Off the Map _ Essay
Name: Daniel Bradshaw
Team Name: Team Battlestar
Blog: http://p14131496.wix.com/dbart
Team Members: Lawrence Ojiji, Mugisha Monga, Ellie Apperley, Harry Taylor
Project Name: Off the Map
I was selected to be place into a group filled with people with similar skill sets and due to a form I had filled out I had the opportunity to influence the decision in who I would be placed with. We would need to build a small game/trailer based from the theme of William Shakespeare the sources we were able to use were Macbeth, Midsummer's Night Dream & the Tempest. Our group chose to make a trailer for Macbeth. The idea for Macbeth came fairly quickly, to build the castle of Macbeth.
All of us on the course were asked to participate in filling out a form that helped the tutors decide what groups we would be put in and what role we would be in each team. On the form I had chosen that I would want to be a character artist in the group as I want to develop my character skills, and there is no better way than to keep trying with a new project. I then had the daunting task of having to concept, design and model the three witches from Macbeth. This did make me doubt myself at the time as I did struggle to produce one character from the previous character project.
My career aspirations at this point are to one day become a concept artist, as I was the only character artist on the team as everyone else had chosen to create the environment for the level. This role did not however prevent me from helping out in unreal engine 4 other the project as I have often helped the team with troubleshooting questions and solutions to any errors that occur. For the large part of the project however I did not have any effect on the modelling or the lighting of the environment in the level as I had plenty of character creating to work on to meet the deadline.
When I look at the results I am very happy with how all three turned out. Throughout this process I have learned how valuable the UV unwrap is when texturing a model as texturing the witches did prove troublesome at points in the process. Such as UV stretching on the model happened to due bad UV unwrapping and possibly the topology. This is an area which I will have to improve upon over the summer in order to get better results and get the most from my hard work sculpting the highpoly model. I learned also that a UV unwrap can affect the outcome of how a normal map is baked down from a highpoly to lowpoly. This particularly affected the outcome of my third witch as due to the normal having errors it then messes with the simulated light in Unreal Engine 4, making colour tones on the model change and have very noticeable seam lines. To solve this problem I had added additional normal maps to blur the over harshness of the original problematic one. If I had planned my time wiser and stuck to strict guidelines that I hoped I would, I could have had more time to redo my unwrap and start the texturing process over again.
Concepting:
The process of concepting the witches worked great as the team we had talked about the style of the level we wanted to aim for, we came up with a style of realism meets stylized. The style was aimed to be similar to the video game series called the 'Witcher' an open world fantasy medieval role playing game . I had never played the game before, when I saw the idea the group had to make it resemble that kind of architecture I believed that as a team would could create something really unique if we worked hard enough. I wanted each witch I concepted for the Off The Map Project to be unique in look but share a distinct unified feel in the design.
When I had began concepting the witches I wanted to do create them as one unified group, I feel that as I concept silhouettes for the overall shape of the three witches I can begin to find each witch becoming more defined with their own unique characteristics.
Below are some of the Silhouettes I had created to form the shape of the witches. Here I have shown the process of decided the look of the third witch. After this I then continued on to develop each of the witches design individually.
Below is a mood board I gathered filled with various references to witches in film, TV and video games. I used this mood board to generate ideas of what I wanted the witches to look like.
Below is the finished concept for the three witches I then used as reference when I created my 3d models.
Witch 1:
When I began creating my 3D model I start by sculpting a highpoly model in Zbrush. Once I make the Highpoly head and torso I then proceeded to make a low poly model and unwrap the model so that I can continue to bake a normal map and an ambient occlusion map ready for photo based rendering (PBR) textures.
When making the rib cage for my model I thought it would be best to create it first in 3Dsmax and make a highpoly in Zbrush.
To create my lowpoly model I used a feature in Zbrush called 'Zremesher'. This is a simpler tool to create a low poly, rather than using the more time consuming process of strip modelling an entire model I can instead have the program automate the process. This however is not a perfect solution as topology can be incorrect after the process.
I then took the obj. Model and converted it to an editable poly in 3ds max to begin work on the lowpoly and unwrap process.
