Final Major project year 2 | shahanmiahportfolio

Unit 13: final major project

I have found different concept art pieces of medieval fantasy themed characters. These concept pieces are useful because they give me ideas for the art style for my final piece.

I have also specifically looked for character art that has similar features to my own character design, an example of this is that I have found lots of concept art of medieval archers because I want to have an archer in my piece.

this gives me insight on what other artist interpret as an archer character so I can capture the same look and style in my own piece.

One concept artists I have found is kekai kotaki and his work on guild wars 2 (2012[), his art style has inspired me because his art style captures the fantasy medieval theme I am going for.

Aspects I like about his work is the use of color to differentiate characters he has illustrated, he has used more organic cooler color scheme for the human characters, while he uses more warmer colors for monster creature characters.

The use of different colors gives different emotions and feelings to the character, cooler more desaturated colors gives a peaceful soothing look while bright red warm colors give of the feeling of aggression and power.

I want to use this idea of color to differentiate my characters as well. Instead I want to use colors to show two different sides ( good and evil) within the scene.

I have gathered images from different movies and TV shows that have influences me for this project. I have used movies and TV because I wanted to see how things look in real life so I can interpret it better when I’m creating it in my stylized art style.

I have found films that are in the same theme of medieval fantasy; this helps because it gives me reference for different objects like weapons and materials of clothes. One of these influences is game of thrones (2011) what I have taken form game of thrones Is how costume differentiates different classes of people, for example they would use expensive materials like silk to show someone is high-class or from a royal family like a king and queens and for the poor people, they would use cheaper materials like wool and cotton.

The reason why they choose certain materials like silk and saturn for high born characters is becouse according to lordsandladies.org (2016)

historically only poeple who were wealthy could afford these materials

I will have to consider different materials for each character to show what kind of role he or she is in,

for example, I would use the material of shiny steel for knights and ill use have dirty old cotton for peasants.

I have also found inspirations in movies like the hobbit (2012) because Its also within the medieval fantasy theme I'm going for.

I mainly took the physical features that differentiate the type of character within the world, for example, elves show that they are noble and high class with their physicals features of bieng tall, slender and are well groomed, others characters like dwarfs are short and stocky and look quite rugged with facial hair and scars to show they are rough warriors.

During previous projects I have attempted to created 3d character, I had used the same programs, tools and workflow that professional character artist use in there work, but my piece still had many flaws and still looked amateur level in terms of quality.

My FMP's main focus are characters within poses, so I needed to research more techniques and aspects in will bring my art to a more professional level.

What I have found is series of video tutorials by 3D character artist Hai phan, called "3D character art for Game". I found this useful because he goes over in depth his workflow and techniques he uses to created his art, what I have taken from this is the idea of making the sculpted and texture detail believably look like the material or object you want it look, a lot of models don’t capture this 'material definition which is

a main difference between amateur and professional model.

Another aspect I learned was the composition on the model, i was told that I should focus on aspects that get the viewer attention most and have other parts subtlety less detailed so the model don’t look too noisy. I think these techniques with more practice will help make my model look more professional and more aesthetically pleasing.

Technique Research

In the past academic year we learned more advanced aspect that is used in 3d art. In the first year we created simple static models and now we have learned how to create rigs for the models so they can move, as well as learning the core skills to create solid animation giving life to the models, in this year we have also touched on different disciplines such as 2D video compositing and the basic of coding for games. I feel that I have

developed my skills in 3D where I now have the skills to create more complicated pieces of work like character animations and because of this I think that I will specialise on creating 3d art for games and animation but within the 3d industry I feel like I would be a generalist. Meaning I touch on all aspect down the process (aspects such as, modelling texturing, rigging and animating) Within the past year I started from having no knowledge or experience of 3d but each project has taught me a specific essential and step by step I builder my skill set to this point where will incorporate these skill together for final piece.

Section 1: Review (Approx 150 words)

Section 2: Project Concept & Proposed Artist Statement

My final project is called ‘call of the wild’ the final outcome will be a 3d trailer animation showcasing intricate detailed character models, that is closer to a professional standard.

I want to communicate the story of the scene. The story will be about 3 main characters who were part of a tribe have come to assassinate the tyrant villain king of the land who has been killing peaceful tribes thought the land.

I want the audience to feel like they are watching a teaser trailer for a game, I want to have that cinematic feeling that teaser trailers have and I also want my trailer to set the theme for the game. The emotion I want the audience to feel is excitement and anticipation as if it really was a trailer for a new game.

I was inspired by the video advertisement ‘Carousel’ (Philips 2009) and the video trailer for the game project ‘cyberpunk 2077’ (2012). What I took from these 2 videos were the style and format of their trailers. What they had was a moment that was a frozen in time and had a camera move around the scene slowly revealing more and more of the scene. I want to use this same format to show my scene in my animation.

