Category: Group

When looking back over this terms group project I can see that I have learned a lot of new things and thus gained a lot of experience. For this project I had taken on the role of Look Dev Artist and the shared role of the CG Lead, Shared together with Martyna who also was the CG Generalist (we had devided the role in her doing more for the lighting work and me taking on the role to overlook all the other Look Dev Artist and helping maintain the same look (communication)). This was a big task but something I would happily take a step in. during the project I have learned many different things like communucation, lead a group, rendering with passes and mostly also a start on learning how to create my own type of texture in substance.

First I want to take a look at the role of a Look Dev Artist, a Look Dev artist has the responsibilities to design, model and texture the specific assets that have been assigned to each individual. Our project theme was decided at the start, Steampunk, and had led me as a Look Dev Artist to do some insight on the specific look of a Steampunk aesthetic. I had 3 different models to make, a lamp, a chair and a couch. While taking in different inspiration I had realized that when creating the assets I had maintain a specific style to implement in all three of my assets. This was because I had looked at the models I made and tried to implement some of the parts in each model. This was all the models maintained their aesthetic and had a good steampunk look. Although through out the modelingand texturing process I had some trial and error Iam very pleased with the result aswell as all the new tools I had learned like better skill in modeling in maya, doing proper UV’s and learning the basics in Substance painter.

I also took on a leading role for the Look Dev Artist, due to this process I had realized that I was able to keep up with everybody work and make sure everybody in the team was maintaining the style that we had chosen. For this I had to make sure everybody was up to date on how everything should be looking. I had created a padlet on where everybody could post there references and process. An important part was also that we as CG Leads had chosen the color pallet in which everybody should stay. Looking back on the role of CG Lead it was a very stressful experience but also a big learning experience. As a CG lead that is more on the communicative side you have to stay in contact with all of your team members and be aware of everybody’s process as well as the CG generalist her process. I managed to be very organised during this process even though there are of course trial and errors.

Term 3

this is the final work of the steampunk group project

Since our video was almost done we had to create some background noises for in our Steampunk project. Eddy had found some sounds and I had added some extra sounds to it and then I sat down with a version of our scene to create the noises that would display in the area. I had done this in premiere pro since I am slightly aware of how to work with the audios in this program.

For the audio I decided to go with some elements in the scene and used some audio for these elements. For example, we have a clock in the scene so you can hear the clock ticking, we have the hologram which would give off a hologram kind of sound and further in the scene you have a radio, this made me think of having some piano/jazz like music playing and also the Lamp I made had flickering lights which would give off a flickering ‘broken’ sound.

Other then these sounds I implemented some background noises like steam and machine workers as well as that when you get closer to the window you can hear the ‘space ambiance’ from outside.

Look Dev Artist

As a look dev artist I had created all my assets, Mariana had send us a Template scene where we could present our work in our Breakdown (showreel video) I had used this template also to put my specific assets together since they fit well together as a nice set up, as shown in the video below.

CG Lead

Also as a CG Lead this was the final stretch. over the next few weeks I will be mainly busy with helping Martyna (CG generalist) out with the final details and pushing out the renders. This will still be with some trial and errors but so far we are on schedual

Everybody from my team had done their assets and send them to Martyna or me so we could place them in the scene.

Below you can see the schedule we have for the last few weeks. This includes the DMP (matte painting) and the last Compositing work. Which we had discussed with Gonzalo a few points to improve our scene in total.

Look Dev Artist

As the last thing on my list as a look dev artist, I only needed to texture my third asset, which is the chair I made. When looking at the chair you can clearly see that all of the chairs need a similar texture as the couch, The pipes need to be somewhat in line with the couch as well as the lamp pipes. And also the body of the chair needs to match with the couch since it is a set of chesterfield chairs and a couch. I re-did the textures trying to do the same as the couch but playing with it a little bit to make this one look a bit more destroyed and also play with the red color a bit so it is not exactly the same but does have the same feeling to it.

CG Lead

These last few weeks as a CG lead I have been chasing people making sure they upload their assets and making sure everything looks as it is supposed to. Other than that again this Tuesday Gonzalo told me that 2 of my teammates need to work on another asset, 1 of these people was Shiqi Ma and the other one was Shuaiqi Li.

