Endless Runner/Specialsation: Production

Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/DNbyG

Next up was to actually produce some work! I used a production pipeline similar to one that would be used for a realistically styled game by following a few tutorials and modifying parts of them.

My process ended up like this:

Character model:

• Concepting
• Base low poly model in 3ds Max
• Sculpting in Zbrush
• Retopologizing in Max
• UV Unwrapping in Max with the TexTools plugin
• Baking Normals in XNormal
• Texturing in Quixel
• Testing in Unity
• Skinning in Max
• Animation in Max
• Testing in Unity

Other Assets:

• Referencing
• Modelling in Max
• UV unwrapping in Max using TexTools
• Texturing in Quixel
• Testing in Unity

Concepting

I chose to do the snowy landscape theme for my part of the endless runner and so tried to create a character that would look like the fit in that kind of environment. My first concept was the one to the left, but I decided to scrap that one because it didn’t really have a purpose or role, so I designed the second character to be a hunter and tried to convey a little more personality in her design.

Modelling

Because I hadn’t used Zbrush before I decided to start with a base for the body to at least have somewhere to start with my sculpt. I studied appropriate face topology for this and actually reused the head of this model when retopologizing.

Sculpting

http://www.digitaltutors.com/tutorial/1093-Introduction-to-ZBrush

I closely followed this ‘Introduction to Zbrush’ course on Digital Tutors to learn how to sculpt and applied what I learned to my character, like what tools are, the hotkeys, how to edit the resolution of your mesh and all sorts of other things. I found it incredibly helpful and probably wouldn’t have been able to figure Zbrush out without it! To do the clothes and hair I referred to these tutorials on Youtube because the digital tutors one didn’t cover that. (ANM220.LO07 Evaluate the literature on contemporary animation practice and use this information to shape and develop your own practice)

Progress shot

Final sculpt

Retopologizing

http://www.digitaltutors.com/tutorial/2291-Creating-a-Stylized-Creature-for-Games-in-ZBrush#overview

I used a course called ‘Creating a stylized Creature for Games Using 3DS Max and ZBrush’ to learn how to export my sculpt from Zbrush to 3DS Max and retopologize. I found the process much simpler than I was expecting though it was quite time consuming! I mainly used the extend tool in the freeform ribbon tab. I made sure to keep animation appropriate topology and keep it relatively low poly since it would be animated and in a game. (ANM220.LO07 Evaluate the literature on contemporary animation practice and use this information to shape and develop your own practice)

UV Unwrapping

The ‘Creating a stylized Creature for Games Using 3DS Max and ZBrush’ also came in really handy for this! It suggested to use TexTools and I found that incredibly helpful and think it sped up my process quite a lot! Along with this it showed how to use symmetry with your UVs which saved me heaps of texture space.

Baking Normals

Again, I used the ‘Creating a stylized Creature for Games Using 3DS Max and ZBrush’ and it recommended separating all the different parts of the mesh and sculpt to do an exploded bake for better quality, so I went ahead and did that. I then plugged both my high and low poly meshes into X normal and baked it out. I had to play with settings like the padding until I got something I was happy with, and fixed the rest of the obvious errors in Photoshop by painting over them. I should do a little more research into how to do this better in the future because there were quite a few iffy bits!

Texturing

Before bringing my model into Quixel I baked out an AO map in X normal too, which I found much easier to do than in Max! I then played around with the materials in Quixel until I had textures I was happy with. I then tested out the textures in unity and found out it didn’t support gloss maps, but I felt they weren’t really needed.

Skinning and Animation

I then skinned it and animated the final run cycle for the game which I went over in this post. I then opened everything up in unity again for a final test, then uploaded the final .fbx files for use!

For the other assets I went through a similar process, but only using the steps outlined in the list at the top of this post. (ANM220.LO09 Research, design and implement a production pipeline for a chosen specialisation.)

Here’s some footage of the final game! We collaborated with Chris Gleeson, an audio student to provide us with a different background track to better suit every different theme, and it’s a shame that all the audio that was made couldn’t be used because not all of themes had complete model sets. Along with this some sound effects for the characters voices were added for when they jump, slide, get a pick up, or hit something. (ANM220.LO02 Effectively integrate sound with animation.)

