3D Week 09 – Assignment 3: part 4

Hello!

This is the final update on the final assignment of the 3D1 course. I’m really pleased with how it turned out, and by comparing this with my first assignment (the sci-fi crate) I can tell that I have really learnt a few tricks. The modelling is so much faster and the final mesh is much more optimized. The texture is more appealing (and more fun to create) as it is hand drawn instead of using photos from the internet.

Well, here is how the final character turned out in UDK:

  

Here is how the diffuse look like:

And the specular:

And the Normal:

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And that’s it for the first 3D course. This course has been the most interesting and fun so far form me. Everything has been new, and the learning curve has been going straight up. It feels like every week a hundred of new things was though out and that’s really cool.

Until next time; Take care!

-Lui

3D Week 08 – Assignment 03: part 3

Hello there!

This post is just a visual update on the Assignment 3.

Here is how the final body mesh looks:

And some details:

Here is how far from the concept silhouette I have modelled. Notice that the front pose concept art is not symmetrical and therefor the differ on the left side:

And last a comparison side by side with the turn around:

As you can see I have tried to stay as much as I can to the original silhouette, and then added some more interesting lines to it. My client (Seamus) is totally cool with this and he says that he likes how the final mesh turned out, And so do I.

That’s it! CYA!

-Lui

3D Week 07 – Assignment 3: part 2

Hi!

This is just a really quick visual update post on the assignment 3 showing my work in progress of the base mesh and the edge flow. At this point I have really sticked to the original concept when modelling, but as I have some troubles with the turnaround I received from Seamus I will do some remodelling, mostly on the sillhouette to get a more appealing resoult. I will also redo some of the topology so it will become a mesh that is better suited for animation.

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Well take care!                                                                                        

-Lui

3D Week 06 – Assignment 2: part 3

Hi everybody!

This is the final update on the Assignment 2, just to show everyone how it turned out.

Tris count: 993

Texture size: 1024 * 1024

 

Hey ho, let’s go!

These are screenshots of the dagger/knife in UDK:

This is how it looks in 3DS max:

This is how the diffuse map looks like:

And this is how the specular map turned out:

And this is the normal map:

That’s it! Moving on to the assignment 3. See ya’ there!

-Lui

3D Week 05 – Assignment 2: part 2

Hello!

This post is just a visual update of the assignment 2 for the 3D1 course. The screenshots is from my second attempt on this model as the first one was kind of sloppy done.

The new model has a total poly-count of 536, and a tris-count of 997. The first model had a poly-count of 799 and a tris-count of 1509, so there is a lot less of polygons in this version and this one is much more optimised. When I was making the first one I did work on it aiming at a much higher resolution on the topology than this version. But as the knife is a rather small object, there is no need to go as high as I did then. Then I did also change the shape a bit more and exaggerated the edge-flow to make the cartoony art-style more obvious.

As I did change the model I did also need to redo the UV layout. Here is how it looks (the red area to the left). The image also shows the knife with the UV-checker on to show so that there is very little distortion both on the top and the bottom of the model.

That’s it for this Update. There will be one more post on the assignment 2 next week.

Cya!

-Lui

3D week 05 – Assignment 1: part 4

Hello!

This is the final post about my crate and my first assignment in 3D graphics 1.

A 3D model often consists of at least four parts. The mesh which is the actual 3D model, the diffuse map which is the texture that holds all the colours, the specular map which tells the secularity of  different parts of the object, and last the normal map which contains information making details look realistic and not like “stickers”.

A diffuse map is basically a 2D image that gets wrapped around the mesh to give it the basic pixel colour from the bitmap used. A good diffuse map is made without a directional light as those are made whit the specular and normal maps. It should only have the basic ambient occlusion by getting darker in cracks and deeper areas. When working on your diffuse map you mostly work with the saturation levels and “raw” colours.

