Prop Modeling Project resubmission

The alterations in the blog post for the re submission are shown in red, many images near the red text are also new.
I changed the date on the blog post so online it shows up as the lates post making it easy to find.

For the triple A modeling task I have chosen to model the polish anti tank rifle WZ 35, this weapon has multiple different materials and is not too difficult or too easy to make.

One of the first things I needed to do was to gather any reference images, this was difficult because the gun does not have too many clear images where the weapon is fully visible, I did however stumble upon the above images which clearly show the features and overall shape of the rifle.

For this project I will be making a model that will resemble a newly built rifle shown in the image below, when it is time to texture the model in Quixel I will use a light creamy wood for the stock and painted metal for the barell, while pieces like the metal plate on the back of the stock will be painted blue.

For the Maya build I will be working from the side layout drawing I found, comparing it to other images of the rifle it is obvious that this drawing presents the rifle layout well and will allow me to work accurately.

I begun the build by making the barrel of the rifle and the stability legs and then proceeded to build the body.

Initially I started the stock with a primitive cube, but it quickly became apparent that this wasnt going to work.

The body was made from a cube was then extruded to cover the basic shape of the rifle, after I build the basic body I extruded the bottom and top to make the rounded shape of the rifle, however because of the shape and ammount of vertices it became difficult to control the model.

This made it difficult to keep the upper front of the gun flat while making the back rounded.

The barrel was the easiest part since all I had to do was reshape and extrude a primitive cylinder to match the shape of the rifles barrel.

The holes in the exit side of the barrel was a little tricky when I came to this point, what I did was deform a primitive cylinder and use Boolean difference to carve out the shape of the hole, but now the mesh was messed up and could cause problems later on in the build, this is there the insert edge loop and multi-cut tolls became very useful, I Inserted extra edges and fixed the topology of the object.

The part of the gun that held the legs together was made separately to make the texturing easier.

While making the barrel I saw that I should start over on the wood stock since the current ones structure is messy and still has jagged areas where it should be smooth.

The easiest part of the build were the trigger and ammo clip as they were just simple squares extruded and had the vertices moved into the right places.

Selected above are the 3 objects I feel like they should be rebuild: the gun stock parts and the firing mechanism, I revised the method I used to make the stock and in order to build it properly I used a cylinder to make the new gun stock, I started from the back and deformed the cylinder so it would take on the shae of the stock better, this made it easier to form the stock as well.

The front of the stock was simply made flat at the top with the selection of multiple vertices, comparing the new to the old it was a drastic improvement.

And comparing it to the first try I was much happier with the second attempt, I followed this up by mirroring the stock in the +Y angle and removed some of the faces and reshaped the new object into the upper part of the gun stock, I applied some basic test textures to see how the gun would look and I am very please with this progress.

To follow up the new gun stock I re created the firing mechanism from scratch.

After loading the model into Zbrush through separate pieces I used noise to create wood grain on the stock of the gun, the noise tool was very helpful with this and in order to make this process easier I divided the gun pieces into separate poly groups and applied the noise seperately.

After exporting the high polygon version of the gun I used dyna mesh to merge the object together and decimated the model to a stage where it retained the basic shape of the gun so that I could take it to maya and produce the low polygon model and prepare it for Xnormal baking.

On the decimated model I produced a quad draw of the gun and used that as the low poly model.

After finishing the low poly version I went over it to fix the mesh topology by straightening the vertices on the object and making sure the object keeps its form.

I added the aim sights since they were missing from the om the low poly.

I also noticed that there were some extra vertices that could be joined to other ones, these must have come up during the straightening of the object, this was my first time making a full quad drawn object, a problem like this was expected.

After fixing up the model I moved to the unwrapping, and changed the size and orientation of many pieces, the main piece being the stock had to be oriented in the way seen below, this was done so that when the object is textured in quixel the wooden grain on the texture would follow the model correctly.

