Masters Project - Week 07 / 8th - 14th August.

Week Hour Breakdown:

Wednesday - August 8th - One Hour & Seventeen Minutes - Unwrapped the rest of the wall mesh.

Thursday - August 9th - Six Hours & Fourteen Minutes - Floor container textured and applied in Marmoset. Viewed reference / texturing videos. Viewed smart material setup sent by Dave. Ceiling plank asset set up, then crashed.

Friday - August 10th - Five Hours & Thirty Minutes - Added model detail to the Crystal door asset, smoothed and unwrapped.

Saturday - August 11th - Six Hours & Twenty Two Minutes - Finished unwrapping Crystal door asset. Computer panel details fleshed out, finished detailing and form. Started unwrapping keyboard pieces.

Sunday - August 12th - Six Hours - Finished unwrapping computer panel, chamfered and smoothed.

Monday - August 13th - Seven Hours & Thirty Four Minutes - Unwrapped and baked computer panel asset. Worked on form and details of Security door asset, unwrapped and smoothed.

Tuesday - August 14th - Six Hours - Finished unwrapping Security door asset. Formed and unwrapped Cursed container asset.

Total time spent this week - 38 Hours and 57 Minutes.

Overview:

Most of the time spent during this week of work was on creating and solidifying some of the larger or reused assets in the scene, this allows me by the end of the project to have a scene that will be as populated as I can get it. Although tempting for example to create the Eyeball AI in the ceiling, it's much more efficient for the end result for me to create the computer panel which can be used three times over with different textures used on the screen. Throughout the course of this week I become more and more confident in my abilities, as some of the models with the baked detail come through better than most assets I had made before. Although, I also at the end of the week start to become doubtful due to being hesitant to begin texturing assets, as I believe that my texturing actually brings my assets down compared to just viewing them plain.

Wednesday / August 8th :

The short amount of time in which I worked on this day, I just finished off unwrapping the wall mesh and packing it efficiently to make the most of the texture space so that the baked vent detail would show up nicely.

Thursday / August 9th : I dedicated the day to texturing another asset so that I wouldn't completely neglect that phase of the process. I decided to take a different approach after the feedback that I was given by some fellow students and tutors. One tutor posted a link to an interesting art station tutorial where they used a smart material that was set up in such a way that you could edit a wide variety of options to get interesting stylised results. I spent an hour or so testing the material on simple asset that didn't have any stacked UV's so that I could make sure I wasn't learning it incorrectly, I did this alongside the video tutorials the Art station user Luis Armstrong had provided, he also provided the smart material to make use of. This smart material allowed for some really interesting settings, and I used it to create a base material to build over the top of. During this process I still went in and manuially edited some of the edge wear, and added subtle noise and dust layers. One change I made to the texture was adding some very subtle colours into the metal, I decided to use purple, dark blue and red as they would be the main light colours in the scene, so on a very low opacity I placed splotches around the asset to add subtle variation. I used the same material to instead of just applying a single emissive material colour, try and create a kind of stylised texture that faked emitting light where I could possibly place a light in the actual Marmoset scene. The material worked wonders for this, as it had a bunch of options which allowed me to slowly lower the brightness of the edges as I got closer to them, making the bright colour look more like a light being emitted through glass. This was also a good example for me of the different kind of effects I could get from the material that I had been using. Once I had decided that the texture for the asset was at a passable state, I decided to go back to the ceiling panel asset. Although this was short lived, since after a while the file decided to crash and I called it a night.

Friday / August 10th :

The next day I debated what was the next most important asset for me to begin work on. I came to the conclusion that the security door that was in the centre of the environment had a lot of smaller assets placed behind it. If time run short again near the end, the clear panel that would display the crystal and details behind the door could easily be changed into an opaque panel to save that area just simply looking unfinished. Although this would change what the centre of attention in the scene was, I felt as though it was a good precaution to take. I decided to add more detail to it, to better flesh out the model, this went pretty smoothly as I already had a good idea of the kind of details that were to be placed. The main focus was making sure the window allowed enough detail behind it to be displayed, and making it look like it would function as a doorway. The asset was then smoothed, optimised and partially unwrapped quite quickly.

