Warehouse: Unity level

These are some screenshots from a Unity-level I am working on. It is a warehouse in a deserted area, meant to be a connection point for distribution purposes. The feel should be lonely and sad. 

I am making this, to practice my Unity skills. It's supposed to look good, but there will be no gameplay other than walking around. Probably, I'll use it in a Unity class. (You might recognize the tree and the crate from earlier posts.)

So far, all of it is made in Unity 3 Pro. Our school doesn't have Unity 4 Pro jet. Hopefully we'll upgrade soon. I had to be creative with some special effects.

- The clouds are moving. It is just a transparent dome rotating. I made all the sky-textures myself.

- The volume light is a transparent cone with some extra planes. It took quite a while to get it right. (Or good enough.)

- The door opens and closes when you touch the handle.

- Fog is always a pain. It's very tricky to get it right.

- I wanted some more camera-effects. Too bad the frame rate wouldn't allow me. Apparently "deferred rendering" takes most of the power. (I'm working on a standard laptop.)

Up next is the environment. A few trees. Some grass. A bit more water. Well shaped cliffs and rocks. Perhaps some distant landmarks? I have some sound, but I'm not too happy with it jet. We'll see, when I'll give up...

Photoshop excercise

I needed some Photoshop excercise. So.... here's me making textures.

Race Game 4 kids

So, I needed to get some more practice in Unity. I thought I might make a race-game for my son. He likes pink. This will be his car. (He also want a big gun on the car and exploding houses.)

It is unwrapped, so that work is done. But the textures need way more attention. That will take a few more hours.

By the way, the total car is 1850 all quad polygons, including all 4 tires.

Bomb tutorial

So, this is the other game-artist-course exercise I prepared. It explains how to design and create a low poly game object. In this case, a bomb. The main lesson is "render to texture". I also cover lots of tricks using the array-tool in combination with instances of an editable poly. The students will learn what not to do in their topology, to get good normal maps.

My game-model does have seams. In this image, I've hidden them a bit. That keeps on being a pain. Advice would be welcome.

We do not cover the diffuse map. Students should already know this. The course is not about Photoshop tips & tricks.

Tree tutorial

I had to write some new "tips & tricks" in 3D Studio, for the Game-Artist-course. This is one of the two exercises we'll cover. It includes making the textures in Photoshop, lots of selection and transform tips, hair-and-fur and the daylight system with mental ray. Also, I advise on polycount and tree-silhouette.  

First facial expressions

All parts of the process are fun, but this part is especially rewarding. There were some minor problems in rigging and wiring. Getting the teeth right took a while. But overall, things went pretty smooth. I'll probably spend some time fine-tuning it all. And I need lots more morph-targets. Still, the main work is done.

Up next: Hair, eyebrows, moustache, maybe some eyelashes. More sculpting for the normal map. The diffuse channel. Creating some really good shaders. Improving the lighting and background. 

And then, finally, I must find an English speaking Indian to record some lines. Any suggestions?

Normal map problem fixed

Omg.... I hate normal maps!

So, apparently, when I render a normal map in Mudbox, it will show seams in Max. No matter what you do. I've tried all kind of render settings, different unwraps, different shaders, different lighting, .... Nothing worked. 

Finally, I tried baking the normal map in Max. Problem solved. After some serious googling, it turned out all the real pro's know about this problem. Well, now I know too. (The problem did not occure with Vincent. Weird.)

By the way, this is far from the final normal map. Lots and lots of sculpting to do. Also, I did a test with morpher, hence the smile. That works like a charm. Only a few minutes work. At some point, I will need to start thinking about the hair, eyebrows and moustache. 

Ghandi wireframe

From Mudbox to Topogun to Max. I had hoped, after Topogun, I would have the perfect mesh. Turned out, I needed to tweak the mesh a lot. The eyes and glasses are a bit bigger, than intended at first. It give this Ghandi a bit a cartoony look. I kind of like that. Also, after sculpting it will get a more realistic look.

So, this is the beginning. I have a good wireframe now. Back to Mudbox to get detail and paint. 

Will this one get animated?

New Project

I gave up on Van Gogh. Stupid me. Mostly, because I couldn't get the paint-strokes right. Also, because I really wanted to start on something new.

Again, it's someone famous. He has glasses and a mustache. Can you tell, already?

This time, I'd like to do some facial animations. I've got some vague idea for a scene, but I know me.... I might not finish it completely.

van Gogh meets Rembrandt

So, I played around with the lights. That was fun. Hopefully you can tell the lighting is based on Rembrandt's paintings.

