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Tips for students from professional artists

“We're all students, we never stop learning, and success is achievable for anyone who has the time and dedication for it.”

All depends on the goal. If you just want to design cool stylized characters/creatures, then it's just a matter of drawing and design chops. If you want to just design realistic dudes, then it's design/drawing plus photoblasting chops. If you wanna be a 3d environment artist, then you have to know everything and be a wizard. More skills is always better. Just make sure you give people at least one compelling reason to throw out other applicants and go with you.

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I always find it important to stress that art is a marathon, not a sprint, to understand that it takes years of hard work after graduation to get to the level they need to be at. It is unfortunate that schools have very little time to allow the students to focus on what they need to learn to become experts in their field. in order to obtain accreditation by the government schools usually, need to teach a curriculum filled with other classes.

In my experience, it is important to explain to them what the path looks like for them, to imprint upon them to focus their art to be able to hit a desired quality bar and for them to also spend time learning art fundamentals. If they are not work-ready after finishing school, express the importance to keep themselves fed and to keep the dream alive, many other popular artists had to follow the same path so there is no shame in that.

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...help them by explaining what you would be looking for in a junior art candidate, then pointing out what's missing in the work they shared with you. That keeps things goal oriented, and while the student may still be crestfallen that they aren't where they feel they should be, you've given them an avenue of training to follow. Remind them that art training never really stops, it just gets tougher and more self-directed once you leave the nest.

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1) they need to look at professional work (not fellow students) as a gauge of where their work needs to be to get work, and 2) that you need to always be studying their craft in order to get better.

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Art is the evolution of the human consciousness. Each artist must walk alone on their path to enlightenment. If you explain what you're looking for when you distinguish quality work and fairly present the challenges, it gives them an area to focus. Hopefully they embrace it and put in the work.

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The art paths are so unique and personal that it used to be super hard for me to say "give up ur style and learn a popular one." But I got over that one a little bit ago by remembering that the goal of most of these kids is making a living while doing art. Now I tell people shelling out big bucks at school and wanting spots in the industry that their personal style will always be theirs, but they need a "make money" skill set just like any other job.

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“...focusing less on the art and more on helping them set goals. In my experience, most students fail because they simply don't have good goals. Removing the opinions and subjectivity from the equation can dramatically help. Its easy for anyone to brush off feedback and suggestions that can be perceived as opinion. Staying logical and using data with direct comparisons works great.

... find comparable examples from existing games and ask how they feel like their work lines up with these industry examples. Then there is a good conversation. If you steer them into realizing the situation for themselves, it can be far more effective for them actually learning.”

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Post your Centerpiece Object

Please post a render of your centerpiece object along with the textures as images to your Tumblr.

Also post your reference & concept art, those are easy points that a lot of you are missing.

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Extra Credit 2

I’m opening up one more chance at extra credit.

Create a matte painting, take a screenshot featuring your Project 3 centerpiece and go over it in Photoshop to create a piece of concept art like the video above.

100 points (increase your grade by 10% for Project 3).

All extra credit due May 1st.

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Unity Collaboration

1. Go to the Services tab and turn on the the collaboration feature

2. Once it’s activated a number of other features will open up under it.

3. In those other options you can be able to have others access your scene through clicking Publish> “Open the Collab tool bar” or you can go to the top right of the screen and click the Collab button to drop down the menu

4. Once you click either/or a comment box will open up along with your everything you have in your scene as well as the “publish” option. Type a short sentence or give a little detail of what your scene is or just put the title of what your scene is and click publish.

5. Once everything is loaded(make sure you are in the services tab or go back to it) click the “back to services” on the collaboration window 

6. Then go to Member> add the email address of the one you are going to collaborate with and click invite.

How Others Can Access Your Scene

1. When your collaborator opens unity they will see an invite or a new scene on their main menu

2. Click on the scene; They will have to set where they want to have the file saved. Then turn on the Collaboration Feature

3. You might have to sign in again. Then under the drop down menu of the Collab button or Window click “update” and the scene will load on your file.

Finished…..

*When ever you make changes to your scene you have to go to the collab button then type in whatever changes you made and click publish. The other person will get a notification so they can update their scene……

*You can also have a feature called Collab Hisstory in which you can go back to before a scene change was made in case of mistakes. Just click Window>Collab History….MAKE SURE THAT WHENEVER YOU OR YOUR COLLABORATE MAKES CHANGES THAT THEY WILL ALWAYS TELL WHAT THEY CHANGED IN THE COMMENT BOX BEFORE THEY PUBLISH SO AS TO HAVE A LABEL ON WHAT THEY CHANGED

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http://3dextrude.weebly.com/sword.html  

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Low Poly Weapon Examples

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/XvZ10

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/D1q6o

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/xb5wm

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/2OoAJ

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/WWDQJ

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Office Building Homework

Create an office building with 6+ floors, in Maya using a simple Cube.

Poly count: 6 faces / 12 triangles (can be rectangular) Texture: 1024x1024 diffuse, specular, and bump map JPGs

The easiest way to do this is to first find a photo of a building that was taken straight-on, so the windows are lined up horizontally & vertically. Use the Transform->Perspective tool in Photoshop to ensure your floors are perfectly lined up.