I want it to be in a medieval fantasy theme, I have taken inspiration from games like ‘dark souls’ (2011) and the ‘elder scrolls: Skyrim’ (2011) and will be using aspect of the game like the character armour and scenery as reference when modelling my scene.

For the art style wanted my scene to be quite stylised, I have taken inspiration from games like Fable 2 (2008) and World of Warcraft (2004), the reason these art styles have inspired is because they have quite vibrant coloured stylised art style I am aiming to achieve, I will mainly focusing on how they achieved the texture and colour for the art style.

Section 3: Methods

What I’ll be using to achieve is multiple digital programmes, will be using Maya to model, light and render the final scene, I will also use Maya to animate the camera movement within the scene. I will be using Mudbox to sculpt high Polly detail for the character and assets. I will also be using both Mudbox and Photoshop in order to texture and colour characters and models. And finally I’ll use after effect to composite the rendered images together.

I will be using different techniques like simple box modelling to create the base meshes, then use a variety of different texture maps like normal and displacement maps extracted from the high poly sculpted mesh to add extra detail onto the base model. In terms of texturing I could use grey scale version of the colour map to create other aspects like specular highlights, also ambient occlusion maps to add extra depth to model. I will use texture files alpha channels to create transparency on the model. This can be used for the hair

Section 4: Evaluation

One way I will evaluate my final piece is by comparing my final pieces to my influences, looking at what are the similarities and differences, I will also be comparing it to my concept art to see weather if I have interpreted the 2d art into 3d accurately.

Another way I will review my work is through external feedback from peers and people who have seen the final outcome, this will either be verbal or in an questionnaire. I will ask specific question like, what do you think it is about? so I could find out weather if I was able to get the story intended across and find out what other things they interpreted from the animation, other questions I may ask I will ask what kind of tone or theme do you get from the animation, I will record there responds as see weather I was able to successfully set to theme and mood of the trailer.

I have gathered images from different games that have influenced me for this project, games such as world of Warcraft (2004), dark souls (2011) and fable (2008).

The reason why I am influenced so much by these games is because of their stylised art direction.

I wanted my scene to be like this because it’s meant to look like a game trailer. Aspects I am going to take from this influences are things like the over-

exaggerated unrealistic armor piece and the way they stylised the human feature to match the art styles.

Another think that makes the stylised art style work is the texturing, unlike some games where they try to achieve realism by using image textures and desaturating the color. However games like world of warcracft has textures that are bright, vibrant and looks hand painted. I will want to use a mixture of image textures, hand painted textures leaning toward the stylised look for my final piece.

One thing I have to be carful of is that I don’t replicate the design and art style too closely as it may make my work look unoriginal and generic.

I have gathered different images of real life materials because I have learned that one way to make something look convincing in stylised art is by making it have the same features that it would have in real life. This is called material definition and an example of this is a material like metal, in order to make it look convincing you need it to have high specularity so its shiny like real metal and capturing the smooth hard bevel shape is essential to making something look like metal.

I have focused on finding the real life counterparts of materials that my character will be wearing. I can also use these as references and compare them with stylised art pieces to find out what the artist included from real life.

I will be using theses images during the sculpting and texturing process so I can copy the shape and material definition to make my character costume more readable helping with the composition of the character. One problem with using these images as reference is that they're not in the position I want them, so its going to be a challenge to know or guess how the material folds, stretches and compresses. A solution to this is that I find the material and take my own photos in the position I want it to be.

Experimintation

These are my concept designs, influences I have used were from stylised concept art pieces like Kekai Katoki's work on Guild Wars 2, also from stylised games like World of Warcraft (2004).

What I took from these was the over exaggerated shape and form of the armor pieces, I have kept the design simple and without color because I did not want to commit my self to a color scheme, I would like to experiment in 3d to see which colors looked the best. I would use other reference images for the details when sculpting, this is because I may not be able to convey the same level of detail in my own concept art.

Another reason why the designs are so basic is because when researching on creating 3d art, I was advice to work from more professional concept because if working from art that has mistakes like scale problems or is not to the quality standard it could deteriorate your work.

My main focus will be creating the 3 art for the scene within the time frame I have, so I'm using my designs as a basic reference for my character I use more professional designs when I'm adding more detail.

Something I could improved is to add a profile view of the concept art and also have more detailed designs of different parts on the character, also I could try sketch out what kind of expressions the characters will portray within the scene.

Here I tried to sculpt a stylised character with a fleeting expression, I used photos reference to try include human features you real life. My intentions were to portray real human features on a stylized character, my plan was to have a mixture of life like human features with more cartoony aspects.

I tried to capture aspects like the cheek bones but because I wanted to it to be stylised I only tried to add the most basic prominent features on the face and not include subtle details like small wrinkles, with this experiment I found it useful as it was like a test for I do create my final characters and I know what are some of the problems I may run into, the biggest problem I think is that that looks awkward and not portraying the expression I was going for I think this Is because a lack of expressions of sculpting human features, I could work on the anatomy more such as the teeth.

