the various types of nodes and how to achieve the desired affects. Since it was my first time, I did stick to somewhat simple textures.

The four textures I created (from top to bottom) are ceramic tiles, sandstone bricks, reptile skin, and a metal surface. I included the base color, metallic, normal, and roughness maps for each to show how the end result was created. You can also see the node layout I used. I greatly enjoyed Substance Designer and will continue to explore it in the future.  

Visual Effects (Project 2, Particles)

This week in Visual Effects class I learned about emitters and particles. The second project required me to three particles in Maya using legacy emitters. For this project I chose to simulate rain, embers, and steam. I chose them because they all behave very differently and I thought it would be a good exercise to explore how particles act in regards to physics. 

Using Legacy emitters, I primarily used omni and volume types. The steam and rain lent themselves to being easily manipulated with volume emitters while the embers were better execute with an omni emitter. This is because the steam and rain only travel in one direction while the sparks needed to be able to travel in all directions from their source. I also applied gravity fields to all my emitters. I used different gravity fields for each particle so I could independently control their behavior.

Once I had the particles where I wanted them it was time to render. Now the simulations were all made using different particle shapes. The steam was made using Cloud (s/w), while the rain and embers were made using "Streak." 

Because of this, I had to render out my scene in multiple passes; one with Maya Hardware and one with Maya Software. After I had rendered out the scene twice (once in both hardware and software) I brought it into Nuke. In Nuke, I was simply able to merge the rain and embers over the scene that contained the steam. Here is the final product:

This project was a great introduction to emitters and particles and I look forward to learning more. 

Visual Effects (Project 1, Rigid Bodies)

This month, in Visual Effects class, we started off learning about rigid bodies and fields in Maya. The first project primarily focused on learning how to properly utilize active rigid bodies, passive rigid bodies, and constraints. Active rigid bodies are applied to a mesh that you want to interact with the environment around it. For instance, a hammer hitting a cup; both need to respond to each other so they would require an active rigid body. The table that both of these objects are sitting upon only require a passive rigid body though, since the table will not be acting upon either objects. Constraints limit the actions of an active rigid body to force it to comply to the movement you want. There are nail, pin, hinge, spring, and barrier constraints that can all be applied to rigid bodies. I started off with the scene provided below. 

As you can see, this scene emulates a Rube Goldberg Machine. There are several objects that interact with each other to push the action forward from one end of the contraption to the other. The first step was to try and conceptualize where I would place my rigid bodies and constraints. I mapped these out using Photoshop CC 2015. 

The next step was taking these ideas into Maya. I pretty much followed my "storyboards" once in Maya, but soon realized some changes would need to be made. I also ended cutting the total time down and ended my scene where the last cup gets knocked over. I had a lot of fun exploring the rigid bodies, as there is a slew of different options you can change to get the desired outcome. Some of these attributes include mass, dampening, drag, and bounciness. I also used fields, such as gravitational and uniform to keep the geometry behaving normally. The Dynamic Relationship editor was most beneficial for keeping track of these relationships between rigid bodies and fields. After all of the active rigid bodies were set up and working correctly, I baked the simulation to animation keys. This way Maya would simply have to compute the animation of the objects moving instead of the physics simulations each time.

Once I had the scene set up to my liking, I added some textures and began to render using Mental Ray in Maya. I ended up with 1400 frames of animation. I will admit that the render time greatly exceeded my expectations. It took a good 48 hours to render with mental ray. I rendered out in batches of 200 frames at a time so I could check for any mistakes or errors present. If there was an issue with how something was rendered, I could simply fix it and re-render that batch of frames.

After the render was complete, I used fcheck (integrated with Maya) to check the .iff files that were rendered. I then arranged the video in Final Cut Pro, adding some ambient music to set the scene as well, and came to a final animation clip. It is important to note that all the animation seen here is simply simulations baked to keys.

Overall, this was a great introduction to particles and physics in Maya.

Some things I would have liked to fix are the pole on the hammer (jerking around a lot), the balls falling out of the cup (appear very suddenly), and the overall speed of the process. This project was done on a time crunch, especially with 48 hours of rendering, but in the future I will definitely use better time management to fix any issues that arise in the production process.

