Futures Project - Week 02 / 7th - 14th June.
- Ryan Harlee Jones
- Jun 22, 2018
- 7 min read
Week Hour Breakdown:
Thursday- June 7th - Two hours & Forty seven minutes - Apple Asset Creation. (Subway Evening Shift) Friday - June 8th - Six hours & Twenty five minutes - Apple asset creation / Pear asset creation.
Saturday - June 9th - Forty minutes - Introduction journal post. (Subway Evening Shift)
Sunday - June 10th- (N/A) (Subway Evening Shift)
Monday - June 11th - Four hours & Twenty six minutes - Journal entry week 01 / Watermelon asset creation.
Tuesday - June 12th - One hour & Forty eight minutes - Watermelon asset creation / Hack'N'Plan editing.
Wednesday - June 13th - One hour - Team meeting.
Thursday- June 14th - Six hours & Forty three minutes - Cupboard asset creation / Hack'N'Plan editing.
Total time spent this week - 23 Hours & 49 minutes.
Overview:
This week overview seems to be productive compared to the week prior. My personal input to the project was a lot of task management, and putting techniques to practise on smaller assets from what I had learnt the prior week. Most members of the team had created an asset to place forward, although we found that our direction and focus was very misguided so far into the week. This was resolved, and our focus was directed better on the Wednesday.
Thursday - June 7th:
The new milestone week began with me picking up some organic assets to create so that I could test my high to low poly baking method that I had tried on the pan asset. I wanted to make sure the method was stuck in my head, so that I could recreate it when I needed to. The apple asset was simple to create, but a good start for me to make sure I understood the basics of organic modelling and using the turbosmooth modifier correctly. The other reason for my choice was so I could practise my realistic texturing skills on something that wasn't just wood or rough metal. I also planned to create a bundle of the other fruits and vegetables that were needed so that I could have a nice set of items to display on my portfolio.
The approach to building the apple form itself went quite smoothly once I had looked into using splines to draw half the shape, and then using the lathe modifier to make the spline form into a solid object by drawing the spline around a centre point. The issue I had was when turbo smoothing the apple, I kept finding that the smoothing groups were showing bumps that followed around the apple in a ring. I tried a variety of things such as spacing out the mesh lines equally before turbo smoothing and manually trying to fix the smoothing group errors to no avail. I eventually found that by removing some mesh rings I had before turbo smoothing the apple solved the issue. This being because when turbo smoothing, the mesh loops were bundling too close to each other, with too many of them, this caused areas to bunch up and render smoothing errors.
Fig 01. Apple Mesh Comparison (Jones, 2018)
Friday - June 8th:
I spent the Friday finishing off the smaller portions of the apple mesh, and making sure that the smoothing groups, low and high poly forms and more were all correct. The texturing phase of the apple was really interesting to work with. Most of the items I had textured before, were brick or metal, and to texture something with a natural colour gradient and skin values was different. Adding the smaller details such as the rougher ringed bumps at the base of the apple stalk was a nice change to some of the usual materials I work with.
Fig 02. Apple Asset - 512x512 (Jones, 2018)
I moved onto reattempting what I had just done, but in a shorter amount of time, with the pear asset. This was created in a very similar manner, and took less time due to not spending as much focus on trying to resolve smoothing issues. What I did differently with this asset to the apple, was that I added a FFD modifier to allow me to pull and subtly warp the pear form. This was done to add variety to the asset, and to give it a more natural and organic form.
Fig 03. Pear - Low to High Poly (Jones, 2018)
The pear texture was also approached in a similar manner because the fruit had very similar traits to the apple. The difference made was the subtle normal texture used, and the splotches of dirt that I placed upon the surface. The pear also had less of the strong rough patches that the apple had around the base of the stalk.
Fig 04. Pear Asset - 512x512 (Jones, 2018)
Saturday - June 9th:
Considering I had another evening shift at work, on the morning of the Saturday I decided to set up the first journal entry for my blog page. The introduction post wasn't necessary, but I felt as though a page worth of context to the project being created was deemed helpful and also more professional. In doing so, it would help me round out the pieces I wanted to bring into the reflective report at the end of the project.