Another problem I think I had was that the human features I included made the character look creepy and unappealing, I think a solution to this is focus more on making the character look more stylized and appealing to the viewer rather than making look anatomically correct.

This is one of my characters that will be within the final piece, my idea was to have a druid like character that can summon these tree like creatures. i wanted to add magical/supernatural aspects to the scene. I wanted the audience

to feel a sense of excitement and be immersed within this world as if you were playing a game.

I modeled the base mesh within maya, I then took it into mudbox where I sculpted the main details, I then used the texturing program quixel to texture it. my influences were from games such as world of warcraft (2004) and from concept art designs from legend of the cryptides (2012) what I took from these was how they try to make creatures look like bipedal human like figures. I also liked how they portrayed the material of wood by using organic colors like greens, greys and brown.

With this model I tried to use my references of materials, especially wood in order to make the model look believable but I also had to balance this with trying to make him look like a bipedal humanoid creature. I did this by giving him the face that’s similar to humans. What I think went well was that I was able to the add details I was intending to have on the character, I think I was able to make the sculpt look somewhat like a wooden material, there are some parts I could still work on like the feat and hand.

The is one of my characters that will be in my scene, this character will be like duplicated and slightly edited so I can fill the scenes with knights to make it look like there a big fight going on within the scene. my influences for are from games like world of warcraft (2004)and dark souls (2011), what I took from these games was how they created their knight characters in there games and how the interpreted aspects of real knights into their art style, I also like how they use vibrant colors in there art style.

Other influences was from the research of the 15th century portaits paintings, what I took from this is how they rendered the amour, and showing aspects like bright highlights to indicate its reflectivity and I also like the choice of color palate. In many of the portrait the many high noble knights are shown to be wearing gold, red and silver armor and clothing,

this may because historically (according to ladyandlords.org,2016) the material for these colors were expensive and showed that your wealthy or in a high ranking position. I wanted to portray these character as the kings guards which is a high ranking position.

I started by modeling the base model within Maya, what I focused on was creating the basic shapes for the armor pieces, one thin I could of considered more Is how it is going to deform when rigged, once thing I could of changes the placement of the armor pieces making sure there nor around areas where there's lots of deformation, like the shoulders and elbows .

I have searched for different things that has influenced different movies and shows. For example I have found out that World War 1 & 2 influenced 'The Lord of the Rings'. This is because the author J.R.R. Tolkien fought in World War I's 'Battle of the Somme'; you can see how the area of Mordor from the movies is reminiscent of the western front in World War One. He was also influenced by the industrial revolution and the problem of pollution, he showed this concern in 'Lord of the Rings' with examples like how Sauron devastated an ancient forest to create his army. In terms of lore mythology it was heavily influenced by Norse/Nordic mythology, you can see that he had taken the mythological creatures from Nordic mythology like hobbits and elves, but also the figure Gandalf was based of the Nordic deity Odin. This is shown from not only Gandalf’s physical appearance but also his character as a wise old man that promotes justice, knowledge, truth, and insight.

Tolkien also had lots of catholic influences within the story; you can see this with different themes of immortality, resurrection, and also a lot of different religious ideals of such as the triumph of humility over pride, and the activity of grace as seen with Frodo's pity toward Gollum.

I can use different historical events and themes as an influence for the look and feel of the scene, just like the influence of the Western front within Mordor. This also gives me an idea of what kind of environment my scene could be in or influences how it'll look. I feel that I may take influence mostly from the Medieval time period. I could also use religious and mythological influences because many people have a personal connection with the ideals and stories. If I am able to incorporate these ideals within my scenes it will add weight to my final piece, making the audeience personally connect and immersed in the animation as they subconsciously recognise the same ideals that are said in their religion.

Test render

These videos are my main influences for the animation because they all the same aspect of a scene frozen in time, the first one, Carousel, is a scene of a bank heist unfolding where it reveals the story gradually in one long camera shot, the next one project red is a game advert where it show different camera angles of the models mixed with some different animation like guns fire and particles, the last one is a VFX piece that uses interesting camera movements. What I like about these are that they all have the same concept for showing the scene but do it in different ways.

I like how carousel shows the scene gradually with no cuts and the problem I feel is that you don’t see the character for long, and in my case I want to showcase them showing off all there details. The game trailer was interesting but I feel that it’s not conveying the story well enough but shows good world building.

The last piece had the most interesting camera movement but did not convey or reveal any thing just seemed like differents random shots. I think I will use the long gradual slow reveal mixed with some interesting camera movement from the vfx scene.

This is one of the main character for my scene he is the main villain who is a tyrant that is fighting the heroes. The main inspiration for this character is Robert baratheon from game of thrones, what I like about him was that he was a fat king which is what I wanted to go for because I feel he seems gluttonous, and adds to the evil fealing of the character, when creating this character I focused on the facial expressions I used different references of obese people to shape the features of the face and I used pictures of my self with the expression I was going for, I feel I was able to do more with the texturing as I got more accustomed to the programme. Another way I tried to save time was to focus on the areas you will only see in the final animation, (mostly the front the character). What I like about the model was that I got the facial expression to look more convincing than previous attempts showing development in my skills, what I could improve was things like the eyes and the some of the distorted area like the hands and feet. I also feel like I could improve the way the expression looks to adds more life to the character.

