Final Trailer
Project Evaluation
I was asked respond to a brief where In which I would have to create a national trust environment and a mechanical character to go in it, the end product of this project would be a trailer showing off the work I had done. During the process of this project all of my progress was recorded in an online blog that I would update with every change I made and explain in detail the process of producing various assets and objects. The project presented itself to me as very significant since allot of work had to be done in a short amount of time, this made me then question how I would do it and how much time it would take.
The limitations I had within this project were largely due to a restraint on time, to try to identify those limitations before they arose I produced a project tracking spread sheet which I updated regularly. The areas that limited my creative ambition were the areas that I did not at the time know how to do at an industry standard level, particularly as UV mapping and Rigging. If I had had more experience learning those skills and improving on them I feel that I would be able overcome my previous limitations and produce a final project that would be at a much higher standard of quality and polish.
In the formerly mentioned project tracking spreadsheet I broke down the briefs I had into specific tasks and then estimated the amount of time each would take as well as the difficulty of each task, the tasks I thought would be more difficult were allotted more estimated time. The result was surprisingly that after I had finished the project it took allot less time than I thought it would and on every task I had written down I had finished each one in a much lower amount of time then I had originally estimated. These sheets were updated regularly and helped me gain an understanding of how to professionally plan a project and make accurate estimates that can be updated and changed with time. Doing this part of the project helped me realize the scope of my project before I jumped into production and allowed me gain a better appreciattion for the management of larger industry projects.
Because I already had experience with 3D modelling the majority of the first Mech modelling project was relatively easy for me, although there were some areas which forced me to learn new skills such as UV mapping and Rigging, learning those specific skills helped me move forward personally as a 3D artist and I will build upon them in future projects. I feel that this project has helped me improve in many areas that I had neglected before such as texturing and real time game engine considerations.
I began unit 69 by sketching some quick concepts out for my character, there was no scheduled time for designing so spending a long periods of time doing this would eat away at time I had for the rest of the project, therefore I came up with a quick design and then ran with when I went on to modelling stages.
I chose the national trust site “Penshaw Monument” because I knew that area well and had visited it before; I also thought it would make a very interesting setting for a medieval fantasy forge, which was the theme I had went for. Creating the environment was the most difficult of the two tasks for me because It was the area I had the least experience in, I found it difficult to achieve the results I wanted and am still unsure of the quality of the final product, If I had more time this would definitely be the area I would spend the most time on, I feel that it is not up to the standard of some of the other parts of my production such as the objects and character.
The character was the area of the brief I spent the most time on, even though from the outset I did not particularly like the design I had come up with I couldn’t sacrifice much time changing it and began modelling straight away. I feel that the quality of the character does hold up to industry standards somewhat but I think the design is very flawed and quite visually unappealing , if I had more time at the beginning of the project I would have spent a significant amount of time iterating different designs until I had something I and others liked. When comparing my character with other similar Mech characters in the games industry it is clear that the problem I had with matching their standard was not so much technical ability and more actual design, I identified that this was due to the lack of time I had to design the character before starting to model it. While the techniques and quality of the model, texture and rig could be comparable to an industry standard model the actual physical and aesthetic design of the Mech is where it falls short in the end.
A big change that had to be made in the middle of creating the character was the choice to remove the pistons that would simulate the clavicle and spine of the scapula, and the main spine made up of mechanical vertebrae, they had to be changed due to changed due to complications in the rigging process, this didn’t take away from the overall look of the Mech and didn’t significantly impact anything in the project or project plan majorly, I replaced these areas with more simple rotating joints that allowed me to bypass that major roadblock and continue on with the project, spending any more time trying to fix the rigging issues was something that I could not afford to do at that critical point of production.
Upon asking my peers and lecturers what they thought of my design the general consensus was positive, they also agreed that changing the joints and spine was a better idea than spending a large amount of time figuring out how to fix it, in a real production setting that may have been detrimental to the final product.