The Specular map is like the diffuse map a 2D image wrapped around the mesh, but instead of containing the colours for your object the specular map is a grey scale of how shiny your object is. The brighter the value, the higher specular the surface gets. In real life, one of the first thing the human eye notice is the secularity of a material, sometimes even before the colour of it. So to get the secular map right is really important to make a legit model. For example if you’re making smooth metal that is shiny you want to use a bright value to simulate that glossy surface, but if you’re making a dull surface like textile you will make it much darker as textile reflect almost no light at all. Take a look at your clothes and you will see that almost no light from other objects gets reflected from them, but for a mirror (a very smooth metal surface) almost all you can see is light already reflected from other materials.

The normal map is used to give your mesh a much higher resolution look than it actual has. A normal map replace what otherwise would have used a lot of more polygons. You should use the normal map whenever you want details on your model that is not interfering with the silhouette too much. What the normal map actually does is faking light and shadows on your mesh creating an illusion of that higher poly mesh for a much lower performance cost. Interactive normal maps can be used for creating effects when interacting with them, for example if you shoot at a wall the normal map will change so that the hole doesn’t look flat by getting proper shadows.

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This is how my final crate turned out. I’m pretty satisfied with it as it’s my first model ever, and it even got a diffuse map on it. I have only played around with 3D modelling a very few times before and most of the time I had no clue of what I was doing. So this is my first finished 3D asset and I think it turned OK. (the image is rendered in UDK)

 

And this is how my Diffuse turned out (you can check my latest post about how I did this):

 

This is my normal map:

And this is how my specular map turned out:

Hope you enjoyed reading!

-Lui

3D Week 04 – Assignment 1: part 3

Hello. It’s time for an update on my sci-fi crate, so here we go!

The inspiration for my crate is all from the Halo and Portal games. Well for shape and model I was looking more at the Portal’s “companion cube” as I hope you can tell from the rough and hard edges I have in my crate. When it comes to texture mostly of what I aimed for is from Halo I would say, as the crate I am trying to create is a bit more serious than those from the Portal’s series.

So for the diffuse map (the map that holds all colours, icons and so on. think of it as a textured piece of paper that is wrapped around your model.) I chose the materials metal, rubber and carbon fibre as they are rough and almost industrial, just like the Spartan suit from halo is. For getting the right appearance of the materials I will have to use a specular map to get the reflection and normal map for the texture of it but that’s for next week. As the Spartan suit’s is themed with one high saturated colours of either green, red or blue I thought my crate would have one of these as colour theme. I chose red simply because I think it looks better than the others. (And maybe a little because I didn’t wanted to do blue just because “sci-fi” is supposed to be “blue”, wanted to try if I could make it work with red.)

The colours I used (well, it was only red) I made pretty hard saturated. The colour is distinct and even darkened a bit to compensate for the brighter metal scratches and polished parts inside the spheres. The rubber I made with zero saturation as to make contrast with the redness so they are basically all dark grey. To give them a little bit of wear and tear to fit the rest of the texture I highlighted the edges as when rubber or plastic gets damage they tend to brighten a bit. It also adds a bit to contrast so the grey parts aren’t all grey and boring.

The colour I use is warm. As sci-fi tend to have a bluish tone to it, it is often a cold felling in a sci-fi image overall and as I stated before I wanted to see if I could do the opposite of the “stereotypes” of sci-fi. My crate also have a dirty look to it, it looks like it have been out in the sun and hot weather for ages, maybe in a dessert. At least it doesn’t look like a new, directly from factory crate for sure.

This is my crate with an “UV-checker” I got from Nataska, our 3D teacher. It is used when doing the UV map. By using this it is much easier to see how large or small the resolutions on the different parts of the UV map are. This is all so that your crate won’t look blurry on some spots as they have too few pixels, while some will have “too many”. You would want a diffuse that is as even as possible. You can also use it to see so that there aren’t any big distortions on your texture and if there are you might need to re-cut your UV-map and relax the tensions creating those distortions and warps.

For my crate I chose to use the same area of the UV map several times so that my result would be of higher resolution in the texture as we were limited to 512px X 512px for this assignment. For my crate that is symmetrical in all dimensions this isn’t a big of a problem as the symmetry already is obvious and the details are so small they are hard to see if being repeated compared to an unsymmetrical crate of a different material (like if you see the same planks of a wooden box being repeated they are much easier to spot). Also, this crate has six sides, and no matter how you try to look at it you will only see a maximum of three sides at the same time, so why don’t repeat the texture on those sides that you can’t see at the same time? This saves both time in creating all of the maps, but the crate also gets a higher resolution by reusing the space on the UV-map.

