rahuljoshi63

[rahuljoshi63]

5. Forefront: Unreal Engine 5

Unreal Engine released a massive early access version of the new UE5 and it is packed with new updates. UE4 was, in my opinion, the best free game engine in the first place, and now with Unreal Engine 5, Epic Games has taken it to the next level.

Some of the key, noteworthy updates are:

·         Updated UI- Compared to UE4, the UI of UE5 is extremely sleek and it looks like a mixture of Unity and Houdini’s node graph.

·         Quixel- Now, finally, the Quixel bridge is integrated to the engine so we do not have to install it separately anymore. It has been added to one of the windows which directly opens Quixel from where we can drag and drop any asset we want into the scene.

·         Nanite- This is probably the biggest update that Epic Games has launched. Now, the importing time of bringing in a very complex mesh has been reduced greatly. According to an article by PCGamer, Ionized Games lead developer Taylor Loper put nanite to the test by importing a photoscan of his dog lying on the bed and duplicated it a thousand times. Photogrammetry complicates a mesh in the first place, duplicating it a thousand times is just insane and the fact that Unreal Engine 5 did not give any issues for it, as mentioned by him in another tweet by the developer, proves how good the engine is.

·         World Partition- This feature allows the user to only look at one portion of the entire scene which can be changed in just a click. Basically, due to this update, now Unreal will hide the portion of the scene that you do not need and give you more frames to work with. Combining this feature with Nanite’s technology is game-changing.

·         Full Body IK Solver- This feature gives animators a single platform to modify all the animations that they need without having to use any other software which they previously had to.

·         Lumen- Previously, light baking was the thing that took the most amount of time depending on the complexity of the scene. Now, with the lumen feature, we do not have to worry about light baking anymore. With the added feature of real-time Global Illumination, light baking has become obsolete, now all you have to do is add in lights and you can change its transformation real time as many times as you want.

·         Metasounds- This feature allows users to do sound mixing in Unreal which cancels out the need to use other softwares just for audio mixing. Now you can use the node graph editor in Unreal Engine itself to create some nice sound effects that you want to assign to the character or the environment depending on the project.

·         Sample files- During the Unreal Engine 5 promotion, Epic Games used an amazing high-quality world along with a character to showcase all the new features and things you can now do in Unreal. Epic Games has provided these sample files for free, which can be used for any personal projects or can be used to make high quality renders.

References:

askNK (2021) ‘ Unreal Engine 5 - Early Access & New Features!😍.’ YouTube. [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S-mZssyVS4 [Accessed: 20.05.21]

[rahuljoshi63]

4. Forefront: Blender- Even More Updates In Just One Higher Version

As I talked about Blender’s update 2.90 in a previous forefront post, in 2.91 they have got even more updates such as - 

SouthernShotty talks about how Blender handles the new Boolean system better wherever the geometry is overlapping. It also opens up new artistic approaches and opportunities which were available in other 3D applications.

Overlapping geometry is every single 3D artist’s nightmare, and the new Blender update solves some major issues as discussed in the Boolean system, now the knife tool is also updated wherein the overlapping issue is handled more efficiently. 

 As I mentioned the new custom bevel property in the previous Blender Forefront post, in the new update they also introduced Custom Curve Bevels wherein you can add a custom profile in your curve which makes the ornament modelling even easier, along with a few new options as well. 

It doesn’t matter whether you are a Blender pro or a beginner, sometimes even the best of artists forget where a property is located in the panel even though they know the name and what it does. Now the name of the property can be searched at the top of the properties panel, which makes it a lot easy rather than to look for it in every single sub panel. SouthernShotty also mentions that the search system has been improved, wherein if you search short forms of what you are looking for, you will still get the results.

In the outliner, the new updates have made it so much easy to transfer the modifiers from one object to other, by just dragging and dropping it on the name of the object in the Outliner, that you want the modifier to have. 

There is a new modifier which allows you to turn your entire mesh into a volume which can be useful if you have to create custom shaped smoke or clouds using a procedural texture. 

And the new Volume to Mesh modifier is the exact opposite of the previous modifier, which turns the volume to mesh - this is an incredible easy method if someone wants to make stylized fluid simulation. 

The Cloth brush keeps getting better and better - now supporting collisions with scene colliders, a new property called soft body plasticity has also been added to the cloth brush which makes it incredibly easy to add manual folds on the cloth to make it look nicer. There are also some new cloth brushes which are just enjoyable to mess around with and blender has also added some new notable features wherein more detail can be added to the mesh to make it look more realistic. 

