This thread is a collection of personal work conducted for USO; however some work may belong to others. The UDK Screenshots are also taken from the Editor window to capture to post process. This post contains a basic overview of the game, while others that follow will provide personal assets, texturing and art style process. A kind of personal post mortem.
USO Overview
USO (Japanese for Lie/s) was an art showcase Vertical Slice for the group project module of Teesside Universitys Masters Computer Games Art course. The production ran over the course of 12 weeks, from concept to final delivery of which is shown in this post.
USO was an art showcase of an introductory level of the game concept we created, the level itself was produced inside the Unreal Development Kit (UDK) and was to provide a 3rd person action adventure game with a heavy focus on stealth, through light and shadows and player choice to conclude the level in a manner that offered the player different routes and moral choices.
Lead Role
Although there were no Leads initially picked at the beginning of the project, two others and I fell into lead positions across multiple disciplines with a Lead Character Artist and Creative Direction from SA_22 and myself and another picking up Lead Environment, World Building and Production roles.
We took the module aims and its final product expectation and warped it to create a set of our own learning outcomes for the team whilst trying to meet the aim of producing a vertical slice for the final product. These were to assess and grow our teams artistic and technical abilities to offer them the opportunity to learn new production pipelines and tools in an environment where there was a range of skills and knowledge in order to overcome problems, especially the common problems usually associated with tools such as ZB, XNormal and Marmoset.
Art Style and Art Testing
To define the art style of the game we grouped together to gather reference and workflows that existing, especially in AAA game IPs that use the Unreal Engine such as Borderlands 2 (2k Gearbox) and Dishonoured (Bethesda Arkane Studios), both released in the holiday lineup of 2012.
With these references we defined a style guide for the team and set an art test for the team. The art test was a test of the levels of abilities in the team in terms of High Poly sculpting workflows and to allow other team members to contribute to the definition of the art style. This was a major task in terms of creating a cohesive style for the environment and defying the odds many members of the team were able to create an art style that was cohesive with others work.
Using the art test allowed us to identify team members that were struggling with this workflow and provided critical feedback and learning resources. Taking this information we created an asset list that allowed members of the team to play to their strengths, but also allowed the weaker artists to have a smaller asset list that allowed them to have time to grow and develop.
Vertical Slice Production
For the overall production we tried to aim to have a small scope, highly polished environment that offered itself to the team members to produce fewer higher quality assets that allowed them to take time and learn the processes that we had asked of them.
The environment was created and defined as a small introduction level the game, where the player would assassinate a member of the enemy organization and seize the stronghold and its town to create a hub world for the player to have as their base. This environment was to start small and dilapidated and show progression through the game with trophies, followers of the player and the return of life and beauty to the environment, an evolutionary hub world.
Being a strictly art based team we decided to aim for the highest level of beauty in the environment and characters in order to produce a beauty shot for the vertical slice, taking this concept further the resources are in place to create a kismet sequence showing the level falling back into disrepair and vice versa.
Additions of Personal Role
My role in the games pre-production was also to pre-empt and create documentation in regards to the artists pipeline, through both scale and importing into UDK, and the creation of the initial scope and size of the environment through blockouts and gameplay tests. To which another lead began production of the levels terrain.
As the game progressed through production, I created a selection of assets and oversaw world building responsibilities on a few separate occasions to ensure the direction and scope of the environment, as well as creating and defining the initial boundaries of the level. I also tried to provide critical feedback to a few artists working on the project, and provide a hands on advantage and learning resources.
For the art test each member of the team was given a small asset to create for the environment, this was to ensure redundancy if the asset failed to meet the art test specifications.
For the art test I created a small terracotta pot to house foliage in the compound and to be modular to use throughout the world.
This was then baked down and the diffuse created.
For the diffuse to define my art style for the game I create 3 AO maps, the baked AO from XNormal from the high poly mesh, an AO based on the geometry of low poly version of the asset and an AO in NDO2 from the normal map baked from XNormal. Using these and a cavity map from the Normal in NDO2, I hand painted the additional detail and colour to the diffuse texture.
(For this thread I have also created a Texture Process breakdown in following post)
During this process we also created specular maps; however these were made redundant by the Post Process in the scene and therefore removed for memory optimization.