This is how my final diffuse map turned out. As you can see I reused a lot of space. If I haven’t done this the resolution would have been around 6 times smaller than what I managed to do now. But as I said before, this only works for a few types of situations such as mine.

This is how my crate looks in the Unreal Engine (using UDK). Note that this is only with a diffuse map. The specular map and the normal map will be made next week, and hopefully this crate will look much nicer than it does right now.

That’s it for now!

Hare gött!

-Lui

3D Week 03 – Assignment 1: part 2

Hi!

This week we have been working on our 3D-crates and how to optimize the models for game usage. First of we have learnt that a 3D-model or mesh should only contain polygons with a maximum of four sides otherwise they won’t be handled well and the mesh might end up distorted and not looking like your original model.  Any polygon with a number of sides greater than 4 is called an N-gon (I guess the N stands for any number, like in mathematical formulas, might not be correct though).

When 3D-modeling for games you might also want to consider the amount of polygons you put in to your model. A higher amount of polygons results in a higher “resolution” on your model but drains a lot more performance than simpler 3D-meshes. So depending on what your model or mesh is going to be used for and how close to it the player is going to get you want to consider the amount of polygons. A good rule for cutting down on the poly count is that anything that doesn’t break the silhouette of the mesh can probably be removed from the mesh.  Examples for what doesn’t break the silhouette would be small details and parts of the mesh that is negative extruded into the mesh. This information is added in a later stadium using something called normal-maps or bump-maps.

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My Sci-Fi crate was optimized and corrected by Simon Brundin.

The problem with my Sci-Fi crate was that there were some N-gons (marked red on the top two screenshots) in it, so they have to be fixed as they had more than four edges. Another thing that isn’t as critical as the N-gons but can be improved is the poly count. By reconnecting and arranging the vertexes in the spheres he did some savings on the poly count without braking too much of the shape. I guess as the spheres isn’t actually breaking the silhouette at al they might can be reduced even more, you might also have to make sure that the appearance of the holes is corrected by using a normal map in a later phase. In this case I’m pretty satisfied with the poly count, so  next time I would’ve just make sure that there aren’t any N-gons in my model.

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Next model is my medieval crate, and is worked on by Rickard Folland.

The problem with the medieval crate was the same as for the Sci-Fi crate, which was the amount of N-gons (marked red in the two top screen shoots). The high amount of n-gons I get probably founding in that when creating my crates I use a tool called Pro-Boolean ( it can be found under compound objects and is different algorithms for how to objects shall interact with each other where they intersect). I use Pro-Boolean to easier and faster doing my model. By performing a Pro-Boolean the vertexes doesn’t connect to each other just the planes and that often results in polygons having a high amount of sides. By the using of Pro-Boolean the poly count raises significant as you have to fix all N-gons as well. Rickard didn’t finished working on this crate as there where so many faces to fix and he did spend most of the time working on making the topology better as that was something the Pro-Boolean did mess up as well.

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My last, the cartoon crate I fixed myself.

The problem with this crate was the N-gons (again lol). This crate is way simpler than the others in one way as all lines are straight (no smooth or rounded surfaces or shapes) so this mesh can keep a very low poly count without messing with the silhouette at all. So what I did on this was basically making all faces to four or three sided polygons tops by connecting the vertexes needed or removing the unnecessary ones that occurred when I used the Pro-Boolean tool. Next time I think I’m going to skip the Pro-Boolean tool for some of the steps as it gave me much more work in the clean-up phase, which takes a lot of times. The reason why I tempt to use the tool is that I have done some 3D-modelling for 3D-printing. And when you 3D print the poly count is something you rather keep high than low, and your models need to be fully watertight. For 3D models you only use in digital form (for games and such) you want the poly count to be low and if it saves on your polys the model don’t have to be watertight. So next time I probably will use another method were I can.

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That’s half for this week.I’m also going to post about the prop I picked at Gotland Museum for the modelling-assignment in school.

CYA

-Lui

3D week 02 – Assignment 1: part 1

Hello!

