At the start of the second year of Level 3 we were set a task to produce very extensive research into our chosen profession including various workflows artists have used. The most useful workflow in my opinion from my research was Treehouse’ 3D Artwork workflow due to its simplicity and similarity to what I’m already use to. Example below.
Their workflow was very simplistic as they followed the workflow which I’m already familiar with, they start by researching their topic (In the example they have chosen a radio) they then moved onto breaking down the object into basic shapes outlining the object of choice, once they had outlined their object including the detail they wanted, they started detailing the basic shapes by using their reference images for help. And then finally they begin unwrapping and texturing the asset.
This workflow is definitely the most useful in my opinion as the other example I found was similar yet far far more extensive and overly complicated using blueprints etc. However there was some information which I learnt from this workflow which was LODS which are simplified models with lesser levels of detail shown when the model is at a long distance from the game camera, essentially reducing cpu/gpu usage by decreasing model quality as the camera moves further from the object. This would mean creating multiple versions of models with reduced polycounts.
The overall development of my project has been greatly affected by the historical and contemporary influences for my profession due to the fact that if the technological advances throughout the years, I would not have been able to produce assets anywhere near the standard of which I can now. An example of this is the huge difference between the two games below, the first image is half life which uses relatively low poly assets whereas compared to the last of us (Image on the right) has the benefit of having far better game engines, software and hardware to actually produce and run the graphics to a much higher quality than in the past.
Throughout this project I haven’t learnt a great deal due to stress at home and medical issues however I did manage to experiment with some ideas within Unreal engine such as holographic materials and also how to light up a scene using an emissive map. Examples of this can be seen below. Although I did experiment with the hologram idea, I did not successfully manage to produce the material as I encountered various issues with my model due to overlapping polys which looked incredibly terrible. I could have spent more time on this by using the boolean tool in Maya to remove the interior polys overlapping eachother however this would have ruined my entire model with the risk of the outcome being visually unappealing.
My written work during this project have been extremely lacking in detail mainly due to just wanting to pass and not fall behind as well as other problems already spoken about above, I am however very opinionated about my work and somewhat reflective yet I lack evaluation on the outcome of certain parts of my work. This has given me motivation to improve for my final project as peer and tutor feedback have mainly been about my written work, where I have already planned out a cheat sheet for the final project as to not miss out on the main points when annotating my work. This feedback was extremely useful however the tutor feedback was far superior as they went into greater detail on how I could improve as I feel personally that students don’t take the peer review tasks seriously. Examples below.
In conclusion, I believe that other than my personal issues interfering with my work, I have managed to produce a relatively visually appealing final product however I definitely lacked development throughout the project including test pieces, blockouts and sketches for all of my assets I planned to include. This is something I will definitely be focusing on during my final project. I was also extremely lazy with my annotations which have affected my grades very very badly, however during my final project I will not be letting this happen as I am aiming toward a distinction and with the current quality of work from this project, I will definitely not achieve that goal.
James' 2nd Year - Level 3 