Shiqi Ma so far had made the three assets: The whiskey rack, the whiskey bottle and the whiskey glasses. Gonzalo told me that when looking at the whiskey glasses that this is not its own asset but more an extention to the whiskey bottle. This is because the glasses does not have its own charm but are just standard glasses. Since Shiqi Ma already had gone home when I heard of this I had to text him about the extra asset he could make. I did some research about accessories of a wine/whiskey set and one thing popped up that I thought could be a fun asset to make for Shiqi Ma that also makes it to where he stays in his own area he worked in so far.

The other person that was not counted to three assets is Shuaiqi Li, When starting off we had decided that Shuaiqi Li would do the Clock and the UI for the window. He made both. Last week we heard that everybody had to do 3 assets and me and Li decided that it would be a good idea if he would create a floating frame for his UI so that this UI could be placed anywhere in the scene. Gonzalo made it to where the UI and the UI frame would be 1 asset so he would be missing an asset, this thought is understandable so since Li was in class when this was discussed I sat down with him and made sure he got a good third asset that he would be ok with to make.

When sitting together I asked him if he would be okay with creating a support beam and showed him these references above. I asked if he could make it quite a light Support beam with the holes shown in the reference images. This is because in the scene we don’t want it to block too many things since this would look out of place and this way Martyna could play with the position. Of course aside from that he is allowed to adjust it as he pleases.

For my overview of how far we are in the project, I took a look at the asset list and decided to color code it according to which assets are done and which still have to be made. Of course, the support beam and the Cork opener still have to be made since it is quite short notice. Other then that there are only a few more things that have to be made. The Glass floor was made by Jesse and he is working on it as we speak. The Plants by Yanbin, also noted that the water still needs to be scaled to the pool and that he still needs to upload the fish so they can be put in the scene, Martyna told him to come in next Monday so we can talk about these. Lastly the models made by Zhiqian, I have had high contact with her making sure she stays quite up to date since she is not at uni as frequently as others may be. I know that she has modeled all 3 models and placed a base material on the lights. She also asked me about some of the textures of the bird which she is working on as we speak. For as far as I know these 3 assets will be done before Wednesday.

Render farm fail

This week was quite a difficult week to go through for Martyna and I, After last fridays attempt to render our scene but unfortunately getting kicked out of the render farm since the technicians had to fix some problems ended up in monday being a big problem. Every time we tried to render our scene through render farm nothing would happen, so basically render farm was not working for us. We sat together the whole week where we tried to think of solutions we thought of things that could cause the problem:

One of the last items we implemented was the Hologram of Nira. After looking closely at the hologram we noticed that the whole model had an absurd amount of polygons that since most of it was quite small should not be that high poly. This issue is shown through a few models but the hologram had an absurdly high rate. But even after removing the Hologram from the scene the render farm still would not budge. Even though it was not the cause of render farm not moving I still sat together with Nira to talk about her highly poly rate.

Another thing we thought was maybe the UI frame of Li. Since this was imported from blender and had some problems with the naming since I assume Li wrote in Chinese and maya did not understand the characters. Even though this would likely be the problem we still had to try. After deleting the asset, it still did not budge in render farm.

The last cause we thought was maybe because I for a bit was working in the same scene and could not save as a different file so saved it as an increment, I am not sure where exactly this would go wrong but it would be a possibility. the only question is, how do you fix a bugged Maya scene…? I thought maybe it would work if she choose a somewhat older scene and then tried to create a new project and import the textures to the new project file. But unfortunately this also didn’t work

At the end of the week, we were stressed out and unsure of what to do, I told Martyna on Thursday that I will spend the next 2 hours, when she was heading to a meeting, recreating the whole scene from scratch trying to use as little as possible exports from the ‘broken’ scene. The only parts I had to export from the ‘broken’ Maya file were: The lighting Martyna implemented, The pipe system, and vents that were spread out throughout the scene and lastly the block-out Martyna did to match the tracked scene.

