Bleak Devlog 24/06/2015

After much huffing and sulking and silently screaming into a mug of tea, I managed to plumb together two scripts (technically) and now trade prices automatically adjusts depending on the number of production buildings in the game world. There's some cleaning up to be done, such as moving it from Function Update to a less intensive function, as well as possibly just using the value kept in the ProductionManager. There's a train of thought that justifies merging the two scripts, but I'll cross that bridge when it comes to actually start production, instead of just planning all of this in prototype code. No point in taking GIF's of the actual game scene just yet, it's just green cubes popping into existence on a grotesquely shiny plane. Actual in-game work will come later once more of the framework's in place.

I was also going to show the start of a style guide, but work can't begin on that until I find my copy of Lowry and the painting of Modern Life. The works of L.S. Lowry, to me perfectly marry gritty subject matter with a stylised, simplified look.

Artist: L.S. Lowry 1887-1976, Date: 1955, Industrial Landscape

The washed out simplistic design of the buildings and features of Lowry's body of work would suit a low-poly style, in my opinion.

Bleak Devlog 23/06/2015

Not a lot of work's gone on for this project and that's squarely on my shoulders.
That being said I've done some things behind the scene, I'm writing up something to show people to explain the art style, for when the time comes that I rope in other people.

Okay, so here goes.

A demonstration of the second piece of code written for the project. A simple two lines that calculates a unit price for a resource, by comparing supply and demand of that resource. It's more than a little simplistic as of right now, later iterations will be linked to specific game objects being present in the scene.

A mockup to demonstrate an idea for the games logo slash title screen. The game will heavily involve creating buildings and the idea to show the title as building lights makes some sense.

An in progress model to demonstrate the particular look for the game I'm going for. Rugged and bulky, with dated 60's - 90's styling with the occasional sci-fi detail thrown in for good measure. Similar to that of Wolfenstein: The New Order.

A mock-up of the games title screen, to help visualise the concept and eventually sell the idea to other people.

 In a similar vein to the above mockup- this is a mockup of the map selection screen. Even at this stage I realise that what I'll be able to produce won't be the full extent of the idea so it'll be reined in at this stage. The full extent of the game would have procedurally generated terrains and maps based on where the player selected on the map, but ultimately the delivered project will likely only have one map.

The worlds of Robocop, Alien etc all have the multinational conglomerates, and Bleak will be no different. Containing a mix of references, parodies and unique companies, the businesses of Bleak will be cynical and gritty.

Personal Works

Two of the things I've made recently. Top should be instantly recognisable as Luke Skywalkers Lightsaber. The second piece is a 3D version of something I designed as part of a concept homework in the first year. Both were made in a day each, in Maya 2016 and rendered in Mentalray.

60 model challenge | Day 2&3 | IKEA Wardrobe and Concrete Texture

Working on my modelling skills and texturing with these two days. Intent was to texture the wardrobe, though during the process I uncovered an awkward issue with Maya that made editing UV's impossible. This has since been remedied.

Moving on, I decided to get some PBR experience under my belt and make a concrete texture. I realise that such practices are probably going to wane after the uptake of software like Substance Painter, Ddo, 3D-Coat et al, however I feel that in order to better understand how the workflow functions is to make a few textures myself.

60 model challenge | Day One | Bin

Shoring up my knowledge of modelling by making sixty small assets in sixty days. First up is this Bin. 622 polys, two textures which could be reduced to one, however due to a long-standing issue with Maya and ATI cards, UV Mapping is beyond my capabilities as of right now. Also my first serious foray into PBR workflows.

Critical Reflection

Worldbuilding Critical Reflection

As the blog aspect of the course is likely to be scrapped and replaced by an essay at the end of each relevant unit, I feel I may as well get some practice in. All in all the Worldbuilding unit, despite the initial disappointment of not containing any actual Dungeons and Dragons style worldbuilding which to be honest would be a quite strange unit in hindsight. The unit has been enjoyable and has allowed me to find my niche in modelling, and the technical aspects of Maya such as rendering, shaders and Unity VFX. The stipulations of having to do one modelling task has not affected me at all, as I would’ve chosen one anyway but I am aware of other people who found that distressing.

Anyway, time to critically reflect on the tasks I did.

Task #1 - Weapon or Vehicle Concept

This task cemented the idea that I am not a particularly competent concept artist in my head. The task started out well, producing numerous thumbnail silhouettes. After that the project began to tail out. Awkwardly, given the course, by this point I hadn’t fully grasped drawing in perspective and as a result all my variations and in depth designs were drawn isometrically. A limiting factor I feel I did not notice during the task was my determination to stick to the idea of a ‘minigun rocket launcher’ I chose that idea purely down to its sheer absurdity. However I am starting to feel that a more conventional idea, whilst not as adventurous in scope would have been much easier to produce something to a much higher standard of fidelity. To add to this, my choice of rendering a model of my concept and presenting a paintover sourced from that may have been to my detriment, and the fact that I conceivably cannot replace what I produced within a reasonable timescale speaks wonders for my technical skill in concepting.

In terms of what went well, I believe that whilst problematic in areas, the concept I produced, with time could be iterated upon for a third time and would most likely produce something interesting. I feel I have not been able to deliver on this through being unable to enthuse about the idea, despite it being wholly my own.

Task #2 - Low Poly Model

Oh god, where do I start with this one? From the get go I knew that this task would be by no means an easy one. I didn’t quite realise quite how difficult it would be though. I attempted numerous new things during the time spent on this project, not many of them working. Things such as baking normal maps from high-poly objects in Maya futilely took up a decent portion of time that could probably have been better suited to sorting out details in the model, or paying greater care to the tiling UV’s, or just to the textures in general. it was suggested to me that I treated this task as a building, when it came to UV and texture it. I took this to heart and used that approach at all times. The model is reasonably detailed, and apart from having to massively change the topology of the model due to inefficient use of polygons earlier in the project, the model in and of itself is soundly constructed in my eyes. Other experiments I attempted was creating emission maps for use on the glowing side lights. This overall worked quite well, but was let down by rushed textures. Near the end we were introduced to the PBR workflow, and as at the time the Unity 5 release was rumoured to be coming very soon I mused over the possibility of retexturing the model in the PBR workflow. However I decided against it as time was not on my side. One issue I had was finding enough content to justify fifteen sketches for this task. The brief states that the intent of the sketches is to increase knowledge of the forms you intend to model. There are only so many angles you can draw a cheese-wedge shaped craft before you realise that it’s mostly a triangle.

My inclusion of a quickly constructed unity build to showcase the model was widely-received and I would consider doing similar things in the future to showcase model work if it wasn’t for the fact that services like Sketchfab do so with more ease on both ends. This task was plagued with ambition. It is something I would love to finish, but I am unsure if I have the skill to do so to a standard I am happy with. The one thing I have learnt from this task is for the love of everything, do not set your sights so high in the future.

Worldbuilding #3 - High poly Vehicle or Weapon.

I loved this task. Using Mayas Subsurface modelling options make it so much simpler overall, despite having to pick up a few new techniques along the way. The fact that this allows me to be sensible with my polycount on simple shapes, such as cylinders only need to have four edges, as the end result is smoothed over has led to me gaining competence in low-poly modelling as well. Additionally, having to tweak material values over and over, whilst time consuming has led to me understanding what happens behind the scenes more, and has led to me appreciating the technical side a little more. whilst the end result isn’t quite as high detail as I would have hoped for, I am happy with this and will probably do some more objects in this workflow, despite them not being immediately useful in games.

Worldbuilding 2 - Final renders

Spent some time getting to terms with Maya's carp paint shaders. Did some replacement renders as well.