Art Creation for Games (Final Project)

The final project for Art Creation for Games involved putting together all the skillsets learned this month. The requirements were to build a complete environment in Unreal Engine 4. For this project, I chose the following reference image from the ones supplied:

The idea wasn't to replicate the environment exactly, but to use it as a basis for our project, while injecting my own creativity and ideas. This way I could show off what I learned throughout the month. I did the majority of the work for this project in Maya 2016, Photoshop CC 2015, and Unreal Engine 4. I created all the meshes and laid out the UVs in Maya. I then created textures for everything in Photoshop. Finally, I compiled everything in the scene in Unreal Engine. Here is the final result:

I also took a couple screen recordings of the environment. This first one is just me navigating the scene in Unreal. 

                                          The second one is the actual gameplay in Unreal. 

Overall, this was the most enjoyable project I have had since starting school at Full Sail University. I really got to see all my talents and skills combine into one glorious environment. I will definitely keep working on projects like this in my free time and look forward to learning more about Unreal Engine 4. 

Art Creation for Games (Lesson #3, Texture)

In my last post, I showed the process of laying out UV's for meshes in Maya. The next lesson for Art Creation for Games involved building upon that foundation. Solid UV work is a vital part of the texturing process. There are two different types of textures used in video games, Collage Textures and Tiling Textures. Collage Textures are unique and created for a specific asset such as a character or individual item. Tiling Textures are seamless and created to repeat or tile. This type of texture could be used for surfaces such as a brick wall or a tiled floor. Below are some examples of both types of textures. 

Examples of tiling textures via Art Creation for Games curriculum. 

Example of a collage texture via Art Creation for Games curriculum.

I also learned the process for creating textures in Photoshop.

1. Determine the working size of your texture 
2. Keep brightness and saturation in the middle 
3. Remove any obvious details/specific details 
4. Add detail from large to small 
5. Consider use and size on screen when adding details

The Archway

Time to implement it! For this lesson, I was given three different assets to texture. The first asset was an archway. 

Base mesh.

Texture provided for archway.

I started off by fixing some issues with the face normals. Autodesk defines normals as, "a theoretical line that is perpendicular to the surface of a polygon. In Maya, normals are used to determine the orientation of a polygon face (face normals), or how the edges of faces will visually appear in relation to each other when shaded (vertex normals)." This means all the face normals need to be pointed in the correct direction to ensure the texture is visible. 

The spikes show the orientation of the face normals for the geometry. Notice they are all pointing the same direction after I applied conformity to them.

Next, I moved on to laying out the UVs of the archway and then importing the texture. I made sure all the UVs were proportional to ensure the texture wouldn't stretch on the archway mesh. 

Screenshot of UV layout in Maya.

As you can see in the screenshot above, I laid out the UV's over the corresponding part of texture I wanted that piece of geometry to have.  With the normals oriented correctly, my UVs laid out, and the texture properly applied, I am ready for a final render. 

Final render in Maya, utilizing MentalRay.

Overall, I was satisfied with the final project. As you can see, you are able to add a considerable amount of detail to a basic mesh by utilizing textures. Next, I will be moving onto the second part of the assignment: texturing a barrel. 

The Barrel

I started off with the base mesh of the barrel, provided to me.

Base mesh for the barrel.

 I started off by repeating the process I did for the archway; cleaned up the face normals and laid out the UVs. The texture for the barrel that was provided was actually two textures, one for the wood and one for the metal.

Textures provided for the barrel.

In order to have an easier time laying out the UVs over these textures, I took them into Photoshop. In Photoshop, I combined the two textures into one. 

Combined textures.

After bringing the texture into Maya, I simply laid the out the UVs for the barrel to match the corresponding material I overlaid all the metal bands on top of each other over the metal part of the texture and then laid out the rest of the barrel on the wood part of the texture.

UVs laid out on my new texture.

 Last, its time to generate the final render for the barrel. After setting up a couple area lights to really showcase the texture, I rendered out the barrel with MentalRay.

Final render in Maya, utilizing MentalRay.

The Pipes

The last asset for this assignment was a configuration of plumbing pipes. This was a more complex mesh because, unlike the archway and barrel, it contained variety of of different parts with differing proportions. As with the previous two assets, I cleaned up the normals and laid out the UVs. The texture for this asset was a basic checkerboard pattern that allowed me to check for squashing and squishing of the UVs. 

Base mesh for the pipe asset.

Provided texture for the pipe asset. 

After laying out the UVs I imported the texture. As you can see, I tried to keep the UVs as simple as possible to avoid proportion issues.