Modelling the environment was the next part of the project, this I tackled after finishing the Mech. Environment modelling was the part of the project I had the least amount of experience in. Using 3ds max I created the terrain, trees, monument and objects within the monument. I used 3ds max because it is the most commonly used piece of software for creating game assets, and to make sure my assets served their purpose of being transferable into a game engine if need be.
Making the terrain was relatively simple, my previous experience with sculpting in software like Zbrush helped me in this area, I used geographical data and photographs from Google maps and Google earth to try to maintain the accuracy while modelling the environment, this would further help to serve the brief and make the potential clients happy. The Penshaw monument model itself was also modelled using accurate measurements of the real life building, that I was able to transfer into 3D space, using these measurements I modelled an accurate version of the site, again to maintain the clients wishes.
I knew that my environment was going to contain allot of forest, for this I modelled a few basic trees that I had planned to repeat around the environment to save time, this method however still proved very time consuming and potentially dangerous in terms of getting the work done before the deadline, so I decided to use 3Ds max’s built in tree system to create forest like environments in my model. The tree models in 3ds max looked more realistic than the ones I had made, I used my own custom made textures to texture these trees however to take some ownership of them and make them my own. After researching some industry methods for making trees in games I also discovered that it is very uncommon for artists to actually make individual trees for games, I found out that software like speed tree is often used to generate forests and woods procedurally, I did not have access to this software on this project but will take note of it for future endeavours.
I filled up the rest of the environment with decorative objects I created to match the aesthetic of a fantastical forge which I was going for. I made sure when creating the environment that I did not damage or disfigure in any way the national trust site itself, this was because if my client was the national trust, it would be in their interest to have my present their sites as well as possible, without damage or inaccuracies.
After completing the environment and reflecting on it I was quite disappointed with the landscape texturing and detail, I felt that it was definitely not industry standard and did not match the quality of my other work when viewed at a distance. This problem could have been solved if I had more time to increase the visual fidelity of the terrain and environment but the project schedule and plan did not allow for this. I did however feel that all of the assets to decorate the environment inside the monument did almost match up to industry standard work, again; texture limits and time limits meant that I could not accurately and individually texture each object which meant that I had to rely allot on tiled textures, this made most of my objects less than industry standard. If I had more time on the project the environment is the thing I would spend the most time upgrading, I feel that having more detail in the environment would have made my final trailer look much better.
The animation and rigging process went very well after I had created storyboards and animatics, I simply matched each shot I drew with the 3d camera and this process didn’t take allot of time and gave me fantastic results. Although the ease of this process was definitely because of the simple nature of the actions I had chosen to take place in the scene, the project benefited from the speed of this process being completed. Dividing my 3D files up into scenes also helped this process, because I had storyboards and animatics I could easily match up the scenes shot by shot and save them all as separate 3d files, this meant that when I rendered the trailer I could to it scene by scene, making my workflow pipeline more efficient and les prone to fail.
After finishing my animation, I don’t think there is much I would have changed sticking to the original storyboard I had created, the animatics I created matched exactly what I had in mind, one of the reasons this was so was because my mech character was very large slow and cumbersome, meaning animating it was easier.
Compositing my animation in after effects did not take much effort at all, I was simply able to put my scenes in order to finish the video editing process since all of my effects were built inside of 3ds max. The most time consuming part of rendering (after the actual 3d rendering process itself) was accurately adding sound effects, ideally I would have created my own sound effects to add but because of time constraints I used copyright free sound effects from freesound.org. Reflecting on the compositing process is difficult because it is a process determined by the rest of the projects previous tasks, if any previous task was done differently this would most likely mean my compositing experience would change somewhat.
In conclusion, the project went very well and I personally benefited by gaining some very useful skills along the way, design and pre-production would be the big thing that I wish I could have spent more time doing since it would have given me a more visually appealing result if I had the time to focus on concepts and designs at an early stage. The entire production was documented online in the form of the blog, there I analysed and annotated my work process and decisions throughout the entire process of all of my units. As the brief required, the whole 3d scene was designed in a way that it would be capable of being taken into a games engine such as UDK. I feel that after completing the project, my final product is definitely fit for purpose; I adhered closely to the briefs technical, narrative, and ludic considerations and put all of my effort into producing the best piece of work I could in the relatively short amount of time the project spanned.
