I've Moved Blogs

I've moved blogs everyone, so this will be my final post here.
If you're interested in still following my progress head to hannahrjmcmillan.weebly.com/blog for further updates.

- Hannah

Side Scroller Project - Final Renders

I thought I'd do a quick post and upload the final renders of my assets for the Side Scroller project. I spoke a lot about the management, but not much about the actual assets I produced. So here they are in all their glory. 

Some of the materials made; very basic but effective.

- Hannah

FMP - I've Made A New Blog For My Final Project

Heyo there everyone, sorry its been so long since I posted.

I'll still be using this blog for my personal projects and some other portfolio pieces, but I've set up a new blog for my Final Major Project, which I am incredibly excited about (and also terrified of)! That's right, my university experience is almost over.

Please do head over to my new blog to see my progress and such with the project. It's a film noir/neo-noir inspired environment and character so... if you're into that or you want to see some of my work click here.

I've got a few posts I'm planning on doing about my time over christmas so, see you all soon.

-Hannah

Side Scroller Project - Post Mortem Positivity

It's finally over. 

This post mortem is a little overdue, but after the amount of work I put into this project, I needed to recharge. The final result is something I'm pretty damn happy with and, seeing as I took on a slightly managerial role as well as being an environment and occasional concept artist, I feel some responsibility for the entire project, not just the level I worked on.

As you know, I worked on the Scary Level and, honestly, I've got a few problems with it. Out of all of the levels I feel like it was the least polished and there are many reasons for this. A lot of is, unsurprisingly, revolved around time management. Due to this being the first large group project where we've been working as a large team, as well as part of smaller teams, actually figuring out the pipeline process was difficult.

Many of our issues stemmed from the fact that we spent a lot of time worrying about Game Design rather than the art side of the project. As I've shown before, we had some fantastic concepts, all the levels did, but some of that awesomeness didn't transfer in the way we wanted it to because we were focused on gameplay elements and how the levels would play out. This can be partly attributed to some miscommunication between us and the tutors. Due to this project being somewhat of a work-in-progress, we got slightly confused as to how much we needed to focus on in terms of designing the levels. From the feedback we gave, next years third years will have basic levels set out with some blueprints provided and the placement of the platforms set up for them as well. 

Another big problem we had was communication within our team and with the engine team. Some of this is down to me. Because of this managerial role I sort of adopted, I spent a lot of time managing all the other levels. It meant that, even though my communication with everyone overall was great, the communication within our smaller team wasn't so fantastic due to my attention being diverted elsewhere. Some of my other team members were quiet which meant that there was no strong leadership, other than myself. They weren't so good as making sure they were working in sync with the engine team, which meant that a lot of time in which assets were needed to be was wasted on engine work that we couldn't actually implement. We also had some personal issues that somewhat impacted out ability to work as fast as other teams, but we still managed to get most of the work done.

In terms of my own problems with this projects, there were a few. Ignoring any personal problems I had, the main issue was I was spread too thin. I realised that, closer to the end of the project, because my mind was on the game overall, my focus on our level was fairly limited. In the last week, my focus was back as I paid more attention to our level rather than the overall game. 

Although there were many issues we faced, there was plenty that we did well. 

I was particularly proud of many of the assets that I made. The altar that I sculpted was one of my favourite assets I've ever created and something that I'm planning on remaking for my portfolio. Using Karol's concept, I sculpted it in Zbrush, retopologised and textured it with a panning emmisive to highlight the details. 

Karol's concept

My WIP sculpt

Retopologised altar front wireframe

Retopologised altar side wireframe

Altar baked down and textured in engine

There is plenty more I'd like to change with the model, the bricks for example, and the textures. I'd also like to change the shape slightly. Mike Kelly did a quick paintover for me, showing how to emphasise the shape slighty and make it more interesting, although admittedly he got a little carried away.

