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Portfolio Website Link

https://lukaszmdx.wixsite.com/mojawitryna-1

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Final Project

The final project has began as group project, we continued working in the group  that has been established in the VR project. 

We have started by looking for some inspiration, we went to National Imperial Museum as we had in mind that we want our game to be based in England and contain some British heritage.

With the development of the idea it has been decided that the game will be set in Norwich. I was asked to model the church to fill in the game environment.

Along the FMP I couldnt really figur out what it is that I really want to do. I have tried to begin few personal projects.

The Monster Pose

I have drawn a monster taking influence from Slavic Folklore, especially I really liked the Leshen concept developed in Witcher 3. I  tried to create somewhat similar creature. 

The very first pose mapping out was out of scale, the torso seemed to be too bulky, I wanted the creature to be slender and swift.

With final polishes I have made the final pose, here the pose is much more slender and better balanced.

I have also experimented with compositing a fantasy house. My initial idea was to combine a fantasy design with contemporary architecture, to combine the curves associated with fantasy design and hard edges associated with modern design.

I have research modern log houses as they seemed to combine the timbers with glass in a brilliant designs, I really loved these designs.

I have studied some key features of the designs to get a better understanding.

I have made some quick sketches to play around with the layouts, I was looking for a strong well balanced shapes and silhouettes.

I have also made couple of attempts to figure out how to get the best layout of the building.

I has taken couple of days to figure out the best composition and features that go along coherently with each other. I have imported the tree I have made for assistance week last year to give a fantasy feel.

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IPG  - VR LIVE BRIEF

The project has began with Me, Chris, Raeqwon and Bayley discussing certain ideas and VR video games that we thought would be suitable for the IPG. The visit from IPG representative gave us an idea of key characteristics that the game should include. Some of them are that the game should start easily with minimal User Interface, get in straight into the action. Another thing was the idea of multiplayer, the game should support the idea of player being able to play the game together in the environment. For the initial concepts each of us have set up a visual block out of what we thought the game should be.

VR Castle Siege (Concept)

My idea for the game was a 1vs1 castle defence. The players each would be equipped with a bow and arrow and defend own castle from upcoming waves of NPc minions, the minions would capture checkpoints  on the way to opponents castle. The Player who wins would be the one that has killed off more minions, also bonus points would be given for captured checkpoints and damage dealt to enemy castle. Destroying the castle leads to instant Victory.

After presenting the concepts and by given feedback we decided to continue with concept introduced by Bayley, The Wester Quick Draw.

We began thinking about the game in depth, we have worked together to come up with initial ideas of what the game mechanics should be and how the video game should look like.

First Concept introduced by Bayley was a three way stand of.

My idea was a more complex mechanics. I remember David Turman talk when he mentioned a game mechanics with broken labour, he made a quick example of a two player on a boat fishing, the competition is to catch the most fishes however two people are needed to control the boat, one to row one left side of the boat and second to row on the right side of the boat, however the competition is to catch as many fishes as possible, so the player don’t want to spend too long time on just rowing, if one steps out and begins fishing the other player will be able to counter move the boat and make it difficult for the other therefore this scenario creates an interesting conflict where the players cooperate and compete at the same time for the same goal.

My take on this concept is that there are two robbers that want to steal the gold from the gold cart in the middle of the street, one sheriff that protects the cart. The robbers can take come up to the gold cart, grab the gold bars and throw them into their stash, however the robber is vulnerable to be shot by the sheriff. The robbers have to cooperate when one is stealing the gold the other back fires at the sheriff.

Asset list and ideas that we have discussed together. I have gotten myself into a position where I was responsible for the game environment.

After we have come back from the trip it have introduced an idea of setting the game inside the venue itself, we would keep the western theme and the idea of a shootout however the location would be VR version of the IPG venue. The idea was to create an immersive and IPG unique experience.

Taking reference from the footage I have recorded inside the venue I have mapped out the IPG Venue as well as set out the game environment.

As a group we have finalised the game idea, Bayley has created an illustration to make it easier to understand where the players and enemies would be.

Link For Presentation PDF Below:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1uaQ1ga3Bws5Xz5julgOTMKAX82qJzfm8?usp=sharing

Daniel has made a final build and Video presenting the basic gameplay from the Players Perspective.

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INDUSTRY PATHWAY

Artist Research

Jan Sladecko Showreel 2016

Primary Research Photos

While researching artists who are working in Motion Graphic industry, as it is the industry I have selected… I have come across artist Jan Sladecko who currently works with The Mill company. When I watched his showreel I really loved the use of dark surrounding with the main objects being lit or even emitting light from itself onto other reflective materials. This and the dynamic movement of the objects and camera work I found really exciting and decided I want to give it a try. For my trip I was not rally sure what I should be looking for but decided to create moodboard of dark areas with colourful distinctive light and reflective elements to give me some idea of the visuals I could incorporate into my work.

Link to Jan Sladecko’s showreel.

http://jansladecko.com/main/work/showreel/

I have began modelling BMW M2 with assistance of tutorial available on YouTube. At this point my idea was to recreate Jan Sladecko’s engine animation, where we get to see the engine pistons, then the camera would zoom out to who the whole car.  