Stylized Rock
For the scene to meet the stylized world, I worked on defining the style of the rocks for the scene to be used both in the scene and as an example to other artists.
For the rock I went for a defining silhouette that wasn't too identifiable for modularity, and to give it defined cracks and sharp edges, using Dynamesh to protect the integrity of the underlying topology.
The rocks surface detail was created using Trim Dynamic to give it a stylized weather look of having layers to its overall surface.
However the rock would have been a lengthy production cycle, this meant that it was unsuitable for the short production cycle and then was removed from the final scene due to a clash with the procedurally generated rocks.
Lantern
For the lighting of the scene to meet the traditional Japanese style the environment was aimed towards, I created a modular Japanese lantern.
At first I attempted to sculpt the lantern, but this produced a unique lantern that would have been spotted in the scene for its repetition.
For the lantern I created a mesh in 3DS Max, and created the Normal map from scratch in NDO2. Through its normal map creation tools, once I had created the overall normal map for the cage and its metallic parts, I generated a normal map from a tileable paper texture (only the normal map) and overlaid my own normal on top and baked the AOs and Cavity to create the texture.
Taking this into Unreal, I added a transmission mask to allow a point light to be placed inside the mesh and sub-surface scatter the light from within using a radial mask in the green channel and removing the metallic cage through a mask in the red channel.
Using this mask I also created an emissive mask to further accentuate the radial glow and create a subtle glow on the top metallic holders of the mesh, as it also used emissive for static lighting.
Treasure Chest
For this asset I looked into stylized treasure chests, the abilities of Japanese carpenters of the time and their materials. Taking this information I defined a base mesh in 3DS Max with a strong silhouette but not too identifiable features to allow for the player to avoid seeing its repetition in the level.
Taking the base mesh into ZBrush I began to sculpt the mesh through a series of Sub Tools. For this mesh I create all the wood from scratch in ZBrush using morph targets, using this saved morph target I used layers of adding and subtracting Clay Build Up brush to define the detail and age of the wood, Mallet Fast for knots and further definition and then the Orb Crack brush for a final pass of definition, scratches and cracks in the wood. This was all over detailed and very unattractive, but using the Morph brush I was able to scale the wood definition through blending the morph target information, this was an extremely useful tool because I could both add and subtract detail in a smooth and defined manner unlike using Smooth or Dynamesh to merge these details into the sculpt. It also allowed for a complete reset of the mesh to its clean state by deleting the stored morph targets.
This was then baked independently and assembled in 3DS Max, this allowed for repeatable sections of wood to be mirrored to complete the chest, to preserve texture resolution from the diffuse by sharing UV space.
In review of the creation of the chest, when I create an asset I always try and imagine the construction, assembly and use of the object in the real world to define its creation, especially in the base mesh of a sculpt. However in this mesh using FFD to define and silhouette and ensure the asset was ready for the production schedule, I found that I had missed an opportunity in the metal casing of the chest to divide it in a manner thats more believable and allowed for better seams in the UVs.
I also possibly could have devoted more time resources to accentuate its hero piece aspect, as this chest was a more modular asset, another more ornate version could be possible as this was a fantastic learning and fun asset to create.
To create a detailed trunk for the cherry blossom trees and other trees in the scene I created this tree mesh. It was created using ZSpheres in ZBrush to define a silhouette from each side of the mesh to create a unique tree from each angle and depending on foliage mesh applied.
In ZB using the Clay Build-up I was able to add defining flow to the mesh in its bark and simulated the growth and stretching of the bark during its growth sort of in the similar manner to stretching skin in humans.
The tree was then retopologised and brought to 3DS Max, using Max I done a quick unwrap of the mesh and rendered an AO map for the mesh, using this map in UV Channel 1 I was able to open a new UV Channel and create a new unwrap placing the seams in the dark areas and the cracks of the AO map to avoid seam issues in the final diffuse. I then placed this unwrap into the default UV Channel and baked the High Poly information.
I also adapted the Texel density to decrease as the mesh moved upwards, as it was either hidden from foliage or could not be seen in the player camera, dedicating the most texture resolution to the main trunk of the tree.