The smooth UV tool was also very helpful as it relaxed the UV pieces correctly preventing stretching in the textures on the model.

Final Build

At this point I wanted to fix the direction of the wood grain and the two metal bolts that were on the sides of the stock, I returned to the low poly maya model and rotated the textures clockwise by 90 degrees and added two dots to the new colour map.

The map was baked in maya to ease the process of texturing in quixel.

I produced a few different version of the gun for presentation purposes, and in the end followed the brief and making the newly built gun.

Creating the material to apply to the gun model was simple enough, each texture was named appropietly and easy enough to drag and drop.

Getting used to unreal did take me a moment, the controls are different to the unity editor with which I am more familiar with.

In the end I am quite happy with the outcome of the project, during the time of the build I learn many things about the programs I used and learnt to use more of their features to produce better work.

3D Character design

For extra credit I am going to use the knowledge and skill I gained in year 2 to make a 3D character.

The character will be linked to the 3D scene I made, the blacksmiths daughter.

The aim of this project is to create the 3D character and place her inside a scene presenting the build, and eventually rig and place her in a scene where she walks about.

3D Modelling Assignment

The proposal

For my project, my initial idea is to produce a self contained landscape of a blacksmiths hut within a forest, the blacksmith would be making swords and armour for a witcher.

The story behind this would the blacksmith being kicked out from his village and set up shop in the woods.

the scene would feature the hut surrounded by trees, inside the hut there would be a forge and a blacksmith surrounded by his tools and a forge, outside stands a grave.

Here are the basic designs for the scene:

The Blacksmith would be an older male with a bushy mustache, he would don a set of heavy leather armour.

The basic layout of the inside of the hut, the blue represents the positioning of the blacksmith, weapons and armours on dolls, the yellow shows sunlight coming through cracks in the walls and shining in and highlighting parts of the hut, meanwhile the orange shows the glow of the forge and whatever objects would be lit up by it.

And finally a terrible drawing of the initial layout of the hut, the basic objects are marked, the yellow lighting represents candle light and the orange light is the Forge light, there will be half a wall dividing the entrance space from the forging area.

This image is a quick sketch of the layout of the room showing it from a persons perspective, this will help me build the scene, the two drawing have the layout of the room mirrored from the initial photoshop mashup concept I believe this layout is better.

The next image is a quick layout sketch to use for the organisation of the room. 

After studying images of blacksmith's hammers I produced a drawing I could work from, these were the most frequent and useful hammers: a sledge hammer, rounded hammer, wedge hammer, flat hammer and basic hammers, I produced the drawing for reference as it was difficult to find any images I could model from.

This is starting concept for the swords for he scene, the drawing captures the for of the black Knights sword from the dark soul series and two swords from the witcher 3, I also saved and referenced  images from the original witcher 3 concept art that did not make it into the game. 

The build

This is the base scene i have made in maya to help me see how I want the scene set up so that I may see what works.

After getting in the basic shapes of the level I began by adding temporary textures and started by making one tree type, however I left it as it was since my focus was the inside the hut.

I started to lay out the basic objects like the forge and first table so I could picture the 3D layout of the scene I also added some temporary image textures to help me figure out the layout.

Initially I was Focused on the lighting in the scene so I started playing with the directional light to see where I could go with the shadows.

To help with the layout I made a quick model of the forge and walls then placed them within the unity scene.

For the forge I made a cylinder and individual bricks all over the cylinder, the textures visible are there temporarily so I could tell some objects apart.

After finishing the walls I loaded the level up in unity again and tested out the lighting, I also added a simple script the the main light that makes it spin slowly, the light coming in through he broken planks looks promising even if the hut was empty.

List of  required models:

Hammers

Swords

Chisel

Stakes

Tongs

Files

Anvil

Armours

Wood planks

Axe

Tables

Chairs

Shelves

Racks

Apron

Forge

Firepit

Buckets

Barells

Water

Metal ores

Story wise items:

Childs drawing

Childs Doll

Home side:

Bed

Drawer

Curtain

Physics?:

Waving materials eg. armour cloth waving in the wind.