This week in the 3D-class we have been learning a lot more about 3D-modeling. Our task was to make crates with different themes. We had to choose three different themes out from sci-fi, urban contemporary, post-apocalyptic, medieval or cartoony and then create a crate-like object in that theme. I’d chose sci-fi, medieval and cartoony for my crates as they were the most different styles from each other and I wanted to try making as many different ones as possible! :D

Sci-Fi

First of is my sci-fi crate. When I think of sci-fi games, the first that comes to my mind is the Portal and Halo games (those are the ones I have played the most in the sci-fi genre) so of course my crate was made with those games and their visual styles in mind.

I think Halo defines pretty good what sci-fi is, as the whole game is a sci-fi story-based first-person-shooter game, and that it is taking place in a sci-fi universe were all the man-made objects in the world is associated with sci-fi. The same is for the portal series. They really have that high-end technology feeling to the assets in the game.

My sci-fi crate is a pretty undefined object. I’m not really sure of what it is my self but I created it with the companion cube from the Portal series in mind but instead of making a total copy I threw in those Spartan lines and shapes from the Halo series trying to give it more of a serious appearance. (I wanted to add glowing details but I don’t know how to do that so that will have to wait for now).

Medieval

The next one is my medieval crate. I haven’t played so many medieval themed games in my life so this one was a little bit harder for me. I have played some assassin’s creed, but the inspiration came more from movies I’ve seen during my childhood than a specific game. In the medieval genre I like the pirate stuff the most so of course it had to be some kind of pirate-like asset, and what is more pirate than a treasure chest?

Luckily there are some pirate games out there, and even greater, there is an assassin’s creed pirate game called Black flag (I haven’t played that one though). All the assassin’s creed games are set with a medieval theme with either knights, musketeers, pirates or other characters typical for the medieval genre, making the game great for inspiration for my medieval chest.

When creating my pirate treasure chest I was aiming for that typical one that everyone recognizes from any pirate-themed movie, book, game or anything ever. I tried to add that pirate touch to it by adding the skull details and such.

Cartoon

My last crate is an actual crate, but with a cartoony theme to it. For games with a cartoony style, my thoughts go directly too Team fortress 2. It’s one of the most played games of all time and has been around for several years now and is still a very popular game. It’s even so famous for the comical and cartoony look people tend to use the assets from the game to make short funny movie sketches.

The whole approach of Team fortress 2 is a very cartoony style with unrealistic assets and animation making it great as an inspiration source for my cartoon crate. Team fortress 2 is using unnatural and funky shapes already in their 3D-modeling phase which I can apply directly to the process of making my crate.

I designed it to look as cartoony as possible by using unregularly basic shapes, just like in team fortress 2. I did also add some details such as the huge nails on the top lid to add that funny/odd feeling to cartoon themed assets tend to have.

Suumary from this week

I think by doing this kind of task you will improve your modelling skills a lot. The basic modelling phase is a huge step of the whole 3D process that is very important and is one of the fundamentals for a successful finished 3D model render. The negative part though is that this isn’t a process you would normally go through when creating 3D assets for a game as you way more often “bake” your models (I’m not sure of the term “bake” but what I mean is a technique making your finished assets look more like high poly models than what they truly are using normal maps and texturing. But that is something we will learn in coming lessons of this class and something I really look forward too).

If you want to reach the aesthetic goals for your games it’s very important to pay attention to how your assets are done and how you use the elements of art to provide the player with those through your models and/or objects. Same goes for the visual styles of your game. If you want your game to have a certain type of theme it’s important that all assets are done according to the same visual art style, otherwise the player won’t get the perception you intended for them.

Well that’s it for this week, see you soon!

-Lui

3D Week 01 – Visuals in games

The summer is over and the second year has just started. This semester I will start learning 3D and I’m so freaking excited!

This first week we’ve been analysing screenshots with focus on the elements of art, such as Line, Shapes, Space, Value, Colour and Texture. I must tell I haven’t played any of these games, which gives me a fresh look at these pictures.

The first screenshot is from Batman.

Line: the camera is tilted and the lines are diagonally, which adds action to the shot.

