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.

Week 03 - Use of Basic Shapes

 

Slide 4: Wendy Basic Shapes Model

    This week, we were tasked with making blockouts for our characters using simple shapes. I started with cubes, added edge loops, adjusted to the basic shape of the silhouette, and then focused on the width and details of the character. The eyes were created using a difference boolean from cylinders, and the base of the hair was made with spheres. Finally, everything was put in a smooth mesh preview to better display everything. I'm a 2D artist, so it was a unique task for me, but I'm satisfied with how it turned out. A special thank you to Luo Wang, Channen Macom, and Kevin Wang for feedback and suggestions on 3D tools I could use to improve my work.

Original Silhouette by Luo Wang

Assets in Perforce:

UE5- Basic Lighting & Materials

    For this assignment, we were tasked with lighting a scene in Unreal and making/applying material instances to props around the scene. I played with fog, post-processing, and directional lights the most to achieve a gloomy atmosphere. For the material instances, I imported assets from the modular fantasy pack and created a material instance from the cannon, making it red and applying it to every migrated asset placed around the insides of the houses in the scene.

Perforce Proof:

Crate Sculpt/Polygroups

 

Beauty Shot

Material IDs

W/O Lid

    For my crate, I decided to focus on carving out wood planks and adding scuffed details to the metal. For the planks, I used the DamStandard brush at 10 and 12 intensity, and increased the gaps in the planks with the reverse ClayBuildup. For the metal, I used the TrimDynamic to add scuffs, and added additional depth with Flatten.

Week 02 - Use of Silhouettes

 

Slide 5: Tinkerbell Silhouettes

    For this step in our group project, I worked on eight conceptual silhouettes for our version of Tinkerbell. I had started with something more human-like, but after feedback from the team revised it with a more animal-focused view. Because of her connection to nature, I focused on bugs(particularly moths), flowers, and mushrooms. From left to right, I created a progression of more bug-like to more plant-like designs. One big goal with mine was to create a shape that looks like something else, but could reasonably hold a head and wings.  Adding antennae and details was a favorite part of mine, along with referencing Hollow Knight NPCs to follow a similar theme.

Assets in Perforce:

UE5/Perforce Basics- Fantasy Town

 For this assignment, we were tasked with migrating asset packs in Unreal and laying them out. I focused mostly on the provided Fantasy House pack, working to create a Medieval Village. I used walls to extend just beyond the player's view, as a game would. For the required other asset pack, I brought in a rock pack and scattered them around the scene.

Perforce Proof:

Crate Blockout

    For my blockout, I decided to create a cross-section style with bolts. I'm aiming to turn this into something medieval, and chose to use larger planks on the inside to later deform and sculpt into.

Assets in Unreal Engine 5

Proxy Model:

Beauty Shot

Wireframe

Blockout:

Beauty Shot

Wireframe

Week 01 - Use Of Reference

 

Slide 2: Game Synopsis & Elevator Pitch

    For our group project, I worked with Kevin Wang to create a game summary, elevator pitch, and choose a captivating image for our board. To start, we both wrote a game summary and elevator pitch, then worked to combine them. After meetings with our whole team to review and get feedback, we continued to iterate a few times before getting to our final result. Kevin worked more on the summary, while I worked more on the elevator pitch. After discussing ideas for the image, I found our movie still from Disney's Peter Pan to use for our board. 

    I also ended up creating the template for our boards, choosing fonts, colors, and borders to try to fit the theme of our game. I had assistance from Channen Macom to lay out the pieces aesthetically before sending it out to the team to use on their own boards.

Assets in Perforce:

Inanimate Object Animation - Flour Sack

 

Meet Mat

 

For my Meet Mat character, I decided to create a statue covered in moss. I was inspired by Greek and Roman statues, and the smaller garden statue replicas of them that can be bought. The positioning of the vines also reminds me of how plants grow on a garden trellis.

For creating the texture, I started by using two fill layers with slightly different shades of the same hue. I created a dirt generator on the lighter color, and used a linear gradient to transition them. For the moss, I used a fill layer and a black mask to draw on specific spots where the moss would most naturally grow over time. I added a blur filter, and used the same fill layer and black mask technique two more time with slightly lighter colors to create depth. I added a height slider to each layer and raised it slightly. Finally, for the vines and leaves, I used paint layers and height to raise it off the model as much as possible. I increased roughness while keeping it less than the roughness of the statue itself. For the leaves, I added two fill layers and a black mask to add shading and highlights, and added a slight blur. for the stems of the leaves, I used a darker paint layer with negative depth. I used a filter to add a stylization of slight brush strokes to all of the plants along with a drop shadow of the vine and leaves. Each section of the model was able to follow the same routine with slight adjustments for the placement and dirt levels.