Starting the Process of the Synoptic Project

I started getting the project under way over the last 2 weeks however I need to catch up because I have been under the weather for a while. I have done 2 major designs and 2 sketches of how the functionality of the starship would work.
An issue that I have been running into however is that I must export every scene I make in Maya, because I have a more recent version of the program and because if this when I load up the file it spasms across the 3D space and the UV polygons become a mess. I need to find a way to remind myself of exporting the scene or I can't do work.

I have reworked my original design of the body of the starship into less of a box and more of a rounded shape (like most other spaceships). Since I have now gotten the main design of the starship down the main points of this scene is to finished the wing designs and add in the known additions of the model such as the additional engines and weapons, then to finally make small animations of either the additions folding out of the model starship or attaching to the model.



The main point of the modelling now is the worked in extensions to the wings and body for the additional upgrades. They will be there own objects, just like the body, the wings and the primary weapon for the player to use.








These are the two designs that I made, the first will mostly be left alone, however the second design will be used for a prototype for the enemy attack ships. This will be the basis of what I will model from. Our project lead (Conner) has created an idea for a drop ship that will serve as an area of spawn for the enemy fighters. So that is something that I don't need to worry about for the future. I know that there is a point of where I need to focus on the textures but I don't know how soon that will be.

Industry Level Task Update

Since last time I have finished the modelling process of the scene. All of the assets that i wanted have been complete. I have been UV unwrapping the model as much as possible and have nearly completed the process. Considering this is most tedious part of creating this scene well their is not much to report on.

However, I have learned a new tool for UV unwrapping. In the UV menu you can select one of these options. Depending on the shape of the object this can save you a lot of time. It unfolds the models UV's in the UV editor. An example is that is the 'Cylindrical' option would unwrap a models polygons for the viewpoint of a cylinder. This is much more time effective than doing a few polygons at a time and sewing them together.

The main issue that I have been having is that some polygons are in a very awkward position with the UV's centred in between an x and y axis.  So the texture may look malformed compared to all of the polygons next to it. The way that I have to deal with this is to individually map out each polygon and sew them on shells of polygons. One more point is that I have been deleting vertices, edges and polygons for two reasons, to reduce my work for the UV unwrapping and because i am required to bake the model after mudbox process onto a low poly model.

My next steps are too finish the UV unwrapping and the texturing process by the beginning of next week.

Synoptic Project Beginning

This was the first week on working on the chosen projects. I got set the project that Conor had pitched as lead 3D artist and Creative Director. The idea is to create a top down sci-fi shooter (similar to Asteroids or Geometry wars) with waves of enemies trying to destroy the international space station. My other teammates Gabriel and Conor are in-charge of the rest, mainly coding and game design.

My main job is creating 3D assets for the game including the space station the enemies and the main player starship. Right now I am designing the look of the starship, the main feature is that it has an upgrade system to alter the look of the starship with additions (like adding extra engines for speed). So issue is creating a design so that is does not look bloated with the additions. The solution was to work backwards with all of the additions in place. I have made two designs so far for the starship. Once the design has been chosen, I will model the starship, then texture it. Next comes modelling the designs of the space station and the enemies. The deadline for the first product is in 3 months so I have to work hard to keep up with all of the projects happening at the same time.

Other than the starship, the main models will be the international space station and the enemy UFOs. I will have to create designs for them as well.

Trim Paths

This week we tried to understand the concepts of pre-composition for projects.

This project was done by having already set the outline effects of the illustrator asset word. The way that we improved on this was creating two compositions over each other and included a black shape layer in between. From this, we altered the shape layer with editing the layer with a choke layer. What that means is that the bottom layer can slightly clip through the shape layer.

Once the main points of the VFX sequence have been completed. The comes the extra visual effects. For each new effect we added we created a new adjustment layer for the composition. The effects that I added were blurs from both horizontal and vertical axis, another was changing the overall colour from a pale white to a golden yellow and the final effect was adding a backlight the letters. The final step was adding the letters back into the composition from the top layer. This makes the final product.

Overall, for this I project I am happy with the results however I feel that with a lot of these after effects projects, we have been fed this information but I fear that this information for this program will just become irrelevant in the coming weeks. If you told me to recreate the past projects I feel that I couldn't do it.

The only way that I could improve this is by practice projects, but I don't know where to start. I understand the layout and principles of the software, however with everything else I feel lost.

The Noire Detective Table update

By this point I have finished all of the major objects that I want in the scene (which include the table, two glass cups, the bottle of alcohol, a pack of cigarettes, a lamp, a 1950's telephone and a typewriter). I have now started the process of UV unwrapping the models and creating the textures. Some of the models I will send the UV shells into Photoshop for the using real-life textures (such as wood for the desk) and others will be sent into Mudbox to paint the textures on the model. I feel that Photoshop is better (most of the time) for objects and assets in a scene while character models are better used in Mubox.

Once the UVs are complete and the textures are done and everything has been imported back into Maya, I will add extra lighting effects to the scene and see if I still have time for an extra object.

We did have an opinion to change what we are working on to combine with our synoptic project, however given how much time and effort I have put into this project.

Since this is the most tedious part of creating 3D models this will be the most uninteresting.

After Effects Tracing

This week in after effects we tried using the pen tool combined with shape editors to create a glowing path for the brief animation.

The way that this worked was by using the pen tool to draw the path as the frames go forward. Once you add a null object to the other layer (which is an invisible shape layer to create the highlight). The path that I created had extra effects such as drizzle (which had raindrops on the path), blur and glow.

The other small project was tracing the word emitter, with the same technique as before, except no other major effects. I can only wonder how this can be used in future projects.

The rest of the time was working on the synoptic project and that will happen until the half term.

Synoptic Project Pitch Reflection

On Wednesday, I presented my synoptic project to my group. I believe that it went over very well, this is a summary of how I did during the presentation, any missed points and the criticisms that I got after it was complete.

The first thing that I did was introduce myself, the project name and project type. Then the idea behind the project and how it evolved, with the addition of factual evidence and reference media (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, They Live and Coraline) . Next came the storyboards and explanation of them all (the only thing that I believed that I missed was the joke about the inception sound effect). The other additions that I made were the moodboard of reference images, ideas for the background soundtrack and the slide for the art style. Something that i missed was more detail concept designs for the audience to look at specifically for 2 creatures that were in the storyboards. I definitely believe I put a lot of effort into speaking the idea to the audience.

The main criticisms that I got afterwards, was that the storyboards that I presented seemed rather disjointed even though I explained them very well and what I wanted from each scene and shot. To rework what I wanted out of the concept of the project to shorten the length of the project, because apparently around 2 minutes might be too much to have in this project because the point for the evaluation is quality over quantity. They praised me for the designs in the storyboards and for the amount of explanation that I gave for each board and their point in the plot. An extra point was that the project that I was pitching sounded like a VR experience, I dd not intend that however, when I think about it, it could be possible. The final criticism was that I did not explain how other people in the group could be part of this project, such as 2D artists, VFX editors and game developers. The main point is the 3d models and animation, other jobs I could make would be the environmental effects for the movement such as dirt flying and having a title card once it has finished and the 2d artists could fill in any backdrops or create more designs.

Everything else it seemed well presented and well done for the presentation. I am happy with how it ultimately turned out, now it is up to the rest of the group to choose if they want to work on it. However I will keep the idea the back of my mind for future recollection.