This is one of my characters, he is one of the main hero's that is an archer .

With this character I wanted him to be an archer character because its commonly stereotyped for archer characters to be the fast agile character that doesn't use brute strengthen but his agility and pin point precision to fight, this gives a different kind of action within my scene.

I try to capture the feeling a agility and swiftness through his pose, unlike my other characters poses, this characters pose looks more choreographed and acrobatic and becouse he in the air in a acrobatic pose it make it looks as if his body I very light weight and flexible which adds a different kind of action within the scene making it seem more interesting.

I was mainly influenced by the fictional character Legolas from the lord of the ring series (2001),

he is an archer that performs very elegant choreographed movements and acrobatic stunts while he fights, I wanted to capture this because it makes the character seam super human so that he contrasts from the other characters and makes him the focal point. other archer characters I have been influenced which give off the same effect are from folk tales and mythology such as robin hood or rama (Hindu god).

I have changed the concept design so he can have armor pieces, the reason for this is because I wanted him to stand out as the one of the main characters, I focused on making the armor matching the swift an agile aspect of the character, I did this by changing the armor to look light weighted and decorative. A game that has influenced me for this idea was the assassins creed (2007).

I wanted to have variation with the facial expressions in the scenes, instead of every simple frowning or shouting, I had this character closing one eye

One thing I did well was the color choice for the character I think these colors especially the color green is associated with archer characters for example character like, robin hood and DC comic hero green arrow. The reason why the colors is used in many archer charter is because they are usually associated with hunters that hunt within forest and the green color is meant to represent there orign.

Something I could improved was the overall sculpting quality, I feel like the armor pieces looks flat and has no volume, also I could of improved the facial details.

Another aspect I could of improved was the texturing of the character, I felt that some of the texture were visually too noise and stared to distort the shapes of the armor pieces.

Ways of improving the model by revisiting the sculpted details, making sure I have a solid foundation of primary forms before putting any secondary or finer detail, also to make the texture more subtle while still retaining the material I was going for.

This is one of my main character he is one of the main hero's and is a warrior type character, I wanted to go for this type of character because in many fantasy medieval themed games it common to have character like wariors and wizards. One game that that I was influenced by is trine (2009) in the game you have 3 main character, a warrior, a archer, and a mage, they all have different abilities and you have to use different character abilities in order to go though specific puzzle in the game. I wanted to have this aspects of different character using there abilities within my fight in order to have variety of of action within the scene.

For the look of the character I was inspired by pulp fiction character Conan the barbarian (1932), Conan was a physically muscular character that that usually wore minimalist clothing in order to portray a barbaric image, I wanted the same barbaric look for my character. I looked at reference photos of actor and former bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger because I wanted to incorporate his kind of physique. aspects I focused on were the shoulder, chest and back muscles they give a v-taper shape to the upper torso, this adds to the muscular physique look I am going for. For the facial expression I used my own reference for the armor pieces I used a variety of referenced from games such as dark souls and final fantasy.

I chose these game because there art style is a mixture of realism and stylized. I wanted to capture the damages grungy look of realistic armor while incorporating it into my stylized art style.

One thing that went well was the facial detail and the body, I feel that I was able to capture the expression of anger and give him this barbaric look to him and although I could improve the physique to match my reference more by broadening the shoulder and thining the waist I think the character portrays a muscular physique

What I could improve was the armor texturing, I feel that I could I added more vibrant colors to match the stylized art style and change the over shape of it to make it more sharp and look visually like armor,

shader and lighting experiment

physical sun and sky

image based lighting

This was a test render of my textures within maya, this test was to see how my textures looked with one of the shaders within maya, the shader I chose was the mental milla layered shader,

I went with this kind of shader is because when using the standard shaders in maya like phong, the textures were slightly too overexposed and I wasn't getting the same results as in the texturing application.

One differences about this shader is that its a layered shader, meaning you can layer different components from separate files into one shader instead of just having all the texture information in one map. you have more control over the aesthetic of the textures when using this rather than the standard.

A reason why I went with is because there is a tutorial on (the texturing application I'm using) quixel's website that shows you how to plug in your textures within Maya using the Mila shader. Useful tips I learnt from this were things like how to adjust some of the settings to match the kind of reflection I want to get on my material.

I also tested different lighting situations (image base lighting and physical sun and sky) within the scene what I have found that I am able to create results that are close to what I wanted with both types of lighting types but the only different was the render times. Using image base lighting took around 1.20 second while physical sun and sky was able to render a frame in 40 seconds. Due to the limited time frame I have chosen to use physical sun and sky, a disadvantage to is that image base lighting you can use many different types of hdri images to choose the kind of overall lighting you want, while physical sun and sky is limited to color and intensity.