Example tutorial, start with an image like the one below:

Click Keep Reading to see the tutorial:

Keep reading

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Final Project Guidelines

Outdoor 3D game environment

Due December 14th

1-3 group members

This post will be updated and specifics could change.

Requirements

High-poly centerpiece(s) modeled & textured

Low-poly supporting objects modeled & textured

Animated camera (5-15 seconds moving shot)

Terrain: sculpted & painted with 3+ repeating textures

Foliage (grass, bushes, & trees come with Unity Standard Assets Environment Package) rocks, rubble, etc

Tech Specs

Turn in an .EXE file

Post Processing Behavior setup

Color Space = Linear

Rendering Path = Deferred

Tonemapper = Filmic (ACES)

Bonus

Add animated characters (2D or 3D)

Add your names in the Unity UI or world space (be subtle) 

Description

Outdoor 3D scene should include a foreground with 1 or more centerpiece objects that use high-poly modeling techniques and are lit using 3-point lighting; and a background made up of 4 or more supporting objects that use low-poly modeling techniques lit with skybox, directional light, etc.

Animate a simple camera movement like a crane, pan, or truck, 5-10 seconds.

Example ideas:

Bench in a park (foreground) with city skyline in background

Escape pod (foreground) with crashed ship in background

Battering ram at city gate (foreground) with castle in background

Spaceship on landing pad (foreground) with alien city in background

Gypsy wagon (foreground) with carnival in background

Fountain (foreground) with village in background

Pirate ship (foreground) with port-city in background

Ruined city gate (foreground) with ancient temple in background

Space station (foreground) with planets & galaxies in background

Cemetery (foreground) with haunted mansion in background

Expensive car (foreground) with fancy hotel complex in background

Wrecked car (foreground) with post-apocalyptic city in background

Turn your scene up to 11! 

I don’t want to see the first boring thing that pops into your head, find a professional example from a game, movie, or Artstation, and then try make your design even better. 

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Unity Collaboration

1. Go to the Services tab and turn on the the collaboration feature

2. Once it’s activated a number of other features will open up under it.

3. In those other options you can be able to have others access your scene through clicking Publish> “Open the Collab tool bar” or you can go to the top right of the screen and click the Collab button to drop down the menu

4. Once you click either/or a comment box will open up along with your everything you have in your scene as well as the “publish” option. Type a short sentence or give a little detail of what your scene is or just put the title of what your scene is and click publish.

5. Once everything is loaded(make sure you are in the services tab or go back to it) click the “back to services” on the collaboration window 

6. Then go to Member> add the email address of the one you are going to collaborate with and click invite.

How Others Can Access Your Scene

1. When your collaborator opens unity they will see an invite or a new scene on their main menu

2. Click on the scene; They will have to set where they want to have the file saved. Then turn on the Collaboration Feature

3. You might have to sign in again. Then under the drop down menu of the Collab button or Window click “update” and the scene will load on your file.

Finished…..

*When ever you make changes to your scene you have to go to the collab button then type in whatever changes you made and click publish. The other person will get a notification so they can update their scene……

*You can also have a feature called Collab Hisstory in which you can go back to before a scene change was made in case of mistakes. Just click Window>Collab History….MAKE SURE THAT WHENEVER YOU OR YOUR COLLABORATE MAKES CHANGES THAT THEY WILL ALWAYS TELL WHAT THEY CHANGED IN THE COMMENT BOX BEFORE THEY PUBLISH SO AS TO HAVE A LABEL ON WHAT THEY CHANGED

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If you’re having performance issues like stuttering, add this plugin to your project so you can test the cause.

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Course Feedback in Email

Course feedback forms are online this year (previously they’ve been a scantron) to provide feedback for the course. Check your email for this:

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All Work Due Dec 14th @noon

Any late work needs to be posted to your Tumblr with screenshots & ZIP, you must message me on Tumblr so I know it’s there. 

4 Projects at 100 points each + 50 points attendance = 450 points 

If you turned in incomplete an project it’s minus about 20% so the best grade you could get is a C+ if you got 100′s on the other projects.

I’ll award up to 20 points for the character texture extra credit, (+2 grade levels on one project) also remind me if you did extra credit for the sci-fi level.

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Currently the school uses Unity version 5.6.2.

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Revised Asset Store Rules

I’m going to loosen the rules on using items from the Asset Store so you can focus on creating interesting mood lighting in Unity.

You can use (click for example):

repeating textures

panel textures

small 3D objects

particle effects

universe skyboxes

material shaders

Due Nov 9th: Centerpiece object modeled & textured in Maya by Thursday so you can build the rest of the scene around it.

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Unity Lighting Tips

Check “Static” in the top right of Inspector for objects that aren’t animated

To improve Unity’s graphics:

Linear Color Space: change under Edit->Project Settings->Player->Other Settings->Rendering->Color Space = Linear

MainCamera: Rendering Path = Deferred

MainCamera: Add Component->Post Processing Behaviour (Script)  

Make 3 PostProcessing Profiles, one for each scene, (right click Assets->Create->Post-Processing Profile, drag into the Script input box found under the Component we added to MainCamera)

Improve the graphics by clicking on the profile & in the Inspector checking Antialiasing, Ambient Occlusion, Motion Blur, Eye Adaptation, Bloom, & most importantly Color Mapping->Tonemapper = Filmic (ACES)