The limitations I had within this project were largely due to a restraint on time, to try to identify those limitations before they arose I produced a project tracking spread sheet which I updated regularly. The areas that limited my creative ambition were the areas that I did not at the time know how to do at an industry standard level, particularly as UV mapping and Rigging. If I had had more experience learning those skills and improving on them I feel that I would be able overcome my previous limitations and produce a final project that would be at a much higher standard of quality and polish.
In the formerly mentioned project tracking spreadsheet I broke down the briefs I had into specific tasks and then estimated the amount of time each would take as well as the difficulty of each task, the tasks I thought would be more difficult were allotted more estimated time. The result was surprisingly that after I had finished the project it took allot less time than I thought it would and on every task I had written down I had finished each one in a much lower amount of time then I had originally estimated. These sheets were updated regularly and helped me gain an understanding of how to professionally plan a project and make accurate estimates that can be updated and changed with time. Doing this part of the project helped me realize the scope of my project before I jumped into production and allowed me gain a better appreciattion for the management of larger industry projects.
Because I already had experience with 3D modelling the majority of the first Mech modelling project was relatively easy for me, although there were some areas which forced me to learn new skills such as UV mapping and Rigging, learning those specific skills helped me move forward personally as a 3D artist and I will build upon them in future projects. I feel that this project has helped me improve in many areas that I had neglected before such as texturing and real time game engine considerations.
I began unit 69 by sketching some quick concepts out for my character, there was no scheduled time for designing so spending a long periods of time doing this would eat away at time I had for the rest of the project, therefore I came up with a quick design and then ran with when I went on to modelling stages.
I chose the national trust site “Penshaw Monument” because I knew that area well and had visited it before; I also thought it would make a very interesting setting for a medieval fantasy forge, which was the theme I had went for. Creating the environment was the most difficult of the two tasks for me because It was the area I had the least experience in, I found it difficult to achieve the results I wanted and am still unsure of the quality of the final product, If I had more time this would definitely be the area I would spend the most time on, I feel that it is not up to the standard of some of the other parts of my production such as the objects and character.
The character was the area of the brief I spent the most time on, even though from the outset I did not particularly like the design I had come up with I couldn’t sacrifice much time changing it and began modelling straight away. I feel that the quality of the character does hold up to industry standards somewhat but I think the design is very flawed and quite visually unappealing , if I had more time at the beginning of the project I would have spent a significant amount of time iterating different designs until I had something I and others liked. When comparing my character with other similar Mech characters in the games industry it is clear that the problem I had with matching their standard was not so much technical ability and more actual design, I identified that this was due to the lack of time I had to design the character before starting to model it. While the techniques and quality of the model, texture and rig could be comparable to an industry standard model the actual physical and aesthetic design of the Mech is where it falls short in the end.
A big change that had to be made in the middle of creating the character was the choice to remove the pistons that would simulate the clavicle and spine of the scapula, and the main spine made up of mechanical vertebrae, they had to be changed due to changed due to complications in the rigging process, this didn’t take away from the overall look of the Mech and didn’t significantly impact anything in the project or project plan majorly, I replaced these areas with more simple rotating joints that allowed me to bypass that major roadblock and continue on with the project, spending any more time trying to fix the rigging issues was something that I could not afford to do at that critical point of production.
Upon asking my peers and lecturers what they thought of my design the general consensus was positive, they also agreed that changing the joints and spine was a better idea than spending a large amount of time figuring out how to fix it, in a real production setting that may have been detrimental to the final product.
Modelling the environment was the next part of the project, this I tackled after finishing the Mech. Environment modelling was the part of the project I had the least amount of experience in. Using 3ds max I created the terrain, trees, monument and objects within the monument. I used 3ds max because it is the most commonly used piece of software for creating game assets, and to make sure my assets served their purpose of being transferable into a game engine if need be.
