Final Year Project Proposal
- Ryan Harlee Jones
- Feb 27, 2017
- 15 min read
'Researching and applying advanced workflows to construct a highly detailed and richly stylized environment diorama.'
Author Note:
This is a direct copy and paste from the PDF document for my project proposal, I felt having a copy on my blog would be useful for others to read, and so that I have another copy available. This document was created by myself, I just wasn't able to upload the PDF file to this particular space.
Overview: For this project, I will be creating a segmented section of an environment to display. This environment will feature an art style similar to the games Darksiders 2 and World of Warcraft: Legion, the key style point they share being very strong colours against greys and darker / duller colours. My environment will also relate to the work I accomplished for my essay I handed in, which was on shape theory, the Platonic Solids and how particular shapes can be used to help an audience read the environment better. Each doorway in the environment will have a particular shape allocated to it, along with the element that according to the subject of Platonic Solids, it was given.
Fig 01. Darksiders 2 Concept (THQ, 2012)
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Fig 02. Wow: Legion Concept (Blizzard, 2016)
The environment itself will be an area where in a game a player would select their level to play interactively, but by moving the character into the levels through doors and gateways. I plan to create only this room and differentiate the five doorways that would lead to the levels through the use of the techniques mentioned beforehand. This room will have a centre piece that is a surrounded by the five doorways which will have an elemental style applied to each of them, such as fire, air, earth, water and eather through the use of texture detail and the special effects mentioned. Motivation / Rationale and Research: There are a handful of reasons as to why I have chosen to do what I have, firstly the art style chosen uses saturated colours that pop strongly in an environment. The other colours used alongside these saturated ones tend to contrast quite strongly to give a wonderful effect that guides the attention of a user. The World of Warcraft art style is purposely saturated and holds the attention of the player well because “The bright cartoony art-style was different from the style of many other PC war games of the era, which hewed to more realistic colour palette.”, mentions former Blizzard exec Patrick Wyatt on a Logitech article. (Akerman, 2012)
I also in the future would like to work for companies who have a charming mix of cartoon and realism in their style if possible, and I feel as though the style I am aiming for is something which people find full of personality and life if done efficiently. The point of efficiency is proven as mentioned by Creative Director Joe Madureira of Vigil Games, where he states “for us, it’s about staying dark and edgy, but not falling into horror territory.”, talking about the Darksiders 2 art style. He also mentions that “You need to keep players on edge.”, in the context of a first person horror game but “If you have cartoony zombies running around in a colourful world, that impact is lost.” So in relation to these points, for my project I do want to create an environment which could be viewed as a more serious, possibly horror kind of styled environment, but because of the amalgamation of two art styles I am using, it will be viewed in a more stylised way similar to Darksiders 2, where being “Dark and edgy” is a goal, although going into horror territory is not. (Kain, 2012)
The environment will also have a consistent symbol theme which will be intertwined with the art style, a previous module where I had written a paper on shape theory and the Platonic Solids, was where the original idea for my project had come from. As mentioned before, each door will have a symbol allocated to it, along with the element that was assigned to it, so that the zones doorway can embody this in its surround design, through the textures, model or particle effects. The whole room will have consistent shape language based on this idea through reoccurring symbol motifs and patterns. The reason for applying this consistent shape language is because I have always appreciated the use of certain things because of subtle linked meanings, I appreciate the thought that has gone into them, and the expressive logic which comes along with these things, examples being that triangles tend to be used in villain designs, because pointy things hurt people, and that equates to being bad. Another reason is because I also appreciate the categorised control it brings, separating things into similar areas to really make the differences between them contrast with one another, so it this case, it will be between the doorways and their associated element and symbol.
The strongest reason for my decisions, is that I want to improve my current skills that are important to my specialisation, while making use of some new techniques that I have limited knowledge of to improve the overall product. Sculpting and VFX are the two areas that I will be improving / researching for this project to broaden my skill set. With both of these areas, I have had at least an introduction to them before hand, and plan to look further into them via research and practise. I will be looking at reference material on the Unreal Website, YouTube, and 3D magazines, which I own such as 3D world. I feel as though I could just use my current skills to create a piece of work, but there will only be so much personal growth that I would gain, unless I look into some new areas of research such as the ones mentioned.
The reason for researching the areas which I am, are mainly because of the industry standard that is consistently presented before me. I’m still a long way off understanding enough in my pathway to be deemed as an environment artist that can stand on his own two feet. Researching sculpting techniques and application will greatly enhance my knowledge of what different tasks will require what approach, sculpting and retopologising assets will allow me to have a wider variety of tools at my disposal, along with being more specialised in my field. Watching other artists around me on my university course grow, and learn new techniques past what we are taught, has led me to realise that I have to go out of my way to understand each of these new ways of work, rather than just imitating for a result. Alongside that, I have for a long time appreciated the assets which were created for the game Darksiders 2, the quality and style in which they are created fills me with inspiration whenever I take some time to view them. Looking at these assets as a personal goal to achieve, I have spent some time figuring out what possible workflow they might have taken in order to accomplish these results. This is another factor that has informed my decision to research sculpting and retopologising strongly, as I know these techniques will send me in the direction I want to help me create the stylised kind of work I wish to create, but also to make me an overall much stronger environment artist.