UV layout for the pipe asset. 

After that, I was ready to create the final render!

Final render in Maya, utilizing MentalRay.

After completing these three assets, I definitely feel a lot more comfortable with UVs and textures in Maya. I will keep working on these methods in the future to continue to increase my competency. All of these skills will build a strong foundation for the next lesson, "Block out, Mid, High Res & In-Game builds."

Art Creation for Games (Lesson #2, UV's)

Lesson 2 dove into UV's. The project involved modeling part of toilet in Maya, laying out the UV's, and checking it with a checkerboard pattern. 

Reference Image

Maya Build

UV's for build.

Checkboard Pattern UV Check.

This is the perfect setup to use before applying a texture to ensure the UV's are not suffering from extreme squash and stretch.

Art Creation for Games (Lesson #1, Pipeline)

Today I started the Art Creation for Games course, which aims to "provide students with a strong knowledge of the way real time 3D content is modeled and textured. Students develop game models of simple and complex props, foliage, and various game environments. In addition to modeling, students paint color, generate normal maps, and specular maps for created geometry. Special attention will be paid to the creation of clean and optimized models for use in games." (Full Sail University 2014 Course Catalog).

Lesson 1 covered the industry pipeline. We discussed the various software used in art creation for video games, terminology, concepts of game modeling, and culling. The first assignment for the course involved working with a reference image of a Mame arcade table. 

I took the image into Photoshop to create a breakdown of the object. This allowed me to identify various components of the object and determine what assets could be reused throughout the model to increase efficiency. 

I then proceeded to Maya to block-out the mesh. I utilized the breakdown and reference image as the foundation for my mesh in Maya. I also imported a human mesh provided to use as a standard for the size and proportions of my arcade table. This human mesh represented the proper scaling used in Unreal Engine 4. 

After completing my block-out, I duplicated my mesh to begin modeling the in-game mesh. I took my duplicated block-out mesh and proceeded to add secondary and tertiary details while consulting my references. I duplicated objects that could be reused throughout the mesh such as the joysticks and control buttons. 

This was a quick build, and the project was done during a three hour lab. I learned quite a bit about the pipeline of video game art creation and was able to implement a lot of the techniques taught. 

Professional Communication and Presentation (Showcase)

This class revolved around learning how to "sell yourself" to potential employers. While I have had several jobs and experience in professional environments in the past, such as with Apple and the United States Army,  it was a nice refresher course. Here is a slide show presentation I completed for the class that tells my story:  my skills, my faults, my journey, my passion. 

Click the "Read More" tab on the bottom left of this post to see the entire slideshow and learn a bit about my background.

Character Animation 1 (Basic Walk, Final Project)

For my final project in Character Animation, I attempted to implement everything I have learned this month (and over past months in classes such as 2D Animation) into a basic scene. I started off animating in "stepped" mode so I could manually control the animation, versus Maya just blindly filling in the gaps. I plotted the contact, passing, up, and down poses for my character while in stepped. I then proceeded to change the animation tangent to "auto" and corrected the foot roll, balancing issues, head bob, and tail swag. Here is the final product:

Character Animation 1 (Strong Poses, Part 2)

Last time, I shared the pre-pro work for this project. Now I'll share the final part of the project. I took my storyboard and adapted it to a scene in Maya. My goal here was to maximize the poses by exploring negative space in my silhouettes. Here is the final scene render:

Some issues that I need to address in the future include:

Arms do not show joints.
Lobster claws (no silhouette on the fingers).
Symmetrical Antennae.
Some poses lack line of action.
Insufficient use of negative space.
Disgusted pose doesn't read clearly.

Character Animation 1 (Strong Poses, Part 1)

This next project for Character Animation involved a lot of pre-pro work. The main goal of this overall project was to study strong poses in animations, primarily by working on silhouettes. To start off with, we did some concept work exploring different poses for several strong poses such as relaxed, fear, anger, happiness, sadness, disgust, and balanced. Below you can see the different poses I came up with for a set of exploratory thumbnails.

Next, I chose one of each of the strong poses that I thought would work the best and compiled them into a storyboard. I primarily focused on the silhouettes to try and pick poses that would best represent the desired pose.  

Next, I will be applying these poses to a corresponding model in Maya! 

