#immersivevisualisation2

Immersive Visualisation II - Part One

September 26th, 2019.

For this project, I’m feel quite inspired but also quite anxious. I’m not really sure if what I’m doing is too risky to translate correctly for the brief and it’s playing on my mind, but I trust myself and I want to give it my best shot. Our brief states that we need to create a castle scene – a castle in particular because it contains all of the elements needed for us to test out our learning for the next five weeks – however, I’m not particularly interested in creating a castle scene myself, so I wanted to create something that incorporates all of the elements my lecturers are looking for without straying away from myself and the kind of projects I enjoy creating. My scene requires a few things:

Shaders that animate elements of the scene, for example, a flag.

A modular design, so that elements can be repeated for cleaner workflow, for example, castle brick walls, turrets and barriers.

These are the things I’m going to have to think about and work around the most. It’s not a particularly difficult set of requirements, but it definitely requires some thinking so that I can check all of the boxes confidently and not stress out about the work that I’m producing.

When I first heard that it was going to be a diorama, I had an idea of doing something similar to isometric pixel art a lot of my friends and I used to create when we were younger. I began looking up a lot of these to use as references, as the kind of creativity that people brought to the table with creating scenes like these.

I like a lot of these ideas, but I don’t feel like these scenes art particularly true to the kind of aesthetics I like to create in my work, so I began looking up some references for the kind of scene I would like to create. I adore things like city scenes and neon aesthetics, so I decided I wanted to do something in that range of thinking – so I did research on these so I could deconstruct some of the elements of these and figure out ways of checking the boxes for my lecturers. I want to create something fun, electric and colourful.

After collecting these, I definitely had a better idea of how I wanted the project to look and play. I also feel as though this creates room for some ideas that can be implemented to really bring an element of wow factor into the final diorama. I have a small list of ideas that I think would check the boxes:

Rain Particle Effects

Animated textures of rain running down the building sides

A stream of water

 Reflective puddles of water

Clothes lines

Telephone lines

Flag, or Flag Like Objects

Plants

Animated Signage

I decided, however, that I wanted to create a mixture of a futuristic aesthetic and a kind of slum aesthetic, as I think this would be more interesting and detailed for the tile/modular element workflow of the project. For tileable elements, I want to create some things such as:

Panels of corrugated iron

Panels of Wood

Repeated Plants and Small, Crowded Elements

Repeated and reshaped signage

Road

Brick

But we’ll have to see which of these will work best in my favour. I would like to experiment by creating some 3D tileable textures in ZBrush. I don’t think I’m hugely talented at creating textures myself, but I’ve found some really sweet tutorials that explain and break things down in a way that’s a lot easier for me to understand. I definitely would like to work on creating a wooden plank texture. In my first week, I’ve been finding Zbrush a particularly difficult program to work. There’s a lot of annoyances with the program that I’m not quite getting used to, but hopefully if I managed to get some practise in over the upcoming days I’ll be able to work out the kinks that are really annoying me.

Immersive Visualisation II - Part Five

October 31st, 2019.

It’s been a hard first seven weeks but I’ve finally finished. I’m really happy with the work I did in 3DSMax and I really feel like it’s a good step up from some of the city environments I’ve done over the years. Most of the elements are modular and most elements have been stretched and repeated as much as possible. Little aspects such as some of the neon sign designs are also modular, but a few of these were created to help break up the scene visually. I think, bar that, everything in the scene is reused or recycled - including a lot of the textures. I was actually really surprised when I went into my textures folder to see how little I had actually created. On the flipside, I was also really happy with the fact that a large percent of the final textures were actually completely handmade by myself through sculpting. Only a few are outsourced, and these were a few images just so I could check the NDO box (such as the corrugated iron roll-up doors). I also managed to tackle some model types I have a tendency to avoid, such as more organic ones. I’m quite happy with that. I put a few of these inside some pipes to check the box for editing normals - I thought that by breaking open a quarter of the pipes it would give me a “reason” to split the pipes up rather than having them randomly modular.