One downside I found using this shader was that everything looks slightly too glossy and reflective, one way to fix this may be to change some of the specular reflective settings in the shader or change the texture maps themselves.

This is the first stage of the production I started off by modeling the base environment for the character.

For the character I have two different workflows for creating them, the first one is for characters that will be duplicated around the scene like the knights and tree monsters, I modeled the base mesh in the standard standing pose. I will then create all the sculpted detail and texture for the model in the standard pose and then rig it into position.

With the main character I will switch two steps of the process around, I will create the base mesh, rig that base mesh and put into position, then sculpt and texture the posed model,

The reason why I do this is because I feel that I am able to sculpt the characters to look more convincing while there in there pose rather than trying to adjust the mesh with skin weights or make blend shapes. The reason why I don’t do this for the duplicated character is because It would took take too much time to pose the characters and sculpt them in that position,

also all of them would look quite different and wont look like they are the same kind of character.

I also created camera animations for the scene with the help of a pear of mine, as I was working on the scene, my pear gave me useful tips and advice such as having the camera resolution at a wide screen 1280 x 444, which gives a cinematic feel to the scene ,while rendering less of the shot saving renders times.

My plan for the final animation is to have depth of field to maker sure that the focal point is on the characters this should give some room to focus more on the character and not have to worry about the environment that much.

One problem I have with this project was the amount of characters I have to texture, in previous projects, almost a third of the process was texturing and because it’s a long and tedious process to get all the texture details in the right place and then you have to constantly test whether the textures look right in 3d. Although aplication like mudbox speeds up the process, It will still take too long to texture all the models in the time frame given.

so I have researched on alternative methods of texturing and what I have is found is a new texturing application called 'quixel studios'. what's different about this compared to other texturing applications is its workflow, instead of you trying to find textures yourself, they have material presets that use 8k resolution textures. It automatically makes all the different maps you'll need like diffuse specular and gloss, speeding up the texturing work flow greatly. Like Photoshop you mask out the texture to specific area you want, it also has 3d viewport in order to see how your 2d textures look in 3d,it also uses the normal maps you create in order where to decide to add the texture details around this speeds up the whole process meaning you can add details in minutes which would take hours to apply on manually.

The reason I will be using this is because it will speed up the my texturing workflow and give me more time to make more higher quality models in the timeframe given.

The only problems I may face is because it’s a new program interface and a new kind of workflow for me, I will need to learn how to use the program properly which may take time.

The physical features tells you about the characters and makes them look convincing, I will use this within my on piece to show different kinds of characters through their body types and facial hair details.

Intention.

The name of my project is 'Call of the Wild'.

My initial idea was to have a animation of a fight scene frozen in time and have a camera moving around the scene slowly unvieling the fight.

The aim of this project was to demonstrate that I was able to improve my skills as a 3D artist, it was less about learning new specific techniques or workflows, but refining my current skills and using fundamentals rules like 'composition of the model' and 'material definition' to create artwork that closer to a more professional standard.

The way I was going to achieve this was by using Maya and Mudbox to create game like stylised models that had believable looking sculpted armor and clothing details, as well as convincing fleeting facial expressions.

I was also going to use the texturing application Quixell in order to create vibrant colored stylized textures to give life to the models.

I feel that I was able to improve my skills as a 3D artist by creating character models that had some convincing looking aspects and fleeting expressions that doesn't look too uncanny. I was able to complete most characters within the time frame given and are all seamlessly placed within an environment. In terms of the scene, I was able to create camera movements that slowly revealed the scene which gave it a cinematic feel.

Somethings I could of improved on was the overall composition of the models. I feel that I could have added more finer detail to the model to make them seem more intricate and more visually interesting. In terms of texture, there are some parts that don’t match because the texture is too noisy and destroys the sculpted detail of the model.

Another aspect I could of improved was the texturing and creation of the environment, improving the level of detail would make the final animation more immersive and believable that they're in a mediaeval era setting.

Research.

Research on movies games and concept art has helped me develop the overall look of the characters. These influences helped me understand why certain aspects like color pallet and materials have been chosen for certain characters.

For example, why TV shows like 'Game of Thrones' choose materials like silk and satin for the noble born characters, is because historically rich people would wear these kinds of clothing to flaunt their wealth, so this information is applied to the characters to make them look believable to the audiencence.

Another example is why concept artist like Kekai Kotoki uses different colours like green, blue, red and orange to differentiate good and evil, because of the different emotions that are associated with the colors. Blue and green are cooler and organic looking while red and orange are more warm and ferocious which is what he uses for monster characters.

I did some research on sculptures and portrait paintings while I visited the British museum and national portrait galleries.

I was influenced by how the Greek statues have shown Gods of the Greek mythology as strongly built athletes, they added aspects like swollen ears that would indicate that the sculpture would be a boxer or a pankraist (all in wrestler). It give me insight on how they envisioned their gods to have athletic builds and how I could make my models seem more like heroes or God like figures.