Fig 05. Project Introduction Post (Jones, 2018)
Sunday - June 10th: N/A
Monday - June 11th:
I decided to follow up on the introduction post I had made before hand and add the week 01 journal entry. It was something light to start the day with, and also needed to be done to avoid leaving all entries till the last few weeks. The time consuming portion of it was gathering the time stamps I had dotted around on the Hack'N'Plan board. Luckily, I had gotten into the habit of labelling the date I worked on the task, along with the time spent, making the portion after the information gathering easier.
Fig 06. Project Week 01 Post (Jones, 2018)
I kept on the focus of creating fruit for filling the kitchen table, I decided to chose a watermelon. This ended up being a risky choice of fruit to create. Although I had checked to see if watermelons were available in England during the time period, I neglected to check if they were a luxury item or expensive at the time. This realisation came part way through creating the watermelon asset, and I therefore made it so that I did not finish the texture until further notice of if the asset was to be used. Once again, the watermelon asset followed the trend of the other two fruit, where I approached creating the asset in the same manner. I spent a lot of time trying to get the stalk and bottom portion of the watermelon correct, as the way in which the fruit converged to that point was slightly different. I had to alter some vertices to get the smoothing groups to behave the way I wanted them to.
Fig 07. Watermelon - Low to High Poly (Jones, 2018)
Tuesday - June 12th:
As mentioned before hand, after I spent a little more time on the asset to make sure it baked correctly, so far into creating the texture for the asset I was told that it would need checking before the asset would actually be used. There was also a high chance that it would probably not be used anyway, due to the lack of certain information that we could find. I decided to spend a little time cleaning up the Hack'N'Plan board just to prepare it for the next day where our team were going to discuss our approach.
Fig 08. Unfinished Watermelon Asset - 1024x1024 (Jones, 2018)
Wednesday - June 13th:
Our team decided to designate the Wednesdays as our team review day due to the VR module lesson being on the morning. I was working on my other project for most of the day, but our team had a well needed group meeting during the course of the day. We narrowed down what assets were most important to us, and what assets we needed accomplished for the upcoming milestone. This allowed us to direct ourselves, compared to each of us creating random assets for the sake of it. We set ourselves specific tasks to accomplish, and what days to work on the group project. Other things such as implementation days and a general understanding of each persons strengths was very useful.
Thursday - June 14th:
I set into motion the creation of one of the two assets I had been tasked with creating. This was another day where I had a lot to take on board, and learned a great deal from my fellow team mates. I went about creating the mesh of the asset the usual way in which I did, using the reference material I had available to me. Although, when it came to using smoothing groups, I decided to take the initiative to ask my team members how they went about smoothing objects that were planning to be realistic rather than stylised. I learnt a multitude of techniques from my team, each person had their own way of approaching it. After some discussion, I understood the logic of thinking ahead to what portions would be unwrapped separately, which would then mean placing a smoothing group difference would be applicable, but not needed.
Fig 09. Cupboard - Low to High Poly (Jones, 2018)
After I got the bake for the cupboard accomplished, I realised that I didn't have much time left in the labs before the building was going to close. I decided to hold off on texturing for the next day, and instead view the asset list that the team art lead had created. Considering I had taken on the responsibility of the Hack'N'Plan board, I made sure to spent the remaining time I had creating checklists and adding the new assets as tasks onto the board. I also made sure to separate tasks into categories to easier allow for people to find what they needed.
Fig 10. Updated Hack'N'Plan Board (Jones, 2018)
Week Conclusion:
This week of work was much more efficient and eye opening than the week before. At least double the amount of hours were worked this week compared to the last, and I also managed to solidify a new technique in my mind. A handful of assets were created, and the website blog entries were updated, all alongside working on a separate project. If I can keep up the current pace while also sliding in a few more hours overall, then I feel as though the end result between the team members will be to a nice standard. Although, considering the deadline is coming up very soon, more hours over the next set of weeks will be needed. The other project deadline is much further in the future, and can suffer progress wise for the sake of this projects deadline.
-RyanHarleeJones
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