It has been a crazy few months for me, managed to get a job at Reflections Straight from uni.
Here is a quick recap of some of the work I have done in my spare time these past 6 months while being at Reflections.
Not in order because I cant remember the order.
Quakewars sketchfab environment – polycount Comp
A one month environment noob challenge on Polycount
Showreel for Expotees! Nearly finished, just a few things to clean up and collision to make ready for people to run around 🙂
Spent this week finishing off and started building a hologram shader, custom rigs break really easily when transfering to unreal so this took faar too long.
This week is dedicacted to finishing off all of the assets in the scene, a lot of shortcuts have been taken through re-use of older assets and re modelling and unwrapping to old textures to save time.
I have also used ddo heavily to generate the weathering on the latest Buddha statue sitting in the relaxed pose. This was used to simulate the rusting and weathering created from the ages. I have also implimented Image based reflections in unreal and set the floor to use them for reflections. The floor still needs work but I now have a more accurate base to start with.
There are still a few assets to build including the complex carved posts in the center of the first shot, then next week I will be starting to explore creating the hologram shader for the systems surrounding the chairs and to start creating fly throughs for final hand in. Scary/
This week I had to finish contemporary studies, since it is related to, and using, my contemporary studies I can upload some shots from its creation. The idea was to see how close to a film shot I can get the scene by breaking down different parts of a particular shot down and attempting to match it in engine.
I think for the research project I had slightly too many differences in my scene to truly match the shot in question but I believe if planned for correctly in the future, lining up shots from the beginning, it wil be very possible to get an effect very close to the look of the original movie.
I am currently working on the budha in a pot, today should see the completion of the sculpt.
This week I have been working on plowing through new objects in the scene, there isnt much time left and that seems a bit worrying, new additions to the scene apart from a few tweaks are the central stairs are complete with both supporting sides, the medicine cabinet, coal burner, I updated the door and added a frame to it and the circular section behind the chair.
The medicine cabinet took up the majority of the time, I created a high poly for it and re-unwrapped the low poly a few times to increase efficiency, in the end I moved some of the uv’s across and deleted any faces that are not visible to the audience, this maximised uv space and enabled it to use a 1024 without the text and smaller details becoming un readable.
I also added light fog in an attempt to start moving towards the actual scene in the movie, and the coal burner has smoke particles floating off it.
Updated environment with new pieces.
High poly cabinet in 3ds max
Ambient occlusion map bake and normal map bake within Marmoset Toolbag
The near final Medicine Cabinet in Marmoset toolbag
The final cabinet sitting in its correct location in udk.
Here is the chair in its current state, the textures are probably to dark at the moment and some wear and tear should be added but these will be added when lighting in this area is closer to final. I will be putting fyp on the back burner a bit for a while as I need to catch up with my concept art module. I think the next set of assets to do will be the scene pieces to finish off the flooring and stairs so that without any props in the base is there.
Here is the picture I created for the expotees brochure, it was frustrating spending such a long time on the chair but not enough assets around it were complete and without the extra lighting framing it it was not creating a nice composition or eye catching piece for the brochure.
I have been working hard on the rekall chair for the environment, as it is the central piece I thought it deserved much more time spent on it than the rest of the scene, for this reason I have used a 2048 for it and also created a full high poly for bakes, having some trouble with the seam for the normal which will need looking into to fix.
Also, I think the unwrap has been packed a bit too tight for mipmapping, most of a similair material are together tho so hopefully it wont be a massive issue, if problems crop up I can adjust mip map scale in unreal to try and reduce them. Next step is to work over the texture till its all properly detailed up, including adding the normal map for the front panel and small markings on the chair itself.
Created another couple of assets for the scene, progress this week was slow as Animex rolled into town (www.Animex.net). A week of awesome talks from people working in related fields creating amazing things.
Hopefully get back up to speed, I have made a few tweaks through the scene and updated a lot of the textures, really need to stop touching pieces done and finish the loonngg list of remaining pieces, then check what people notice in the scene as issues and fix accordingly. There is a seam issue on the ornate table at the moment, its on my list to fix. Will go over all the assets again when they are in the scene and lighting has had more work to get them closer to the films look. The ornate table seems mostly too bright and not enough contrast across its surface. The door metal is really letting it down at the moment and some of the scaling is off. I made the door wider to fit into the unreal character scales better but the rest is un intentional.
Fallen a bit behind my sunday updates, going to try and get back into the rythm, works still being done just some other uni subjects came up with tighter deadlines and they took presedence for a bit.This week I ran through a few more tweaks and learnt some new stuff.
New bits in the level are the first variation of lion statue, I will be aiming for 3 but the other 2 are lower on my importance list as there is one in their place at the moment.
Also added a large jar, there are a few strewn about the level, and the wall directly behind the chair has now been unwrapped and has a first super early pass texture on it, that will need a lot of work, also updated the tarnished copper circle meshes and added concrete to them.
Here is the reference sheet used for the head, I think its nearly there, just needs some adjustments when the lighting is nearer final.
