Spring 2014 Week 8

Hey viewers!  So for this week, I spent a lot of time going back and re-texturing the cave terrain pieces, and also trying to get all the other environment pieces textured.  I also bought the domain for our game's website and started on the web layout for it, but not officially finished with it yet, so once that is done, I will be posting it.  I really want to post the terrain texture tutorial, but I will probably have to do a new one since the one I created before probably had everything done in one layer, so I wouldn't have steps to show.

I also worked with Khoa this week to get dialogue working.  Khoa is a tech artist working with another team project in my senior studio class.  Since we don't really have a tech artist, I approached him with the need of help because I saw that he was able to place in dialogue for his game, which is very essential for our game also.

Anyways, below are some of the textures that I worked on.  I plan to go back and fix some of the textures for the previous levels and also our upcoming Beach 2 level to make it all fit how nice and detailed the textures have become.

Spring 2014 Week 7

So for this week, I worked on texturing the terrain.  This is actually my first time doing a decent job at creating a hand painting tillable texture without using photo textures.  So everything from shadow to highlights are hand painted.  I then took the tillable texture and would use it as a mapped brush to paint onto the mesh that I needed to paint.

Before I start texturing, I of course have to keep a good naming convention so I know with all the same looking texture, which mesh it belongs to.  So everytime, naming plays a huge role.

Here is the tillable texture I painted on Photoshop.  I wanted a rough rock cut effect, but then also include some of the speckles that came from Nicole's Illustration of the cave.

 Here are the outside pieces of the cave painted out.  I gave it a brighter gradient in the front faces of the mesh, while making it darker on the sides to fake some shadow.

Here is the actual walking platform textured out.  I am super happy with how it came out, so I know what I am also capable of doing for the beach terrain now since I want to go back to it and fix it.

Spring 2014 Week 6

So for this week, I tried to go back to our asset list and finish modeling a lot of the assets that we needed to finish.  Low and behold there were assets that needed to be modeled that didn't end up on the asset list.  So I had to go in and make those!  They were definitely fun to model out :)!

These are the different version of doors for the beginning of the level and also the end of the level.  The beginning of the level is a closed zipper meaning the place before him is done.  The opening door is for the end of the level when all 3 memory shards are collected.

Here is the cave memory shard!

The door and also puzzle mechanic model are almost done!  I need to add chains to the fence, which I found a tutorial on how to do that in a way of efficiently saving polys.

I went back and I created more pieces for the terrain that will fill up the background, and also worked in a procedural texture onto the stone to see if the mesh becomes an obstruction, but it actually blends in well.  This was for reference for me to see if the way I was painting the textures would work or not before I start.

Spring 2014 Week 5

Out 2 Launch was such a success and finally over!  This means I can focus on purely on school, internship, and also a side project I am working on with Crystal Fish, which makes me really happy.  So after Out 2 Launch, I was really inspired to put more time and effort into the work I was already creating.  This meant that some models that felt like they weren't capturing the form or shape as best, I went in and also zbrushed them in high poly detail, then lowered the divisions so I could see a better silhouette.

My Out 2 Launch booth!  I have one of the islands from beach currently displayed!  My website www.tianschen.com also has more screenshots and other renders of certain props that are from the game. 

This was the high poly version of a plant that has an eyeball inside of it.  I felt like doing the zbrush version really helped define more of the shape of the model, while also giving me some more practice with zbrush brushes.

This is funguy, a statue of a creature that sits in this opening of the cave.  The thing about him is that I had to spend a lot of time on was defining his hands and head which meant treating him more like he is a character model rather than just a prop.

This is Mr. Saucyballs who is this wasp eye creature that flies around.  The left version was started by Olsen, but then I helped out defining more of his silhouette and shape to fit the concept art better.  We did not have an increase in polygons as much, but it definitely did help bring out more of the creature's shape.

Spring 2014 Week 4

So one thing I worked on this week is the bounce shroom.  I will continue to finish my models this weekend.  I have been a little behind because of getting prepared for O2L, so a lot of designing for business cards, polishing resume, website, and also getting renders and content shots done for my website.

For the bounce shroom, there were some details on the shroom that I had a little trouble modeling out on maya.  It was the bulging blobs that were on the bottom, which required some high poly to make it stand out. So what I did was take it to zbrush and tried to sculpt some of those bulges out and then lower the poly to get a more exact shape.  I had to clean up some of the edges and remove unnecessary edges that just weren't changing the overall shape of the mesh.