I feel that my research was successful because I have gathered a wide range of different influences for my project. I feel that my research has given me an understanding on why different artists choose certain aspects to include in their art work and I feel it will help me create models that are visually more believable.

Design development

I have created basic design sketches for all of the characters with my research on movies, concept art and games. I designed characters that have different aspects like clothing different physiques in order to differentiate the character from each other. I purposely only created basic designs because I was informed to use professional concept art or real life as reference while I was researching on how to create more professional 3D art, because your own designs may be incorrect. For example it may not have the right proportions or the design isn't readable enough, this could hinder final 3D artwork.

I have done some experimentation with facial expressions and using the new texturing application (Quixel). Although I feel that I failed to convey a fleeting expression at the level of quality intended, it gave me an insight on what my current level was at and how I could improve it. I think the texturing experiment went well, I initially was worried that I wasn’t able to make stylized looking textures because Quixel is mostly used for more realistic textures but I feel that I was able to achieve the textures I desired and gave myself confidence I could use the my main texturing tool for the projects workflow.

Some problems I had was that I was so focused on creating the characters, although they are the main focus, I still needed to plan how the environment around them will look. I feel as if I could resolve this problem by researching on different aspects that would be in a medieval setting and create some concept designs on how the scene will look.

Method of working

I started the production process by creating the base meshes for the characters and environment, during this time I rigged and positioned all the models within the environment using influences on Greek statues and metopes, on how to position the character to show that they're in the midst of battle.

For the character details, I had different workflows. Firstly, for characters that duplicated around the scene I would create the sculpted detail using mudbox and textures using Quixel while they were in the standard pose. However for the main characters I will pose them first then sculpt and texture them in the pose. The reason being that I could achieve better results while sculpting them in position rather than trying to paint skin weights and trying to correct mesh deformation.

The reason why I did not use the same workflow for all the characters is because it would take too long of a process to sculpt them in position, so I'm using a mixture of both for the most efficient process.

I then textured the environment and plugged in the texture files into the appropriate shaders for the characters. I used the researched tutorials on how to plug textures and learn how to calibrate the shade in order to get the right specularity and reflections. Also I used the physical sun and sky set up that was used in my experiments.

After rendering the file I then rendered out a zdepth pass of the scene and composited them together into nuke, then added the music in Adobe Premier.

I feel that I was able to create a large amount of characters that demonstrate my progression in 3D character creation skills. I feel that my program pipeline, especially for texture has been successful because I was able to achieve the amount of characters in the time frame given.

Weakness in my workflow was that I wasn’t able to fully achieve the look of the textured models when rendered into Maya, this could have been fixed if I adjusted how the texture maps were effecting the shaders. Another solution could be to adjust the final image in a post editing software.

If we had more time for the project I may have changed the texturing process, although I feel the current workflow has increased my efficiency and quality of work, I wish I was able to experiment other pipelines and workflows such as Mudbox or Photoshop.

Final outcome

My final outcome is a rendered animation of a fight scene frozen in time. In my statement of intent I wanted to create animation showing off characters in a fight scene frozen in time, I was able to achieve this goal in my final.

I was able to successfully achieve my goals using my chosen workflow, I was able to learn and use a new program and it workflow to create models that look visually more professional compared to previous projects attempts in the time frame given.

I changed how I created the assets and character models. Initally I planned to model every character in the first part of the project and then model and texture everything and finally plug everything in and render. Instead I have modeled, sculpted and textured a single model one by one. The advantages to this is that I have more flexibility in my workflow to change things, I can preform tests such as test for the shader within Maya or test renders of the model so I change things before I move on to the next model.

I have gathered some critism from my peers, these are their responses:

"I like the facial expression in the rendered image but they seem blurred and not as strong in the final animation"

This shows that I was able to create fleeting expressions on the model but wasn’t able to show it in the final render. A way of resolving this is by re- rendering at a higher resolution.

"I like how the camera movement shows the scene, it really feels like a battle"

This shows that I was able to replicate the same camera movement from other researched influenced of frozen scenes I was able to communicate what was going on the scene without it being confusing. Although I see more room for improvement within the model, overall I'm happy with result as I have seen an improvement compared to previous attempts to make. Major aspects I could have changed is the final rendered animation. I feel like I should have focused more on texturing environments, which is the biggest downfall of the final my outcome.

Project management

Time spent on the project was during class periods I-learn and time at home. I would usually do most of the practical work during lessons and add the final touches at home, I would use I-learn as time for research and writing annotations due to the limitation in equipment.

I initially followed the timetable during the researching phase of the project, during the production phase I had changed my asset creation work flow, so my schedule changed from doing certain aspects like sculpted on week 5 and 6 to finishing all aspects like sculpted detail and textures for a single character in that time frame. But after finishing the model creation I followed the rest of the remaining time table for rendering and compositing.