Sparks from the forge bouncing around the room.

Fire physics besides for particles?

Trees waving in the wind?

I then greyboxed the level with basic colours and textures.

The idea behind the scene is that a lot of the armour and weapons will be used or in progress to show the full effect of a blacksmiths workshop.

After this point I baked the models that composed the hut numerous times, each time fixing an issue or something that I was not happy with.

After the many re bakings and retexturings I exported the outcome into Unity and tweaked the lighting some more, to improve the lighting I created two lighting  objects, the forge and a candle, both have two light sources, one that is a set colour and intensity, the other randomly changes between two set intensities, this makes the light look more like a flame light.

I had some trouble with the stone floor, after tinkering with the maya file I exported the obj's again and used the power of quixel live painting to create the texture, I placed a basic mossy stone material on the whole object then proceeded to paint on dirt between the bricks.

The current state of the scene looks very promising and I am happy with its appearance.

From the last state I added a table, stool and barrel that will be filled with swords, this helped populate the scene at least a little.

Returning to the initial concept again helps me picture the scene once it will be crowded with various tools and weapons, I have stopped baking the lighting and removed lighting baking data, this results with a darker scene with lighting far more suitable for the required mood.

I will also go over some of the models and remake them again from scratch to improve the overall look and composition of the scene, this was aided by reference images of existing workshops.

Compared to these images my blacksmiths hut was too clean, too new and far too symmetrical the best way to fix this was to go over the pieces and rethink and re make them.

New Pointers:

Go over Maya models.

Improve textures,

make more models for the scene to increase quality.

Play a little more with the lighting.

3.0

Getting more advice from Phil and great help in zbrush I continued off to produce individual planks for the walls, supports and floor, the planks were then decimated had their UVs layed out and unwrapped, using maya I fixed up wrong meshes, triangulated the mesh and rotated the uv to make the wood grain follow the lenght of the plank before exporting it as an obj and baking them in xnormal, this was the standard procedure.

It is at this point that I became more confident in my knowledge and skill in ZBrush, the mallet brush created fantastic textures and shapes for the planks, it produced the appearance of very old and worn wood.

These reference images are what I'm aiming for.

The most wrist wrecking task up until now has been the automatic unwrapping followed by manual unwrapping where I had to piece together all of the separate pieces of the mesh, and finally the last baking of the planks.

After the bakes finished I made numerous custom materials from Quixels library and in the end I used the dying wood since it made the planks look dry, worn and dead which goes with the solemn theme of the scene.

More objects to make:

Metal panels around forge

chimney

bellows

water container

chains 

metal tool holders

After exporting from quixel I started laying out the planks for the hut walls and elevated floor, I mixed and matched the varied planks making holes and leaving gaps in the walls space to allow outside light to enter.

After the talk with Steve Goss I realized that the idea of the beams of light would place hope and warmth in the scene, this would work against the depressing and awesome workshop (awesome used in its old way meaning: inspiring awe).

I turned off the shadows on the directional light for now and changed the colour to a cold blue that would make the area feel cold and un-comforting.

Becoming tired of the white cylinder representing a candle I made a basic candle object for the scene in Zbrush, at home I applied a rust texture in quixel and changed the colour to white so that the colour and texture would make it look like a real candle.

The candle objects in the scene would be small so I had to make sure that the objects was recognisable when put in the scene, and the best way to do that was pick the right colour and sculpt it to show that this is a used candle and it has wax dripping down the side, the clay build up and smoothen brushes in Zbrush were the best for this task.

Once exported I created a basic cylinder for the candle string and a particle effect for the flame, note to self: make a sprite based particle effect that imitates a flame.

After I purchased quixel I was excited to use the live painting feature and luckily quixel had tutorials to use its new features, the tutorial showed how to edit the layer maps that controlled the distribution of the materials.