So this is the mesh taken into zbrush and inflating the bottom parts of the mesh to get some of the bulges to show up

Here is the result after the mesh had its polys reduced and also some edges manually removed to optimize the model accordingly.  I will have to use this process also when modeling out the creepers that Brice concepted out.

Spring 2014 Week 3

Hey guys!  so for this week, I had to tweak a lot of content within unity while also doing some models.  I will post the finished models up for next week's post.  The reason I spent a lot of my time working on polishing some of the last level's looks is because the team wanted to submit our game to SCAD's 2014 Entelechy Competition for 3D Game and level category.  I have been decorating the levels since the beginning, so a lot of the tweaking and placements needed my attention that weren't finished.

One of the biggest things I  noticed with the monster was that having it as a black fuzzy ball was really hard to read and see on the map, so I added some hue to it and made it dark reddish.  This helped more visually with locating the monster, but it still needs some work and tweaking that it will stand out more, but not be an eyesore in the environment.

For this part of the level, I added more planks of broken wood to the sides of the level and also placing down some bushes.  This really helped break up the spots that felt too empty or bare in the environment.  Also, the wooden planks help narrate the broken boat.

I placed in the rock head that is on the very right, and also some bushes around the memory shard 1.  Through playtests, I noticed how that area didn't seem to get a lot of attention, so I placed more assets around it to make it seem more fit to the game's environment.

One of the biggest things about level 3 was that the lighting was off, so I had to change the lighting to a prefab light that I created for the first level, so it can stay consistent for all levels in the beach environment.  I also went in and placed more assets around the platforms that also felt bare.  For beta, we never had a good chance to go back and add some decoration to the level because I didn't have as much time.  Also, we had a unity version control update that wiped some of my work, so I had go back and place things like rocks and grass in it again.

There was an issue with the platform on the right that  bulged out with a hard edge and then was connected to another platform that didn't have a hard edge.  I had to cover it up by using the fish head and also some assets to distract the player.  I feel like this was a good hide without having to spend too much work fixing things.  Also, dressing up the level with more rocks and wilted grass makes the environment seem more to life!

Spring Week 2

So for the first week, I had a lot of organizing to do with setting up the backlog and getting everyone to start on their parts of the project.  In the meanwhile, I had to go back and fix the texture and also the mesh a little bit for the overall terrain.  I am glad I was able to go back and fix this up so it matches the first level.  I added some sand waves to give the terrain more variety.  More rocks were added to the side of the terrain so it would also give it more variety.  In the meanwhile, we have our Facebook page set up, which everyone should visit! Team Dissonance Facebook Page

Winter 2014 Week 10

Wow!  I am really happy with the progress of our Beta build!  Some of the things that we need to work on is more mechanical and game play with how Lumi is used as a sidekick for Shim, but overall, we are definitely headed to a good start for our game development of Dissonance.  One of the things that I worked on this week was terrain.  Again, terrain was something that I had a challenge with at the beginning because I hadn't used to pipeline before.  My second attempt at creating the Terrain was much simpler and didn't take as much time because I knew what I was doing.  Overall here is chapter 2 where my progress of the level of chapter 2 is laid out with assets.  I went in and had to tweak a lot of lighting to make some of the assets stand out because of the whole concept of real "darkness" would get rid of the beautiful art that the group created.  Here I have used red light as a contrast and also red usually signifies danger.  I could tone down the light a little bit, but for now, this is so you can see the models themselves in the game.  The camera is not the game camera, but instead just a zoomed in camera in the unity edit mode.

I was able to go back into Unity and really get hands on into the Unity pipeline again.  This became really helpful when Alex didn't have time to go in and implement prefabs and other assets into the scene.

Winter 2014 Week 9

With finals coming up, a lot of the production has been trying its best to fill the beta build with it's most content as possible.  Here are the props that I textured.  Some of the minor props were created by Olsen and then I textured.  The theme of the second chapter of the beach level is bones, so we went with fish bones and wood sculptures of sea creatures.   One of the things that we are missing from chapter 2 is the terrain, which I will be able to get started this week, but not finish for beta.  Because our map is extending and becoming longer, I have to come up with a documentation of building modular terrain pieces for the level design to use for now and future maps.  Most likely they will have the same mesh, but replaced with different terrain textures so I won't have to keep rebuilding meshes unless it is necessary.  I spent a lot of my time this week going in and cleaning up the Unity Scene.  For my next post, I will be posting about my terrain building process for modular building.  I think this will be something fun and enlightening for me to do because modular building is not the easiest thing to do when working with terrain and structures.