Of course for recreating the scene I only really had to implement the assets again and look at the coordinates in the old scene and fill in those coordinates. Since the scene that Martyna had create was super good from the start and I did not have to move the objects around. I also Incremented save everytime I implemented a new object and tried to stay as orginized as possible. As one can imagine we were super relieved looking at the little blue bar the render farm showed when I tried to render this out. To be sure it really worked the next day I checked the render and tried it out in NukeX so that I could tell our Compositor (Vitus) the good news.

Look Dev Artist

Since my lamp is done with all its textures I moved on to my couch, For the couch I Finished the UVs and started to work on the textures. For the pipes I had to remake the texture idea I did for my Lamp but changed it slightly to make it look a little bit different, But mainly the Pipes have the same color as the lamp pipes.

At the side of the couch, there is a grid for extra detail, This grid I decided to leave a bit more metal color and also give it a bit of rust just like the pipes. For in the scene that Martyna put together I got rid of one side of the frame for the couch since this side was not visible at al in the shot and would only add extra details.

For the couch, I went for the Chesterfield look of leather and went with the complementary color our team choose for the scene. This color was a Bordeaux kind of red, I made it to where the couch and the cushions looked a bit scratched so it wouldn’t be a very clean couch but a bit more realistic. lastly, I added a golden texture to the small buttons at the bottom of the couch so the couch would look more fancy even though it is scratched.

CG Lead

Last week we were told by Gonzalo that apparently, everybody that is a Look Dev artist had to create 3 Assets as their minimum. Some of our group still only had 2 assets so as our CG lead I put a message in our group chat so that we could figure out the missing assets.

The people who still only had 2 assets were, Shuaiqi li, Jesse Ma, Jiachen Ding, Muqing Liang, and Zhiqian Huang. Eddy (Muqing Ding) Was in the classroom when this was pointed out to us so I immediately sat down with him looking if he could design another asset. At first I as a Look Dev artist was planning to design a Pipe system so that for our scene we could spread these out everywhere. But since this issue occurred I decided to give that as an asset to someone else and Eddy decided that he wanted to do the pipe system. For the other people I texted with them to figure out what other assets they could do.

For Jiachen we discussed through whatsapp and decided that since he got 2 quite big assets maybe when thinking about it the books also could be an asset. This is because the bookshelf for him took quite some time. I mailed Gonzalo for this and said this was all good. So The only thing he had to do is make it a nice looking stack of books that could be placed in the room everywhere.

For Liam, He told me last meeting before Gonzalo told us about the third asset that he maybe wanted to make a frame for the UI since we thought it would be a better idea then putting his UI on the actual window. So I texted him saying if he could go through with the idea and also sent him some reference ideas on his request.

For Jesse I had thought about the glass floor since he also did the window, He also did 2 somewhat bigger assets and since one of those assets was the window and the other one the pool (which is viewed through a glass floor) We decided that it would be best if he also created the glass floor to stay in his theme.

Lastly was Zhiqian Huang, There were not many ideas left for assets as well as that our scene is getting quite crowded. For my assets I als made a standing light. I wanted to use part of these lights to create ceiling lights (with the pipe and the metal cage lamps) but since different people also needed to make assets I asked Zhiqian to create the ceiling lights. These were lights that needed to be a little more simple and could be placed on many different places through the room on many different heights. I also gave her an Idea/reference of what the idea had to be.

Below you see the references I sent to Zhiqian and Liam so they got an impression of the item they had to make. Of course they were allowed to put in their own style from the reference.

Martyna and I Applied for a meeting with Dom (we had already done this a few times last time Dom told us to make the storyboard we made) for this Martyna made some notes:

Light
Two layers of light bouncing with water – v complicated
Instead of glass have transparent object to cut on render time.
Glass on the separate render layer
Swimming pool on the separate layer

Instead of glass have transparent object
From camera view create ibl (360) glass panels and have it on separate layer.
In comp add them together

Raised up area under hologram – half a foot in the air
Hologram moving up and down (bumping) a bit motion curve

Bronze brass silver rusty

Massive blue glow from the hologram overpowering the scene
After going through the hologram you take it down a bit so you see the bouce lights and the golden glow

Add ventilation points in the room ceiling etc.