To fill up and update the workshop space I made a few models like a new forge, charcoal for which I made an asphalt texture that had two parts; the balck asphalt to represent charcoal pieces and the grey to appear as ash around the charcoal, finally to finish I filled the crevices between the charcoal with an oil material coloured red to immitate the red glow of burning charcoal.



These objects were complimented by the anvil which rusted with time but still showed spots of metal where it is still used to forge, cloth textured armour dummies, and a new stone floor made by covering a stone texture with a dirt texture and erasing the dirt off the bricks.

For the coal I made a baked one sided flat model then textured the coal and ash with two different colours using the asphalt material, the burning part of the coal was a problem but was solved by using the oil material coloured red, with the oil materials reflection the illusion of heat was created in unity.

The forge was also remade in quixel 2, the tricky bit was getting the moss to look natural, moss wouldn't appear near the heated area.

the next piece was the anvil, extra hammers and swords, armour, redo the floor...

I wanted to make the anvil look very used so after I made the base model I threw it into Zbrush and gave it chips and dents with a variety of alphas, once decimated and fixed it up in maya by reducing the polygon count by joining the vertices, I used quixel to make it rusty in the right areas, the areas that would normally be used to work I left the metal exposed.

thanks to quixel 2 I was able to paint the rust on more effectively by working just on the alpha, a fantastic new feature in quixel 2 is the M key swap between textured view an the alpha map layout allowing for detailed edits.

I remade the floor in maya then Zbrush and finally in quixel in order to get the bricks to look old and worn and thanks to quixel I could get the nice stone texture and all the dirt/soil inbetween the bricks.

I modeled this new floor by making a variety of different bricks, shrinking and deforming many of them before exporting to zbrush and applying damage alphas, in order to produce a low poly model for this floor I used the DYna mesh feature of Zbrush and merged the bricks with the floor, then I followed the standard procedure and decimated the object before fixing the mesh and unwrapping it in maya.

At this point I am very happy with the project and the models and textures.

For the forge cover I made a small dome that becomes smaller at the top and joins to a chimney, for the space below the dome cover I made a few individual bricks that would then be duplicated over and over to make the rest of the dome in the unity scene.

I started work on the extra pieces that would make the empty space more crowded and interesting to the viewer.

This brick wall in a wooden hut would show that the blacksmith altered his hut to accommodate the smelter.

The production of the swords and armour also began using the reference images and drawn studies I made.

I have never drawn leather armour before so this is not that good, but it does illustrate the pieces of the armour I will model for the scene,  I will follow the original concept that did not make it into the witcher 3, the chest piece, cloth armour, shoulders and arm guards are the pieces I will model.

The armour for the scene will purposely be made so that it appears as it would during its making for the witcher, thus capturing the moment between the visits of the hero.

I used the dummy model to quad draw the leather chest piece for the bear armour set, then I extruded it to make the chest piece, this was followed by the cloth part and shoulder guards, once the armour object bases were done I again exported them to Zbrush, increased their polygon count while smoothing the shapes, except for the green cloth armour which I need to look kind of fresh and creased  on both sides, this will make the cloth armour appear newly sewn and made.

To make the workshop more interesting I used the witcher sword concepts and made the swords look damaged, this would make the workshop more natural since it would be strange if it was filled with shiny new swords, some of them have to be damaged, the workshop would also have damaged weapons that the blacksmith would be asked to fix and some just kept to be melted down.

The dwarven sword concept was used to make one of the broken swords, while in Zbrush you can press and hold shift + Ctrl to use the cut tool and cut out pieces of the geometry as seen below, this amazing tool then recalculates and remeshes the object.

Since I became more skilled in Zbrush I re made some of the furniture for the scene, the table was made more damaged and thus more suitable for the scene.

I took the armour pieces into Zbrush and sculpted them into a better more appealing shape and decimated them, then again, threw them into maya and then quixel.

