Creating water and fire inside Unreal Engine

  This was for an assignment during the last week in Level Assembly and Lighting at Full Sail University. The water was made mostly using a normal that I created in Photoshop and Crazy Bump. In order to do this just make a 1024 by 1024 document in Photoshop and make the black/white color options into light grey and dark grey. Then from the dropdown Filter>Render>Clouds. You can do this a couple times to get the pattern you like. Then copy that to clipboard and open Crazy Bump, paste that copy to clipboard. Once the image has been pasted to Crazy Bump you'll need to tweak the settings to make it look right. For waves you'll want to turn down the fine and medium details and turn up the large and extra large details. Copy this to clipboard again and take it back into Photoshop and save as a targa file.
  Now that we have the normal map saved as a .tga file you'll need to import that and a poly plane (UV mapped) into Unreal Engine. Create a material as well and then open up the material and the poly plane options like so.

Once you have everything open you'll need to set up the water/wave to much more closely resemble actual water. Here is a playlist of videos that I watched to get it all set up. 

Once you have everything set up and a ground-like texture on the floor mesh it should look something like this.

This is just a very simple waterplane applied to a poly plane, I'm sure you can do something alot fancier but this was just a quick learning experiment. Thanks for checking in on this instructional blog post, and have a great day!

Competencies In Art Creation for Games

As I wrap up my Art Creation for Games class at Full Sail, I realize how much of a help it was to me. It provided a more in depth look at how the pipeline works in making video games and how I fit into that pipeline.

As an Environment/Prop Artist you'll need experience in how to create a blockout, high res and game res of an asset/model. Here are some screenshots of a barrel I modeled today in the three examples.

Once the asset has been fully modeled and the Game Res has been UV'd, you'll want to use transfer maps to bake the normals and ambient occlusion of the high res onto the game res.

Now at this point you can choose to texture within Maya, Substance Painter or Photoshop but I have chosen to do so in Substance Painter. Use your knowledge of the program you choose to create realistic textures and apply them to the model. In Substance Painter I use the materials and smart materials to create an asset that can be used within a game engine.

I am importing my barrel asset into UE4 (Unreal Engine v04) and attaching the textures I made in Substance to the model. It's as easy as connecting the correct texture to the right plug in. Your metallic texture gets plugged into the metallic, normals into normals.

Now that you have the asset in a game engine and the textures applied to a material you will need to apply that material to the asset. In UE4 all you'll need to do it click the material and drag it onto the asset within the 3D viewer. It's wonderful how easy UE4 is, dragging and dropping is all you'll need to do for anything within the engine. Now from here you can either take a screenshot (on a Mac it's cmnd+shft+3 for full screen and cmnd+shft+4 to do a freehand screenshot), or you can use UE4 high render screenshot option. 

You'll need to click the option box shown here to pull up the menu.

Here is the menu dropdown, shown after I clicked the aforementioned arrow. Go ahead and click on 'High Resolution Screenshot' button.

This option window will pop up. You can choose any option under screenshot size multiplier, but I wouldn't recommend anything over 3, and here you'll see that I chose 2. Once you decided on your options just click the button shown to take the screenshot. A little popup will show up, and to view the screenshots within their folder just click the popup. Here are some high resolution renders on the barrel asset.

Trim Dynamic brush in ZBrush

While working on my torso build up for Production Modeling, I was having some issues getting the more hardened edges that were presented in the reference image. No matter all the pushing and pulling I did with the move brush or smoothing it out, I couldn't get the edges defined enough.

So I was told by a colleague about the Trim Dynamic brush. The Trim brushes are based on the Planar brushes but provide a different behavior based on the normal of the surface or the screen working plane. Compared to the Planar brush which are restricted to a clicked point on the surface, or a defined path, the Trim brushes do not have these restrictions. The Trim Dynamic brush will allow you to sculpt hard surfaces in a freehand way.

  I started using this brush, along with damien standard, to flatten edges out and give it a smoother look, with more defined edges, like so.

Keep in mind that while you are sculpting you will need to up the resolution of your dynamesh in order to achieve the crisp edges that we are looking for in this type of model. You will want to drag it along where you want the edges to form to achieve the hard edges you want. Unfortunately I had to move on from the torso model before I could complete it but my final outcome was a much cleaner edged model, but here is one more example of the edges I put onto my model.

You'll notice that I made the edges of the pectoral muscles more defined and less rounded. You can achieve that by using the Trim Dynamic brush and LIGHTLY smoothing it, but not too much smoothing because it'll erase those hard edges. Continue playing around with this brush and you will achieve the look you want.

Arm and Sleeve Build

To start my build for the arm and sleeve assets for my Character Design and Creation class, I set up primary, secondary and tertiary form images in order to help me visualize where those forms would be on an arm. I used Photoshop to drop the base images in and the pen tool to set up the primary forms image. Once that was done I used the brush tool and some special settings to achieve a x-ray look with the colors used.

Once the planning images were complete I made a "plan of attack" for my arm and sleeve meshes. In this document I simply went over all the steps I would need to achieve my end goal. At this point I needed to collect some reference photos to use for building my meshes. I used a website called 3D.sk to collect the images I would need. Then with these reference images I split them into images with t-shirts on and ones without, pooling the two separates into "comp sheets". Unfortunately I was unable to add these images into my blog.