The weird thing was, it was really hard to get this jpg to look like my rendering in Max. It kept changing the colours and messing up my dark-light-balance.

Gogh: a diffuse after all

I decided I want a diffuse map after all. This is it. Well, I am planning on improving it. Especially the lines between the hair and the skin are way too tidy. Also, it doesn't have a specular map now. The eyes could use some depth. And I haven't even touched the clothes. Shaders, lights, background, ....

Still, I am happy with the progress. I kind of like the painted-3D-effect.

Gogh: working on the realistic one

I've been working on the realistic version of Vincent for a bit. Thing are going well. I modelled the hair. I'm not going to use "hair & fur" or something like that. I want that perticular 3D look. 

I'm not sure jet, what I'm going to do with the diffuse map. I kind of like this blank look. It could fit the concept.

Van Gogh proof of concept

This whole project is moving very, very slow. But it is moving. And I'm still quite enthousiastic about the whole idea. It's just hard to get the right look.

This is still just a set up. 

The shirt and jacket need to be painted, as well as some skin. The textures for the hand and hair are just drafts. The Vincent on the painting needs some serious Mudboxing for realism. 

I do enjoy those few hours I can work on it. A drink, Spotify,... time flies.

van Gogh draft composition

So, I got a bit stuck on the painted face-texture. To regain some momentum, I decided to leave it for now. I worked on the composition. This should be it. Of course it's a draft.

In the final version (if there will ever be one), everything except the painting will have Van-Gogh-like painted textures. The painting will be as realistic as I can make it.

First, I think I should start modeling the details in the hand and the clothes. And unwrapping them. And decide what to do with the background in both the image and the painting.

van Gogh 5

There's always something wrong. 

I don't like the mouth too much. The strokes of the eyebrow are too paralel. And the stretching in the tip of the nose is a serious problem. 

Apart from that, it's an improvement, I guess.

If I ever finish this one, it would be interesting to render a realistic face as well. I think combined, they could make a strong compositions.

van Gogh 4

Slowly getting there. 

The thing is, I don't want to use too much paint-strokes. So if there is a problem area, I can't just paint over it. I'll need to redo that area all over.

There is too much paint in the eyebrows. There is not enough variety in the forehead. Also, strokes might be wider there. (Because of stretching in the UV.) The tip of the nose is a problem area, since there is lots of stretching in the unwrap there. I'd like to distort the border between the beard and the skin more.

Basically, I need to start over again. But I'm optimistic. I'm getting closer to the picture in my head.

van Gogh 3

Phew... That diffuse map is very, very tough! But I've got a plan now. And this is not it, but close.

I did the canvas bump in Mudbox. I draw guide-lines on the face in Mudbox. All the rest is going to be Photoshop. I created a good enough brush. I did get some hi-res images of paintings, as reference images. And now I'm trying to copy the style. (Which of course is impossible for me.)

I use nDo for the bump from the paint. It's a Photoshop plugin.

The strokes in this test are too small. They need to be wider. Luckily, because that could save me some time. Also I need to fix the colors. I need more white.

Van Gogh 2

Dear Vincent is properly unwrapped. I choose to make the whole head one surface, so I can sculpt over the hair-borders. Now I'm testing which tools work best in Mudbox, to create the paint-look. (I only tried the area around the eyes for now.) I'm not there jet, but you can see what the idea is.

Coloring the diffuse map is going the be even tougher. I did a first test, but I'm not going to publish it here. (That bad.) Perhaps I should start with the diffuse and then do the sculpting? And perhaps I can use bits of the real paintings to create the diffuse? We'll see.

van Gogh

I know, yet another project, with so many unfinished ones. Still, I just had to create this.

Hopefully you can see it's Vincent van Gogh. The base-mesh is almost done. The idea is, that I'll sculpt all the paint on it, looking like the real paintings. So it was a real head turned flat by van Gogh with his special techniques. And I'll turn it 3D, with my techniques. Each step leaving behind it's characteristics.

Portfolio example for a class

Quite often, students make pretty ok models. Sometimes they even make nice textures. Occasionally they also produce good renders. But very rarely they put it in their portfolio's, they way we would like to see it. So, I made this example for them.

Mudbox _ Old Lady

I know, I should have worked on Ben and his airplane. I had to prepare a Mudbox class. I needed to warm up a little. And after 1 night of playing, this came out. I'm quite happy with the result.

I used a base mesh of a woman's head. I added all the wrinkles and the colors. The eye was added in Photoshop. Who knows, I might actually finish this one, some time.