Then the next notable feature is the new Gesture tool and the trim tools, where literally mesh can be drawn and added to the base mesh without hassle, in sculpt mode.

A new brush called Boundary brush has been added to blender which is amazing for hard surface modelling as well as making cloth mesh manually. 

Blender just keeps making sculptor’s life better by adding new feature, now the invert smooth tool has been added which can be used to smooth out any kind of required details on the mesh.

Making basic animations to make chains for example cannot be done manually, because it does not look natural. Basic animations are easy to make but the collision properties can be complex, if learned properly, it can be a pretty handy tool. Now with Compound collision, two meshes can collide and create a twisted effect if needed, without having to do so - manually.

References:

Blender (2020) ‘ Blender 2.91 New Features in ALMOST 5 Minutes.’ YouTube. [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RtNV-kjh5M&t=226s [Accessed: 19.05.21]

[rahuljoshi63]

3. Forefront: Inspiration - Eddie Mendoza

As a 3D artist, I am always on the lookout for new concept art that would inspire me to re -create as an environment as well as the works of other artists such as Mendoza, whose work can also motivate me to create similar scenes with my own input.

Eddie Mendoza is a Senior Concept Artist who works for Apple, according to his ArtStation page. On his page, he has a collection of incredible posts depicting various environments and characters. His work is extremely diverse; from old-age stone structures to a blend of fiction and reality that merges to form wonderful scenes. Out of all of his posts there were a select few that really stood out to me.

One of which was a scene depicting a stone bridge with a river flowing under it as shown below.

The image stood out to me for many reasons, especially because of the mystery and authenticity attached to it. The details in the scene are impeccable and show his fine craftsmanship. We are left to wonder what the characters in the scene are doing and of their purpose there. The greenery blends perfectly with the stone buildings which makes the viewers wonder what it would be like to live in the era. The colour scheme also mixes very well and does not have a stark, unappealing contrast.

The second post that caught my eye was of a similar background with buildings of stone was set in a more modern period.

It includes cars and people in modern clothes as well as a fantasy element of robots. This scene combines the old with the new in a wonderful way. The details, just like the previous picture are well shown and the colour scheme is not jarring. Taking into comparison the art style they are both quite similar and the foliage in this picture blends well with the surroundings as well.

These were just two out of his many artworks that I admire a lot, I chose these posts specifically because I wanted to talk about the diversity that he has in his art. The way he created the first one with all the wizard-like people who might or might not be up to any good, along with the person on the horse who looks like he is a guard and he is trying to maintain peace and order among everyone, plus all the foliage; is amazing.

And for the second one, the mixture of all the different kinds of people like soldiers, robots and the common public, along with the cats, cars and the foliage works perfectly.

Creating a blend between things is what’s difficult for me when I work on my projects, and that is why I got inspired by artwork like this. Recreating this in 3D would definitely be a lot of fun, along with a lot of learning points.

References:

Mendoza, E. (2018) ‘La Capital.’ ArtStation. [Online] Available at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/2oXxJ [Accessed: 18.05.21]

Mendoza, E. (2020) ‘ Canal Town.’ ArtStation. [Online] Available at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/XB6Owy [Accessed: 18.05.21]

[rahuljoshi63]

2. Forefront: How Blender keeps getting more amazing - Update after Update

I have been using Blender for over three years, and it’s safe to safe that I am most comfortable with it in terms of modelling. In 2019, Blender released 2.8x series and from that day onwards, it’s almost like the developers won’t stop breathing until Blender is 100% perfect.

Blender releases each and every update with hundreds of new features, some of which are quite notable in my field of work. To showcase the new features, Blender releases new videos on their YouTube channel Blender, (2020). Artist SouthernShotty on YouTube made a video for Blender covering all the important features in less than five minutes for 2.90.

In this video, there are a lot of features worth noting - 

Reordering modifiers in the modifiers panel which is huge because you can easily change the order of the modifiers if you do it incorrectly. While modifiers are supposed to be useful, it’s crucial that they are supposed to be in the right order.

The new Extrude tool, which lets you extrude faces inwards without ruining the mesh is also incredibly helpful because now you don’t have to worry about the extra vertices that used to come up which used to be disjoint from the initial edges whenever you used to extrude a face inwards.