Fig 03. Darksiders2 (Vigil Games, 2012)
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The choice of creating an environment was decided because of the fact that previous modules have allowed me to create 3D assets for use in team projects, although it has been quite some time since I personally made my own environment with my individual assets. A module in the second year allowed me to create my own environment, and I enjoyed this a great deal, but I personally was not happy with the outcome of the project, and wanted to challenge myself to do better this time around. The marker which I had for second year, Deepak Gautam, mentioned feedback comments such as the work was “A confidently constructed collection of assets,” although “The scene could have benefitted from one or two more complex pieces”. He stated that my “submission evidences potential.”, and that “With additional practise I feel your work will steadily improve, but don’t lose focus.”. This feedback was exactly a year ago from now, and since then I have only predominantly worked in group projects, not allowing myself any time to learn and grow in the direction that I wish to explore to give my work it’s personal identity. I want to hone my current skills of being an independent environment artist that I can stand on my own, and so that I can also more efficiently contribute to future group projects. (Gautam, 2016) On the hand of researching the visual effects and particle systems in the Unreal engine, this is personally something that I am just very interested in because of the high quality and amazingly beautiful effects that can be created with practise. I am adding this research in because of my own personal interests and also because I have seen many dioramas or projects posted up on websites such as Sketchfab, where VFX have greatly helped the environment come to life rather than seem static or dead. The Unreal Engine particle system tutorials page’s first video description states “This video covers some key terms that you will need to know in order to comfortably use the particle systems in Unreal Engine 4.” Which for understanding the other tutorials in the playlist is crucial, the other videos in the playlist range from “Creating a Mesh Emitter” to “Creating an AnimTrail Emitter”. The playlist covers a fairly wide range of base knowledge to get me prepared for understanding what emitters and special effects I will need for my tasks. (Unreal Engine, 2017)
Technical Overview: As mentioned before, I plan to create an environment diorama, although I want to create the environment inside of the Unreal Engine so that I can better practise other areas of the program such as particle effects, possible minor animation implementation and general functionality. The art style will consist of duller tones and hues for the majority of the overall colour palette, although strongly saturated and contrasting colours will be used strategically around the environment to help draw the eye of the viewer. The environment will be a hub level, displaying a centre room surrounded by five distinctly decorated doors. There will be a consistent environment setting in the hub room to set the environment with a theme, although the decorated doors will purposely contrast against this to stand out and display the nature of the openings being what would be level zone entrances, although there will dotted consistencies in the door designs to ground them to the overall environment.
Good reference for what I intend to create would be the second and third crash bandicoot level select hubs, where in both games there is a centre platform surrounded by different zones the player can choose to access.
Fig 04. Crash Bandicoot 2 (Naughty Dog, 1997) Fig 05. Crash Bandicoot 3 (Naughty Dog, 1998) [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]
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Workflow/software: With this project I plan to create all of my 3D models in 3DS Max and then decide between texturing the assets manually in Photoshop, or attempt to make use of Substance Painter and Designer and see if the outcome will better suit what I hope to achieve. I will spend a day or so looking into substance painter and designer to debate whether to use the programs or not, and if difficulty is met when using the program or if things look like they would need much more time to pick up, then I will manually create the textures in Photoshop instead. The assets will then be placed into the Unreal Engine so that I can create and build the environment up correctly and place everything together so that I can debate what more needs to be done to improve the overall quality. I will then after set dressing and applying base diffuse textures will continue onwards to adding other needed maps for individual assets such as specular/reflectivity maps, and any other maps mentioned in this paper.
Although if any normal maps are used on the assets I will have to dedicate some time to researching and practising my sculpting skills, depending on once again how well things progress with sculpting, I may have to either only add normal maps to select important assets, or attempt to bring through depth with non-sculpted normal maps and texturing. The next step is then to make sure to add in particle effects to add an extra sense of flair to the scene. There will be a particle effect for each of the doors hopefully, and then wherever else needed, depending on time the particle effects complexity may be varied, some time for research will possibly be allocated for this also. After this has been accomplished I will then move onto adding lighting into the scene and also tweaking around with the post processing settings to make sure the scene has final polish, along with then overviewing the project as a whole.