Texture Process / Personal Art Style Definition & Basic Overview of Asset Creation
To define an art style especially for a team of individuals that share a vast range of abilities, especially in sculpting and high poly modelling and generating both the normal information and the other maps associated with these workflows was a challenging task, especially in keeping to create and define a unique style.
During the project I used the following texture process; this also covers areas of my own asset creation workflows. For this breakdown I will focus upon the treasure chest asset.
To produce the treasure chest I created a base mesh in 3DS Max, using the above workflow I created a basic geometric shape outlining the dimensions of the asset, taking this further I further added definition to the geometry to further define the object as a chest. Using FFD modifiers in Max, I began to adapt and add silhouette to the chest, adding features such as the curvature, the base legs and the arch which was added to blend the asset in with the architecture of the level, taking influence from the Tori Gates and the Roof assets.
Before I took this into ZBrush I defined the chest as a collection of separate meshes with basic UV data to allow ZBrush to further divide the chest through SubTools and Polygroups.
Once the sculpt was surface detail complete I took the chest out as separate mesh exports through the separation of the SubTools. I retopologised the assets and assembled the chest back in 3DS Max as seen below.
After assembling the low poly chest in Max, this was achieved as all the assets had retained the original origin pivot point placement from the initial export of the base mesh, I do a quick unwrap as seen in the left hand side of the image and Render to Texture a basic Ambient Occlusion map and place this as a material on the mesh. Adding a new Unwrap modifier I further adapt the UVs, unwrapping the assets to the AO map allows you to further hide seams in the shadows of the ambient occlusion the assets geometry creates. For this assets there are a few tweaks to where the seams are taken for the Pelt / Peel on the holding metal frame. I then Render to Texture another AO map from Max, explained further in the following image.
For the texture process the Art Style of the game explores the use of the High Poly assets baked maps in the creation of detail for the asset in the final game ready state. This uses a selection of baked information as seen above as a selection of various AO maps that were used to create the definition of detail for the chests final Diffuse Map.
From left to right the AO baked is a selection of the AO baked from XNormal, which produces both a basic Ambient Occlusion of the geometry and the surface detail created in the High Poly sculpt, the next AO is the previously render AO map from Max that creates an overall AO for the geometry of the low poly asset to which the Diffuse is applied, and finally this AO is taken from NDO2, taking fine shadow and very little medium shadow from the Normal maps information and generated through NDO2s Ambient Occlusion pre-set. The fourth image is a collection of the cavity maps generated from XNormal and NDO2.
The central image is a collection of the Ambient Occlusion maps compiled in Photoshop, with the Max AO having a lower opacity. The Max AO is also useful in Photoshop to quickly select areas for Max ifs it AO is too overbearing on the asset.
The image above shows a basic compilation of the following image, a GIF run-through of the texture process taken from layers in the Photoshop file used to create the Diffuse. From left to right down the screen shows the process of the chests texture creation, further explained below the GIF.
However I would like to take the opportunity to discuss the basic brush setting I had in place throughout the generation of the hand painted aspect of the textures for all of the assets. This brush has both a tip modification to create a natural brush tip similar to a marker or brush stroke, with slight shape dynamics applied. The Colour Dynamics placed on the brush allows easier selection of colour variation in the hand painted process, adding different Hues to the selected colour from the palette and variations in the brushs saturation, brightness and purity. This provides a range of tones to each time the brush is applied to the canvas, although it adds an aspect of repeated strokes and undo stroke to the workflow, its range of colours allows for a faster overall painting within the layers on the canvas. It is also important to further change and refine the chosen colour of the palette to add further ranges of colour; otherwise the final image becomes flat with a little range of tonal value.
The above GIF displays the 8 overall stages of creating the Diffuse Map for the Chest, with the first displaying the base colour of the chest, an addition of two base colours a dark oaky brown, with a lighter red wooden brown colour in a layer above and using the lighten blend mode with a midway opacity change. The next stage was adding further dark tones to the wood in areas where the chest would face a lot of surface wear across the top and front side of the chest around the locking mechanism and frame of which would be gripped to open the chest.