The new Bevel tool where you can change the curve of the bevel according to your liking is pretty impressive, it makes the modelling of intricate designer objects super simple, without having to model all the crevices manually. 

The new sculpting tools make it a lot easier to sculpt details on a model with subdivision, where you can now change the subdivision levels without having to reset the sculpting process - and plus an added bonus is that you can keep changing the subdivision to your liking while you are sculpting.  

Cloth simulation is an extremely fun thing to do and along with the Blender’s new updates it keeps getting better. Blender now has a feature where you can run a cloth simulation while you are actually sculpting, which takes the cloth details on a whole another level.

References:

Blender (2020) ‘Blender 2.90 New Features in LESS than 5 minutes.’ YouTube. [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M1UaDe0qsk&t=137s

[rahuljoshi63]

1. Forefront: GDC Talk- Three Steps to Becoming a Better Artist Immediately

The video that I watched today was on a talk was conducted by Horia Dociu who worked as the studio art director for ArenaNet.  He has had a vast array of jobs related to the gaming industry before he joined ArenaNet but the aspect of his career that seemed the most relevant to me was that he was an environmental artist and worked on the video game Half Life 2.

In the video he talks about three extremely simple and straightforward ways by which people can become a better artist. He begins by giving an example of a plane crash and talks about how pilots can prevent them by having a checklist about the most basic aspects of flying such as remembering to have appropriate gear and to close the door properly. These things may seem mundane and obvious but a slight mistake with them can have a devastating outcome. These checklists can be used by people no matter which profession they are in to map out a path of tasks that need to be completed in a particular order; to prevent missing anything out.

He then goes on to talk about breaking the principle of game design into three broad categories.

The first on being ‘The Idea’ which referrers to the basic concept of the game or character or environment. This can include as many details as the creator wishes but mainly is used to map a rough blueprint of what is in the developer’s mind.

The second aspect is ‘Design’ which refers to how the developer is going to execute the idea that they have. For example, which art styles they would use, the various percentage of space dedicated to a particular article and even some more specific aspects such as the form and appearance of individual aspects of the environment or character.

Finally, the third aspect is known as ‘Rendering’; in which the developer decides upon their method of rendering and details relating to the same such as the lighting, tone, theme and cinematography.

Reverting back to the checklist that he talked about in the beginning of the video, Horia talks about the checklist that can help individuals achieve better art. The first point being that we shouldn’t be full of ourselves and assume that we always know what we are doing. The second point is that we should stop and think and use creativity to better our project. And lastly, he talks about using references to help us get a better concept of what we are working on. He clearly mentions that we should not use the very first image that we see as a reference but instead to look for specific thing that are particular to what we are trying to create.

This relates strongly to me as I often fail to use references, which I have now learnt, are vitally important and always help me to learn the intricacies of the artifacts or the scenes that I am creating.

References:

GDC (2021) ‘Three Steps to Becoming a Better Artist Immediately.’ YouTube. [Online] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amlwcI8dh_g [Accessed: 16.05.21]

[rahuljoshi63]

Major Project #1

The final part of the Practice 2 module begins after the Stellar Project, and this is the part I have been excited for since the beginning of my MA Course. This is the part where I get to work on a personal project for three whole months and I don’t have anything else diverting my attention. 

After the brief for this project, to add into my portfolio one more creepy project, I decided to go with a lair of a cannibal inspired by the TV Show Hannibal portrayed by the talented Mads Mikkelsen. I wish I could give out the same intensity that the show gives out, but sadly the platform is limited to just visualization in terms of making the environment relating to a Cannibal - which is his house and a secret lair that he uses from time to time to make his meals.

I am planning to challenge myself with things such as making a whole house along with its exteriors, which I have never done before. I am also going to be making a lair that will be located under the house with a secret elevator leading towards it. It is going to be a fun semester.

[rahuljoshi63]

Stellar Project #8

Update - after getting one more extension for the submission I decided to make the best of it since I was not entirely satisfied in the first place, with what I did. I made an entirely new and different scene, a garage wherein the thought was that it can either be used as a main menu screen with a car’s showcase, or it can be used an actual garage which would be located at different places in the racing area’s map, and obviously it’s aim would be the aim of any garage in real life - to fix cars. I added this work in progress blender scene to finalize the contents of my submission and I added a note about it in the self-critique document that we were supposed to submit along with the work that we did.