Depending on time constraints, and how the project has progressed, I will then continue on to create a companion artefact for the project, which will be an art book. This art book will not contain concept art, but will act as an index for the diorama, this art book will be written up in the point of view of an adventurer passing through the zone and making notes in a journal. This will come along with the project to act as an extra sense of depth, and allow me to add some description and lore to the diorama. Considering that this is an extra, this will only be accomplished with extra time, and to save time and make this possibly manageable in the project timeframe I will be using my models as a tracing reference for rough sketches in the book.
In greater detail, the workflow that I ideally want to follow, is for me to use 3DS max along with specific references from Darksiders 2 and WoW: Legion to help me model in a manner which embodies their art style, making use of the various tools such extrusion, indentation, vertices manipulation / welding and so on. I am going to very carefully think about the way I want an object to be built up, an example being a stone pillar with a stone symbol extruded out. I will break down and work on the bits separated from each other, to then bring them together later on, allowing me to focus on the simple shapes and to break down the item so that it is simpler for me to understand during the creation process. I shall then use ZBrush to work into these individual sections through manipulating the mesh with brush strokes, and alpha stamps to bump out and reform the structure of the object, allowing me to add high levels of detail such as wear and tear on corners, and textures like rough rock. This will be done by adding more geometry to the mesh in the ZBrush application by subdividing it so that I can add this level off detail. After that, instead of creating a normal map from the sculpting detail, and then baking it onto the lower poly variation of the object to fake depth, I would ideally like to retopologise the new sculpted mesh so that the poly count isn’t ridiculously high, and would optimally run in the Unreal Engine. [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]
I then hope to make use of photoshop or substance painter / designer so that I can use the layer systems to create stylised realism textures for my assets, and to also create the maps necessary to make the asset model look wonderful in the engine such as reflectivity maps. This will be done by saving the files out as Targa formats, and plugging the assets and textures correctly to each other in the Unreal 4 engine, before I start using the material editor to manipulate the final touches along with lighting, post processing sliders and settings, set dressing which is asset placement and rendering.
Research Ethics:
With this area of discussion, I personally feel as though I am in a fairly safe area considering ethical issues. The areas which I believe could cause some sort of problem are in relation to things such as possible skull motifs, or reference to bones, as it could be a fairly sensitive type of imagery to some individuals. The larger issue which I think could arise, could be the setting of the diorama. Considering the environment is in a temple / tomb kind of area, once again it can be seen as relating to death, and graveyards / crypts. More sensitive individuals to the subject of death or passed away individuals might be bothered by this. On the whole of the subject though I feel as though there are no openly offensive or morally questionable directions I am taking in my project, and that more than likely, if I am to offend anyone, or cause any disturbances because of my project, they will be because of very specific dislikes or personal triggers.
Project Deliverables: The project deliverables that I will hand in will be:
A link to the uploaded environment diorama Sketchfab page.
A trailer showing the environment diorama from different angles.
A selection of still images of the environment diorama.
The Unreal Engine file zipped for viewing if needed.
The stretch goal deliverables that I hope to give in will be:
A companion Journal Artefact, written in the point of view of an adventurer.
The environment deliverable will consist of:
3D Models, Key assets are sculpted and then retopologised or high to low poly baked as an alternative.
Albedo Textures. Created in Photoshop.
Reflectivity / Specular Textures if assets require them. Created in Photoshop.
Particle Effects or emissive maps as an alternative.
The environment stretch goals consist of:
Simple animations on some assets.
Emissive Maps as well as particle effects.
Non key assets are sculpted and then retopologised or high to low poly baked as an alternative.
Albedo and Reflectivity Textures, created using Substance Painter / Substance Designer.
The stretch goal companion journal artefact will consist of:
Stylised pages.
Asset traced drawings.
Lore / information text.
Project Plan:[if gte vml 1]><o:wrapblock><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_5" o:spid="_x0000_s2051" type="#_x0000_t75" style='position:absolute; margin-left:0;margin-top:140.1pt;width:541.45pt;height:319.5pt;z-index:251667456; visibility:visible;mso-wrap-style:square;mso-width-percent:0; mso-height-percent:0;mso-wrap-distance-left:9pt;mso-wrap-distance-top:0; mso-wrap-distance-right:9pt;mso-wrap-distance-bottom:0; mso-position-horizontal:center;mso-position-horizontal-relative:margin; mso-position-vertical:absolute;mso-position-vertical-relative:text; mso-width-percent:0;mso-height-percent:0;mso-width-relative:margin; mso-height-relative:margin'> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:/Users/N3022938/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image009.jpg" o:title="" cropright="34402f"></v:imagedata> <w:wrap type="topAndBottom" anchorx="margin"></w:wrap> </v:shape><![endif][if !vml][endif][if gte vml 1]></o:wrapblock><![endif] My project plan table is an estimate on how long I feel personally that I will need to spend on each sub section. The red indicates important deadlines, the light orange represents the days I will have at home without working on the project but to tweak my portfolio website that is in need of updating. The light green represents areas where I need to accomplish something for an upcoming deadline, and I have labelled a large section to indicate whenever I find the time to do this I can use that spare time. The darker green is the allocated days that I feel I will need for each subsection. This timetable looks set, although I am aware there will be some areas that take less, or more time than necessary, but I feel as though this timetable will help me get started and move through my workload logically. I anticipate to have to mix a few days around, although that will all depend on how the first two weeks of progress.
