Thursday, November 19, 2015

[WIP] From Puke-worthy to Rock?

Still plugging away at practicing my Zbrush sculpting in my free time when I manage to somehow rip myself off of playing Fallout 4/Star Wars Battlefront!

At work today, Darren Horrocks was nice enough to show me some of his neat little tips & tricks he uses when he approaches rock sculpting, some of the main ones:

  • Define the main large shapes by using the handy 'Clip Curve' brush
  • Breaking up any straight lines and adding a bit of a more organic touch with the 'Crumple' brush + cleaning up a bit after with the 'Trim Smooth Border'
  • Adding a bit of rocky texture by adding Noise through the Noisemaker tool under the Surface tab
  • And to top it all off, revealing that noise selectively either by Masking by Noise + sculpting over it OR creating a Morph Target before applying the noise and masking it the noise once applied with the 'Morph' brush

Here's a little (and embarrassing) look from the very first night I got back to sculpting to where I am after tonight's iteration on the same rock (with proper ref this time around):

Forgive me again Zbrush gods.

Still a ways to go, but feels like I'm getting better again. Forgot how much I enjoyed sculpting!

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

[WIP] Getting Back Into Sculpting


One drawback of being a Level Artist in a larger team and focusing more-so on the big picture and not as much the nitty-gritty details anymore (as you often have Modelers/Environment Artists under you that you're delegating that to), is that some skills kind of fall by the wayside a bit...namely high-end sculpting. And that's something I'm working on changing.

I'm slowly getting back to it over the last couple of weeks in my free time, and finally got a result I didn't want to puke on tonight. Been sculpting while having Clinton Crumpler's excellent Digital Tutors' tutorial playing in the background.

Here were tonight's results, no ref was being used, just getting used to all the different brushes again:

Forgive me Zbrush gods.

Will slowly skill back up! Been a while. I mostly did sculpting in Mudbox before too, but making a point to learn Zbrush better now, sculpting just feels so much better in it.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

[Micro-Tut] Applying Modular Techniques to Wheels

So, for my next blog post, I wanted to totally switch gears from talking about high-level art principles, and drill down to a little "micro-tutorial" on...wheels. Like I said in my first post, I really want this blog to cover a whole range of topics: articles, analyses, tutorials, WIPs, etc.

And here we go! Happy reading!

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Why Wheels?


[tl;dr - If this post is looking too long for you to read right now, scroll to the bottom for a nice big recap image :)]

Wheels are arguably what makes or breaks a vehicle in game art. You could have the best looking vehicle body, but if the wheels suffer in quality, the whole vehicle does too inevitably. Case in point, I recall this one teaser screenshot Kojima released 4 years ago to tease The FOX Engine/MGSV:

Teaser image released by Kojima back in 2011 for The FOX Engine

You have this nicely detailed vehicle, then your eye scans down and see the sore spot of the wheels that are really flat, lacking any good shapes/volume and that are of a much lower quality and resolution than the vehicle itself. (To be fair, the vehicle might not have been final/ready to show and marketing might have taken it anyways, definitely something that happens sometimes.) 

All that to say, this little micro-tutorial will focus solely on creating high-quality & efficient wheels. There are tons of tutorials that focus on full vehicles, so I figured I'll focus one this one part which can ultimately help elevate an already great vehicle.

Surprisingly, after having looked around online, I haven't seen the technique I'll be outlining below mentioned at all. It's definitely a technique that's used more for modular structural environment art to get the best resolution and quality (see how Simon Fuchs uses this with his small environment), but not one I've seen applied too much to something as small as wheels. It's a nice technique that I learned from my good friend and super talented colleague Tim Bergholz (Check out his upcoming gumroad tutorial!) during our time working together on the Benghazi map in Splinter Cell: Blacklist.

Through the tutorial, I'll be going over the creation of wheels similar to ones that were used in my portfolio pieces from Splinter Cell: Blacklist:



0. Symmetry & Quartering Are Your Friend


The over-arching technique that guides this whole tutorial to achieve the best resolution and quality out of your wheel is that of symmetry and quartering. By not fully uniquely unwrapping your wheel tread and sides and only being able to focus on a quarter of your wheel, you can maximize its resolution (by maximizing the quarter shell size to what you would use for a unique unwrap all while leaving room for other elements) and make it match if not exceed the resolution of the vehicle body as well as speed up texturing time (although it comes with its own challenges to make sure details don't tile badly). Knowing this, you need to fully keep this in mind as you flesh out the design for your wheel/treads/rims/etc.

