Game production

Fantastical Tradesman's Shop 

Modelling with modularity in mind

For this brief, we are required to design a fantastical medieval shop whilst utilising the ability to create modular assets. 

After contemplating the type of shop I would design during my digital art practices session, I have decided to design a Clockmaker's shop. I am determined to employ a colour pallet that is distinct from my previous block 1 projects because I want to make sure I'm not going for monochromatic warm oranges and purples again. Seeking contrast, I have gathered images of cold and sinister Victorian-era Houses to inspire ideas for my shop's design.

White Boxing

Week 1- initial ideas

The term 'White boxing' (or 'grey boxing') in game art refers to blocking out your ideas in simple geometry as place holders for the finished 3D art. It is like doing concept sketches on a canvas but using 3D primitives with the purpose of developing ideas quickly as possible. this allows you to visualize and question your ideas, allowing you to reflect on composition and functionality. it is far easier to scrap a rough collection of primitives than a refined model you got attached to.

In this lesson I tried to block in many different house designs. I didn't have any ideas to go off of other than the fact that I wanted my design to look cold and sinister so I was exploring thin, tall and pointy shapes in the design.

The first three designs did not resonate with me at all, however, the fourth one gave me a few ideas for what my shop could look like. I liked the corner-shop vibe it had, and how strange and asymmetric it looked. I later tried to model it larger to explore the design further but I later discarded the design because it felt like there was something missing as a whole.

sketches completed in digital art practices which where inspired by these block ins 

Week 2 - second house design attempt

In all honesty, it was a struggle for me to move on from just blocking out vague place holders of my building. I felt that game production was so reliant on me getting my concept fully fleshed out that it caused me to fall behind quickly.

I found that I still had a preference for developing ideas through sketching rather than doing iterations in 3D so I continued to sketch.

This was my second design idea which I modelled during week 2. I thought it would be my final design but once I modelled it in 3ds max, it really wasn't resonating with me no matter how many things I shuffled around so I decided to continue searching for a better design.

Week 4 - final model

After finally deciding on a building design after countless iterations, I quickly blocked it in in 3ds Max.

I only used two modifiers for my model; Array, and Bend. Array was super useful for duplicating the wooden beams, as well as making all the windows eavenly spaced. Bend was used to curve certain wooden beams seen on the balcony rails, under the suspended walls, and scattered on the walls for decoration.

At this point, we had a lecture on silhouettes and primary, secondary & tertiary design choices in Digital art practices. I decided to do a quick check up on my own house model to see if I wanted to do any further edits to the model before I committed to the design. I looked at it from the front and the right in orthographic view and thought the front side was looking great but the right side was looking quite square and plain, so I brought the bottom back wall in and added some curved wooden beams to support it and it really helped give the design more unpredictability.

likes the sharp visual language I have chosen

maybe add some automation mechanical machines around

mail pigeons delivering cogs/ toys/ letters

I want to incorporate the round shapes of clocks and cogs but still maintaining a cold and angular visual language to the building.

Tiling Textures

Week 4 - Roof Tiles

Keywords: Cold, ridged

Stone Tiles

Trim & Prop Texture Sheets

Week 1

The biggest struggle I had with painting my textures was trying to get every asset to  harmonise with one another in colour and detail. It was a struggling to get all the windows, wooden beams, and roof tiles to look aesthetically pleasing by using colours that worked well together. this struggle was harder to overcome because all the textures used different canvases. In the future, to make this process easier, I should make sure to have my other textures nearby for reference to always check their compatibility.

Gabriel advised that I should straighten the front shop sign if I had time so that space would be more efficiently used. This was, of course, if it didn't cause much distortion. I tried to straighten it but it did indeed cause too much distortion on the letters. I wasn't liking the look of this sign to begin with so I completely removed it and added decorative wooden beams along the front instead.

Exploring fonts

Problems encountered

 Aligning this circular staircase to the bricks I had painted where fairly straight forward (and extremely tedious as I would have assumed), however, when I had to unwrap the very top center of the stairs, I realised that I hadn't really thought about how I would make the circle work with the straight trim sheet. At first I thought that they would unwrap nicely if I just unstitched all of the edges that intersected in the middle to make a large chain of neat triangles, joined by a single vertex on each side to make it easily tile. This worked much better, however, the cracks that separated each brick did not work properly having the faces organized like this. Instead, I shuffled these triangles around to manually match the bricks below it. I had to change the top vertex of the triangles that had the cracks in them to make sure they joined in at the middle.

Despite the second unwrap being messier, It worked much better visually. I'm not sure whether there was a better solution to this problem but this is how I managed it and it achieved what I wanted it to do.

Reflection

I should have chosen something more fun and playful for this brief because it would have benefitted a lot more from the limitations. I don't think a clock shop was a very clever idea because round objects use a lot of the tri budget. At the very beginning of this brief, my plan was to go for a really cold and sinister looking shop, however, this changed as I went forward with the project because I felt that ...

I am proud that I have completed my very first building, however, my outcome did not meet the expectations I had for this project. I would have loved to have added clock hands, folliage, and little banners under the door's overhanging using alphas, aswell as modelled some props like a cart or some wooden crate boxes and perhapse a stand with small clocks and a mechanical wind up toy train on it.

Grade: 63/100 (-7% from Block 1)

Feedback & personal notes:

I knew my project for game production was really lacking the technicality and motivation required for the brief. I had hypothesised that I would get 65% for this module so despite it being a little disappointing of a grade, I am at least glad I know that my project wasn't up to standard. Throughout my blog you can tell that many of the gaps are poorly filled using digital art practice course work because I honestly was designing rather than working on my game production work which isn't good.