[rahuljoshi63]

Stellar Project #7

Finally, just after a few days my scene was finished. I modelled a few modular assets which can be used anywhere in the entire game, along with some foliage assets.

A few hours went into the modelling and the texturing, and two days for my Unreal Scene to finish since lighting was a major aspect and I wanted it all to go well, wherein I had to research a lot to get it just right as I had imagined. As a self-critique note - I definitely would want to improve the amount of detail that goes into my renders, no matter what or how much I work I am never going to be satisfied with the amount of detail. The new thing that I got to try in this project was the Landscape tool in UE4, which is fun and really better than having to model the terrain in a modelling software and importing it into Unreal Engine. I don’t want to say I am entirely satisfied with this live brief submission but, seeing as though I only had a few days’ worth of time I really like what I could come up with.

[rahuljoshi63]

Stellar Project #6

Due to a lot of technical as well as other reasons, I was not able to work on the project at all and now since there are only a few days left I have decided to only work on the real-world environment wherein the car getting sucked up into the sky would be highlighted, along with a normal road render. It is really sad when you have a lot of ideas and you want to turn it up into real life projects so that you could add them into your portfolio but things don’t go your way and you end up having to settle on just a version of what you imagined.

[rahuljoshi63]

Stellar Project #5

To further develop and make a solid idea, I thought of making one race last between two worlds continuously. If there was a story to the game, the first time the transition ever happens could be added in a cutscene and then between actual races it can happen in a second or two within a snap of the finger, wherever the spots of the transition are - which would be pre-determined. For the Unreal scene I decided to make a road which could be a part of the final race map, and I wanted to keep a car beamed up in the air where I would want to take a render out along with the name of the game on the road as a shadow. I chose to take a scene from the TV Show dark and tried to recreate it, since lighting seemed like a challenge and the scene looked pretty creepy and dark - full of mystery. I also looked up some references for the alternate universe where the TV show Rick and Morty played a huge part for my inspiration because that show is all about Rick visiting alternate dimensions, and other shows like The Walking Dead and Death Race for their Post-Apocalyptic environments.

[rahuljoshi63]

Stellar Project #4

Over the past week, I have been spending a lot of time making a car. I did a lot of research and decided to go with a buggy, which was my biggest mistake. I have never made a car before, and as an environment artist I have little to no experience with proper hard surface modelling. I put together a PureRef of Dune Buggies and looked up for blueprints to support the front-side-top modelling technique -as I like to call it- wherein you put front, side and top view blueprint photos of the thing that you want to model and use orthographic modes to trace the outline of the blueprint in 3D. Well, that part was pretty easy, but then came the difficult part of modelling the harder surfaces like the engine, tubes connecting to the engines as well as tyres and the actual surface of the car keeping it all together. That is when things started to go sideways, and I decided to stick to environment modelling because I had already spent a lot of time on it and I didn’t have enough time left to model the actual environment along with the other things that we were supposed to submit according to the brief. As I have mentioned many times before, I love to try new things with each and every single project I make, but this time I failed. I will definitely turn this into a lesson and try to finish this model once and for all when I don’t have to worry about other projects, but until then, I now had to focus on the main part of the project for Stellar Entertainment, which was my main idea about the transition between worlds.

[rahuljoshi63]

Stellar Project #3

To develop the last two mini-ideas, finally I realized that maybe there could be a destructive race between two separate worlds, one earth and the other maybe an alien planet. Now what I had to figure out was how to make the transition. Then it came to me, something that has never done before, cars getting sucked up into the sky by a UFO. Well, thanks to Red Dead Redemption 2 and it’s amazing easter eggs, this idea came to me. I did a little research whether something like this had done before, and nothing really popped up.

[rahuljoshi63]

Stellar Project #2

The live brief of Stellar Entertainment made me full of enthusiasm and ideas. Since Burnout is always going to be a memory of ‘fun with destruction’ as a kid, now that destruction got turned into a more of an adult rated destruction - mainly something like the movie Mad Max. Post apocalypse is always a go-to idea when it comes to fiction, and turning it into a racing game would mean mixing Mad Max with the movie Death Race. But that seemed like something which has been done a lot of times in the past, so I still wanted something else. Another idea that was floating around in my head was something that I can do with aliens/outer space. I wanted to combine the two, but found it a little difficult.