Click on image to see full-size

1. Creating Treads


I've personally seen a few tutorials of creating high-poly treads like this, but here's a quick overview framed within the symmetry/quartering technique. The most important thing is to make sure your design tiles well so that the symmetry/quartering works flawlessly:


Click on image for full-size

2. Creating Hubcaps


Again, nothing out of the ordinary for creating the hubcaps. Where it diverges from most methods is in the quartering/symmetry of it to get the best size and resolution within your UV sheet. Given we're using this technique here, you just need to make sure your design quarters well and always pay attention your spacing is cleanly fitting within a 360 degree rotation. Here's an overview of hubcaps framed within the technique:

Click on image for full-size


3. Closing thoughts


And there it is. Doing this technique is definitely a bit more involved and takes some light planning. However, for the gains in quality and resolution you get for the vehicle as whole through the wheel, I think it's worth doing. Symmetry and quartering shouldn't just be used for this, it can also obviously be used for any type of repeating parts of a model (e.g. either side of a vehicle, concrete dividers, tank treads, etc.) which you don't want to double up work on and save precious UV space, so long as you break it up cleverly in the texture or with other unique middle pieces in the model.

As always, I'm always open to critique & feedback to the blog post. All I've said can most definitely be updated if anyone brings up any issues or things worth clarifying. Just give me a shout on Twitter @jobyek or in the comments!

One last thing...here's a nice big high-resolution recap page of all this:

Click on image for full-size

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Links used in article:


Simon Fuchs' use of quartering in an environment: http://www.simonfuchs.net/folio/project06.htm
Tim Bergholz's Portfolio: http://www.timbergholz.com/
Tim Bergholz's upcoming Gumroad tutorial: https://gumroad.com/timb

Saturday, August 29, 2015

Welcome + My Guiding Art Principles

Welcome to my game art blog, 'Creating Triangle Soup'! (Bonus points to whoever catches that name reference.)  Ever since I overhauled my portfolio website a couple of years ago, I've always been meaning to eventually add a blog component to it. I've only ever had a couple of articles/posts in mind, but recently, there was a sudden influx of post ideas which prompted me to *finally* start this up. Here we are.

Expect to see posts about a range of topics, from posts about game art, the industry, to posts with WIPs of studies or future art projects that I've been kicking around in my head. I'll try to keep this as active and updated as possible, if not, scream at me on Twitter @jobyek.

Without further ado...onto my first post!

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My Guiding Art Principles


I recently got asked by a friend how is it I approached creating props and environments when I was talking about what I do for a living. I actually really enjoyed thinking about my approach and breaking it down for said friend, and thought it would be worth sharing. I'd love to hear about how different or how similar people's approaches are in the comments!

Throughout the post I'll focus on these two images that you can find on my portfolio:


From Modeler to Level Artist


I started out at Ubisoft Toronto as a Modeler nearly 4 ½ years ago and worked my way up to my current position of Senior/Technical Level Artist. Boy am I glad I started out as Modeler and not as a Level Artist. After finally breaking into the industry and seeing just how much a Level Artist is responsible for, there was no way in hell I could have done that straight out of school like I thought.

As a Modeler at Ubisoft, you're typically responsible for modeling and texturing all your own environmental props under the guidance of a Level Artist (if it's a more linear Singleplayer game) or a Lead Artist managing a pool of artists (if it's more of an Open World game). To start out in the industry, that's great. It let's you really focus on the details, the nitty gritty art/tech details and start to have you worry about gameplay constraints (cover, vaulting, etc.) and really start developing your eye for all of that. And from there, if you so choose, you can grow into doing level art given the chance. It's something I slightly miss, but what I realized transitioning from Modeler to Level Artist, is that a lot of the same principles apply, just on a different scale.

Some of the core principles that I subscribed to whenever I start a prop, in no particular order:

  • Context - From a core question like: Where is this prop being used? You can extrapolate many other questions: How is a person using it (where are the hand and feet going)? What weather or natural elements are affecting it? Etc. All of those inform my decisions in both modeling and texturing and not to mention reference gathering. I never add any detail just for the sake of detail. Everything should have a purpose or a reason it's there, however small the reasoning is. 
  • Imperfection - This is a tenant I've carried with me ever since our very first high-level Art Direction meeting with Scott Lee. One of the art pillars of Splinter Cell: Blacklist was Imperfection. That's something that applies whether you're making something for a war-torn map, an abandoned warehouse or a perfectly pristine government facility or private estate. Nothing in life is ever really perfect. There's always some sort of imperfection whether it be in its placement, its shape, its material quality (this is where you get a lot of your imperfections for 'clean' environments), etc.
  • Gameplay - Does this prop need to be gameplay friendly? Does the player need to take cover behind it? Can the player vault over it? Is it purely visual dressing and other props will stack near it to form cover instead? A lot of those questions can drastically change the design and approach of whatever you're making, so it's good to answer those questions early.

How I applied this practically on the scooter model I made for our Benghazi map in Splinter Cell:


The Big Picture


As much as I miss doing that hyper-detailed work of a Modeler, where I get the most joy out of my work is building up full environments as a Level Artist. At the end of the day, players won't notice your little super detailed prop in the corner (exception: Weapon and Vehicle Artists!), what they'll notice is the Big Picture, the whole environment. That's what gives chills and creates emotions for players when exploring a game's world. Not sure about everyone else, but whenever I come across a beautifully realized expansive vista in a game level (even better when you get to play in it!),  I usually, without fail, get those 'good' spine-tingling chills. Halo 4 comes to mind with their beautifully-paced vistas and reveals in their Singleplayer levels (looking forward to Halo 5's!).

A (playable!) vista reveal that I was particularly proud of in my Shangri-La map in Far Cry 4.

As I mentioned earlier, a lot of those principles I applied to my props, they can be applied to full environments and locations, just on a much more bigger scale.

For the principles, they stay the same, but the questions you ask yourself change, as all other departments' work converges in the level:

  • Context - What is the narrative of the world/location your level is set in? What is the gameplay or story beat that needs to be hit in this area? How is VFX & Lighting coming into play? How are all those factors affecting your environment? Etc. The more questions you ask yourself, the more you can ground your environment by directly answering those with your art's layout.
  • Imperfection - Again, same principle I've been carrying with me ever since Splinter Cell. Although, instead of applying it on the macro level on a prop, you're blowing that up to the scale of a whole level. Imperfection can apply to the placement from anything small in the level (rocks, trash, etc.) all the way to the large (architecture, entire sections of level, etc.). Things are rarely ever perfectly straight or perfectly on-grid (which can cause a lot of back and forth with Level Design depending on how rigid your gameplay features are).
  • Gameplay - Design and gameplay naturally plays an ever bigger role as you're working on a full level. You have to be in total sync with your Level Designer to make sure you preserve (and even add to!) their gameplay intentions all while making everything look pretty. At the end of the day, we're game artists, not just Artists. You could have the most beautiful level, but if the gameplay is s***, it's a bad level and it won't be memorable. Some things you naturally always have to think about: How is the player flowing through these spaces? How does it feel to flow through---Natural? Kind of awkward? Can we get a nice reveal here through layout?Where are his natural cover points? Where can he vault? What can he climb? All things you need to constantly worry about and feel out by constantly playing your level. Something I make a point to do almost everyday first thing in the morning if I'm working on a map.

How I applied this practically in this shot from the Shangri-La level in Far Cry 4 (which happened to be the intro shot of our hands-on Gamescom 2014 demo):



And on that note, that pretty much concludes my very first blog post. Hopefully the first of many. Sorry for the overly 'wordiness' of it all (there's some pictures!), I tend to write too much. Will need to learn how to be more succinct in my writing!

I'd love to hear from other artists in the comments, on Twitter @jobyek, whatever! How similar or different is your approach to making a prop or an environment? Always good to get different perspectives. If you have any questions too, feel free.


Cheers,
Jobye

Monday, August 24, 2015

Coming Soon.

Under Construction...soon to have articles, studies/project WIPs, etc. feelings?! What have you!