Making the terrain was relatively simple, my previous experience with sculpting in software like Zbrush helped me in this area, I used geographical data and photographs from Google maps and Google earth to try to maintain the accuracy while modelling the environment, this would further help to serve the brief and make the potential clients happy. The Penshaw monument model itself was also modelled using accurate measurements of the real life building, that I was able to transfer into 3D space, using these measurements I modelled an accurate version of the site, again to maintain the clients wishes.
I knew that my environment was going to contain allot of forest, for this I modelled a few basic trees that I had planned to repeat around the environment to save time, this method however still proved very time consuming and potentially dangerous in terms of getting the work done before the deadline, so I decided to use 3Ds max’s built in tree system to create forest like environments in my model. The tree models in 3ds max looked more realistic than the ones I had made, I used my own custom made textures to texture these trees however to take some ownership of them and make them my own. After researching some industry methods for making trees in games I also discovered that it is very uncommon for artists to actually make individual trees for games, I found out that software like speed tree is often used to generate forests and woods procedurally, I did not have access to this software on this project but will take note of it for future endeavours.
I filled up the rest of the environment with decorative objects I created to match the aesthetic of a fantastical forge which I was going for. I made sure when creating the environment that I did not damage or disfigure in any way the national trust site itself, this was because if my client was the national trust, it would be in their interest to have my present their sites as well as possible, without damage or inaccuracies.
After completing the environment and reflecting on it I was quite disappointed with the landscape texturing and detail, I felt that it was definitely not industry standard and did not match the quality of my other work when viewed at a distance. This problem could have been solved if I had more time to increase the visual fidelity of the terrain and environment but the project schedule and plan did not allow for this. I did however feel that all of the assets to decorate the environment inside the monument did almost match up to industry standard work, again; texture limits and time limits meant that I could not accurately and individually texture each object which meant that I had to rely allot on tiled textures, this made most of my objects less than industry standard. If I had more time on the project the environment is the thing I would spend the most time upgrading, I feel that having more detail in the environment would have made my final trailer look much better.
The animation and rigging process went very well after I had created storyboards and animatics, I simply matched each shot I drew with the 3d camera and this process didn’t take allot of time and gave me fantastic results. Although the ease of this process was definitely because of the simple nature of the actions I had chosen to take place in the scene, the project benefited from the speed of this process being completed. Dividing my 3D files up into scenes also helped this process, because I had storyboards and animatics I could easily match up the scenes shot by shot and save them all as separate 3d files, this meant that when I rendered the trailer I could to it scene by scene, making my workflow pipeline more efficient and les prone to fail.
After finishing my animation, I don’t think there is much I would have changed sticking to the original storyboard I had created, the animatics I created matched exactly what I had in mind, one of the reasons this was so was because my mech character was very large slow and cumbersome, meaning animating it was easier.
Compositing my animation in after effects did not take much effort at all, I was simply able to put my scenes in order to finish the video editing process since all of my effects were built inside of 3ds max. The most time consuming part of rendering (after the actual 3d rendering process itself) was accurately adding sound effects, ideally I would have created my own sound effects to add but because of time constraints I used copyright free sound effects from freesound.org. Reflecting on the compositing process is difficult because it is a process determined by the rest of the projects previous tasks, if any previous task was done differently this would most likely mean my compositing experience would change somewhat.
In conclusion, the project went very well and I personally benefited by gaining some very useful skills along the way, design and pre-production would be the big thing that I wish I could have spent more time doing since it would have given me a more visually appealing result if I had the time to focus on concepts and designs at an early stage. The entire production was documented online in the form of the blog, there I analysed and annotated my work process and decisions throughout the entire process of all of my units. As the brief required, the whole 3d scene was designed in a way that it would be capable of being taken into a games engine such as UDK. I feel that after completing the project, my final product is definitely fit for purpose; I adhered closely to the briefs technical, narrative, and ludic considerations and put all of my effort into producing the best piece of work I could in the relatively short amount of time the project spanned.