Sunday 30 November 2014

Second Week of Character Project



This second week I worked on the base mesh for my character, I’ve decided to only create one as I’d like to make a fairly high tri character.





I had trouble with the face, it took me 3 attempts before I managed to get one of a desired standard.






While modelling I was also generating silhouettes in order to come up with a final design, but with the deadline drawing nearer I was pushing myself to get a basemesh done and out of the way first that I can paint over and further develop ideas.




Our project was extended by a week (phew!), this was a great relief, especially seen as I feel like nothing positive came out of the first week of the project.




I finished the body mesh for the character, it’s now ready for paint overs which I will begin the start of next week.

Sunday 23 November 2014

First Week of Character Project



This was the first week of the character project, I’ve spent it all creating mood boards and generating ideas. Here are some of the mood boards:






I came to the decision early on that I wanted to create a sci fi female character with a companion, so I straight away got on with creating silhouettes trying to come up with an idea:





I then went onto creating mood boards for the second character:





I wanted to go for a sort of cute and loveable yet manmade theme:





I’m not really happy with any of these designs, none are really strong enough to begin modelling, which is something I need to start Monday according to our brief plan.

I presented my work to the critical studies tutors on Friday, I was hoping that I’d get some guidance as to which of my designs work, which don’t and help me possibly finalise a design ready for modelling. Instead I mostly got confirmation that none of my designs were good and it was suggested that I start again. I decided against starting again as a third of the project had already passed, instead I’ve decided to continue and to need to have decided on a final design by next Wednesday.

Sunday 16 November 2014

Final Week of Sentry Gun Project

Finally I got to the texturing, I initially intended the upper hull texture to be that similar to a solar panel as a dark blue purple because it’s supposed to be a high tech active camouflage. I really wasn’t happy with that so I tried out various colours until I got to white with a black trim. To give the active camo panels more of an interesting surface I added dots to the roughness map to insinuate a high tech surface. A lot of the materials on the turret are supposed to be a sort of matt painted metal, so I used a grey on the metalness map because it’s not solid paint, nor is it naked metal. I used projection mapping to add normals to some of the less detailed parts of the mesh. I added grime and dirt to the white areas to make it look as if it’s been used, I put light dirt collecting around the edges of the panels and then spots of mud near the floor at the front, I adjusted the roughness map to look less shiny where dirt had collected on it.


I also made a camouflage texture sheet to show that the turret can change colour



I noticed near the end of the project that the legs would probably not support the weight of the turret so I bulked them out through a couple of iterations




I think this project turned out okay, I’m pleased with the mesh, I’m very happy with my unwrapping and packing and I’d say it’s the most efficient unwrap I’ve created to date. I’m happy with how the active camouflage areas look with the dotted roughness and added dirt and grime.



As I said above I altered the legs later on in the project, and although they’re better than they originally were they still aren’t perfect, they wouldn’t be able to actually move an awful lot if an actual leg was designed like that, but due to time restrictions I couldn’t go back to add and alter geometry which would have resulted in taking away tri’s elsewhere on the model which wasn’t really an option long after the whole thing was unwrapped and halfway textured. The textures lack detail in places such as the joints and the underside of the hull, and although these areas aren’t really visible it would still have been nice to see some detail in those places. An initial stretch goal for this was to rig the mech and set it on a simple walk cycle, with the whole leg re design and the fact that I spent about twice as much time concepting as I should have I was unable to do this. As another stretch goal I intended to possibly have the texture of the active camo change in engine




 So to improve this project I would have made sure that the legs looked like they could support the weight of the hull as well as function properly. I would rig the mech and run it on a walk cycle, I’d give more attention to detail in the textures of the joints and underside of the hull, I’d setup the active camo to work in engine and I’d add sound effects to the gun as it fires.



Wireframes:



Sunday 9 November 2014

Week Two of Sentry Gun Project



I spent all of Monday iterating on the most favourite design from my silouettes and came up with these designs.


None of these are any better than the original design so I just began modelling the original silhouette.



I was concepting shapes as I was modelling in 3Ds max, I did this because I work much better when designing something 3D in max rather than painting.



Rather than moving onto texturing as I normally would, I took the mesh into engine to ensure that the turret worked properly so that there would be no chance of me rushing at the end of the project with something I wasn’t familiar with. Putting my meshes into the blue print didn’t pose great difficulty; most of my time was put into getting the projectile to fire correctly.


The projectile was originally set up to have a slow and heavy round which ejected the cartridge nowhere near the barrel, I’m making a rail gun which doesn’t have a cartridge but it has a casing around the projectile which splits away from the projectile shortly after leaving the barrel. So to get the projectile to fire fast and straight I increased its initial speed to 4000 and reduced the projectile gravity scale to 0 in its blue print, I did try having the speed at 7000 which although would be more accurate, it means that you cannot see the projectile in the air as it travels towards you. To get the ejector to look convincing I moved the socket to the barrel mesh and put one either side of projectile socket, one of them rotated 180 degrees so they’d shoot out at opposite trajectories as if they were splitting apart from the projectile. When I was getting shot by the turret to begin with the gun was facing down towards the players crotch area, to fix this I restricted its aiming angle to -5 degrees. To make it seem more like a rail gun I reduced the rate of fire to give each shot appear to have more impact.

I ran into some problems while working in engine...

Quite a few actually...

Sunday 2 November 2014

Sentry Gun Project


At the start of this project I compiled a pinboard of images on pinterest of weapon designs that interested me. I started off with a wide range of weapons of various styles and looking at both real anidea of creating a sci fi walking tank of some sort.


I then narrowed my search to mechs and robot with the intention of making a turret that would be stationary but looks like it is designed to move about.


In Mike Kelly’s workshop I was introduced to bash kits as a way of quickly concepting ideas. So I went off and created a bash kit from all of the shapes in my mood boards so I could piece them together in various ways to create an interesting design.


After creating the bash kit I came up with these silhouettes. I asked around which were people’s favourite designs and the second along on the bottom row was the favourite. Next week I’ll be playing about with the bash kit to further develop this designd fictional designs.