When creating the cloth model for the I used a program named Marvellous designer to create the effect of hanging cloth. This program was very fun to use but very complicated when initially getting started. Marvellous designer 3 is used to create clothing on top of a model. By using clothing templates you draw in the viewport, the program takes that data and converts it to a 3d simulated cloth that drapes over the model. I used this to create the Hood and draping cloth from the waist. I then took it into 3ds max and began a long process of strip modelling the cloak. After reflecting on this I realised I could have saved a lot of time if I had used the 'Zremesher' tool like I did previously to generate a low poly body.
After finishing the lowpoly I then created a paint over of what I want the finished witch to become once I had textured it.
Next was the texturing process. To texture my model I had used a combination of Photoshop and Substance Painter.
Below are some unreal engine screen shots of the finished model:
I am very pleased with the result of my first witch as it stayed true to the design of the concept. I was unsure about how well I could stay to a specific design whilst sculpting in 3D and trying to capture the same feel as the concept art.
Witch 2:
After completing my first character I could then move on to sculpt the second witch I had concepted. This witch is very different from the first, as unlike the previous, this one has large exposed areas and a larger body with a more detailed facial structure. This proved to become very enjoyable to create in Zbrush.
I start out by creating the head of the second witch and then create the body as a separate sub-tool.
Once I had completed the sculpt of the body I knew I could then begin crating a lowpoly model in the same fashion as before with the previous witch using the tool 'zremesher'. As this witch also has a hood and draping cloth I thought that could recycle the model I had made for the first witch and edit the shape rather than create a new one from scratch.
Below is a developed concept I have produced. I did this because I felt like needed more detail than from the final concept gave me. I thought a nice way to not only see more detail in the painted face but use a paint over from the Zbrush sculpt.
Once I had completed my lowpoly model I could then start texturing. This time round t=with texturing I had decided to use a new program named Quixel suite 2. the reason for this is that I had seen the program advertised online giving amazing results. As it was on the university computers I thought I would give it a try to see how it would compare to the previous Substance Painter.
At this point in the process I still had to add more detail to the texture of the second witch. But I am very pleased with the results of the Quixel Suite textures. I also made the decision to make this model have a multi-sub material giving it two UV unwraps due to the overall size of the model and would make texturing in Quixel Suite 2 much easier with nicer results.
UV 1.
UV 2.
(Opacity mask, Top left)
Witch 3:
The third and last witch conceptually is a lot smaller than the other two witches, I had designed the third witch with the intention of giving it an aged, morphed childlike appearance to add to compliment the weird and fantastical level my team were making.
Once again I began sculpting the head to gain the feel of the character.
When I began sculpting the torso I referred back to my moodboard, and looked at a way I can exaggerate the features to create a skeletal frame with the look of sagging skin. I wanted to stay clear to the concept art but also make it seem more realistic than I had drawn.
Using the Zremesher in zbrush is a very useful tool to create the low poly from the high poly sculpt. The head and the body are separate from each other as I wanted the head to look uncomfortable sitting on the shoulders of the torso. After using the cloth model from the first and second witches I thought I could save time and us it again. This time changing again the shape and positioning of the cloth to suit the design. When making the low poly cloth for this particular with I had used a function to shape the cloth to the torso.
Here are a few screenshots of all three witches in Unreal Engine 4
Witches in Level Screenshots:
Over the Off the Map project I have pushed myself more than I would have believed. I am glad that I took on the job of creating the character for our level as I think I would not have had as much fun on this project if had had be working on environmental assets. I have had a few problems while making the witches, but I contribute all of my mistakes in the project as a big learning curve. For example, the UV unwrapping. Unwrapping is a skill I have yet to master and takes practise, that is why over the summer I intend to create more 3D characters to increase my portfolio and expertise in UV unwrapping and texturing. From reflecting on the Off the Map Project I am pleased with how my team has worked. When I imported my witches into the engine for the first time and saw how they fit into the castle of Macbeth, surrounding the cauldron in the courtyard I knew it was clear we had all worked hard to produce a great level ready for the Off the Map competition.