In terms of shaders, I created quite a few different ones for different things in my scenes. I played around with the flag shaders in order to get some of the clothes on the clothing lines moving with the wind, which I think was a nice substitute for a flag. I also had some water running down the street sides which I think came out quite nice and stylised - not perfect but definitely enough for me to be happy with. I also created a shader that runs water down the windows and bricks in the scene which I feel gives the rain just a little bit more power. I really love this shader, even if it is quite simple. I didn’t have much reason to use a triplanar, so I used it in a custom skybox I created for myself and created a few “star” textures of different colours to get it to blend them together. It’s quite hard to see in the final game because of the fog and lighting, but it’s there I suppose. I did struggle a lot at first with the shader graph but as I got used to editing it definitely felt a lot more natural. It’s definitely not what I want to be doing for the rest of my life, but I respect it and do love the extra blow it gives to the scene.

Immersive Visualisation II - Part Four

October 26th, 2019.

I’ve been working away on this project to the point where I’ve finished the 3D modelling aspect, and I kind of feel like I’ve outdone myself. There’s a lot of things I would have liked to have added to make the scene feel a bit more full and a bit more alive - but I’ve checked all the boxes I wanted to check to a standard where I’m actually really happy with it. There are some things I haven’t accomplished - but I’m at the stage where I really need to move on.

Most of the textures for the models I created myself - either through sculpting or photoshop. I created a few textures and their normals in Zbrush - such as the wood and brick textures - and I used some brushes I found online to help me with the stylized appearance. I think this really helped me get the look I set out to achieve as I was really struggling with using the base brushes. I also used a couple of textures from online and used the NDO to get the results that I wanted - particularly with things like the window textures and the corrugated iron shutter doors on some of the buildings. I also added some smaller bump textures to things like posters. I created all of the neon signs and poster imagery myself. I think I sometimes using graphic design as a way of breaking my working rhythms and relaxing a little bit. I do sometimes miss making traditional art.

As you can see, I was also playing about with the lighting. I kind of wanted to set out for myself how I wanted my scenes to translate into Unity and what I wanted to do with my scene and give myself more of an aesthetical grounding. This helped a lot. It also meant that I could focus on refining the scene colour schemes without necessarily adding colours to the textures themselves - which is what I was struggling with.

I’ve also been told that I kind of avoid creating models of natural objects - and one thing I wanted to create was plants so that I could put some wavy shaders onto them - so I created a few using some cylinders and some planes and I actually really like the way they turned out. I was kind of scared that they wouldn’t look stylised in the way I wanted them too, but they turned out actually looking really good. I’m really proud of myself.

I’ve also added other shader-orientated things like clothes lines and such. A;though thinking about it now, that doesn’t seem too smart considering I’m doing a rainy night time scene...but I guess continuity isn’t going to be a huge bit of my priorities right now.

Immersive Visualisation II - Part Three

October 18th, 2019.

I’ve not really updated myself in a while as I’m feeling quite overwhelmed at the moment – I’m kind of finding it hard to keep up with my ideas and my development, but I’d like to get better at this – so I came in early in the morning to get this post finished.

For ZBrush, I downloaded a brush pack from online in order to help me achieve the stylised textures that I wanted to achieve. When I started using this, it created the results that I wanted a lot faster and allowed me to practise ZBrush a lot more without becoming frustrated, and because of that it’s allowed me to become a lot more used to the interface. I’ve also found that I actual really enjoy creating textures and I’ve been really motivated to create lots of textures for the project. I started by creating a wood texture and then developed a brick one too – from this I also created a few subtler textures like concrete for things like pavement and road.

I’ve also started throwing a bit more into 3DSMax. I also started playing about with the lighting in order to give me a better idea of how my textures are turning out and what I want to achieve. I’m actually really happy with the result. It’s really allowed me to see my potential and de-stress a little bit.