Saturday / August 11th : The doorway asset that housed the crystal was finished off being unwrapped for the start of the Saturday. This was then placed in Marmoset to continue the scene being built up. I moved straight onto the next most important asset, the computer panel. As mentioned before, the computer panel would take up most of the environment space, but just with varying textures on the screens. This asset was an efficient choice in thinking ahead with the time I had remaining. Instead of focusing on form first, I decided to think about how the computer was going to function. Originally I had decided everything was to be touch screen, but I went against that when I thought of visual interest and mainly because of the narrative. The AI is being forced to run the security systems by the owner of the vault, and in the case of it going Rogue, manual operation of the consoles is needed. So most of the day was spent adding hexagon keys in arrangements similar to a keyboard, alongside buttons and knobs. After deciding what to bake and what not to bake on the input panel, I edited the form to have some more points of interest such as the maintenance hatches with a key panel, and various vents and indents. This asset took a lot of inspiration of various art station users, searching computer console gave a lot of results, and I went through looking at the kind of details people had used to make the bottom portion of the console more interesting. I ended the day with getting through most of the unwrapping for the smaller portions of the keyboard panel.

Sunday / August 12th :

The Sunday was pretty straight forward, but just time consuming more than anything. The main form of the computer panel and the remaining pieces that hadn't already been unwrapped were chamfered, smoothed and unwrapped to round off the asset. The actual long process of manually packing the UV's was yet to be done, but considering the use of the keyboard floaters and vent floaters, I needed to make sure that the packing was done as best as it could be.

Monday / August 13th : The remainder of the unwrapping process was finished for the computer panel, and the asset was baked and placed into the Marmoset scene. This bake came out especially well, and I was very proud of the result. The asset looked really intricately detailed because of all the details on the keyboard, and considering the asset was to be reused around the scene, the quality meant the time spent on it was worthwhile. The next asset that obviously needed doing was the Security door asset that would be placed along the wall to make people believe there was more to the world past this scene. This asset was to be repeated on the upper level, but considering the size of the asset and the way in which it helped break up the multiple uses of the computer, I felt as though this asset was important. Another useful set of art station users helped with reference, searching sci-fi doors displayed a wide variety of doorways that had different locks and opening mechanics. One Sci-fi door design by Imanol Delgado stood out though as the main point of reference when creating the form of the door I had. I understood what aspects I wanted my asset to have, but there were a number of detail and shape choices that I needed inspiration for. I managed to get what I want much quicker than some of the prior assets, and got to the state of unwrapping most of the asset by the end of the day.

Tuesday / August 14th :

The remainder of the security doors unwrap was accomplished, I took the usual approach of packing as best as I could to make sure the keypad and vent floaters displayed at a reasonable resolution. The security door was yet another asset that once baked and brought into Marmoset I was personally really pleased with. With both the security door and computer console they could obviously always be better, but both assets were proof that I had really gotten the handle of making use of floaters for extra detail that couldn't be modelled in. I opted to move onto the Cursed container asset which ad been fleshed out from weeks before hand, I wanted to get it through the process and into the scene so that I wouldn't have wasted time creating it, that and once again, this asset was planned to be used two to three times. The asset was formed fairly quickly, with only a few changes to the overall mesh. The major changes being to the button panel which would release the container, this was changed to make use of the keypad floater I had used before hand for consistency. The asset was partially unwrapped by the end of the day.

Week Conclusion:

As mentioned at the start, some of the assets I created during the course of this week, in my opinion displayed my improvement over the last few weeks. This is always refreshing to see work pay off, knowing that you aren't just going through the motions to get the task done and stagnating. Even on the front of texturing, the asset that I did manage to texture this week once again taught me a lot, and you can see the extra layer of complexity of the textures I create now compared to some prior ones. The issue that looms is how long I'm taking to accomplish each of my tasks though. Even though I feel as though I have hit my stride and I'm getting through the modelling stages quicker with each asset, the texturing phase so far takes me a day per asset, and I don't have that time available to me.I'm becoming more certain that the texturing is going to bring my project down, from being forced to base colour most assets in an attempt to make sure everything has a colour. Even though I'll be disappointed in myself if it gets to this stage, I'm not going to stop working on this scene past the deadline, as I know this scene can become something worth finishing, that and I know that I have been trying hard to get this to where I want it to be.

-RyanHarleeJones