Week 06 - Use of Composition

    This week, we were tasked with designing a concept for some props for our game. I chose to work on a toybox that will be in Wendy's room. I started by using one of my original box renders from 3D art as a base for my perspective, then found a reference for a Victorian-era chest and worked from there. I worked on the front perspective first, and added smaller details like scratches to the wood and a little bit of rust on the metal. For the toys, I referenced what types of toys were available in the Victorian era and added more color to them to make them pop, along with a slight texture to everything. I struggled a lot with the back view of the lid, as it was hard to find a reference that would give me what I wanted. Once I was finished, I added a motif of the chest design from Hollow Knight to the keyhole and back of the chest, along with a small W for Wendy.

Slide 4: Toy Chest Prop

Original Perspective Reference

Victorian Era Chest Reference

Hollow Knight Chest & Motif

Assets in Perforce:

Week 05 - Use of Basic Lighting

This week, we were tasked with adding lighting and color to designs chosen from last week's critique round. I worked with Manas Venkatesh's value and contrast design of Luo Wang's original silhouette. I have a lot of experience with 2D art, but have not played much with 3-point lighting, so this was a new experience for me. I tried both softer shadows and cell shading, but felt the cell shading fit more for our intended style. I originally wanted to do the character with rim lighting but decided against it, so I used it for the close-ups of props instead. Thank you to Luo Wang, Kevin Wang, Kelsey Powell, Jazz Ashley, and Sena Dorokhina for feedback and advice, and Channen Macom for the updated template! 

Slide 4: Wendy Basic Lighting(Cell Shaded)

Slide 4: Wendy Basic Lighting(Airbrush)

Assets in Perforce:

Maya - Basic Rigging

For this assignment, we were tasked with creating a skeleton, weight painting, and rigging a provided character model. I started with creating all the joints for one side and mirroring them, painting the different skin weight layers, then creating nurbs circles, connecting them to the joints, and recoloring them for better visibility. This assignment was extra interesting for me as an animator, and while I ran into a lot of problems, I'd love to explore it more.

Model with skeleton and rig

Skeleton and Rig

Directory Structure

Perforce Proof: 

Crate Final Model & Painting

 

Textured Crates

Textured Crates from Multiple Sides

Textured Crates with Open Lid

Wireframe view in UE5

For my final texturing, I focused on darker colors for more of a medieval feel, and put the darker gradient in the middle where it may be bumped/touched more.

Week 04 - Use of Value and Contrast

 

Slide 4: Wendy And Peter Lineart

    This week, we were tasked with taking chosen designs from our blockout/basic shapes stage and creating three 2D versions of them: Lineart, Values, and Gradients. I chose to continue with the design I blocked out for Wendy, the original silhouette by Luo Wang. For Peter, I chose Manas Venkatesh's block out, the original silhouette by her as well. I started with the lineart, trying to give Peter a more dynamic pose so I could include his spear. For both characters, I tried to show some depth with their masks with a little bit of thickness around their eyes. For Wendy, I hinted at her arms in the outline of her poncho. When I worked on value, I made sure to keep the white faces and black bodies of Hollow Knight, and chose greys to complement and balance the designs. To achieve the gradients, I drew over specific parts of the designs and created clipping masks with a gradient fill layer.

Slide 4: Wendy and Peter Values

Slide 4: Wendy and Peter Gradients

Assets in Perforce:

UE5 - Intro to Blueprints

    For this assignment, I took my Fantasy town map and added two blueprints. The first uses a dynamic material blueprint actor that, when pressing the G key, will make a boulder in the scene pulse red. The second uses a Niagara system of kill particle VFX to make the boulder look like it's emitting when the player steps into a box collision. 

Box Collider Emitter

Emitter Blueprint

Pulsing Rock

Rock Blueprint

Material Blueprint

Perforce Proof:

Crate Game Res Mesh

Game Res Render

Game Res Wireframe

Game Res Bake

Game Res UVs

I used a modified low res mesh and created UVs for it(of the many planks). If I were redoing this, I would modify my proxy crate for simpler UVs. However, I'm happy with the bake and think it translated well.