Mesh light of the hologram turn the visibility of the light off -radiating from the
Add little details to the hologram and the platform

Walls are too clean, too modern
Small bump map, displacement map on the walls, put steampunktexture on the wall

Damage on the walls a bit of brick on the wall in comp
Almost no lightning just tiny bits from the outside

Art deco windows
Render layers and passes

Broken up outside light = much better scene
Do not overlight the scene

Try to separate light
Low poly model flying past the ship to break up light a bit
Crypto_asset
Subsurface scattering off for now and

Every 10 frames note where my eyes drawn

Look Dev Artist

Chair:

Using the same method I used and learned from how to make the couch I designed the chair. As first part it has the same pipe system going around the chair so it will hold up the chair. Then I started creating The body of the chair, for this I used the reference image I had for my couch and created the chesterfield like seating. As you see on the reference the chair is a bit higher and has smaller arm rests. So I tried to recreate this from the reference image.

Here are some zoomed in details regarding the chair. One of the more important traits for this chair is as I said the arm rest and the ear like back that is somewhat higher then the couch is. I used the method I learned from the tutorial video from the couch I created to make the little indents and outer bulbs of the armrest and the sides of the backrest.

As shown in the images below I re-used the grid side panels I also had in the couch and that is also used in the coffee table (made by eddy) and the radio (made by Nira). This is an element that comes back in multiple places in the scene. and on the right image below this text you can see the result of the chesterfield like steampunk chair I have created.

Over this term I have created 3 different models for our Group project regarding the theme steampunk. For this I was given the option to choose my assets and I choose to create a lamp, a chair and a couch. I have now completed the models that will be ready for the texturing. As seen below I have placed the elements I created together in a scene to show how it fits together in the scene.

Since most of the chair is used elements from the other assets I have made, for example the grid on the sides or the pipe systems that are both used in the lamp as in the couch. The UV’s where more easy to do since the main focus layed on the main body of the chair. (as shown below)

Lamp

For this week I also wanted to do the finishing product of the lamp. So I went into substance painting with the neatly UV’ed Lamp I had modeled and started working on the texturing. For the textures of the lamp, I needed to create a few different parts. So for the lamp, I went to substance painter and started making the dark rusty pipes system texture, the copper part of the Gas tank part, and the gas meter on the lamp as well. All the pipes have the same textures and the in-between parts have the same texture but are made lighter in base color so you can still see the difference between them. For the lamp caps, the thin metal once I gave a simpler metal texture but as for the main lamp cap I worked with the baking system and made it to were the brims you can see the underlaying metal layer and for the base lacquer which added a nice detail to the lamp.

After finishing the main base of the textures I realized that for the Gas meters, I would need a texture that would fit the meter. So I would have gas tank meter numbers going across the board so it will look like a real gas tank meter. I designed this in Photoshop and then made it as its stamp in Substance Painter. You can see the design of the meter in the image below and lastly, I will implement a video of a rotation of the lamp from when the textures were implemented into Maya.

CG Lead

This Week I did a few different things about Being a CG Lead. First of all, I looked at the Excel list (the weekly list to keep track of everything) and decided to add different parts to the list. I filled in for this week and already filled some parts in for the upcoming week to make sure we are on schedule. In the schedule I pointed out what the CG generalist, Look dev artist, and the Compositor had to do for this week and next week this is also so Gonzalo, Christos, and Dom can take a look at this list and kind of see what way we are heading and how far we are. Since we are nearing the end of the term we need to make sure all the assets work in the scene. So for the next week we need a finished asset of everybody so we can point out if anybody has issues with their assets.

Also of course every week (every day) I take a look at the padlet we created and make sure I am up to date on everybody’s work. For the Look Dev artists everything slowly starts to form into the item they are trying to create. Overlooking our pallet You can see that most of the people understand the color template and that all the items also fit in with each other in the scene.

