NEXT-GEN Nescot Year 2 Project - "Truck"

At the beginning of year 2 we were tasked with (over the course of the year) creating a car based off of a Hot Wheels vehicle that was provided to each student (different for each person).

I began this task by creating a template for the model in Adobe Illustrator and importing it into Maya. I used this to create the outer template and to help position different segments of the model at the correct placements.

First I created the front bumper, base and wheels, this then allowed me to move onto the main frame and the open pickup part of the truck. This then led to me being able to create over arching parts over the wheels, as wheel-hubs.

Once this was finished I began working on the main frame over the driver's seat and added more detail to the wheel frames and bonnet.

Eventually, when I was happy with the appearance of the car I began quad drawing the car in order to link each of the sections of the car together, as well as fixing any topology errors that were causing issues.

The quad draw was made on the right hand side of the car and was used to create the highest quality model whilst also keeping the model at a lower poly count in order to avoid creating issues down the line.


When I had completed the quad draw, I mirrored the mesh, then combined and bridged the meshes together to create a single car mesh.

Then I used the new mesh to create some minor changes to the front hood. I did this by selecting the faces on top of the hood and moving them outwards to create an extruding surface.


I then selected faces at the front of the hood and moved them outwards to create another external surface to show the small indents and features on the original Hot Wheels vehicle.

Finally I began working on the model's UV mapping in order to add textures. This was relatively easy as the car had many protruding and seperately textured points.

Once UV mapping was out of the way, I began creating textures resembling the same colours and patterns as the original Hot Wheels car. This included creating sticker like flame patterns on the sides, doors and hood, as well as creating metalic glitter-like blue for the over arching colour. I also added a black plastic texture to the pickup truck's back and interior surfaces.

Lastly, I fixed any errors with UV mapping that I had missed. This improved the appearance of the textures that had been placed onto the car, alongside creating a more universal pattern for the blue texture.


In conclusion, I believe that I did well on this assignment due to the close resemblance to the original vehicle and the final outcome of detail on the car. However, if I had more time on the task I would improve the UV mapping further and I would add more detail to the interior rather than just the exterior body panels that are noticeable.

NEXT-GEN Nescot Year 2 - Synoptic Project pipeline

During the last few weeks of Year 2 we were tasked with creating pipelines for the three industries, videogame development, Vfx and 3D animation. I did this by, firstly, creating a list of activities/ steps that are important to the industries, then I colour coded each part to resemble a section of each flowchart (eg: pre-production, production, and post-production).

For my first flowchart I decided to base the Animation industry pipeline on the way my synoptic project team decided to enact on our synoptic project. This meant that it would first start with the creation of a story or series of events set to take place, then it would branch out and lead to character designs and storyboards before carrying onto the next section. Each section was interconnected and arrows were placed to show a steady path of movement and to show what section interconnected with eachother.

For my second set of flowcharts, I decided to segment different flowcharts for each section of production. While this worked well it was time consuming and I later decided to revert towards the older style for the Vfx flowchart. The first flowchart made out of the videogame section was the pre-production phase, starting with the concept idea and ending with prototype models and animatics. I also decided to colour co-ordinate around what function the steps had.

The seccond phase (production) was set up similarly to the previous flowchart with function coloured instead of section. This flowchart began with modeling and ended with the begining/hosting of the application/game (earlier version of the final product).

The Third phase (post-production) showed the setup of servers and initial testing before then moving onto the final product and maintinace of the game. Again, this was set up similarly to the previous two flowcharts.

For my final flowchart, I decided to go back to the original design of my flowcharts and segmented the flowchart by section, this worked well because it lowered the amount of time spent and allowed me to simplify the flowchart more easily. On the other hand, this flowchart is much more clustered than others and could be improved upon by increasing the space between each step.

I believe I did well on this task due to the number of tasks already set, time left to complete it and also due to the setup of each flowchart. However, that being said it is hard to recognise where the flowcharts initially start due to my personal error of forgeting to correctly label the start and end with respective circular symbols.