[rahuljoshi63]

Stellar Project #1

After the interdisciplinary project began the phase two of the module which consists of two assignments, a pitch to Stellar Entertainment about a new idea which can be implemented in their racing game Burnout, and the other being a pitch about the final major project which is going to be my main focus for the entire final semester of my master’s degree. Ever since we got the pitch about the Stellar Entertainment Project, I was extremely excited for it because Burnout Paradise is my ultimate favourite racing game, something which I have loved dearly since I was a kid and always will. There was just something different about crashing cars into traffic and jumping on ramps with the camera shots feature that I really enjoyed, a feeling which I did not get in any other racing game. And, to top it off, I was excited for the major final project since before I even started the course. This is just going to be the best part of the module for me.

References:

Electronic arts (2020) Burnout Paradise Remastered. Available at: https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/5LfFZQ8KWqZZoUxNtF4GoJ-970-80.jpg.webp

[rahuljoshi63]

Interdisciplinary Project #10

Over the next few days, me and Dan divided our 3D work wherein I took the responsibility of blocking out the world and modelling the terrain along with taking a few models from Dan and putting it together in the world. I then put everything to finalize the render in Unreal, set up the foliage such as grass and Trees on the terrain and the Skylight plus the Water shader. Then Dan took up the responsibility of texturing the final buildings and post-processing in Photoshop. With that being said, the final render was ready to be published. 

The next steps were just writing an evaluation document and a few blog posts relating to the lectures that took place during this phase of the module - such as a reflective post on the sound-triggered animation group task and types of creativity used in the group. And finally, sending out the grades for everyone in my group. Overall, I was more than satisfied with the amount of work put in by my group and making the final render a big success, in my opinion the experience was amazing - working in the group and the actual experience of the render that we created. It was a fun phase in the module which led me to experience what it would be like to work in an interdisciplinary group and still working on a project together to make something beautiful out of it.

[rahuljoshi63]

Interdisciplinary Project #9

We chose to do an aerial view render because none of us had done it before and it seemed very interesting because of the size of the render, we got the freedom to add as many tiny details as we possibly could. When the final sketch was ready, Haritha divided it into several different parts which after breaking down were all equally important to consider. The exhibition experience was supposed to be immersive to the people and details are significant.

Haritha did a very good job with adding small details into the bigger picture which is what the exhibition was supposed to be like. The main topic of the world render is that nature is reclaiming its place on mother earth when human activity came to a halt. To explain the smaller parts into detail, starting from the top left of the 2D render - she added a part where mangrove trees started growing back from the water body because of the decrease in water pollution. Moving to the right, there would be a big water body just behind the big buildings signifying that where there was once plain land, water made its way into it. Then Himani’s idea of an Oxygen glass globe where people would have to stay since clean air is only possible to get in there, and the air outside is totally polluted. Further to the right, flocks of birds starting to come back in suburban areas. Along with water and birds, the levels of greenery also start to increase as the rural landscapes start getting covered in a carpet of colourful wildflowers. Nature also starts to send wild life to the city area because there is so much greenery and so little human activity that animals stop feeling scared and sick to enter an urban area. We also took some real-world examples such as the sighting of Penguins in Cape Town who ventured further out of their colony at the beaches, along with the return of Swans in Venice Canals. Turtles laid over 60 million eggs on the beaches across India in 2020 because there was no human activity on the beaches which meant less pollution and more freedom for the wildlife and aquatic life. With that point, ends our experience of the render. Haritha, Hemanth and Himani did a very good job with coming up with a 2D concept and mixing all these ideas together, now it was up to me and Dan to turn it into a 3D experience.

Miro (n.d.). Group Project [Online] Available at: https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lU8V-N8=/ [Accessed: 16.02.20]

[rahuljoshi63]

Interdisciplinary Project #8

Based on the finalized idea, Hemanth, Himani and Haritha came up with amazing concepts. One idea was about a dome where people are forced to live because the air outside is so bad that no one can breathe it and stay alive. Another one was also sort of similar, where the final artefact could be a mask connected to a small pot of plants since they give out fresh oxygen. Out of which we all liked the idea of a sky-view of a city where there are rivers flowing through instead of roads and there’s greenery everywhere. This sketch was made by Hemanth, and it was approved by everyone else in the group. After pre-finalizing this sketch, we decided to discuss further to refine it if needed which was to be done on our next group call.