Game Characters Lecture

This month I had a game character course.  We focused mainly on anatomy and learning the way muscles and bone work. We did different activities each week focusing on a different topic every time. For the final week of class we did a bust and full body sculpt using ZBrush. I still have a lot of work to do regarding anatomy and practicing, but here are the presentation shots of my final projects for the class.

Environment Art Lecture

This month I worked on environment art and modular building. We created tiling textures using Substance Designer, created material blends, build an environment using modular meshes, and finally we lit the modular level we created.  Below I will post the assets we worked on for each week of the course.

Week 1:  Tiling Materials

For the first week of class we created 6 tiling materials using Substance Designer.

Brick:

 Mossy Stone:

Ornate Tiles:

Slate Floor:

Stucco:

Wooden Floor:

Week 2:  Material Blending

For week 2 we created 3 material blends using different methods for each one. 

Color ID map:

For this blend we created a mask in Maya with a different color for each material we wanted to blend onto the mesh, then we imported the mesh and ID map into Substance Designer to create our complex material.

Multi-Material Blend Node:

Here we used the multi-material blend node inside Substance Designer.  We created masks for each material we wanted to use, and positioned them according to our reference.  Then we plugged each material node to the multi-material blend node using the mask we created to get our desired result.

Vertex Painting:

For the final material blend we used the Unreal Engine 4 vertex painting.  We imported the maps for each material we wanted, and used the Vertex Color and Lerp nodes to blend them together.  We were then able to use the paint tool inside the engine to paint the second material on top of the first.

Week 3:  Modular Building

For this project we used BSPs inside Unreal Engine 4 to block out a reference image of our choice.  After we had the level blocked out we converted the BSPs to Static Meshes and exported them to Maya.  We used the BSPs as reference for scale and proportion to build the Static Meshes we would be using to re-create the level.  After modeling the meshes in Maya we UVed them, created custom collisions for the meshes we would need to walk through, then exported them back into UE4.  We used the new meshes to replace the existing BSPs since they do not have proper geometry.

Reference:

Re-Built Level:

This is my level after I replaced the BSPs with the static meshes I created in Maya.

Week 4:  Lighting

For the final week of class we used Unreal Engine 4 to light the level we created the previous week.  For this I used a Directional Light to simulate the sun, and point lights for the interior lighting of the level.  I also added in Atmospheric Fog and a Sky Light to create the sky and sun sphere. After that I brought in a Lightmass Importance Volume, Post Process Volume, and Sphere Reflection Captures to optimize the scene lighting. After everything was done I built my lighting using Production Quality to see the final results.

Here you can see the Directional and Point lights, as well as the Sphere Reflection Captures inside the level.

Final lighting built at production quality being played.

This are all the projects we worked on during this month. I learned a lot about constructing a game level from start to finish, as well as how to create and blend my own materials and textures. I hope to practice this techniques more in the future and create more complex levels in the future.