After the last meeting, we also talked about who would do the outside area and that this would form to be a matte painting. Christos (Compositing lead) took it upon himself to create the outside area as well as that we discussed that at the end of the video, there will be a docking system where Nira’s spaceship would land, this will also be implemented through matte painting. In the messages on the padlet you can see that Christos made his first drafts of the matte painting and I responded on it noting that I would want to further discuss this in our next meeting. It had a good feeling as a first draft but ofcourse still needed some work.

The mood board I created last week that viewed our ideas of how the outside is supposed to look also got a reaction from Dom, saying particularly about the parts shown in the image. I took a picture of this message and made sure that Christos got the message since he was working on what should be outside.

Since everybody started working on their textures as well I also made sure that everybody was going for the same idea regarding their pipes. Since a lot of people started creating their assets with pipes I knew it would be a good idea to discuss this in the group. So I made a list of different pipes with different textures and showed it in our group chat to make sure everybody had the same idea. The pipes I sent all kind of had the same feeling to them together but most people voted for 1,7 and 8 as that being their favorites which all three had that dark copper idea to them.

Look Dev Artist

Lamp:

When looking at Ftrack I went to review of my lamp and saw that someone had given me a review on my lamp asset. The review said that my asset was good and it could go into the next phase. This phase is doing the UV’s and starting to texture the assets. So I went into my maya file and started doing the UV’s, this is a very tedious and long job selecting all the different components individually and doing their UV’s in the UV tab.

Here you can see a few of the components I have UV’ed from the lamp. Above this text you can see the objects and their unwrapped UV’s. You can also see the checkerboard below this text on some of these items.

After doing all the UV’s I took a screen shot to show the results of the UV maps I did. I had to take this screen shot from some what closer so the checkerboard would be visible. This image I have also re-uploaded on Ftrack for new feedback on the work I did. Now I have to look into the texturing part but I would have to look into that with my team since a lot of people have done pipe systems and we want to go for a general feel.

Couch:

Two weeks ago I sat down to work on a draft version of the couch that will be added to the scene. This draft version of course lacked on some details. This week I sat down again for the draft version and started to add some details to my design. For some parts I used what I had done on my draft version and for other parts I had to re make it. for the main body design of the couch I had followed a tutorial. (see below)

following the fast tutorial I made the details of the back of the couch. This was to create the idea of little indents and having this over the whole couch. and added to that where the extruded lines going from one indent to another. above this texts you can see a closed up detail for this process and below you see the whole thing together. the sides (armrests) where added by simply using 2 bends and bending the sides on a 90 degree angle.

Above this text you also see the cushion of the couch. I re-used the one I created in the draft version and added these little brim lines on top of the component, you can see these in the reference image above.

Then as shown in the tutorial I also added this part for below the cushions. this gives the couch some more depth to it otherwise the cushions would feel like they would fall through the couch, this was also done in my draft version with a simple cube.

Lastly I added the details to the to the pipes around the couch according to what changes where made to the body of the couch. In my first idea I wanted to add gears but in this version I decided that these would not fit to the couch I created and left these out. The raster shown on the left image was something I already added but I have played around with it in this version according to what would fit with the changes of the couch.

also the back corner of the couch had some changes since it now is more a soft corner. as shown in the image I have cut it to be 2 times a 45 degree angle instead of 1 time a 90. this takes up more of the empty space that was there befor.

In the end this is what the couch looks like, I have uploaded this on Ftrack again as a video that rotates around with the wire frame on it. My next step will be moving to fixing the UV’s and applying the texture to it.

CG Lead

For this week as a CG lead I tried to push people to uploading the first model they made as an Alembic type of file. This is so that the CG Generalist could start working on the scene and see if there is anything weird regarding the objects.

Other then that Martyna and I had a meeting with Dom to talk with him about the fact that now it goes full frames and that we wanted to figure out what was the best way to fill in that last few frames that now looked quite flat. During that meeting he pointed out about our story in the given scene, and he started by creating a storyboard as an example. Since we had not made a story board Martyna, Nira and I decided to sit down to create the story.

After we had a general idea for the story board I sat down and drew out all the details on top of the frames Martyna had given me as a reference. With the drawings I also implemented text and arrows to point out important parts.