Adding a range of colourful values to accentuate both the highlights of the wood, the fresh scratches and areas of little wear to wood was placed in two layers with the same brush strokes, one using a low opacity Colour Dodge blend mode and another with no blend mode and a higher opacity to soften the brightness of the colour dodged layer. The next stage was adding further definition to the gaps between the planks, adding darker shadows and more colour variation to the more raised areas of the wood.
The next range of images show the creation of the metallic part of the chest, for the overall composition of the chest the wood was created to be lighter with more colour information, whilst the metallic areas of the frame, arch, hinges and locking hinge was to be a more deformed and worn impression. This meant that the range of tones in the metal was to be small, with more work on defining the darkening of the metal, whilst retaining definition. Using a slight bright blue colour for the base colour, a selection of the metallic parts from the NDO2 AO map was dropped on an above layer with Exclusion blend mode applied matte-ing the tones of the metal to allow for further layers of dark tones and lightening brush strokes to be applied to the metal areas of the diffuse, the final two images showing the addition of dark tones and the lightening tone pass.
Texture Process in Review
High Poly information is crucial, so sculpt must receive multiple passes for definition and surface detail.
The retopologised asset is taken to Max with basic AO baked and applied; the seams for the final UV co-ordinates are refined to ensure seams are easily hidden both in shadows and areas that allow for natural seams. With an finalised version of the UVs another AO is baked from Max.
After the High Poly information is baked, in this case via XNormal, there are 3 maps created, an AO, Normal and Cavity.
In Photoshop using NDO2 another Cavity and AO is created from the baked Normal Map.
In Photoshop the Max AO, XNormal AO, NDO2 AO is complied with both NDO2 Cavity and XNormal Cavity overlaid.
Using base colours and the complied baked maps information the texture is created in layers under the AO/Cavity collection of Maps.
A specular map is not created for the purposes of this art style as the Post Process in UDK renders them redundant.
Another useful step in the creation of this art style is a real time texturing process involving the Marmoset Toolbag, displaying the asset, the normal map and an updated version of the Diffuse PSD, which it automatically updates after each save in Photoshop.
Thank You
Thanks for looking over the previous posts; I would love to receive further feedback on the final delivery level, my own assets or any other aspects of this somewhat post mortem of USO. I will also be posting a link to this thread in the groups Facebook group which we used throughout development so they too can see any feedback.
Really digging that character and this style in general. Being a big BL1 fan, i really like the texturing on the character. Very apparent you drew inspiration from GBX in a good way of course. Doesn't appear to be a rip off or anything. With the size of the eyes, The color of the clothing, and "Quality" of the overall being (not all dirty and shit).
Really looking sharp. Good work! Can't wait to see some more.
Below is an image of the Ninja Character for the game by SA_22, it is linked to his latest WAYWO thread post. I also believe he is making another texture pass on the character, so check his blog as well!
In Game Shots
i may have played with the post pro a bit to much and added 1 or 2 many lights when taking these :poly142: :poly136:
Weapons
High
Low (AO+Normals)
like Ciaran said character and the weapons are sitting at around 90% done right now.. will be finishing her and her pointy things in the next week or so hopefully.
also still waiting on the rig to come through working properly hence the same pose everywhere
This is wicked man I'm not usually into stylized stuff, But this has some serious flavor. Can't say what it is, But i can say i love it! Really nice subtle, Modest highpolies(more pointed at the weapons). I assume the weapons were sub-d modeled than touched a bit in zbrush?
lookin forward to seeing more ^^ Just cause of the style, I imagine a variable melee weapon system for the primary weapons. Would be so cool to have Grip, Cross-Guard, Blade, and maybe some kind of "Gem" attachment. Anyway. Awesome stuff guys.
This is wicked man I'm not usually into stylized stuff, But this has some serious flavor. Can't say what it is, But i can say i love it! Really nice subtle, Modest highpolies(more pointed at the weapons). I assume the weapons were sub-d modeled than touched a bit in zbrush?
thx again buddy!.. yea pretty much how i made the weapons :poly142:
Really nice stuff, great colors , love the first shot
Your ground is too blurry tho, thats a little turnoff, and your watermarks make my eyes hurt, especially on this quantity , they really hurt the images. Theyre way too big, and the contrast is insane.
I'm in my third year of a HND in an associated University with Teesside, ESAT in Valencia, Spain. Are you doing A BA or a HND?