The other strength I found I had in this project was management. I spent a great deal of time organising things, talking between groups, and setting up meetings and scrums to make sure everyone was on track. I also kept minutes and updated the tutors with the progress of the project, speaking with them when people had issues. It was a shame that my own work suffered a little because of it. It's definitely opened my mind to a more production/managerial role within the industry, although I still would like to continue on this environment art path. 

There are many parts of the level I would like to change, looking over it. Due, again, to my more managerial role, I very much left the overall look of the level to the other team members, something I regret quite a bit. I feel like, with a bit more of my own input and more input from our concept artist, we could really have improved the overall look of the level. 

The colours and the lighting were the two big problems in my eyes. From the very beginning we knew that our colour palette was very monochrome and we needed to add in more colour; reds and blues are great, but we needed more purples and yellows to really highlight things. Looking at the final build, there was far more that we could've done to make that happen.

The lighting really could've done with another pass. Our values were really shot, things were just blending into the background, which is not what we wanted at all. A lot of this was because of, again, because of time management. Many of the assets I made were placed in relatively late, and they needed tweaking to fit properly with the level.

I did a paintover of the level , attempting to fix a few things that I would've changed. 

Original Screenshot

Value Paintover

Value Paintover with Waterfall

Colour Overlay Paintover

Colour Overlay Paintover with Waterfall

Colour Overlay Paintover with updated levels

Colour Overlay Paintover with updated levels and Waterfall

The main changes that I made were just figuring out the focal points, like the alter and the city. I changed the crystals, which were taking away from the focal points of the level, as well as the eggsacs and mushrooms I made, which were far too emmisive. The crystals, as Elliott suggested after speaking with him, would have been better with subsurface scattering or opacity, like how the stalactites in the cold level were done. I also put a lot more colour and saturation into the level, looking back to our original Trine influence. 

All in all, although there is much I would change about our level, I am particularly pleased with what we managed to get done as a team, and as a year. Our game looks fantastic, and producing something of that quality with barely any experience and only 6 weeks is something to be proud of. 

Side Scroller Project - 2Spooky4U

So, our big Third Year group project is - surprise surprise - the Side Scroller project.

It's a big group project, involving the whole year, to give us an insight into what it's like to work in the industry within a large team, and to give us a feel for the pipeline process we're likely to encounter there.

The year has been split into groups;
- four environment teams of three with a concept artist assigned to each
- five character artists
- two engine artists

I was assigned an environment artist position, so I can get some more experience with environments after the King Of The Dead character fiasco.

The project is broken down into four levels, each one inspired by a different word; Hot, Happy, Cold, Scary. We were given a volume of space to contain the level within and the layout.

This is going to be a big lesson in time management (my favourite thing), and working within a group.

I was assigned to the Scary Team (go figure)

The first thing we did was brainstorm all of our ideas out, taking from a wide variety of sources and environments. Due to the vertical nature of our volume, we discussed the idea of decent heavily and drew the conclusion that some kind of cave would be a good idea. Making sure that fit with the Cold level before us was fairly simple, they were planning on ending the level in a cave anyway. We made a few pinterest boards just pinning all the awesome reference we could think of, and then we went through and picked out our favourite images and put them into one final one, where all of our concepts also have gone.

To keep communication going among all of us, I made a facebook group so we could keep everyone updated with our progress. I also organised a few meetings between us all, so we could see how each of the groups were coming along with idea; 21 heads are better than 1 when it comes to analyzing an idea.

The concepting stage has been relatively good, although I think we've definitely taken too long with it. I did a variety of layout designs to get the basic ideas out.

I we settled on a final design and went through trying out colour palettes. We settled quite heaviliy on blues and reds, with some purples and yellows to make things pop.

I was in charge of concepting the foliage and the egg sacs. I looked at mushrooms, due to us deciding on a cave environment, with a focus on bio luminescence.

These were the final designs for them. I'm planning on making the mushrooms a morph target so that they open out when you walk past them.