NEXT-GEN Nescot Year 2 - sound Foley/sound design

For our Synoptic Project, we collected a sound Foley (series of everyday sound effects) for the outdoors effects.

For this we used a mutitude of equipment to collect sound ourselves by creating sounds used within the animation, E.g: twigs breaking, a thump from somthing falling.

The equipment we used included:

• A Zoon recorder for recording the sound effects.

• A shotgun mic used as an extention to the Zoon recorder, used for recording the sound in a higher quality than normal and to maintain a more focused reciving of sound.

• A XLR cable to link the recorder and shotgun mic together.

• A dead cat (yes real name) which is a protective fur ball placed onto a microphone/ recorder in order to prevent background noise such as wind from interupting the sound being recorded.

• And headphones to listen to the sound being recorded.

The sounds were collected by both primary and secondary resources, for example, lots of the sounds were collected by our group recording them around the college grounds; these sounds include (but are not limited to) branches snapping, thuds by obects falling and wind (in and outside the trees).

However, more complex or harder to collect sounds were collected on the internect due to the inaccessability of the sounds at college. These sounds include (but are not limited to): bird noises, a collection of sounds for a play park, contruction site sounds and snow crunching underfoot.

After collecting the sounds we created a collective folder for each of us to go through them and select the best sounds for our project. We then started to work on editing them. For this, we put them in Adobe Audition and started by clearing up the background noise by reducing the noise of segments with less desired sound. This could also be used to get rid of static as well.

Once we removed most of the background noise, we began editing some sounds to be clearer and louder/quieter depending on what was needed to be done. For the bird noises, I collected multiple ones and merged each of them into one sound file in order to have a singular file needed for different scenes, with different bird noises and timings for each required scene.

NEXT-GEN Nescot Year 2 - Small Animatic of Park Concept Art (to show the sounds within the scene)

During year two, we were tasked with creating a very small animatic of one of our concept pieces to showcase the sound that would be used within that scene.

For my animatic I chose my final concept image for the park setting, this allowed me to choose a mix of sounds that consisted of wind in the trees, a set of different bird noises and sounds considered to be found at a play park. I separated the layers of the concept art, in order to make it easier to loop the image, then created a null object to hold the images at the same size. Initially, I intended for each layer to move at different speeds, however, because I didn't have enough time to do so, I instead had the image move as one layer.

I believe that I did well on this task because the ainmatic produced was mainly to showcase the mix of sounds within the scene and the animatic itself was good enough considering the amount of time I had left to finish it.

NEXT-GEN Nescot Year 2 - Final Concept Art (imagined worlds) John Wallin Liberto

During week 7 we were tasked with choosing a concept artist, explaining them and their work before creating a concept art image in a similar style/setting towards the concept artist. I chose the concept artist John Wallin Liberto.

John Wallin Liberto is a  matte painter and concept artist based in Sweden, currently working at OculusVR and he has been working in the games industry since 1999. He has worked on many famous movies and video games such as Halo 4/5, Star-Wars, Pacific-Rim, Harry Potter and many others. He is also known for his work on computer graphics.

John Liberto paints digitally in "Corel Painter" and "Adobe Photoshop" in order to have a mix between the tools on both applications based on the effects that he wants. John Liberto creates intensely detailed images with a feeling of realistic texture due to the tactile surfaces shown.

Unfortunately John Liberto doesn't give much information about himself on his bio, however he had been featured in an interview where he discusses his past further. Unfortunately, this interview has since been removed from his website.

John Liberto has worked on many sci-fi type projects (among others however his most famous concept pieces are his works on Halo 4, Pacific-Rim and Star-Wars and is commonly referred to as a science fiction artist) created with immaculate detail, this allows him to give a large sense of depth and realism to his work.

This sense of depth can be shown in the Pacific-Rim concept art shown to the side; giving a sense of fog and lighting colouration due to the brighter colour across the streams of light and darker colours around where less detail is needed. This draws your eyes towards the robotic body because it not only appears close but it also has the least extreme difference in colour.

I decided to create a futuristic fantasy setting with an element of a dilapidated and mysterious portal alongside a spaceship and a research team.