How many people did your team had?
Did you collaborate with any programmer?
How many time have you've been working into this project?
How it was the experience?
I'm in my third year of a HND in an associated University with Teesside, ESAT in Valencia, Spain. Are you doing A BA or a HND?
How many people did your team had?
Did you collaborate with any programmer?
How many time have you've been working into this project?
How it was the experience?
Thanks and cheers! Love this amazing work.
this project was for a master's course
a team of 9 split into 2 character artist and 7 environment artists
nope no programmers...
from start to finish we had 12 weeks... but that's with all of the pre-production, paper work presentations etc... so i'd say around 6 or 7 weeks of work
it was hell! and alot of hard work.... but because of the people on the team it was also fun as hell to work on!
@ Shrike : Thx!....yea i know what you mean about the watermarks... was kind of a last minute thing for the final presentation, didn't have time to make and get everyone to use a pretty template.
@ Silkroadgame: thx man! yea the rocks were a quick procedural max job because of the time constraints
Replies
USO Overview
USO (Japanese for Lie/s) was an art showcase Vertical Slice for the group project module of Teesside Universitys Masters Computer Games Art course. The production ran over the course of 12 weeks, from concept to final delivery of which is shown in this post.
USO was an art showcase of an introductory level of the game concept we created, the level itself was produced inside the Unreal Development Kit (UDK) and was to provide a 3rd person action adventure game with a heavy focus on stealth, through light and shadows and player choice to conclude the level in a manner that offered the player different routes and moral choices.
Lead Role
Although there were no Leads initially picked at the beginning of the project, two others and I fell into lead positions across multiple disciplines with a Lead Character Artist and Creative Direction from SA_22 and myself and another picking up Lead Environment, World Building and Production roles.
We took the module aims and its final product expectation and warped it to create a set of our own learning outcomes for the team whilst trying to meet the aim of producing a vertical slice for the final product. These were to assess and grow our teams artistic and technical abilities to offer them the opportunity to learn new production pipelines and tools in an environment where there was a range of skills and knowledge in order to overcome problems, especially the common problems usually associated with tools such as ZB, XNormal and Marmoset.
Art Style and Art Testing
To define the art style of the game we grouped together to gather reference and workflows that existing, especially in AAA game IPs that use the Unreal Engine such as Borderlands 2 (2k Gearbox) and Dishonoured (Bethesda Arkane Studios), both released in the holiday lineup of 2012.
With these references we defined a style guide for the team and set an art test for the team. The art test was a test of the levels of abilities in the team in terms of High Poly sculpting workflows and to allow other team members to contribute to the definition of the art style. This was a major task in terms of creating a cohesive style for the environment and defying the odds many members of the team were able to create an art style that was cohesive with others work.
Using the art test allowed us to identify team members that were struggling with this workflow and provided critical feedback and learning resources. Taking this information we created an asset list that allowed members of the team to play to their strengths, but also allowed the weaker artists to have a smaller asset list that allowed them to have time to grow and develop.
Vertical Slice Production
For the overall production we tried to aim to have a small scope, highly polished environment that offered itself to the team members to produce fewer higher quality assets that allowed them to take time and learn the processes that we had asked of them.
The environment was created and defined as a small introduction level the game, where the player would assassinate a member of the enemy organization and seize the stronghold and its town to create a hub world for the player to have as their base. This environment was to start small and dilapidated and show progression through the game with trophies, followers of the player and the return of life and beauty to the environment, an evolutionary hub world.
Being a strictly art based team we decided to aim for the highest level of beauty in the environment and characters in order to produce a beauty shot for the vertical slice, taking this concept further the resources are in place to create a kismet sequence showing the level falling back into disrepair and vice versa.
Additions of Personal Role
My role in the games pre-production was also to pre-empt and create documentation in regards to the artists pipeline, through both scale and importing into UDK, and the creation of the initial scope and size of the environment through blockouts and gameplay tests. To which another lead began production of the levels terrain.
As the game progressed through production, I created a selection of assets and oversaw world building responsibilities on a few separate occasions to ensure the direction and scope of the environment, as well as creating and defining the initial boundaries of the level. I also tried to provide critical feedback to a few artists working on the project, and provide a hands on advantage and learning resources.
