Final Product

3.3 - Presentation Research

Presentation:

I knew that for my end presentation I wanted to take my final scene with all the textures and things like AO baked from substance into Marmoset to get a better render with lighting but first I had to do some research into how others have presented their 3D works. Looking at the original "Shrine diorama" piece I based my whole ideas off of in the first place I see he did some initial renders in UE4 and then a video doing different camera shots of the whole scene while he had animations for his grass, fire, leaves, rain and banners play out. (shown below).

In these shots of his overall scene in UE4 he doesn't include any watermarks so it's a lot more a cinematic piece rather than anything else as he's not showing off what he created as its more of showing off the scene together with all the aspects UE4 can bring with animations and effects. But then later he shows off his models with a watermark to show how and what he made within the scene. Including showing some of the maps and materials he created: such as the normals, masks, Ao, Alpha (glow and more) for his lamps / lanterns and then the material he created for his ground textures, having a mix of mud and grass (for under his actualy grass models and leaves for the open mud/dirt on the ground). The author talks about what the breakdown includes himself "The breakdown includes my prop close-ups, Speedtree work, Shader balls which I built in mixer as well as the scene, sculpting work, prop arrangement and some stills. The majority the rock and foliage assets were sourced from Megascans".

Even showing of the leaves he created in the scene. Like a small snippet into how he made them.

Over all I really like the way the Author/Creator (Lewis Hewison) has shown off his work and it worked because the way he presented it is what originally got me to be inspired to create my own similar piece. From the overview shots and animated video in UE4 with different weather effects getting the entire scene together as like a snippet of the game it's based off (ghost of tsushima) really making all the aspects coming together with the rain coming down while the textures on the ground look wet. The video really portrays the scene well - especially since it's lack of watermark makes the set dressing and story telling of the scene really come out and tell more of that story in an animated piece. but also on top of this - including a breakdown to his own scene in his showcase made it x100 better as you get that informative view into the way the creator made the scene and can see the small parts of the scene that built to make the overall look stand out from other pieces. He also talks about the technical side of UE4 he used to make the scene that much better with the weather effects and so forth. "I dived deeper into the tech art side of Unreal for this project and found a great tutorial and rain drop shaders which I fused with the textures I built out. I also built particles generators as well as rain and wind sim to really bring the scene to life! ".

Although I don't have the skills or experience at this point to do any work within UE4, especially adding effects or emitters for rain and fire or even adding any animations to my scene I think adding some kind of video for the presentation/showcase could really push the showcase that bit further. Then adding the extras like models and texturing including my maps (not quite as complex as normals, Alpha and glow but still AO and such like maybe bumpmap) with the watermarks for the software I used to make those. So just like Lewis' work I would have a video to really show off the scene as a whole and would use Marmoset to render it out and showcase my work but using the other pannels to breakdown my work and show the 'behind the scenes' almost of what I used to make it and the different elements that build the scene in the video.

I also did some primary research for presenting 3D models by looking at the previous work within my college (Primary sources):

This is the collection of all the photos I took around the college for previously done 3D work. For my favourites they would have to be these 2:

The reason for these being my favourite is because of the way they are rendered. Not only are the models and textures of the scene high quality but the way they are rendered with dynamic camera angles and dynamic lighting steps it up to that next degree of level. It feels much more like an actual artistic piece rather than just an environment as theirs no real stylized design that makes it look unique and like a piece of art but rather the realistic scene with realistic lighting and realistic textures, having all those things come together thats what makes it look artistic and thats something I want too.

As such like this scene because even though it's rendered using unique and dynamic camera angles and is similar in context to my own scene due to the lighting lacking over all the scene as a whole lacks some sort of substance and overall can look quite flat and lose that dynamic feel. However for this piece in particular it have a stylized look to the textures and presentation so it also comes out looking a bit better.

For particulars in the showcase of 3D work that is common amongst the pieces and something I would like to also do is the use of program icons in the corner to show the different tools used to create the piece. Including a small detail on the scene's polys and verts. That small amount of detail in the corner to show off what was used I think is really good when looking at the entire scene. But at the same time the remark on polys and verts can also be a bit much and also having icons that blend into the scene a bit more helps the over all look, like how the first one did theirs. (see below)

But looking at my 2 favourite rendered, both have very little relating to what and how it was made and instead focuses on the scene itself. As with the mansion looking one it was many pages which are nothing but the render itself, no text only visuals. As such there is no behind the scenes. Similarly the other cave like one doesn't show that much behind the scenes and has minimal text just a title and icons that blend in. One of his boards however is dedicated to the substance materials he made in the scene which I like the look of as it looks a lot less tacky than showing off wireframe or the textures as their square UVs. (see left for substance materials)

Also there is the one where they show off their wireframe for their scene displayed over their scene image blurred. I like the idea of showing the behind the scenes on top of a blurred image on the scene but I'm not the biggest fan of showing off the wireframe, showing the untextured models I feel could work as a sort of before/after type look but wireframes themselves of individual models looks tacky in my opinion. Also another important detail is the use of a font for the text that suits the rest of the scene as it can't be too jarring and take away from the scene. For example the text for the cave like scene blends quite well with the environment and work displayed but the font for the Torii gate piece feels out of place for the work shown off.