Fig 06. Personal Project Plan Part 1 (Jones, 2017)
Fig 07. Personal Project Plan Part 2 (Jones, 2017)
Contingencies:
The personal project plan which I have put forward in the form of an excel sheet, is as I mentioned beforehand, very tightly packed, and also not as broad as I could have made it. The contingencies which I have set in my mind are actions such as making the deliverables section of this project sheet as specific as I can, so that I can make sure that if problems arise, or different routes need to be taken, that the end result of what I said I would deliver by the end of the project, will still be correct and accounted for. I also, in respect to the research areas I will be looking into, have thought of different ways to go about getting the same result if one route causes me issues or is too difficult in relation to my time on the project. Things such as the retopologising of the sculpting stage, could be traded over into doing normal maps though high to low poly baking, even though the quality of the result will be different between both routes, the overall function will remain similar, therefore ticking the checklist box of my proposal. The same kind of thing has also been lined up for the particle effects section of my brief, if I find that the Unreal Engines particle system is too complicated or beyond my grasp, I can get similar although not exact effects by making use of emissive maps so the assets have glows to them. I could also in the end make use of both of these routes, but one is easier to apply and understand than the other. Another thing which I am doing in anticipation for possible issues, is that I am purposely planning the way assets are build up, so that I can make sure they look moderately attractive and nice even without the extra detail stages of sculpting, so if time becomes extremely short and I have to cut out some sections such as the sculpting phase, the environment will still look as though it’s a finished piece although the quality may have to suffer.
General References:
Allegorithmic (2017) Substance Painter. Available at: https://docs.allegorithmic.com/documentation/display/SPDOC/Substance+Painter (Accessed: 01/02/2017)
Allegorithmic (2014) Substance Painter Getting Started 01 – Intoduction. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DQZV9vOQpI (Accessed: 01/02/2017)
Edge-CGI 3D Tutorials and more! (2014) #1 Zbrush Sculpting Tutorial for Beginners Series – Organic & Hard – Surface T-Rex 1080p HD. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ididulfg9w (Accessed: 01/02/2017)
Pixologic (2017) How to start in ZBrush. Available at: http://pixologic.com/zclassroom/workshop/how-to-start-in-zbrush (Accessed: 01/02/2017)
Sketchfab (2017) Help Center. Available at: https://help.sketchfab.com/hc/en-us?utm_source=website&utm_campaign=header (Accessed: 01/02/2017)
Unreal Engine (2017) Particles Video Tutorials. Available at: https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Videos/Particles/index.html (Accessed: 01/02/2017) [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]
Images:
Fig.01 THQ (2012) Dead Plains Architecture [JPEG Image]. Available at: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/95/b3/75/95b3755b1fa3c1691b55da8360926b95.jpg (Accessed: 01/02/2017)
Fig.02
Blizzard (2016) Legion Environment [JPEG Environment]. Available at: http://media.blizzard.com/wow/legion-6a153ad2/images/media-artwork-6.jpg (Accessed: 01/02/2017)
Fig.03
Vigil Games (2012) Abyssal Doors [Jpeg Image]. Available at: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/15/66/19/15661949e4179b8c0c95d58175238b4d.jpg (Accessed: 07/02/2017)
Fig.04
Naughty Dog (1997) Crash Bandicoot 2 Level Hub [JPEG Image]. Available at: http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/273282-crash-bandicoot-2-cortex-strikes-back-playstation-screenshot.jpg (Accessed: 01/02/2017)
Fig.05
Naughty Dog (1998) Crash Bandicoot 3 Level Hub [JPEG Image]. Available at: http://v007o.popscreen.com/eGdqM2o5MTI=_o_test-crash-bandicoot-3-ps1---session-crash-bandicoot.jpg (Accessed: 01/02/2017)
Citation References:
Akerman, N (2012) World of Warcraft’s iconic visual style explained. Available at: https://www.vg247.com/2012/08/16/world-of-warcrafts-iconic-visual-style-explained/ (Accessed: 07/02/2017)
Kain, E (2012) The Art Of Darksiders II – An Interview With Vigil Games Creative Director Joe Madureira. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/08/13/the-art-of-darksiders-ii-an-interview-with-vigil-games-creative-director-joe-madureira/5/#4d3d86353515 (Accessed: 07/02/2017).
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