So. onward to the modelling stage.

King Of The Dead Presentations: Well, That Was Beautifully Brutal

Today, we presented our King Of The Dead projects to the tutors and I think it's fair to say that we learnt a hell of a lot from the incredibly brutal critique we all received. I thought I'd make a quick blog post just to sum up all of the things that I took away from the session, so I don't forget them again.

• The planning stage is SO important.
  Seriously, we darted around from idea to idea, but it was very... tunnel vision? We focused on one idea completely until we decided that it wouldn't work. Then we switched and the process started again.
  So, how to avoid this? Well, some of it is practice. Getting used to making quite visual judgments is a useful skill to have, and one I need to develop. However, there are other things that could help. One technique recommended was everyone go away and collect 50 cool images. Then, stick them up on a slide show, sit in a room and pick out the 20 best images that inspire you. This helps you get a good idea of where the project is going. Another way to solve the problem is to concept lots of different ideas early on rather than sticking with one single idea. This means that, early on, you cover lots of bases and nail down the style and idea much,
  much faster.
  
• Leave time for polish
  A mistake almost all the groups make was that we didn't leave enough time for engine work and polishing of our levels. Having everything finished 2 or 3 days before the deadline means that you leave plenty of time to fix issues and play around with lighting and effects in engine. This can make or break a project. All your beautiful assets and textures are useless if your lighting doesn't show it off. This is easily fixable, simply through planning and time management.
  
• Have a strong concept and style sheet everyone can refer back to
  So, so important to have the final image nailed down well before you start working on modelling. The best projects had a strong image down right at the beginning and this meant that their project came together really well at the end. Our group was definitely lacking this, none of us being particularly strong concept artists, and that really isn't an excuse anymore. We should be able to make good visual judgments at this point, and be able to get a good concept out that gets across what we want our final outcome to be. This all relates back to paying attention to composition, colours and such. Just suggesting them can be enough to work with.
  
• Communicate
  Talk to the rest of your group or your work will suffer. It's a very simple concept, yet somewhat hard to put into practice. making sure that we schedule regular meetings, a couple of times every day to see what everyone else is working on, ensures that everyone is staying on track and everyone is sticking to the style that's been set. Communication is so important when it comes to group work, and it can make the outcome look disjointed and mismatched if it's not done.
  
• Don't be precious with your ideas
  Don't be afraid to change ideas early on. As I mentioned before, going away and concepting loads of quick, dirty ideas will lead to a better result than getting precious with one idea that isn't working. To avoid this, ask other people to look at your designs. A fresh pair of eyes can work wonders, and they'll be objective. You might know the long backstory of your piece, but if it doesn't read in your final outcome then you're design is shit. Having someone else look at it and see if they can understand the narrative you're trying to get across will definitely help you push the work.
  
• Make sure your good design is through good design, not good luck - iterate! 
  Again, not much to say here that hasn't already been said. Go through loads of ideas. When you've settled on an idea, go through loads of variations of that idea. You may be lucky and manage to get a beautiful concept that everyone loves really early on, but relying on this happening is a really bad mistake, and one we definitely can't afford when we get to FMP. "Iterating is professionalism"
  
• High Five Moments
  Having a "high five moment" as Mike said today, is basically where you all come together and realise your idea. Everyone is suddenly on the same page and you are all really inspired and happy with what your working on. Everything just clicks into place. This is the aspiration when doing a project, to have an idea that you go over and over until finally, everything slots into place and the project becomes awesome. Some groups had that moment, others didn't, but the ones who did had much better final outcomes. Supposedly, if you haven't had this moment, then you need to iterate more, continue working and working, try out new idea and eventually it will happen. That's how you know you're on to something good. Again, there isn't really anything else to say about this other than continually iterate and you've eventually get there.
  

There were a few other things to be taken away from the presentation, but these are the main ones that stuck with me. I thought I'd write them up both for future reference, and to help anyone else reading through my blog.