I then jumped into Maya and began building my base mesh for the arm. I started by importing a reference image into a free image plane, and lined it up on the axis. I created a six-sided cylinder and put the opposite ends at the write and shoulder. I added one edge loop at the elbow to allow the bend. From here I added a couple edge loops between the elbow and wrist, and then the elbow and shoulder. To create the hand I used a tutorial video that was provided to me in the Google Hangout. I made the main palm from a cube with one edge lowered, and the fingers I made from separate cubes. I actually made up one finger, and then duplicated it after getting the bends at the knuckles and extruding a fingernail. Once I had duplicated it three times, I then adjusted size and vertices to match the different sizes of the fingers. I had an issue connecting vertices for the wrist area (because the hand and arm were separate meshes at this point) but with help at the Hangout I realized I was in 3 mode! Once back in 1 mode everything went smoothly.

Once this was all finished I deleted history and froze transforms, saved my file and exported as an .obj file. Importing this file into Z-Brush as a tool and importing a reference image in the texture drop down, I began my sculpt. This was the real tricky part of the entire operation, as I was still learning how to use Z-Brush. But once again, with help in the Hangout, I made a beautiful arm sculpt with full secondary forms. I loved utilizing the dam_standard brush making the veins on the arm and knuckle wrinkles. Once all the secondary and tertiary forms were complete for my arm, I then masked the upper area of the arm. Using this masked area I extracted at .008 with a thin border for the sleeve. I followed the instructor's lecture video closely in order the get the sleeve done correctly. I put in an upper wrinkle for the t-shirt. Using the dam_standard brush again I lifted the wrinkle up and the area next to it down. Adding in a couple more wrinkles to the shirt, I then moved on the stitching. This was pretty easy, because again I followed the lecture. Using the basic stitch brush I simply dragged the brush tool along the edge of the shirt for one edge, and twice next to each other on the inner side. Once that was done I used to dam_standard tool to bring up the shit between the two stitches I made on the inner shirt. That made it look as though two pieces of cloth were genuinely stitched together.

Once both my arm and sleeve assets were sculpted, I used decimator master to bring down the poly count of both meshes. Once they were both down in the 1k-4k count area I exported both as an .obj file separately. I then imported these two files back into Maya. Doing first the sleeve and then the arm  I made the mesh "live" with the magnet icon near the top of Maya. Once the mesh was live I used Quad Draw to make a low poly version of each asset/mesh. During this I made sure to just get primary and secondary forms fitted out, the tertiary forms would be made in the normal map.

Now at this point I needed to map out my UV's. Do to this I focused on the arm first, cutting edges around the wrist, underneath the arm and the top of the arm. I made the UV's for the hand separate from the arm itself by cutting and edge loop between the fingers and extending to the wrist on both sides. For the sleeve I simply cut and edge in the middle of the top of the shirt, and middle of the bottom of the shirt. I then used the layout, unfold, and smoothing tools in the UV editor window. With the UV's laid out, I followed the instructor lecture on how to use the "transfer maps" tool.  

Once normal maps are created, I'll check for any artifacts. If there are artifacts, I will bring the image into photoshop and use eyedropper tool to sample color from background in order to remove these artifacts from map. I will then reload these into my hyper shade and check in 6-mode to make sure everything is looking good. 

Here are final images of what my resurfaced, low poly meshes look like in 6-mode using the normal maps.

I feel very strongly about this work, I think I did a wonderful job for my first crack at building an arm and sleeve mesh. I could use more practice laying out UV's, due to having to manually move UV's around so that there wasn't any overlapping. All in all I think this is a pretty decent arm and sleeve.

Compare and Contrast

The original piece titled "Dance" by Henri Matisse

Here you see Matisse used oil on canvas, depicting nude individuals dancing on what I presume to be a hill or mountain top of some sort. His use of lines showing you that the figures are moving and not still. 

Here is my rendition of the piece.

As I stated in my previous post the green and blue merging together signify they are stronger at the mergence. What I have come to call "organs" are the new stand in for the nude figures. I wanted to keep them somewhat pale, and have the red darker in the "tentacles". For me that just show where the activity beneath is occurring the most.

Where they are both different, I still used the same primary colors, and five unique but intertwined appendages. In my piece there is a more fluid movement, while in the original piece the movement is raw, and flawed.

Completion

Here I present my final completed piece for my interpretation of "Dance" by Henri Matisse.

I used colored pencil, keeping the same primary color's that Matisse used in his piece. Instead of people dancing, I re-imagined it as 5 inanimate objects flowing together in the blue and green. As the two colors meet they become darker, signifying that this is where they are strongest.

Prepro and Work In Progress

I have begun working on the change up of this piece titled "Dance" to kind of give it more movement and less rigidity.

The top prepro shows the flowing movement I wanted from this piece, as labeled I keep the coloring the same. The second prepro is still showing movement but with less freedom. I really enjoyed using flowy sketches on this assignment. The third prepro is opposite of what I wanted to accomplish but I just had to try out a minimalist piece.

These two pictures are my attempt at using my Wacom for a digital rendition of my first prepro, which I decided to go with for my assignment.

I ultimately decided to stay traditional for my final, as you'll see in this rough draft for my Final piece.