Personal Art Test
For the art test each member of the team was given a small asset to create for the environment, this was to ensure redundancy if the asset failed to meet the art test specifications.
For the art test I created a small terracotta pot to house foliage in the compound and to be modular to use throughout the world.
This was then baked down and the diffuse created.
For the diffuse to define my art style for the game I create 3 AO maps, the baked AO from XNormal from the high poly mesh, an AO based on the geometry of low poly version of the asset and an AO in NDO2 from the normal map baked from XNormal. Using these and a cavity map from the Normal in NDO2, I hand painted the additional detail and colour to the diffuse texture.
(For this thread I have also created a Texture Process breakdown in following post)
During this process we also created specular maps; however these were made redundant by the Post Process in the scene and therefore removed for memory optimization.
Stylized Rock
For the scene to meet the stylized world, I worked on defining the style of the rocks for the scene to be used both in the scene and as an example to other artists.
For the rock I went for a defining silhouette that wasn't too identifiable for modularity, and to give it defined cracks and sharp edges, using Dynamesh to protect the integrity of the underlying topology.
The rocks surface detail was created using Trim Dynamic to give it a stylized weather look of having layers to its overall surface.
However the rock would have been a lengthy production cycle, this meant that it was unsuitable for the short production cycle and then was removed from the final scene due to a clash with the procedurally generated rocks.
Lantern
For the lighting of the scene to meet the traditional Japanese style the environment was aimed towards, I created a modular Japanese lantern.
At first I attempted to sculpt the lantern, but this produced a unique lantern that would have been spotted in the scene for its repetition.
For the lantern I created a mesh in 3DS Max, and created the Normal map from scratch in NDO2. Through its normal map creation tools, once I had created the overall normal map for the cage and its metallic parts, I generated a normal map from a tileable paper texture (only the normal map) and overlaid my own normal on top and baked the AOs and Cavity to create the texture.
Taking this into Unreal, I added a transmission mask to allow a point light to be placed inside the mesh and sub-surface scatter the light from within using a radial mask in the green channel and removing the metallic cage through a mask in the red channel.
Using this mask I also created an emissive mask to further accentuate the radial glow and create a subtle glow on the top metallic holders of the mesh, as it also used emissive for static lighting.
Treasure Chest
For this asset I looked into stylized treasure chests, the abilities of Japanese carpenters of the time and their materials. Taking this information I defined a base mesh in 3DS Max with a strong silhouette but not too identifiable features to allow for the player to avoid seeing its repetition in the level.
Taking the base mesh into ZBrush I began to sculpt the mesh through a series of Sub Tools. For this mesh I create all the wood from scratch in ZBrush using morph targets, using this saved morph target I used layers of adding and subtracting Clay Build Up brush to define the detail and age of the wood, Mallet Fast for knots and further definition and then the Orb Crack brush for a final pass of definition, scratches and cracks in the wood. This was all over detailed and very unattractive, but using the Morph brush I was able to scale the wood definition through blending the morph target information, this was an extremely useful tool because I could both add and subtract detail in a smooth and defined manner unlike using Smooth or Dynamesh to merge these details into the sculpt. It also allowed for a complete reset of the mesh to its clean state by deleting the stored morph targets.
This was then baked independently and assembled in 3DS Max, this allowed for repeatable sections of wood to be mirrored to complete the chest, to preserve texture resolution from the diffuse by sharing UV space.
In review of the creation of the chest, when I create an asset I always try and imagine the construction, assembly and use of the object in the real world to define its creation, especially in the base mesh of a sculpt. However in this mesh using FFD to define and silhouette and ensure the asset was ready for the production schedule, I found that I had missed an opportunity in the metal casing of the chest to divide it in a manner thats more believable and allowed for better seams in the UVs.
I also possibly could have devoted more time resources to accentuate its hero piece aspect, as this chest was a more modular asset, another more ornate version could be possible as this was a fantastic learning and fun asset to create.
Tree Trunk
To create a detailed trunk for the cherry blossom trees and other trees in the scene I created this tree mesh. It was created using ZSpheres in ZBrush to define a silhouette from each side of the mesh to create a unique tree from each angle and depending on foliage mesh applied.