I have also decide to jump into modelling a car to practice my modelling skills. Here I am putting care to maintain clean topology with well maintained edge flow and edge distributions. It is especially important when applying subdivision modifier.

I have quickly realised that I will not be able to model the whole car in time, not to mention the UVing, Texturing, Lighting and Rendering. I realised I have to cut corners.

I have downloaded assets from Turbosquid.com and composited suburban scene, the sort of idea you get watching car commercials. I have also experimented with simulating a sheet of fabric covering the car. The sheet was going to pull away reavling the car. I needed the sheet to follow the shape of the car therefore I have applied “Cloth Surface” dynamics to the sheet, and applied “Rigid Body” dynamics to car parts.

By this time I realised I was really short on time and so far there is not much artistic or abstract value to what I have done so far. Therefore I decided... I need to take a different approach. 

I have come across this amazing video created by Daniel Danielsson. I immediately though it is much more creative and imaginative than what I was doing so far. From this point I began thinking about smaller scale renders.

At first I gave it a go to achieve similar effect of object flying though the water bubble. I have tried few things, from “metaball” modifiers to “turbulance” effectors to try and get the ripple effect as the water bubble gets hit by object. 

The way I have ripple effect on the water bubble was to create a sphere, change the type to “Hexahedron” as it distributes the edge flow much better. Then apply “Subdivision Surface” as parent to the sphere and increase the  subdivision to 3. At this stage “Make Editible” the sphere to collapse the modifier and make the sphere object. To out sphere that now has many polys apply “Jiggle” and “Smoothing” modifiers. The Jiggle modifier will allow the mesh to deform, and smoothing will ease the deformations making them less chaotic. At this stage the mesh and jiggle modifiers need to be told how and when to deform.

To simulate the chaotic motion of a ripple add “Turbulance” effector. In this case it is important to change the Falloff of to “Box” and adjust the shape to the one visible above (flat square). Going back to the sphere hierarchy select the jiggle modifier that has been applied, and in its options under “Forces” settings, link up all the “Effectors” that will be used to effect the sphere.

I have also added “Attractor” effector with value set to -100 so instead of “pulling in” the effector began to “push out”, also changed the fallof to Sphere and adjusted to the size of the airplane. I have keyframed and animated the efector to follow the airplane therefore you can see the bump at the moment when aiplane flies into the bubble. Without it the simulation would look less natural as if the aiplane hasn’t effected the bubble borders.

I have taken some time to experiment with the water material because I deiced to use Arnold Renderer I knew I can count on some good results. I have played around with the Arnold Tag and Material editor. I have tried to achieve white reflections line in the original video, instead of the black reflections I have been achieving with default settings. Unfortunately I could not find the solution so the default settings have remained.

I have also experimented with different idea revolving around transparent materials, this time instead of soft and organic shapes I have given it a go with sharp and hard material, Glass. 

I have drawn an illustration of a shuttered glass. Taking the knowledge how alphas work the white will stay and the black will be subtracted.

The illustration has been imported to Cinema 4D as JPEG.

Vectorizer tool has been applied to the library, in Vectorizer sub-menu select illustration through "Texture". Add "Extrude" tool and make the "Vectorizer" a child in the chierarchy. The extruder will add thickness to the drawing. Some unwanted messy topology may occour.

To fix messy topology adjust the setting in "Vectorizer" sub-menu, set Tolerance to 1 cm and Angle to 90 degrees, this should get rid of messy topology. Also it is important to tick select "Create Single Object" so that all elements are being treated as individual elements (Also without this option selected, the faces may isolate and come apart from each other)

Create "Fracture" tool and make it a parent to the rest of the tools in the chierarchy, in its sub-menu under Object select the Mode to "Explode Segments & Connect" also create a "Rigid Body" tag and apply it to Fracture. Here we will change few settings in the Rigid Body tag... Under Collision change Individual Elements to "All".  

From the MoGraph panel I have selected the “Fracture” so that the glass pieces will be treated as individual elements. To that add Simulation Tag “Rigid Body” so that the objects is effected by simulated gravity. Also in the Dynamics panel set Trigger to “Immedietley”  and under Collisions set “Size Increment” -0.5, this will lessen the collision intensity making the elements explode less chaotically.

Using the “MoGraph Weight Paintbrush” make 2 separete selections. The inner selection with all the glass elements that will shoot out following the momentum of the object that will go though the glass. And Outer selection of the the pieces that will remain intact. 

Now its time to apply Attractor again with negative value so that the glass is pushed outwards simulating the momentum of the arrow piercing through. Also the Project Settings have been changed, under the project dynamics change Time Scale to 2% and Gravity to 500cm, this will help to achieve a slow motion effect.

To finish off I have modelled a simple arrow and created simple Arnold Materials. For glass I used default glass preset and only given a slightly green colour, the arrow was a black plastic preset for the body, and metallic with dark yellow for the gold pieces. The light source is Arnold Sky with HDR image applied. The rest to do was to set the composition, tweak some dynamics for best shatter efect and animate the camera.