As reference for the image's layout I took inspiration from one of Liberto's destroyed city environment concepts. I first started by creating the portal, making sure to add lots of detail similar to Liberto's style. Eventually this lead to me being rushed for time and  I moved onto the center island, copying its design of other islands but not directly copying the center island.

After this, I began creating  a background using lines and differentiating shades of colour, in order to give the effect of the sky and the sea using different shades of blue and purple.

Then, I began filling the sky with stars and floating islands in the background. I also used a white outline to show the placements of different objects, characters and stairs.

Once the islands were created, I began working on the stairs by creating a new separate floating island, before copying, re-sizing and re-positioning it to give the effect of a floating staircase.

As this was finished, I decided to add a blue star/sun in the top left by creating three separate layers of different shades of colours, starting with red/orange/yellow the next being purple/dark blue and the final being a light blue.

Next, I created a spaceship (ship) on the right hand side of the image, I settled on a red colour for the ship and added thrusters on the bottom side of the ship, I attempted to make it appear as if the ship was coming into land on one of the farther away islands and added an old metallic appearance for additional detail.

Lastly, I began creating ideas for characters, such as a militant/soldier-like character in uniform; similar to riot police as a form of protection along side a group of scientists and people in small mech suits designed for collecting materials from foreign worlds. Once everything else was finished I began shading. While not entirely consistent, I shaded everything in the scene relative to the sun. On the left side of the scene, however, as I was pressed for time I was unable  to create the shadows of the characters and didn't adequately shade the spaceship as well as I would have liked.

Unfortunately due to me forgetting the task for a select amount of time due to other projects, it didn't show the level of detail that I would have wanted. However I believe that I did well because of the appearance and layout of the floating islands and portal. If I could improve upon this I would have added more detail to everything but the center of the portal, specifically the spaceship and research team.

NEXT-GEN Nescot Year 2 -Thumb-nailing Final Image

During week 6 we were tasked with creating a set of four concept art pieces using existing photos as a basis for the created drawings. I created a multitude of images but decided to use my "park" concept art as my final image, due to the potential improvements that could be added.

I started by adding shading to the leaves and play park equipment to give a further sence of depth, then I began adding (low opasity) trees at the far background of the scene. After this, I began adding clouds for the background sky and adding a few extra leaves above the trees to show the density of the trees.

I believe that my final thumbnailing image is good, however, if I could improve upon this I would fix any misplaced shading and add detail to the river behind the play park.

Pre-production - Synoptic project

The Idea

Our animation is all about the negative effects we are having on nature itself.

we personify nature to better convey emotion throughout our sequence.

Our animation starts with the beginning of an acorns journey through the environment, and progresses with his trip across varying environments.

Until final our protagonist acorn reaches the outskirts of their habitat that we are taking over, where its journey sadly ends.

Storyboard

Story Board animatic (with sound)

Production schedule

Initial Concept work - Character

Our 2nd attempt at concept art for the main character & concept of potential second character, a dog.

Our very first character concept design, made on Photoshop.

A rough sketch of how we imagined the character to look.

Improvement of character art with added detail and a colour pallet.

Developed the dog artwork adding in skeletal joints and refining colours.

Concept art for the big tree which is where the acorn comes from.

Initial Concept work - Environment

For the environment concept art, we all worked on different versions of each scene so that we would have variety of options.

research on the subject & production methods

For research, we looked into rigging. This plays the animation process.

• looking at rigging tutorials on you-tube as well as researching websites such as rigging 101.

• we were able to get a basic understanding of setting up a virtual skeleton that affect the characters joints and they move.

• IK rigging vs FK rigging

Initial assets (3D model tests)

We created models and assets using MAYA in order to test rigging and rendering.

MAYA also allowed us to create different proportioned character models as an example to how they wound look.

We created a drat scene to test lighting using Arnold and to represent where items will be placed in the scene.

We did this by creating a series of rocks, a leaf and acorn; before Then compiling together on a plane with some example tree stumps from Mud-box.

We created rig test by using better modeled version of the acorn's leg, this allowed us to secure each joint and test the capabilities of the rig.