Improvements

If I was given another 10 weeks the way I would develop this project is by evolving it from being a game like stylized art style into more of a hyper realistic art style, influences in mind are game cinematics from companies such as Blizzard and World of War Craft. In order to achieve this I will attempt to take 3D skills a step further, by trying to capture the likeness of real life reference. I will also use more complex techniques to gain this sense of realism such as sub surface scattering and hair systems for realistic hair.

Using these techniques combined with fundamental skills for 3D art, will result into a final product thats closer to a professional standard.

Research & influences

Sculptures that had influenced me were Greek sculptures. You can see a strong built young male sculpture, this is believed to be a certain god from Greek mythology but different aspects like the muscular body and the swollen ear indicated the statue may have been a athlete like a boxer or pankraist (all in wrestler). This gives me insight on how they envisioned a godly figure to be, I can incorporate this by having a character that has a strong muscular physique, so that he portrays that god like figure.

Another greek sculpture that had influenced me is the Metope sculpture, the sculpture is a man fighting with a minotaur, this gives a reference on how to position my character to make them seem like they are fighting.

What is also interesting is how the mans body is crossing the minotaur's diagonally, this was a common and popular Greek compositional device for portraying the emotion of strife.

I can incorporate how the they use this kind of composition into my models in order to portray the emotion of anger and strife that you would have in a fight

What I think I could of improved was the texturing, although the texture may work with the model on its own, I feel that the texture is too desaturated and wont fit in within the scene and the art style I am going for.

Overall I was quit happy, some peer feedback were comments like 'the model was really good and it looked like it was made out of wood' showing I have achieved my goal of material definition.

character creation

I visited the national portrait galleries to try find inspiration for my project because my project is set around the Medieval era and revolves around kings and knights. I thought that painting from the 15th century, which were known for realistic painting of religious noble and high born figures would be useful for my project. What I found was influence from painting of noble knights. I start to recognize that the color scheme for the knights and royal / figures were quite similar, the color palate usually consisted of red, gold and silver. I found this information on lordandladies.org (2016) webpage about middle ages fashion and clothing. According to the information I discovered on the website the materials for these colors were expensive and only the wealthy and noble people wore these colors to flaunt the wealth and show off. This could be used as a way of differentiating characters within my scene.

What interested me the most was the painting by artist Luca Giordano, In the painting you have the figure Perseus turning his enemy into stone, the compositions in the painting is really clear, you have your hero one the left and the villains on the right, this gives the idea of two sides fighting, something that I want to incorporate into my scene.

Another aspect that supports this is the color scheme, you can that Perseus is the only one wearing blue and everyone is

wearing red and silvers, this is a good use of color and contrast to make him the focal point. And finally I am inspired by the fleeting expressions which I feel brings life into the painting and makes the figures seem like they have been frozen in time which is one of my main goals for my project.

This is my textured environment, I used a combination of the game concept from games like assassin's creed (2007) and world of warcraft (2004) in order to create something that looks stylised and matched the theme of the scene. I chose the color scheme of blue in order contrast with the villain knights and king, I really want to exaggerate that two sides fighting idea and here I am using color as a way of enhancing that.

During the texturing process for the environment, I initially tried to use quixel In order to make the texture, although I created nice looking textures, I couldn't make the detail small enough to match the scale properly, for example the brick looked oversized compared to everything else. So my solution was to use images as textures and planar map them.

This fixed the scale problem, but I don’t have the complex weathering detail. A solution to this is to hand paint the weathering but due to the limited time I had left I had to settle for the plane texturing. Something else I could of done to make the scene seem more intricate is to add smaller sub details and object such as boxes carts and plants to fill the scene and bring to life.

my biggest mistake was focusing too much on the characters and not planning out the environment scene properly

Reflective dairy week 0–2

Started the project by researching a wide range of different art mediums for influence and inspiration. I Have found different aspects from each medium that I want to incorporate into my scene. Example being art style from games, setting and kind of armor and clothing from movies, position and scene composition from sculptures and color palette from paintings.

by gathering all these different influences I feel that have developed my basic idea of a simple fight scene into something that conveys emotion and meaning,

My next steps will be researching more technical aspects of the project aswell as experimenting to see if the techniques work.

Reflective dairy week 2 – 4

I have researched different types of techniques and workflows in order to create higher quality character models. I have found video tutorials by 3d artist Hai phan, giving a general overview of what to consider when you create 3d art. I have learned fundamentals skills like composition of the model and material definition.

I have researched on a new texturing application that could potentially speed up my work flow. By using normal maps I generated, I was abke to automatically add texture details in certain areas.

I have experimented with the texturing application and sculpting fleeting expressions, although I wasn’t successful in achieving the expression or look I wanted, it was good practice for the real thing and now know what to look out for, like anatomy and body proportions.