I made use of the special Imm brushes like sew lines that became very useful for making the armour.

The normal and Ambient occlusion maps are capable of amazing feats, lowering the poly count and still making objects look brilliant, however overusing them will make objects loose appearance quality, the belt on the chest piece was modelled and baked but the belt buckle would have to be placed in separately to make the armour look nicer.

Painting the colour map was the agonising part until I discovered that the magic wand can pick up the normal map parts pretty well, after this the colour map was no problem, this was mainly done to make quixel texturing easier.

This in the current scene in unity, the water effect that was in the standard assets is great but it moved too quickly for a bucket of water so I altered the script that controlled the speed.

This is a bunch of images from the process of making swords and armour, much of it is the cycle of maya, zbrush, maya and quixel.

This is the armour chest piece in quixel showing the alpha of the stitches and laces, this imperfect coverage of the stitches is good because it will help show the working condition of the workshop and show that the blacksmiths old age and decrease in work quality.

I made the armour objects differentiate from the concept because it is new leather, unlike in the concept where it was used in battle.

After the armour was done I started making the witcher swords from concept, the swords had to be low poly so that it wouldn't be too expensive on the scene.

More basic tools like the clamps were made simple, since they would not become the focus so much and the normal map can handle the detail.

As this is the final version of the scene I began playing around with the Camera effects to enhance the scene and give it the feel that I intended:

I added a script that enhanced the ambient occlusion and made every bit of the wooden textures stand out.

These are the last bits and pieces going into the scene, the bellows for the forge

new object: Red glowing sword that is still being forged

Since the deadline was extended I returned to some things I didn't think Id have time for, rather than play around with Zbrush I studied the chainmail brush, it was easy enough to replicate.

 I made the chainmail and leather base, enhanced it in zbrush and baked the colour map in maya, used xnormal again and threw it into Quixel, the results were pleasing but I would like to go over this whole piece once more.

The most tedious process is placing all the pieces in maya, I used the files that were exported from quixel into Unity and copied the folder, then I removed the material folders and meta files so that they don't take up precious space on the submission usb.

Making the final builds I started going over the texture sizes for the final time, main pieces like the armour and weapons were given 4k textures and tools were given 2k texture sizes, this gave off a plesing 120+ framerate even without baked lighting and camera effects, however this was running on a gtx 970, the uni's quadro cards struggled.

While baking the lighting I noticed that the scene would become extremely bright, this has never happened before, many tutorials for unity lighting and forum answers did not help until I found one answer that suggested turning off the lesser light sources and baking the main sources, I turned off all the lights except for the directional and forge lights, then baked, however I ran into the same problem, turning off the static tick on the scene objects seems to have solved the issue.

I wanted to put some light higher in the scene without breaking the illusion of 'natural' lighting, so I made a basic lantern that would be appropriate for the time period and placed a candle inside.

After receiving feedback I sealed off the view to the outside of the hut through the cracks of the walls, I did this to an extent where the viewer could still see between some cracks but nothing could be seen.

Then I began experimenting with effects to create an illusion of a realistic scene: by placing a transformation script on the candle light component I could make it go up and down very slowly, thus moving the shadow that it creates, mainly the tree trunk shadow, creating the illusion of a live fire altering the shadows in the scene.

Summary

In the end, I believe I have made the right choices when this project started and as it progressed, I had to cut down the scene and only make the inside of the hut explorable, I would have loved to make the outside.

I had my idea and inspiration from the start, the lonely blacksmith that worked quietly in isolation, created a scene and atmosphere close to perfect to my love for and inspiration from the Witcher 3.

Seeing the scene progress and seeing where I have come from in terms of skill, one lesser part of progressing to where I am now came from doing many of the processes over and over, for example the walls, initially I completely relied on normal maps and ao, then as I remade the walls in different ways I learn new things in the programs I used, in Zbrush I began using new brushes and new features to make good models rather than just play with the features.