In ZB using the Clay Build-up I was able to add defining flow to the mesh in its bark and simulated the growth and stretching of the bark during its growth sort of in the similar manner to stretching skin in humans.
The tree was then retopologised and brought to 3DS Max, using Max I done a quick unwrap of the mesh and rendered an AO map for the mesh, using this map in UV Channel 1 I was able to open a new UV Channel and create a new unwrap placing the seams in the dark areas and the cracks of the AO map to avoid seam issues in the final diffuse. I then placed this unwrap into the default UV Channel and baked the High Poly information.
I also adapted the Texel density to decrease as the mesh moved upwards, as it was either hidden from foliage or could not be seen in the player camera, dedicating the most texture resolution to the main trunk of the tree.
To define an art style especially for a team of individuals that share a vast range of abilities, especially in sculpting and high poly modelling and generating both the normal information and the other maps associated with these workflows was a challenging task, especially in keeping to create and define a unique style.
During the project I used the following texture process; this also covers areas of my own asset creation workflows. For this breakdown I will focus upon the treasure chest asset.
To produce the treasure chest I created a base mesh in 3DS Max, using the above workflow I created a basic geometric shape outlining the dimensions of the asset, taking this further I further added definition to the geometry to further define the object as a chest. Using FFD modifiers in Max, I began to adapt and add silhouette to the chest, adding features such as the curvature, the base legs and the arch which was added to blend the asset in with the architecture of the level, taking influence from the Tori Gates and the Roof assets.
Before I took this into ZBrush I defined the chest as a collection of separate meshes with basic UV data to allow ZBrush to further divide the chest through SubTools and Polygroups.
Once the sculpt was surface detail complete I took the chest out as separate mesh exports through the separation of the SubTools. I retopologised the assets and assembled the chest back in 3DS Max as seen below.
After assembling the low poly chest in Max, this was achieved as all the assets had retained the original origin pivot point placement from the initial export of the base mesh, I do a quick unwrap as seen in the left hand side of the image and Render to Texture a basic Ambient Occlusion map and place this as a material on the mesh. Adding a new Unwrap modifier I further adapt the UVs, unwrapping the assets to the AO map allows you to further hide seams in the shadows of the ambient occlusion the assets geometry creates. For this assets there are a few tweaks to where the seams are taken for the Pelt / Peel on the holding metal frame. I then Render to Texture another AO map from Max, explained further in the following image.
For the texture process the Art Style of the game explores the use of the High Poly assets baked maps in the creation of detail for the asset in the final game ready state. This uses a selection of baked information as seen above as a selection of various AO maps that were used to create the definition of detail for the chests final Diffuse Map.
From left to right the AO baked is a selection of the AO baked from XNormal, which produces both a basic Ambient Occlusion of the geometry and the surface detail created in the High Poly sculpt, the next AO is the previously render AO map from Max that creates an overall AO for the geometry of the low poly asset to which the Diffuse is applied, and finally this AO is taken from NDO2, taking fine shadow and very little medium shadow from the Normal maps information and generated through NDO2s Ambient Occlusion pre-set. The fourth image is a collection of the cavity maps generated from XNormal and NDO2.
The central image is a collection of the Ambient Occlusion maps compiled in Photoshop, with the Max AO having a lower opacity. The Max AO is also useful in Photoshop to quickly select areas for Max ifs it AO is too overbearing on the asset.
The image above shows a basic compilation of the following image, a GIF run-through of the texture process taken from layers in the Photoshop file used to create the Diffuse. From left to right down the screen shows the process of the chests texture creation, further explained below the GIF.
However I would like to take the opportunity to discuss the basic brush setting I had in place throughout the generation of the hand painted aspect of the textures for all of the assets. This brush has both a tip modification to create a natural brush tip similar to a marker or brush stroke, with slight shape dynamics applied. The Colour Dynamics placed on the brush allows easier selection of colour variation in the hand painted process, adding different Hues to the selected colour from the palette and variations in the brushs saturation, brightness and purity. This provides a range of tones to each time the brush is applied to the canvas, although it adds an aspect of repeated strokes and undo stroke to the workflow, its range of colours allows for a faster overall painting within the layers on the canvas. It is also important to further change and refine the chosen colour of the palette to add further ranges of colour; otherwise the final image becomes flat with a little range of tonal value.
