Week 3: Running Wild N Free (or too much free time)

So as the title suggests, this week for some reason I found myself with a lot of free time. Like a lot. I had Spent the past two weeks obsessing with my models and modelling and I have unfortunately finished, unwrapped and textured my models which means its time I put on a thick skin and ask my tutors for feedback on these models before it’s too late.

I have already had a run in with some feedback on my now old iterations of my angel model In Game Production. My tutor claimed that one thing that caught his attention was how sharp edged the base of my model was. As quoted by him “I could cut himself on such a hard edge.”

At the time of modelling this asset my thinking was to save Tris since in the scene itself. The base will not be seen therefore I thought it would be more efficient for the level and tri budget if I were to diverge more of my Tris into the angel itself.

However my tutor brings up a great point that such a contrast in Tris directs the viewer’s eyes away from the model and more to the lower poly areas of the asset. This in mind I went back into my model chamfering the edges and rounding off the form to keep it consistent with what overall asset and avoid my previous mistake.

Above is my new angel model alongside my other models and already I can see much improvement in the base as well as the overall model. However looking at this image it’s becoming abundantly clear that there is a new problem I need to remedy. There are a few issues that need adjusting with the angel such as the clear seems visible from the angel towards the wing. As of writing this now I cannot think of a clear solution other than adjusting the UVS of my angel unwrap to make a less obvious transition between the textures. I plan to talk to my tutors about this very soon and see what would be the best option to take. (Guess what turns out there’s always something to do on this course)

Speaking of Game production, this Game production as well as receiving crit from my work, we were introduced to lighting in engine. At first like anything 3D or engine, it went straight over my head and I was lost however braking this down into a more manageable process I started to grasp how to produce lighting and certain lighting styles. I feel like I need to start expressing my lack of understanding of areas in 3D because admittedly it’s an area I do struggle to grasp at first. In the future I would like to start to ask questions more in lessons but I do feel slightly embarrassed doing so.

This week’s visual design we started to study bitmap2material which I was quite disappointed to find since I quite enjoyed the lesson on composition and had figured we would still maintain lessons which would still have some relevance towards 2d. The lesson regardless was quite enlightening as we studied another method to create texture maps with relative ease. Using the software strangely felt naturally which I supposes is from the result of working with PBR for quite some time. I would like to integrate it into my workflow at a later date however working in engine as of now feels much more comfortable and actually very gratifying experimenting with its different features.

Speaking of experimentation, since I had finished my models earlier than I expected I decided to go back and refine some of my textures as well as pursue one of my stretch goals which was to add fire to my candle stick model, which I go into more detail about this process in WEEK 3: BONUS ROUND

During this week I also started to refurbish my textures of my models. Particularly my Candlestick model. The Candlestick seemed too saturated to fit in a non-stylized scene. In addition I decided to internailse something my tutor said about how subtlety is king with making real textures, thus in Photoshop I lowered the saturation and adjusted the hue of my diffuse.

Moreover from receiving feedback from my group I had noticed that the normal on both my floor texture and the texture on my candlestick was far too much and conveyed a noisy look towards the model. Thus taking in what I learnt from my tutor in visual design, I lessened the detail to give some breathing room to the models. Unfortunately I forgot to take screenshots of this but in the future this will be corrected.

Critical Studies

In this week’s critical studies we started to delve into group dynamics and scenarios such as how to deal with those who don’t pull their weight as well as interestingly enough how to deal with very dominant type of people. This week was quite an eye opener as admittedly I have myself felt that I have had run ins with those who don’t seem to be pull their weight or don’t really show up during work days which has caused anxiety on the overall progress of the project. However after this session I have learnt that perhaps me and the group should offer those who seem to be behind a helping hand to not only benefit them but also the group. Admittedly I am a bit worried about this because this could result in conflict which I would like to avoid every step of this project. Interestingly enough the section on how to deal with very dominant people was very helpful as I myself feel that at times I can be very dominant in group structures and I Learnt as a result of this attitude I am putting those off who want to contribute but don’t feel they can out of confidence. I need to start to take more of a back seat and give people more of a chance to step forward. In addition my tutor explained that perhaps I find myself in these dominant positions because I am the first to volunteer but as a result those around me may take a step back. This in mind I need to stop feeling as If I can do everything and take some time to trust my group members and step back.

Anyway this was my week. In answer to my previous week query about whether it is possible to scale things in engine. It is however it’s not efficient as with the amount of models we will be importing we will be spend unnecessary amount of time to scale our models to the right size when we can refine the scene itself. This week’s plan is now to get those exact scales so we can scale our models in Max.