Game Art - Diorama, Part 4

Getting closer to the end of writing up this assignment. Strange, isn't it?

For added convenience, I'm including links to the previous posts. Just so there is less scrolling to mess around with. I may edit the previous posts to also contain links, but probably not. I am notoriously lazy, after all.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Additional Objects

As possibly touched upon in previous posts, I'd more or less prioritised the basic diorama itself over having too much to work with at once in the form of the room and objects to populate it as well. After finishing the cabin, I found that I still more or less had 5 days in which to make some small objects to place upon the table.

I returned to my sketches to see which items I could realistically build within the time constraints... it would have been a no no to try and make something that was complicated (With one exception). I settled upon -:

• A radio
• A book
• A bottle of whisky
• Playing cards
• Planks

I wanted to make some posters as well... but I discarded this idea at first owing to not having time to draw them from scratch. More on this later.

Anyway, it turned out that it didn't take me too long to make the objects in question, mostly being composed. My radio was rather move complicated than the rest of the objects I created, and I initially had some trouble making a number of indentations in the model to represent the inset speakers. Using a compound object and trying to use the Boolean function resulted in my model getting covered in so many lines that I doubt it would have unwrapped. Instead, I used a pro-boolean function... while I have no idea why, it worked in creating the inset speakers without confusing the object with additional faces/edges. Naturally, there was also a fair amount of vertex welding of multiple objects to fuse everything together.

I made planks to cover the window somewhat, create that boarded up appearance I was gunning for earlier on in the project.

From left to right - Radio, Book, Bottle, Cards

Planks for the window

I created original textures for the radio, the book and the bottle (which I lovingly called Black Spaniels Bourbon). The playing cards used images scanned from some Fallout : New Vegas cards I have in my possession, something of a little nod towards the original inspiration for this piece. The planks used the texture I'd created for the cabin floor - Given the lack of time available before hand in, I didn't want to waste time making a similar texture from scratch.

... lazy, I know.

Early progress for the book.

Early planks. The colours didn't look right in 3DS Max, and so later they were darkened.

Book and Radio before bumpmapping. The radio was going to be blue instead of green... but I somehow felt that green was a more fitting shade.

Planks recoloured, and nails hastily painted in. At this point, almost everything was bump mapped.

All but the cards had been textured.

Cards textured, using the Fallout : New Vegas playing cards from the Collectors Edition

So yeah. Pretty much everything textured and completed. On the final day before hand in, I visited the Fallout Vault wiki to find some posters from the games Fallout 3 and New Vegas. I would have vastly preferred to have made my own posters, but time at this point (THE FINAL DAY) really didn't permit me the time. They were made using diffuse and opacity textures. Nothing special.

Below would be the diorama in the state I handed it in... in.

In the FINAL PART!...

... Some screenshots from the diorama in the Unity Engine.

Game Art - Diorama Part 3

It is now Friday, which is roughly 3 days since the first year of college concluded. And I do have to say that as much as I enjoyed doing the work... I didn't realise just how badly I actually needed a break until I had nothing to do on Wednesday. While I told myself I would kick back and relax... I have a duty yet to complete my write up of the Diorama assignment. So lets get to it, eh?

Textures

So, onto the texturing. I'll only go into the process of how I turned one of my UV(M?) Maps into a texture that could be applied onto my models, but I will likely show all the finished textures for the sake of pretend enlightenment.

I decided that the best place for me to start with the texturing would be the simplest model, which amounted to the ceiling and floor... what with them being perfectly flat and all. So needless to say, unwrapping was a very simple process. I used a box unwrap.

The unwrapped map. The top square being the floor, and the bottom square being the ceiling. Simple.

 The texture was itself going to be fairly simple, being composed of planks, and seeing as I intended on painting everything from scratch, I had to do a spot of internet searching to find some tutorials to help me get started.  For the sake of posterity, I'll also include the video that gave me the push in the right direction.



For a short video, it was very useful. I am sure that I might well have achieved a lesser result if I'd simply used a stock photo of a plank as the basis of my work, but with that said and done, I wouldn't have thought of adding in a highlight to the grains of wood, which I think really adds to the overall result. It was really one of those things where it didn't look like anything when I started... and by the time I was done, I could safely say that what I had looked like planks.

I had to recycle a couple of plank textures I'd made, simply because I made them a bit too wide prior to this version.

And then the bump mapping. I used a program called Crazy Bump to create the bump map for my texture. I don't really know what else I can say. So have some pictures instead.

And while this may be out of sequence, these bump maps all come together to form  -:

And without further ado... some further screenshots of the rest of the project as I added further textures to each part of the diorama.

I used some custom brushes for the rest of the diorama, taking inspiration from Team Fortress 2 in not making the textures too detailed. Not sure how well I succeeded in suggesting detail rather than explicitly adding detail... but I tried. I /tried/. Afterall, if I wanted to work towards a more cartoon style, to have excessive detail in my textures would be counter productive.