I think one thing that was particularly stressful is not really knowing how to apply my colour scheme for this project. I initially attempted to directly colourise the textures, but I found them to look a little bit gaudy. When I started putting in lights, it gently reflected some of the colour and took away the stress of having to go over the textures. Now, I want to use colour in a way that’s sparing but impactful – things like signage and posters. I would love things like decals and stuff the add “pops” across the scene and create an aesthetical unity that creates a bit more than just a greyscale city. I also wanted to create elements like this that were relatively repeatable in line with the modular aspect – things like bollards, traffic cones, posters, etc. I think this really helped build my own confidence in the scene and a good basis for furnishing it.

I also used pipes as a method of using the edit normal feature. These have been cut into quarters. One thing I would like to do is add half pipes in as gutters and three quarter pipes in so that I can furnish them with plant-life. Now, it’s really just beefing up the scene, expanding it and adding the final changes.

In terms of Unity, I began to mess around with shaders and currently have one. I would like to create some more this week. My current goal is to finish my model entirely this week – potentially over the weekend – and work only on Unity implementation from here on out. My first shader is a water running down materials texture – as I want this to be a rain scene. I still need to refine it, but it has the basic nodes to do the job. I also have the basis for a water shader, but I still need to work on refining that too. It’s a lot more incomplete compared to my first one. I would also like to work on creating a shader for swaying plants and laundry – which I’m going to try referencing form some of our examples we’ve been given.

Immersive Visualisation II - Part Two

October 7th, 2019.

I began looking for a wider range of references to sketch from on the off chance that some of the elements that I chose weren’t suitable for the final project. I began to organise my references as well to help better identify my wants versus my needs. The last time I wrote, I identified the isometric style of model I wanted to produce and then identified the aesthetic, but I also began to look a little bit more into modular style and references of building structures in order to help me identify what I could create for a modular look. Because of this, I have a lot of different types of sketches now, as some ideas act as “backups” or “expansions” to what I’ve already created

So, I began creating a few small sketches here and there, and then from there identified what minor aspects of my sketches I could use in order to be more “modular” with my approach – things like styles of windows, piping, plant types, fences and other things that can be made relatively repeatable throughout my model. I’m hoping by separating these early it can lead to a more successful approach later.

I also began making some preliminary models in order to somewhat plan out what I’m doing. I think at times, I’m confusing myself by overcomplicating the idea of “modular” in my head, so I just wanted to get a file down on paper so that I could see which elements of my model I could repeat. Although this was just a test, it really helped clear my headspace up a little bit – just so I was able to plan out things like walls and tileable elements – and as of recent, my head’s been feeling really foggy, so this has helped me a lot.

I’ve also mentioned I’ve been struggling with ZBrush recently, so I’ve begun to practise it a little bit more so that I feel less overwhelmed with the anticipation of learning a new program. I’m far from good at creating organic models and sculpting, so this has been something that’s been phasing me a lot, but I’ve managed to follow a tutorial to create a tileable texture – as recommended by my lecturer – in order to create some wood. This has definitely taken quite a lot of stress off and allowed me to work at learning my way around ZBrush a little bit better.

I think I’m going to create a cheat sheet of currently relevant ZBrush shortcuts to put up on the wall in order to help me just a little bit more. I remember feeling a bit overwhelmed when I was first learning 3DSMax, so I’m trying to avoid getting unnecessarily stressed out and not being able to produce the things I want to produce. I think at the moment, I need to come to terms with the fact that I won’t be perfect in the next five weeks – I wasn’t perfect at 3DSMax by week five – far from it, actually. I think I just need to let nature take its course and keep on practising so that I’m not falling behind, but knowing when to stop so that I don’t get overwhelmed.

My texture didn’t fully come out the way I wanted it to, but I think I’ll go over it with Danny so that I can accomplish what I want to with my textures. I think I was an execution style similar to that of Darksiders/World of Warcraft/League of Legends. I don’t want it to feel particularly realistic, so right now I think I’m struggling to stylise it in the way I want to. I don’t dislike it though – I think it came out a little bit better than I was hoping, but I would like to speak to him about stylisation and brushes regardless.