Character Animation 1 (Leggy Walk, Part 3)

Here is my final playblast for the "Leggy Walk" project. I am pretty confident with the results, but would have liked to have more time to explore the foot roll in the future. That is definitely something I will explore more outside of class in the future.

Character Animation 1 (Leggy Walk, Part 2)

Next on the Leggy Walk project, I started working on the "up and down" poses. These poses are important because they add realism to the animation. When we walk, our hips rotate from side to side and move up and down. This part of the assignment helped me understand how these poses are important. 

via Full Sail University curriculum 

via Full Sail University curriculum

As you can see in me animation below, I took these techniques and applied them to my project. 

Next I will move on to finalizing the hip rotations along with applying a foot roll. The foot roll will ensure the character looks balanced and natural. 

Character Animation 1 (Leggy Walk, Part 1)

This is the first project assigned in Character Animation 1. It is a building block, a foundation, for what is to come. The project involves a simple leg walk. I started out by blocking out the animation in Maya using stepped tangent. Here is the playblast of the blocked out scene.

The blocked out scene contains the contact and passing poses on the animation. Next, I will move on to up and down poses, and eventually a foot roll.

Character Rigging

Here are some screenshots at my first attempt at character rigging with split geometry. I have included several poses to show the mobility and flexibility of the rig, along with an image showing the actual rig set-up.

Fundamentals of Animation, Box Push

After completing the ball bounce, the next project involved animating a character pushing a box. Through this assignment I learned how to create a successful piece of animation that incorporates weight, appeal, staging, and good timing. All of this was accomplished by using the workflow tools taught such as MEL buttons and the graph editor.

Fundamentals of Animation, Ball Bounce and Roll

This month, in Fundamentals of Animation, we covered a lot of the key aspects to animating in a three dimensional environment. We started off learning how to animate a bouncing ball.

This video shows a project in which I animated a ball bouncing. During this project I learned how to use the Graph Editor in Maya to control the speed of the animation. Using the graph editor was vital to create appropriate timing and spacing, key elements in creating a believable ball bounce and roll. Being able to control the animation of an object such as a ball is an important first step to master before moving onto animating a character.

Changed Physics Animation Project

This month, in 2D Animation class, we focused on on the fundamentals of animation by learning the 12 basic principles of the field. This assignment required us to show a change in physics compared to a perpetually bouncing ball as shown here:

The perpetually bouncing ball relies heavily on the principles of "Squash and Stretch" along with "Slow In and Slow Out." The bouncing ball moves faster as it approaches and leaves the ground. You can also witness the exaggerated way that the ball makes contact with the ground (Squash and Stretch).

In contrast to this rubber ball bouncing, I chose a much heavier ball to show a drastic change in physics. This second ball relies heavily on the principles of "Arc" and "Secondary Action." You can see how the arc of the ball's trajectory is more exaggerated to add emphasis. The secondary action of the wall breaking is also vital because it adds a reference point for how heavy the ball is.

Overall I found this project very educational because it taught me that every scenario being animated might call upon any variety and combination of principles to make it work. It is vital to understand which principles will help you convey the scene to the audience the best.

Final Compare and Contrast

In my final, I tried to keep a lot of the same elements used in the original Picasso, while making some changes to to the composition in order to correct some oversights. First, I expanded the color palette of the original, adding in more vibrant reds and blues, while keeping the earth tones of the original. I also tried to keep the simplistic structure and texturing of the original piece, with some minor expansions. I added a third dimension to my piece to give it more perspective than Picasso did. I did however try to stick to the roots of Picasso's stance with perspective by giving my two buildings a different vanishing point. This allows them to have an extra element of depth, while keeping with the unorthodox, differing perspectives implemented by Picasso. I also tried to give the composition more unity, by balancing the structures along the lines of thirds of my composition. I also think the solid background color I laid down first does a good job of unifying all the elements, as opposed to the original, where the elements run together. Overall, I tried to keep the basic elements Picasso used, while expanding them in a new direction to achieve a smilier, yet in some regards, vastly different composition. 

Work In Progress Update #4

I finally continued my way to the foreground and began to work on adding texture, detail, and shading to the piece. 

Work In Progress Update #3

Next, I began working my way to the forefront of the scene. I used tape to keep my building edges straight and keep everything flowing towards the same vantage point. I did this so each building will have the same perspective within it. I did however, alter the perspective between the two buildings to harken back, slightly, to Picasso's style of multiple perspectives.