 

In the next part!...

The final steps composed of adding extra bits and pieces to the diorama, and maybe even the final piece as placed in the Unity Engine.

Game Art - Diorama Part 2

Oh boy, the excitement. A week on, a new post. Where have I been? I've been working hard on finishing my diorama. As I write, I'm still not quite finished, although all that really remains is to bump map the textures I have done. Given that I also have a bit more time available before the hand in day, I've decided to add some additional objects to the diorama.

Additional objects? Why yes, I worked mostly on getting the absolute basics completed first, which is the cabin itself and the dressing table serving as the centrepiece. The additional objects are going to get their own write up after I have written part 3.

Building the Room

Anyway, so as of the last post, I'd mostly decided on what I was wanting to make, which was a fallout-esque post bomb room that had been usurped by a wandering survivor. Pretty much the first thing that changed as I started building up the rough objects that would make up the room as that... I felt flat walls were going to be a bit bland... even with bump mapping. I also wanted to conquer curved objects which meant that a log cabin seemed like a sensible way to go.

The basic layout of the room as laid out in the sketches.

I might as well throw up the rest of my render shots as they are, as they will tell more about what happened as I went along then trying to explain.

Same as the previous shot, only a different angle. So terribly obvious.

For the record, the table was composed of both box and cylinder objects, as well as some areas drawn with the line tool and converted into editable polys. The table also featured some chamfering on the edges in an attempt to make it look more curved.

At this point, I'd been working on the mirror for my dressing table, and had decided that I would rather have a larger window than a window and a door. 

Used the Boolean function in compound objects to cut a square shape out of one wall for the window. Table also rotated... because I could.

Additional note - The table was completed using symmetry on the half I had already made. I'll go into the details in the third part, but this did not really work out very well at all.

A diversion as I tested out a bump mapped texture. This was where I decided I definitely wanted to stick with painted textures rather than using photos.

The diorama still coming together. I decided to add a roof for some reason. I'm honestly not sure why.

I'm sad to say that I really don't have a lot to say here. I'll just say that the scene had deviated from the sketched plan for assorted reasons, from wanting use the space a bit better all the way though to wanting to make the diorama a little more closed up (Seeing as I envisioned the lighting in here coming through the window alone, I needed a ceiling.)

 

I also learnt how to use the Boolean and Bridge functions during this part of the work process. And whilst there are no screenshots to show (seeing as one would literally see nothing)... everything behind what can be seen in the screenshots has been removed, seeing as it would be time consuming to unwrap and texture areas that won't be visible in screenshots or in the Unity Engine.

 

In the next part!...

 

I'll be going into the texturing.

Game Art - Diorama Part 1

Yes, I really should have started uploading my progress a whole lot sooner than I actually have.. so much for the promise of keeping up to date this time!

But still, I'm going to make it my mission over the weekend to upload as many steps in my work as physically possible. With that out of the way, let us begin.

Planning

Our assignment was to create a 10 foot by 10 foot diorama of our own choosing, using our skills picked up from the pirates chest assignment to build a small scene, making sure that objects and scenery were to human proportions. A little something that seems incredibly obvious and simple, but as many of us discovered... the limitations of the diorama proved challenging as less could be fit into the space then one could have imagined.

Case in point, I was originally planning to design a Edo period shrine using hand painted textures, with a little river and a bridge, as inspired by the influences Spirited Away had on my pirate's chest. However, although I'd presumed that I would have enough space... it turned out that I really did not. I downright rejected an alternative idea of a diorama based on where one of my notebook characters Bill Dup lives (seen briefly in the image below as a half arsed windmill and fence)



Early ideas for a spirit shrine or the home of Bill Dup.

I continued along the route of the shrine until I simply felt that I wouldn't be able to do my idea any justice, given how much would have to be removed in order to make it fit. It was around this time that I suddenly decided to work on a diorama based on Fallout : New Vegas. A game series that has always taken my interest and it seemed so very obvious to me that I could create something visually interesting.


However, it was still too large for the dimensions!

The scene remained larger, but the lower right sketch was about the time I settled on a scene that would fit into the dimensions and still prove visually interesting.

So by this point, I'd started testing object sizes within 3DS Max, and began to feel that a lot of my objects were far too simple and geometric. As I will show in the next part of this blog, I decided to move from wooden walls to log walls, and turned a basic table into something more complicated... a dressing table.

Also at this point, I was still debating whether to take a painterly approach to my work or use photographed textures. I eventually leaned towards painting my own from scratch simply due to wanting to experiment with art style... as well as try and learn to do something I've not done before. So basically, I was working towards a Fallout style scavenger hut with a more Team Fortress 2 inspired art style.

In the next part!...

I go over the process of making some things. Whee.