Shapes: the spaceship, the platform, the machine in the background and the pads of the suit has harder shapes, which makes them look manmade while the suit and the rocky surfaces have more natural shapes.

Space: Batman is in focus which puts him in the positive space, the spaceship is in a middle between positive and negative space, and the rest of the image is negative space.

Value: Batman has the darker Value while the background is brighter. The light sources bring brightness to the background even if it has a darker appearance.

Colour: This screenshot has a mainly monochrome colour, but have some compliment colours like blue and orange spots.

Texture: Batman’s texture is smooth and diffuse. The spaceship and the machine’s texture are rusty metal .The background is mainly stone with some details of metal added to it.

The next screenshot is from Battlefield Hardline.

Line: just like the image before the camera is tilted and the lines are diagonally, which adds action to the image.

Shapes: all buildings, the helicopter and the zipline have hard and sharp shapes while the clouds, the mountains in at the horizon and the characters are made of softer shapes.

Space: The characters, the zipline, the main building, the helicopter, the white building and the building to the right are in the positive space. The rest of this image is in the negative space.

Value: The foreground has a darker value while the background has the brighter value. You can tell that the screenshot is taken in backlight by the differences of the value on the foreground and background.

Colour: This screenshot has a wider colour range than the last screenshot but is still pretty monotone, with a tint of blue and some brown tones in it with a few details in other colours such as the red bag.

Texture: The characters are mainly fabrics, and the buildings are of concrete, glass and other urban materials.

This screenshot is from Mirrors edge 2.

Line: The camera is slightly tilted to create a more action-filled shot. All the tall buildings with straight hard lines add an oppressed feeling for the character as well.

Shapes: The whole city, with its hard edges and square shapes, gives a man-made impression while the character and the clouds and mountains in the distance have natural shapes.

Space: The character, the wall she’s sitting on and the tall building in the middle is the positive space in this picture, while the rest of it is in negative space

Value: the character is the one with darkest value (except for her trousers), while the buildings have a brighter value with a few exceptions for shaded walls and dark details. The sky goes from a dark value to a brighter value towards the horizon.

Colour: This image is almost only black and white with very high contrast with a few details of high saturated colours, and a blue tint to add that futuristic feeling.

Texture: The character’s clothes is fabric, her hair is “fur”, and the buildings are made out of glass, white painted concrete, steel and other urban materials.

The last screenshot is from The Witcher.

Line: In this image the camera is completely horizontal which decrease the intensive in the picture. Even if this is a shot of a battle it looks like it’s in slow motion. There are intentions of diagonal lines in the smoke creating a bit of tension in the image.

Shapes: the sword is the only thing in this image with a straight hard shape. Everything else is either rounded and soft or diffuse.

Space: the character and the monster are in the positive space while all the surroundings are in negative space.

Value: The both characters, the ground and the nearest surroundings have a darker value while the distant and the sky have a brighter value.

Colour: This Screenshot have a monochrome colour range with a tint of green/brown and hints of blue and orange as compliments to each other.

Texture: The character is mainly fabrics, the monster is a mix between rock and flesh. The surrounding textures are dirt, stones, wood and smoke.

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This week we have also started 3D-modeling. The assignment was to create a level design from one of three games our teacher gave us. I haven’t played any of the games we could choose from but I have seen a play through of Journey so I choose that one. We then had to choose a keyword for our level which we also received from our teacher. I picked solitude as my keyword as the game itself feels very lonely and isolated (if you don’t choose the multiplayer mode that is).

I wanted to create large, flat and open space to strengthen the solitude feeling. The shapes of the building and the ruins are straight and hard which makes them a look a bit alien. To strengthen the solitude feeling even more the colour scheme is mono-tone, everything is orange and brown except for the character.

In the class, when showing the other students my work they nailed both the game and the feeling I was trying to create. They said that it feels very lonely as there is barely anything else than the building. But they also said it’s a bit suspense, like what is going to happen when the character reaches the building, what is it inside? Etc.

One of my classmates did also worked on a journey level, but she based her work more on the positive and negative spaces, which was really cool as it seems hard to do without texture, atmosphere and proper rendering

Well that’s all for this week! See you soon!

-Ludwig Lindstål