Week 1 - Initial thoughts

My first thoughts wen straight to something that wasn't outlined in the brief, I initially thought I'd like to try to create weapons that could fit into a game like Overwatch with ha futuristic however these aren't technically environmental assets unless they weren't hand held weapons (these could potentially be something like a deploy-able turret, barrier or something that could be an element of a level e.g. the payload that moves through the level). I am quite keen to design something that could potentially be incorporated into a level as it would have not only a futuristic theme but would also be inspired from the region which the map is located, the maps within this game tend to cover a large proportion of the world and many different eras of time too (e.g. futuristic Brazil int the map Numbani and medieval Germany in the map Eichenwalde).

Moving on from this, I had a think about the different regions of the world that are covered within the game and which I would like to design assets for: there are quite a few that catch my eye due to their large variety of areas. I want to feature mainly on these maps when it comes to developing my models:

• Busan - City Area of South Korea with a variety of maps: Downtown, Sanctuary and MEKA Base. Majority of these maps feature a futuristic city-scape. Even these basic shops that are located within downtown have a futuristic feel to them considering they're simplistic in design and are meant to be part of the lower income areas of the city. The main feature of the map Sanctuary is the control point located at the centre of the map which features an oversized drum which appears to be located within a shrine. All of the buildings that are located within Sanctuary have been designed as if they belong within a more religious and historical Eastern-Asian country with typical temple like buildings that can are typical of buddhism and shintoism in these areas. MEKA Base is a large futuristic base comprised mostly of large open areas, mostly made out of metal and has a sci-fi look and feel to the whole map and not much else. There are lots of corridors, open spaces and little things like what looks like a healing pod and as he name suggests, MEKA suits (another potential candidate for designs).
• Hanamura - Residential District in Tokyo, Japan. The map mainly features a very large area of a city. Moving from the attackers side to the that of the defenders; the players will start in a small city district where the shops have a very run down kind of look to them. There appear to be homes above them however they display a rather classic design where the buildings are typically smaller and crammed together due to Japan being a very small country. After passing these shop areas, you approach a large wooden gate that is an entrance to a temple where there are the temple like buildings I mentioned above that appear typically within Eastern Asian countries. This theme carries on throughout the map with large archways and what appears to be large buildings that appear as if they're layered, with their large, curved rooves. There are sakura blossom trees scattered throughout the area, which indicates that the map is located in Japan as they're very typical of japan itself. As we entered the large temple at the back of the map, there is a large shrine like area with draped banners. lanterns, ornate decoration on the back wall and a lot of the area is made out of wood.
• Lijiang Tower - Large City Area with a variety of maps: Garden, Night Market and Control Centre. The map mainly features a large metropolis for Night Market where there are large towers of buildings, a shopping district with may shops located within these large buildings as well as individual food stands located near the spawn locations for both teams. There are however a slightly different building style mixed in within these and they are the traditional Eastern- Asian temple like buildings as mentioned above. Sometimes depending on the game mode, the teams will spawn within these temples as well as the capture point located centrally is housed within a temple too however these don't feature maybe assets within them. Garden does also feature this mix of large futuristic, towering buildings and traditional religious buildings however there is an overall tendency to lean towards the temples like design in this map. There is a welcome addition of a garden area, hence the name which mainly means that the futurism is kept to a minimum and a minimalistic amount of greenery including small patches of grass and trees. Lastly the Control Centre map favours the futuristic appearance, housed within a large sci-fi tower with very little clutter, lots of exposed metal and glass, white washed walls and the centre of the map containing a large hologram/centre piece of a satellite, giving a space station sort of vibe. There's even a statue/feature that displays a rover machine like the mars rover, as if it's old technology here.

BUSAN

HANAMURA

LIJIANG TOWER

TORII - GATES/ENTRANCES TO SHINTO SHRINES

SAKURA BLOSSOM TREES

SHINTO SHRINE

WEEK 2

After going to the lecture and discussing my ideas within the group, it was decided that we should avoid trying to make trees and other organic material as organic (soft) modelling is much more difficult that hard material modelling. This now leaves me with another item to try to build as I was sort of invested with the idea of making cherry blossom trees to help situate the shrine/temple items. Another object that I have to now steer clear of is the Torii due to them being too simple to make it maya.