I thrive off of feedback, though I also hate myself a little afterwards for missing the obvious things that are pointed out to me after I've finished projects. BUT I'm not looking at any of this experience negatively. It's all a positive learning experience. Mistakes I've made here, I hopefully won't make again because I know where the pitfalls are and I know what to do. Fingers crossed, I can carry this feedback into the next project and produce something great.

I'll leave you all with this...

Game Art Student Bullfrog

- Hannah

King Of The Dead: Trying And Failing To Not Make A Political Statement

Halloween is edging closer and, oddly enough, our Week 2 and 3 project is following that theme quite nicely. King Of The Dead is the title of our first group-based project in second year and, I think it's fair to say that it was fairly challenging for me. Group work can often be quite difficult; clashing opinions, clashing personalities and different ideas. Although our group suffered from all of those, we still managed to produce a great piece of work at the end.

The brief itself asked for three different things: a character, a throne and a backdrop/wall. We, of course, needed to populate our scene as well. We had four people in our group, so we were able to set each person their own area to focus on.

We flitted from idea to idea at the beginning of the project. After our initial brainstorm, we settled on a mexican day of the dead gameshow, which quickly picked up some aztec influence.

I worked on concepting the character. However, we felt the whole idea wasn't really clickling, so we decided to switch it to a wage slave idea.

Again, after some discussion, we decided that it wasn't going in the direction we wanted, so we finally settled on a corrupted politician, which quickly evolved to a warmongering military general. My desperate need to make some kind of political statement accidentally won out.

I was tasked with creating the character. We wanted a lot of focus on the face and the silhouette of the character, so I decided to work first on the head, taking a lot of inspiration from political cartoons, caricatures and the tv show Splitting Image. I made a small pinterest board with some inspirational images on it.

Once the face shape had been decided on, I tailored the rest of the silhouette around that. From there I worked on the outfit designs. We seemed to settle on the more angular, sharp face.

After this was one, I drew up some orthographics so I could begin modelling.

Then I modeled the character in 3ds Max, giving myself a tri budget of 15,000, paying close attention to the topology.

Then, onto the textures. After last weeks PBR practice, we decided to keep on the same track and practice some more PBR work. Skin and fabric, I learnt quickly, were incredibly difficult to get right. My texture budget was three 2048x2048 materials including albedo, metalness, roughness and normals. I did end up taking the face into zbrush to refine it a little. As we'd decided on making the face a central feature, the rest of the character was less important and likely to be hidden in shadow, allowing me to focus my attention on one specific thing.

Everyone else in my group did a fantastic job and, although many of us had differing opinions, we still managed to bring the project together and produce a really good end result.

Our final chosen image.

Due to us changing our idea, we iterated repeatedly, making sure we got the best result. On the other side of this, however, it left less time for the modelling, texturing, and engine work. I am relatively happy with the overall result but there are so many areas I would improve.

           

I was happy with the overall design of the character. The concepting stage I thoroughly enjoyed and I got the opportunity to explore some interesting characters with the change of ideas. I was also pretty happy with the character model I produced. The topology was pretty neat and the face was particularly fun to construct. Our final image, I believe, was well constructed as well and shows off the work that each member of the team put in.

There were, however, many areas I would've liked to improve. 

The textures were my biggest problem. As I mentioned before, our idea being changed a few times meant that I didn't have as much time as I would've liked to actually produce the model. This meant that my textures suffered. I also needed to make my unwraps more efficient. It would've greatly improved the overall look of my textures. Our time constraints also meant that I was unable to include some of the details in the character that I wanted. 

           

I do plan on remaking this character for a portfolio piece, spending a little more time on him and taking him into zbrush to work on the normal maps and spend a lot of time defining the materials in Unreal 4. With a little more work I'm pretty sure that this character could really be something good so, keep an eye on this space to see if he gets any better.