References:

http://www.digitaltutors.com/tutorial/2291-Creating-a-Stylized-Creature-for-Games-in-ZBrush#overview

http://blog.digitaltutors.com/understanding-a-3d-production-pipeline-learning-the-basics/

https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/game-asset-production-pipeline-unity-1929

http://blog.digitaltutors.com/whats-the-difference-a-comparison-of-modeling-for-games-and-modeling-for-movies/

 

 

Digital Sculpting Research

Digital sculpting technology is a comparatively recent method of creating Computer generated 3D models, which involves using software to manipulate a digital object as if it were made of a real-life substance such as clay by providing tools such as push, pull, smooth, grab and pinch.

One the first occasions of when digital scultping software became avaliable was in 1999 at SIGGRAPH (short for Special Interest Group on GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques) where Ofer Alon, the founder of Pixologic Inc, presented their newest software, ZBrush, which remains one the most prominent 3D sculpting software today. It gave 3D artists the ability to create highly detailed 3D models in much more natural and intuitive way, and revolutionized many different types of production pipelines.

Video games, for example, has been influenced by such a degree by digital sculpting that in many production pipelines the process of creating a 3D model has been reversed. Instead of beginning with a low poly mesh and only using a sculpting program for detailing, now high resolution sculpting is now the starting point, meaning an artist has the freedom to experiment with making the most suitable character first before creating the best topology for animation for that figure. (ANM220.LO04 Describe how the history of a chosen specialisation has influenced current industry best practices) (ANM220.LO07 Evaluate the literature on contemporary animation practice and use this information to shape and develop your own practice)

Since digital sculpture produces work very similar to traditional sculpture, you can apply the elements art to it as you would with a physical work of art. The elements of art are form, line, color, space and texture, though clearly some are more applicable to digital sculpting than others, namely form, colour, space and texture.

Form refers to an image’s shape, volume and believability that it exists in 3D space, and is probably the most important element for sculpting. There are two types of forms, geometric forms- which have a specific name associated with them, contain simple 2D shapes, and are usually man made- and organic forms- which do not typically have names asscociated with them and are comparatively complex when compared to geometric form. These two types of form could be associated with whether hard surface modelling or sculpting would be better suited to a particular shape. A sculpture’s form must be recognizable and accurate from every viewing point in 3D space for it to look aesthetically sound. For example, I had to study the shapes that occur in plaits to help make my characters hair convincing in 3D space. I found that if I pictured the plait as three separate and very malleable pieces of rope it was easier to get the placement of the hair to look right.

Texture is another very important element in sculpting and is integral to communicating what a surface is actually composed of, and can help add interest and contrast to an image. Texture, unlike the other elements, is strongly associated with the sense of touch, and how vividly something is able to depict how it’s surface feels usually depends on how realistic it looks or is. Texture in art can be split into two categories: Actual or Implied texture. Actual texture is what an artwork feels like when you actually touch it, like a physical sculpture or the surface of a painting. Even though digital sculpture is in three dimensions it is also impossible to actually touch unless 3D printed, so digital sculpting will more often fall under the implied texture category and the same can be said for physical marble statues that depict textures like fabric and skin. Implied texture is when something contains an illusion of texture. To create a more believable implied texture for a 3d model you can include a range of different maps, like albedo, normal, specular and gloss, along with actually adding texture to the topology of your model by sculpting. For example, in the image below the stitches were sculpted in while the texture on the fabric was added through applying a normal and albedo map in Quixel. (ANM220.LO05 Research and describe the role of visual fundamentals in producing aesthetic images in a chosen specialisation)

References:
http://pixologic.com/zbrush/industry/video-games/

http://cymae.deviantart.com/journal/A-Visual-History-of-3D-Art-284617122

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_sculpting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elements_of_art

http://thevirtualinstructor.com/form.html

https://www.sophia.org/tutorials/elements-of-art-texture