3.3 - Presentation Planning

After looking at the final version of my scene and taking a look at the works that inspired me I quickly saw that my favor was more pointing towards stills to just show off the scene. The works without any major logos or behind the scenes come out a lot better looking and presented as not only is there this sense of mystery of not being exactly sure how it could have been made but also because of that the work itself stands out more having these clear previews of the work from different angles (allowing for more dynamic camera shots to show closer up bits of the work as well). My decision for going for these pure visual boards for my scene is because also taking a look at some of my materials they aren't the best, especially since they weren't materials I created by hand in substance designer so they didn't look the best for just showing off my materials like the one above. Another factor is although I like the idea of including icons to display the tools that made the work, the logos along with anything else on top such as titles are very jarring and can most definitely take away from the scene.

When taking a look at professionally done works from real game studio companies such as the work I looked at for Ghost of Tsushima by Sucker Punch Productions team on Artstation I can see they laid out their work by just having a border at the bottom of the image which is black and doesn't take away or add anything to the scene itself above it. Rather just stating the artist name, the studio logo it came from and the copyright for the game and producer of the game. Obviously for mine I don't have any copyright or producer behind my work so It's mainly just giving my name as the artist and including a possible title (as it isn't concept art it doesn't need a signature). Although the image of work below doesn't actually have a banner and is just layered on top it still works because its so small and simple while also being visibly clear, but another important part of the image below is the inclusion of a title but it isn't anything fancy, it's just "foliage" after the artists name to signify that that is the part of the work that they did. Showing specifically what they did. So the equivalent would be for mine to just call it what it is "Torii Gate".

This was my first test render out of marmoset: using a lower fov and a blurred skybox it was pretty cool seeing how my scene came out especially with all the lighting elements. But the background still felt a bit harsh with the lighting as you can see the Torii gate itself starts to get a bit glossy in it's painted look. Also I wasn't 100% with the current look of the background/skybox so I decided to play around a bit more with setting before focusing on angles and getting the right shots I wanted for my board images.

So although the render needed some tweaking for specifics and getting everything perfect (mainly AO, lighting & the Skybox) I was extremely happy with how the textures looked rendered out with proper lighting in Marmoset. (FYI above is Screenshot and below is render using raytracing)

3.3 - Final Presentation boards

I was able to upload a version with slightly lower resolution textures to sketch fab (1k rather than 2k) which turned out pretty nice when adding some post processing effects. (This was so I could show off the entire 3D model on my artstation page for a portfolio).

Even if I couldn't upload my Marmoset Viewer to Artstation I was able to get this screenshot of the inbetweens of the different maps and wireframe for my piece which I think works really well and might be a good idea to use for one of my presentation boards as I plan to upload my Marmoset Viewer file anyway.

However this just being a screenshot isn't as good or high-quality as the rest so instead I decided to record the showing off of the different layers in OBS.

I then needed to slightly crop and edit that video to remove the taskbar and me showing off OBS so it looked a bit more professional. Creating this:

After messing with the effects and skybox within Marmoset I then created the Renders I wanted for my presentation boards and art station. Then picking 1 main render I moved it into photoshop to add a title and my name underneath as it was going to be my center piece for my other renders so you can see who made it and the tools I used. While keeping the other boards as purely render only to really get as much out of the scene as possible as the work really speaks for itself.

1st Board:

2nd Board:

3rd Board:

4th Board:

Then lastly to add to the presentation I also rendered out a turnaround video of my scene in marmoset, tweaking settings like AO and the raytracing. I made sure to keep the background for the turnaround while making sure there was enough lighting for the entire scene so nothing it too dark or bright and you can see everything nicely and get effects like gloss and bloom. There were a few issues in the rendering process when making my turn around video with things like not enough lightening and the raytracing being too low making the grass go pitch black but in the end it turned out really nicely as a final touch to everything to just get that 360 degree look on my piece rendered.

So for my final list of assets for presentation I have:

A Marmoset Viewer file of full resolution textures
A SketchFab Upload of my scene
A 1080p turnaround video render from marmoset
4K Still Renders from marmoset
A video of me showing the maps of my scene in marmoset viewer

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