The above GIF displays the 8 overall stages of creating the Diffuse Map for the Chest, with the first displaying the base colour of the chest, an addition of two base colours a dark oaky brown, with a lighter red wooden brown colour in a layer above and using the lighten blend mode with a midway opacity change. The next stage was adding further dark tones to the wood in areas where the chest would face a lot of surface wear across the top and front side of the chest around the locking mechanism and frame of which would be gripped to open the chest.
Adding a range of colourful values to accentuate both the highlights of the wood, the fresh scratches and areas of little wear to wood was placed in two layers with the same brush strokes, one using a low opacity Colour Dodge blend mode and another with no blend mode and a higher opacity to soften the brightness of the colour dodged layer. The next stage was adding further definition to the gaps between the planks, adding darker shadows and more colour variation to the more raised areas of the wood.
The next range of images show the creation of the metallic part of the chest, for the overall composition of the chest the wood was created to be lighter with more colour information, whilst the metallic areas of the frame, arch, hinges and locking hinge was to be a more deformed and worn impression. This meant that the range of tones in the metal was to be small, with more work on defining the darkening of the metal, whilst retaining definition. Using a slight bright blue colour for the base colour, a selection of the metallic parts from the NDO2 AO map was dropped on an above layer with Exclusion blend mode applied matte-ing the tones of the metal to allow for further layers of dark tones and lightening brush strokes to be applied to the metal areas of the diffuse, the final two images showing the addition of dark tones and the lightening tone pass.
Texture Process in Review
Thank You
Thanks for looking over the previous posts; I would love to receive further feedback on the final delivery level, my own assets or any other aspects of this somewhat post mortem of USO. I will also be posting a link to this thread in the groups Facebook group which we used throughout development so they too can see any feedback.
Really looking sharp. Good work! Can't wait to see some more.
Below is an image of the Ninja Character for the game by SA_22, it is linked to his latest WAYWO thread post. I also believe he is making another texture pass on the character, so check his blog as well!
Character Art
ok so 'Kuno' is short for 'kunoichi' which means... ermmm.... female ninja :poly122:
Concept
Sculpt
Game Mesh
just over 19k without accessories/weapons, 25k with all of them
2048 diff, spec and normal map
i may have played with the post pro a bit to much and added 1 or 2 many lights when taking these :poly142: :poly136:
Weapons
High
Low (AO+Normals)
like Ciaran said character and the weapons are sitting at around 90% done right now.. will be finishing her and her pointy things in the next week or so hopefully.
also still waiting on the rig to come through working properly hence the same pose everywhere
@ s620ex1: thx dude!! :poly124:
lookin forward to seeing more ^^ Just cause of the style, I imagine a variable melee weapon system for the primary weapons. Would be so cool to have Grip, Cross-Guard, Blade, and maybe some kind of "Gem" attachment. Anyway. Awesome stuff guys.
thx again buddy!.. yea pretty much how i made the weapons :poly142:
Your ground is too blurry tho, thats a little turnoff, and your watermarks make my eyes hurt, especially on this quantity , they really hurt the images. Theyre way too big, and the contrast is insane.
But I personally don't like those stones,they makes the scene looked little empty.
I'm in my third year of a HND in an associated University with Teesside, ESAT in Valencia, Spain. Are you doing A BA or a HND?
How many people did your team had?
Did you collaborate with any programmer?
How many time have you've been working into this project?
How it was the experience?
Thanks and cheers! Love this amazing work.
Nailed a good style.
this project was for a master's course
a team of 9 split into 2 character artist and 7 environment artists
nope no programmers...
from start to finish we had 12 weeks... but that's with all of the pre-production, paper work presentations etc... so i'd say around 6 or 7 weeks of work
it was hell! and alot of hard work.... but because of the people on the team it was also fun as hell to work on!
@ Shrike : Thx!....yea i know what you mean about the watermarks... was kind of a last minute thing for the final presentation, didn't have time to make and get everyone to use a pretty template.
@ Silkroadgame: thx man! yea the rocks were a quick procedural max job because of the time constraints
@CordellC & Torch: :poly106: