Final Cinematic

Here is my final cinematic for this module. All in all I  am quite happy with the turn out of the final product, I feel that the diorama looks quite good for what it is, and the added land around the area has worked well. I think the atmosphere and mood work quite well and help emphasize the scene and give it the push I wanted. With the character I still feel that a lot of detail has been lost from the high poly which I am upset about as it makes it look like I havnt pushed to try and create a really in depth character. But I did try all that I could with my current knowledge and I am happy I decided to go with a character. From the beginning I felt I would learn more doing a character than an environment and I now know that I was right in thinking that. 

Over the course of this module I have learnt how to create high to low poly models which I then baked down. I have improved my skills in rigging and feel more confident in that now. I've also pushed my modelling skills to create more natural shapes instead of just modelling a complex box live I've been used to. And I've learnt how to use Zbrush better, on top of all this I have learnt about the workflow of creating a character and although it will need building on I now have that extra push against others that chose to do an environment.

I know if I were to do have done an environment it would have been a much safer option and I would most likely come out with a better grade, but I know I wouldn't have pushed to learn new things, so although it wasn't my greatest idea of learning something new in my third year I am happy I have as it has given my extra skills and knowledge when going into the industry. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNIm6v8B9Gs&feature=youtu.be

Comparison between stages

I wanted to put up a comparison between the stages of Uncle Sam. I placed up the stages from blockout stage, to high poly model, to posed low poly character that's textured in Marmoset and then finally and then finally final model in Unreal

I feel he was at his best in Marmoset as the normals came across the best with the textures. For some reason a lot of detail was lost when it was taken into Unreal. I know this is because in marmoset has different lighting settings and with a HDR map which helps render this. I struggled to try and get the lighting better to help show off my character. 

I wanted to make a close up of the heads at the same stages as the images above. I feel once again that the head in Marmoset looks the best, as I was able to get the lighting to reflect some of the information out of the normals and it really does show off the pores on his skin. It is a shame I was unable to show it off in the final form as it makes him look like quite a generic character with no real individuality. 

week 12: change to diorama

I decided to duplicate the ground and then scale it up a lot so you could no longer see the fall off point of the horizon as I felt this did look quite awful when looking past the diorama. Of course when I scaled it up it made the texture extremely blurry, I was able to overcome this though by making the diorama tile the texture. I did this by going into the material editor and addind a texCoord, this allowed the texture to tile on the mesh. I am happy with the end result and feel it makes the horizon large and bleak. I thought of the idea of scattering trees, but then felt this may make it too complicated and unneeded and I didn't want to over complicate it.   

I decided to do some vertex painting on the ground, this was to add some variation in the texture and I also wanted to make it look wet around the water area. I did this by first creating a darker texture of the ground diffuse and then changing the material of the ground to allow vertex painting. This has had a positive impact on the scene and really breaks it up and gives it that extra push.

I then went on to do this with the trees and bark as they would be affected by the water as well. I feel this has worked well and has really added to the scene  

week 12: rebake the trousers

I now wanted to get the trousers fixed so there would be some detail in them instead of two cylinders placed together. When this first happened I was actually stuck for the first time and couldn't think of any clear way around this, but after some thinking I thought of this one way that could possibly work. If I were to get the low poly and position it around the high poly and bake it out a number of times to capture certain parts of the trousers which I would then take into Photoshop and merge together.

This first image is of me posing the trousers to fix the high poly, I am shaping up the left leg to match the left high poly leg to capture the details through xNormals.

Here is the final result, I took three different maps from the left and right leg as well as the crotch and merged them together. I also did the same for the occlusion map. For the parts I didnt need of the normal maps I would delete them and use the clone stamp tool where needed till I do the desired result.

Here it is rendered in marmoset, I wanted to quickly render out in here just to see that it had worked. The reason the stripes are part of the normal map is because while I was taking the screenshots I was playing with the diffuse map in crazybump and overlaying it with the original normal map, this has since been changed.

I am happy with the overall result and glad I was about to recapture the high poly detail.

week 12: Final Presentation

Here is the presentation I created for the final cinematic in week 12.

I first began to talk about my original idea of having Uncle Sam as my character and having him placed in No Mans land, as I felt this would be a strong contrast between the two.

I then talked about the work flow I went into when creating my character, I also mentioned some parts that went wrong along the way.

I then spoke briefly about the process I went through to coming to my final diorama idea.

Afterwards I spoke about issues I faced during this module, including my blazer. issues I had with rigging and the recent problem I faced with the trousers losing detail.

Finally I spoke about what I've worked on since Alpha. 

#

I did also have a slide to do with the cinematic clip which you can view here.

And here is the YouTube link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSok2wzYfxM&feature=youtu.be

week 11/12: lighting

Now that it was all in UE4 and I was happy with the overall quality it was now time to play with the lighting and get the right atmosphere. I wanted to try and recreate the sort of atmosphere you would see from a WW1 picture where it was quite desaturated with a greenish filter. I understand that it wasnt actually like that and was down to how the camera would take the picture, but I thought it would be effective it could try and recreate this style. 

I wanted it to be quite clouded over and gloomy. After playing with the settings for a while in UE4 I was able to get close to this effect. I had to up the brightness as the one I felt may work made the scene look too dark and I lost a lot of detail due to this so I had to up it slightly, I still feel I got quite a good atmosphere to my scene however. 

With the clouds and sky I was able to change the colour slightly to have a green tint to it, this then had an effect on the whole scene which I think adds to it quite a bit.

The pictures below dont show off the lighting very well, I may retake screenshots and post back here to show properly how the lighting appears.  

week11: updates

Some updates I felt could all go in a blog post together.

I wanted to work on the trousers and change the UV layout so the stripes would go down the leg instead of warping around. I achieved this by changing how the UVs were positioned, I was able to straighten them up into rows and this worked quite well. On the picture below you can see the difference between the two legs, The leg on the left shows the uvs normal but the stripes curving around. And then with the leg on the right you see the strips going down, this is because I changed the UV layout. I feel this works much better and looks more natural and realistic. 

Here is what the UV layout now looks like.

Update since then: I have realised that by changing the layout I have messed up the high to low poly bake, as the normal and occlusion map are following the old UV layout. And of course now I can not re bake them out as the position is different. As of yet I have not been able to think of a solution, so I suppose we shall have to look forward to the future and see how I work around this.

I wanted to fill up the scene a bit more to give it more of a push, so I thought of the idea of having some debris in the water and thought that branches would work well. I went in Maya and exported some branches from the trees I modelled and placed them around my scene positioning them how I thought looked best. I also reused some of the trees and scaled them down to try and give more of a variant. I feel this as worked quite well and has really added to my scene.

I have also made the base higher poly by first selecting the mesh and pressing the 3 button which shows a preview of what a high poly version looks like. I then converted this so it was real, at first I was unsure about doing this as it was quite high poly and I was worried it would slow down UE4 but I found out that UE4 could handle quite alot, so when I exported this back in I was happy to discover it didnt change the frame rate at all.
Doing this has made the transition from ground to water much smoother and look so much better.

This is what it now looks like in scene with the new ground.

One final update is that I have improved my helmets, I have now made them much higher poly with a smoother edge. This has defiantly made them look better. 

This is how it now looks in scene all scattered around.