Reflective dairy week 4 – 6

I have started the production and have completed 2- 6 characters, these characters will be duplicated as they fill the scene and make the scene feel alive. I focused on making sure the character material definition was correct, I made sure the tree creature looks like he was made out of wood.

I have achieved successful results with the new texturing application meaning I will be able to use it to create the main characters.

I think I have improved my skills to create 3D characters. But I feel there is still a lot of room for improvements. I need to pay more attention to the finer details as well as practice create a solid foundation for my character sculpts.

I will move on to the main character and will try to successfully portray fleeting expressions

Reflective dairy week 6 – 9

I wanted to spend extra time on the main focus (characters) so I spent a extra week to create the models. I have used my influences from all mediums and incorporated into the these character, an example being is how I incorporated the idea of musculature from the Greek sculptures onto my warrior character in order the represent that god like stature,

I feel that I was able to portray the fleeting expression successfully and I think it brings the models to life. Reference photos of my own facial expression helped me with this. I think I could of added more interacted details to the model to make it more visually interesting. I also think I could of exaggerated the armor pieces like in my game stylized influences to give that magical and exciting feeling to the scene.

Reflective dairy week 9 –10

This time I had to texture the environment and plug in all the textures to the new milla material shader. Due to the limited time I had left, I wasn’t able to adjust the shader until I got the results I wanted, I needed to finish up the scene so that I had time to render the scene,

I think this project biggest downfall is the environment, although the models look good within the scene, I feel if I concentrated more on the scene the final outcome would be much more immersive and feel more cinematic.

I have calculated that if the average time for a frame was around 3 minuets and I had to render 2420 frames I would need to render for about 5 days to render , A way I can speed up the process is by rendering on multiple computers at once.

Final Animation

Evaluation

reference list

lord of the rings: fellowship of the ring, 2001. [DVD] Peter Jackson, united kingdom: new line cinema .

Kekai kotaki . 2015. KEKAI KOTAKI. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.kekaiart.com/. [Accessed 12 March 16]

Grobelski, (2013), fat King [ONLINE]. Available at: http://grobelski.deviantart.com/art/fat-king-409840878 [Accessed 12 March 16].

Philips. (2009). Carousel. [Online Video]. 07 May. Available from:https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=KAFpT3tzRtM. [Accessed: 10 March 2016].

CD project RED. (2012). Cyberpunk 2077 Teaser Trailer. [Online Video]. 10 January.Available from:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAFpT3tzRtM. [Accessed: 10 March 2016].

FromSoftware 2011, Dark Souls, video game, ps3, Namco Bandai games, japan.

Bethesda 2011, Elder scrolls: skyrim, video game, PC, Bethesda, United States.

Blizzard 2004, world of Warcraft, video game, PC, Blizzard, United states.

Lionhead studios 2008, fables 2, video game, xbox 360, Microsoft studios, United kingdom

Ubisoft Montreal 2007, Assassins creed, video game, ps3, Ubisoft , Canada.

Hai phan . (2013). 3D Character Art for Games - Vol. 1 - 720P. [Online Video]. 13 February 2013. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbCl66NFTSs. [Accessed: 10 April 2016].

Middle Ages Clothing. 2016. Middle Ages Clothing. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.lordsandladies.org/middle-ages-clothing.htm. [Accessed 17 May 2016].

Frozenbyte 2009, Trine, video game, ps3/xbox 36 ,Frozenbyte, finland.

Howard, Robert E. , 1932. Conan the Barbarian . Weird Tales , 16 May 2016. 6.

YouTube. 2016. DDO Painter for Beginners: Azog Breakdown - YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at:https://youtu.be/rPnZm8zzs2M. [Accessed 18 May 2016].

YouTube. 2016. 3D Character Art for Games - Vol. 1 - 720P - YouTube. [ONLINE] Available at:https://youtu.be/vbCl66NFTSs. [Accessed 18 May 2016].

Druids - Myth Encyclopedia - mythology, Greek, god, legend, names, ancient, tree, symbolism. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Dr-Fi/Druids.html. [Accessed 01 June 2016].

Breakdown

This is the last character I created for the animation, my main influences were from games such as world of Warcraft, I wanted to have a druid type character in the scene because I wanted to give the impression that his special ability is to control the tree monster character I created earlier within the project, this makes the animation seem to have more of a story and give reason to why there are magical creatures within the scene.

I have used different concept art of druids from artist like kakai kotoki and his work on guild wars 2 (2009) as reference for the character. the reason being is because I like how the costume designs lacks armor and clothing which makes him seem like the character who live in the wild. This idea of living with nature is something that all druids possess. This may be because of influences from Celtic mythology about druids, things like how they symbolize oak trees within the forest. ( mythencyclopedia.com, 2016)

I needed to start rendering the scene so I had enough time to render for the deadline and because of this I didn’t have time to focus on the details for this model.

I could of improved this character by using more real life reference or from different sources to make the character look more convincing. I also should of used more real life face reference so the it has more realistic human anatomy, I also could of spent more time on the textures so the costume does not look so plain.