Other then that I also made a moodboard for the outside area since we had not really pointed out on what was going to be outside. I also sat down with Christos to discuss this since he would be doing a matte painting of the outside space. An important element of the outside area is now that due to our story board we decided to add a docking system to the last few frames to really give it that depth.

Look Dev Artist

To ensure that Martyna is able to play around with the objects in the scene I have created a draft version of all of the assets I am suppose to make. After this draft version of the chair I will be working on the UV-map and texturing of the lamp (this will be a task for next week) and During the UV mapping I will try to finalize the chair and the couch so the week after I will be able to work on the UV-mapping and texturing as wel.

The chair is one of the assets I had a problem with figuring out how I wanted it to look. I started off with the reference you see above this image but realized soon enough that this chair was too much for our scene. Since there already were quite some elements to the scene I think this chair would stand out in a wrong way from the rest. I realized this when I started to model it. As you see in the modelling images I did not get far before realizing this error.

After a lot of thinking I came up with 2 different designes that I thought would match the couch as well a bit more. one would be where I take the couch and recreated a smaller version of this. The other one would look a bit more like a desk chair but also using the pipe system. I think it is a good idea to keep the pipe system going in the objects so these different parts match each other in the scene.

Starting off with chair idea 1:

I started off by taking my inspiration of the reference images above the little bar stools. They have this X themed pipe system to hold up the chair. As shown in the images above I have recreated this in my own way.

This design is with a rounded seat and back which gives it this really fancy look which contradicts the open pipes a bit. I had some difficulties figuring out how the arm rest were suppose to be placed but ended up doing it from the backside of the chair. When looking at the left image I realized the pipes where too small in comparison to the seat so I had to change this, This size is also more accurate to the couch pipes.

Chair idea 2:

This is the chair idea 2, This one is the one that looks very similar to the couch as I have used parts that were also included in the couch. For the idea I think this will work a bit better then the round one since it will be more matching. I do plan on replacing the armrest of this one and give it more the armrest look of the rounded chair. other then that when I will add more details I am thinking of pulling up the back support so the 2 objects (couch and chair) have a little bit more of their own values. (example reference below)

CG Lead

For this week we had a presentation during Gonzalos class, For this class I created a presentation regarding the process of our team. Christos had send us a list of different things that needed to be added for the presentation. It needed to be a short presentation only pointing out some key points (see the image below).

Looking at this I started creating the presentation for Gonzalos class, Due to the padlet asset list I already had a lot of information I could add regarding my team mates. Some people I had to text individually for their work but I almost had it all. Other then that there is also a point where it says to add a few lines on why they chose that piece. I sent an update on this in our group chat regarding this presentation and that I needed them to write something about their work. I have asked them to upload this to the padlet list under their asset.

The presentation I created:

An opening page to welcome the people listening to our presentation regarding our steampunk project.

A page with the members of our team (this page is outdated since the changes, CG Lead: Martyna/Roos and Look Dev Artist: Shiqi Ma).

First page filled with different assets from our look dev artist and a small explanation with it.

Second page filled with assets from look dev artist and process of our CG generalist, Compositor and compositor lead.

Last page of a list of reference items that still have to be modeled for our group project.

Martyna and I used this presentation during Gonzalos class giving a small insight of where we are at as a group. We talked about the different assets created and how we are looking at different parts. Also mainly pointing out as well that we are looking at a specific color scheme that will bring everything together and where we are headed to.

An important thing we also discussed to our team are 2 points: 1 is the naming convention and the 2nd thing is the element folder:

Our first column in our asset list is called: IMPORTANT, This is a list consisting of details that everybody needs to remember when working in this project. The first one, naming convention, speaks for itself. Everybody need to specifically name their model in the right way. when working on the scene the scene has to be saved as the naming convention and when caching this should also be the case.

The other thing is to gather the un-textured versions of the models so that Martyna can start playing around with where to place the different objects in the scene and so we can have a look at everything together and see if something will look off in the scene. I created a folder in elements called STEAMPUNK where everybody can upload their model as an alembic, ABC