Winter 2014 Week 8

This week was really crazy, so I haven't been fully focused on the new models.  I finished all the models, but they haven't been UVed yet, which is ok because that will take only a couple of hours.  Once I get Alex's chapter 2 level design, I will start making modular terrain pieces that we will be able to use for the platform.  I will be taking this week to fully focus on UV mapping and finishing textures during the weekend.  Even though the asset list is finished, we will have to add so much more puzzle elements that aren't established yet.

Winter 2014 Week 7

For this week, I got most of my models finished, but I will still like to go back and edit/clean up some design choices before UV mapping and then texturing.  Before the play test, I was responsible for decorating the scene with assets.  Mainly this week has been research for me.  I tried to find up some good water shaders for a mesh rather than a planar and they all seemed to be realistic rather than cartoony, so we may have to create our own texture.

Here is an example of the Volcanic Worm Volcano that Brice had in his concept art that I modeled.  This model was interesting in that the worms were made out of boned segments.

Winter 2014 Week 6

So our team has been going through some changes with organization and narration.  We realized that communication was just horrid.  Everyone was at a point where they weren't sure what the other people were doing.  Even though we met up for scrums, half the team wasn't sure what the narration or gameplay was.  This is highly due to not everyone being at meetings, and of course not looking at documents, which can be crucial.  I completed the models and textured the models for chapter 1 after I finished the terrain.  The models are looking awesome!!!  Now we just need to implement
them into the game and fit in light to make them look nice

Winter 2014 Week 5

Wow, am I super excited with what I accomplished this week!  I built a terrain piece using Alex's level design, and it is better than I had imagined!  One of the challenges was that  because we wanted a less blocky modular looking platform, we had to build all the pieces together.  Afterwards, I had to detach each section to be small enough to fit a 1024 texture while showing enough detail.  I had learned this process while interning at Cartoon Network and it has helped tremendously!

So what I have done is created everything into one fbx, but sliced them into different pieces.  I bring them into 3DCoat and UV map them all together.  I set a different channel for each piece so when I do paint, I paint from one piece to another through different texture maps, rather than on one.  This means I will have multiple 1024 texture size.  This made workflow a lot easier, and of course the seams aren't horrible.

I have to pat myself on the back for this one :)!

Winter Week 4

I was able to work on a lot of models this week!  This is by far my favorite part :)  A lot of the texture artists were waiting to get some textures done, so I prioritized their models first and got them UV mapped also.  I have to say, I just love 3D Coat's UV tool!!  It has made UV mapping a lot less of a pain, because with a tight deadline, I don't want to spend an hour or two UV mapping a complicated model..  Anyways, all t he major props have been finished modeling.  All we need to now is to model the platforms and texture those.

When modeling according to concept art, I relied heavily of silhouette of the placement of models so that they would convey the design of the concept artist, but also work well for the view in our 2.5D platforming set up.

I started Spring Internship with Cartoon Network Game Studios!  Winter internship ended so quickly, but I was able to grasp onto a lot of the workflow in the industry and have taken tips and tools that I use now for my 3D workflow.  I am glad to be back with the team, but I will be super busy with this schedule.  A challenge is a challenge, and I accept!

Winter 2014 Week 3

This week, I started working on a lot of models for the game.  Originally, I assumed they would take me a while, but to my surprise, it takes like only half the time than what I assumed it would take for me to complete each model!  While I am working on completing my models this week for Dissonance, I will need to go back and do a concept for the platform pieces we have, because I got word from the level designer that we won't be changing anything on that.

Winter 2014 Week 2

I spent a lot of time working on creating an asset sheet and backlog for this quarter's goals.  Working as both Project Manager and Art Director is kind of overwhelming, because I have to worry about content and documents all at the same time.  This does benefit in my skill of being organized and caught up with the group, but it doesn't allow me to create as much content as I would like because I have to help others organize what they need to do and finish.

This week,  I noticed some of the people were confused with what approach we were going with our beach level.  The level designer didn't specify anything, so I took lead and started placing environment elements around where they need to be.  They might be placed differently later in the level, but for now, we know that they would work with the environment.  I also went in and did a sample lighting for what our environment will be in too, which is a twilight beach scene.