After trying to come up with some new ideas, I've decided that I shall next try to create a shrine/temple itself, a bridge with the land on either side of the bridge and a gate/entrance. The gate will be the animated part as it can have laterns attached that can swing and the gates can open and close in and out. Other ideas include possibly having a stone cobbled path or possibly having a bridge which could have running water underneath.

Having not fully decided what I want to do for my other ideas, I decided as I have some time to look a bit more through the maya 2018 essentials tutorial on maya to try and get my head around the way the tools work. After sitting there for a couple of hours just practising, I decided to try my hand at producing a model of the Torii. This was relatively simple so it was a good choice that I decided to steer away from this as a final model. It was so simple that I decided not to finish any of it and decided to move onto the idea of a Japanese temple. These are some of the possible ideas I could produce below:

Japanese Temple

Week 3

Going into the class today, I didn't have much work to show however that was mainly because I was still working on constructing the roof and coming up with ideas and designs. The class was spent mostly going through more tutorials in order to learn some more of the basics on Maya 2018 Essentials tutorials.

To Do List:

• 2 hrs of Maya Tutorials
• 2 hrs of final concept sketching
• 3 hrs of Maya modelling for the temple - (done)

Due to the temple and the smaller shrine being similar in design, limiting my scope, I decided that it would be in my best interest to go for an overhaul in terms of designs. Instead of having the smaller shrine which would be relatively easy to model after having completed the bigger temple due to the similar roof and model shape, I've decided to go with something a little different. My three final ideas will be:

• Large Japanese Temple
• Temple gate (with moving large doors)
• Temple bridge with a cobbled pavement leading up to it

*if I did change my mind on any part of the above designs, I would then attempt to make a simpler object like a large bell that would have an animated pendulum*

Temple Gates

The gates always have a simplistic base to them, the rest of the gate is embellishment. The gates are very similar to the torri's that I looked into earlier, so I have sketched some concepts of what the base gate will look like. I looked into varying the colour of the wood and adding some fencing to the gate. I prefer the third design as not only does it have the small fencing attached which adds an extra level of detail to work into the model. The first two are far too simplistic and fourth would mean that I'd need to have too much roof to create. All the gates would have large wooden gates that can be animated. There would also be a roof made out of slates, either a jade green or dark grey like in my research.

Weeks 3-6: Creating the Models

I decided that if I were to improve and make the most progress I could, I'd tackle the larger and more difficult model. Whilst the Lynda tutorials are very helpful, majority of my learning is easier and will stick more by actually tackling the issues head on instead of just sitting there and learning what all the individual tools do. So with all this in mind and knowledge pf the basics from the Maya tutorials (enough to get me going through the user interface and the to navigate properly), I decided that it'd be best to focus all my attention initially on the most complex and difficult of models, that being the temple due to the model not only having a large, already difficult roof but also because the model will take a lot of individual polygons to form many individual components.

The roof is already created from earlier work I'd done so all I needed to work on for this model was getting the base form correct. Week 1 was all about ensuring the foundations are correct as if these are wrong, the model will look off otherwise.

Japanese Temple Bridge

This model was relatively simplistic, especially when compared with to the temple. After having completed the temple, I was much more capable when using Maya so creating this model came much more naturally to me. Starting off with a simple polygonal cube, I extended it and added 50 divisions along the mesh, instead of having such a simple mesh rectangle. I extruded half of the faces just a small amount to create ridges in the wooden base and then decided to curve the rectangle.

The model then needed more detail to produce a more realistic shape. No bridge would be complete without the rest of the fencing and barriers to the bridge. To make this simple, I created more rectangles and curved them also to produce the curved beams. Then creating the supporting posts in between the curved framework. Creating the rest of the fencing which isn't curved was simple due to having already created the harder part of the model.

I didn't like the fact that my models weren't part of a composed scene. I always pictured the bridge having riverbanks and a river flowing underneath. Therefore, for me to create that impression, I made some polygonal cubes and created many divisions on the faces. Then using the move tool and the soft selection, I was able to create many varied ridges and a rock like effect which I'll be able to texture effectively to produce a truly wonderful looking piece of scenery.

As I've made the bridge much higher off the ground, there should be a support for the bridge as without the support, the bridge could be considered dangerous (even if bridges are a stable structure). The support also helps to tie the model together with the river section that would be there. If I were to add water, it would have something to flow around.

I made a second larger bridge and extra land mass to help produce a larger model and I much prefer the two bridges, having a singular bridge looked a little lost as a model.

Japanese Temple Gate

Week 7 - 12 - Texturing and UV

I also tweaked the material of the gold roof details to an Arnold standard surface where I could alter the material to have similar properties to gold in the Arnold renderer. There is a setting for a standard Arnold material for gold, just another little tweak I can make to make my models look more accurate.

In order to create a realistic lighting effect, I was shown a reasonably simple way to achieve this. Using a skydome light in maya, for the arnold renderer. Then instead of setting up other lights in the scene, I then go to https://hdrihaven.com/ . From here, I am able to take a 2K resolution HDRI and place the HDRI file into the skydome light which will add the lighting from that image into the scene, hence when I go into renderview, the lighting looks a lot more realistic. This has been a huge lifesaver, as ahaving good lighting can make or break a model. Out of the four examples I used above, Tears of a Steel Bridge and Shanghai Bund were the most effective as they have more of a sunset and dawn time of the day which creates a more intense lighting on the lower areas of the model as opposed to being directly on top which I much prefer. The lighting makes the shadows really intense and look more natural as opposed to a really strong spotlight like effect.

I took a final renderview of the gate using the Shanghai Bund HDRI on the skydome light. The main reason I chose to use this one is that once again, the lighting is low so the main intensity of the light is shining on the front of the object, not the top and as the main focus of this object is the gates, I decided to make the light focus there. The lighting helps to really pick up the details of the gate, with all the intricate groves and the texturing of the wood. The way the shadows fall on the walls and wooden help to show the textures and depth of the model better, it really accentuates the details and that is something I was very keen to show through as I worked hard to get the model looking the way it does.

This time around, I had eliminated a majority of the issues I'd created for myself from the temple.

• All of the texture files are PNGs to help save up on the file size. With the temple I had large PSD files which drastically increased the size of the scene due to the textures being used a lot for a lot of duplicated geometry.
• I tried to keep the excess geometry to a minimum so to keep the whole models size as small as possible. The larger the model, the harder it will be to import into sketchfab due to it's size, especially with the 50MB limit.
• All texture files were saved into the correct place, so as to not lose any of the texture files.
• I tried to keep my outliner clean and all the objects in the right places and groups so that anyone viewing my models will be able to fin the objects easily.

Texturing the bridge

Reflective Summary

This was a very challenging assignment where I faced many different issues which made making these models very difficult. From the start, I was at a small disadvantage with other members of my class having previous experience with 3D modelling, unlike myself. For this task, I had to not only learn how to create a model, but also how to make the model smaller in size. I then had to learn how to not only make effective textures to make the model look more realistic but also the best way to make them look like they have depth and like a real texture. I also had to learn about lighting and rendering as well as exploring how to create some difficult shapes and textures beyond the brief. This task was mentally stimulating and really allowed me to push myself to create models I could be proud of. I spent a very long amount of time working on each model to make sure that each part was as detailed as I could make it. Whilst I am very happy overall with the way that everything turned out however there were many issues with the way I created these objects. Whilst the designs seemed like a good idea at first, there were issues with the scope of the models. The bridge and the gate were simple however the temple was far too complicated for a first ever model to create. If I were to redo this task I would definitely make a much simpler object. this would allow me to use my new found skills in maya to create objects with much less excess geometry. From performing this task I have learnt many lessons as to how maya works. I certainly won't use PSD files to create textures as they consume far too much file size in the scene. When using maya, I'd have to ensure to keep my outliner completely tidy with every object named correctly and grouped to ensure that anyone who view my work is able to locate anything. I would research more into both bump maps and normal maps and how I can use them along with my textures to create effective objects. I feel much more confident in my abilities, I could definitely make these objects, making them much faster and with much less overlapping and excess geometry, making the models much more effective. However performing this task again would also mean that I'd reduce the difficulty models to make them more manageable and to allow me to use to create textures that are more effective.

Overall whilst I had a lot of learning to do, the task was fun, challenging, intellectually stimulating and has given me an idea that I might want to pursue a position in this field of work in the future. I will have to improve drastically to stand out amongst the competition.