Urban Exploration - Victorian Architecture

This week we visit the Abbey Pumping Station Museum to drawings of the exhibits in the museum that will be developed in to the theme of Jack the Ripper Environment.

the Abbey Pumping Station Museum

I search around for environments that I like. This place mainly consists of gears and Victorian time room showcase. I looked around and began sketching the thumbnails.

A3 size sketchbook, pencils 2B, eraser, putty rubber

My sketch was very quick and small and not detailed but I have one that I like which I continue the sketch and detailing it further after the trip.

In the end, I choose the victorian time showcase of the washing line. I wanted the final piece of next week's medium to be made with acrylic paint.

because the painting will have to change into 

Jack the Ripper Environment and not a direct live drawing of the science. I use procreate app on my iPad to layout the basic mood and tone of my painting to be used in next week's task.

Final Piece

I really like how the colour and the tone turns out in my final sketch plan. The dark environment and the contrast of the strong lighting create the contrast on the clothes that show its transparency. The sky was made green based on the Victorian paintings I do as researched as most of them will have green and dark gloomy colours to them.  

 

Backyard project: Lighting in Unreal and Substance Designer

Lighting in Unreal

After finishing basic unwrapping, I export the selected scene and import them on UE4. A little adjustment on the sun's position and changing the light to shine from the left instead.

I wanted the scene lighting to resemble evening rather than nighttime because my light source in this build are only the lights from the store signs and the store windows. I wanted to add details to the scene that should be seen in brighter light such as stickers, posters and decals on the machines/garbages/window.

Substance Designer

The program was quite hard for me to grasp at first, I didn't understand what a lot of functions did and maybe that was also due to me skipping through the tutorial.

The first texture I wanted to do was street tiles.

I went just outside of the Vijay Patel building to get this type of tiles as a reference.

After getting my reference picture, I search for a tutorial on youtube to follow along ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGOLLSQnvYo ) to create the tiles. Most of the tiles I search for did not match the tiles I wanted, so I settle for a marble tiles tutorial and adjust the surface texture of the marble to be grainy on my own. I struggle with this a lot but I got it to work in the end.

There are feedbacks from Pat and after I adjusted the texture a little more and add in colour gradient, this becomes my final tiles for the walkway street tiles.

This is the final look of the tiles, with colour and grainy texture to the tiles as the improvement.

The second tiles I made are the concrete that will be on my building. I didn't look at a tutorial for this and tried to use my understanding of the first tutorial I watch and slowly build up the texture for it to resemble a white concrete wall.

This is the final result after adding colour gradient to it

The second one lower is also a concrete texture but with less noise and chipped texture. I will use this as Vertex Painting so the concrete texture won't be as repetitive.

This is my first time using Substance Designer, it is very poorly done and can be improved a lot by adding more texture and learning how to make better interesting tiles. But for my first few tries, I am very proud of myself and will improve myself for future project.

Backyard project kickoff!: Concept and Blocking

This week was the start of the backyard slice project. I contemplated a lot on what theme I should go for since a sci-fi neon sign alley would be too common or just a roughen up dark alley would be too basic.

In the end, my concept for this project is to make a Japanese convenience store alley with vending machines

Moodboard and Sketch

Concept moodboards

Convenient store alley sketch

The convenience store will be based heavily on the Japanese convenient store I went to the most which is Lawson. I want a soft evening vibe from this project with small details or posters and graffiti to rough it up. Not enough to make it scary, just miz feelings.

Blocking out the alley

Starting out by blocking the basic shapes of the object from my sketch. I use colours to mark which object is which.

adding bins and details to the shop, using insets and extrude tool to make the wall not completely flat.

Adding details to the vending machines with slice tool, cutting and extruding the slot for the cans to be in. I inset and push back the advertisement area of the vending machine to give dimension and mark myself where to draw the ads in.

Duplicating the vending machines

Because of the tris I have at the moment is not a lot so I decided to add a gachapon machine in to the scene. ( Gachapon is a vending machine variety that dispends capsule toys, originated in the 1960s in Japan )

The scene blocking with cube 1x1x1 comparison

Final Blocking/Design

Final scene blocking

Scene UV unwarping

I am so excited about this project and love how this turned out. I added the level of the road and the walkway to separate it in the final blocking and add a sign to the pole which will be ads on it later. The red line on the store is a strip of LED light that will be the main lighting of this piece.

Material and Surface Properties

This week's task is to apply a range of values, use the proper amount of contrast, and accurately represent reflecting surfaces. The room was darkened to achieve the lighting that creates high contrast on the reflective surface.
Because of this, the process picture taken during the class has a shadow that I can not edit out.

The setup

Process

starting by drawing thumbnails and grids on the page to get the correct composition, I begin with the object on the left to measure where other objects will be.

I roughly sketch out the basic shapes of the objects

with grids and eclipse method I learnt from last year, I apply it to my sketch to get the right eclipse shape

After being satisfied with the shapes, I start shading the darkest area of the picture as the control value.

The metal surface of the pot was the most enjoyable part in this piece because I have the most understanding of its logic.

when I move on to the glasses and the grater, not so much. I still need to work on the bending angel of the glass and the object behind it.

I added the details such as the fog and water droplets inside the bottle and the rough surface of the orange with dots and scribble.

Final Piece

A3 size sketchbook, pencils 2B – 6B, eraser, putty rubber

I went and repeat the crosshatching and shading on the lighter area and lined the orange for it to be darker. This indicated that the orange is at the front of the setup. The piece took me a few days fr me to feel satisfied with it but with feedback, I managed to finish it and learn a lot for me to improve in the future. I would like to try and use a darker pencil to shade the handle since in the end, it looked too light.

Pumpkin asset : Unreal engine

Unreal Engine 4 Process

Once I finish with the texture from the substance painter, I import the low poly model on Unreal with textures.

material nodes

After that, I add in the lights and change the atmosphere to make it spookier. The theme is to make the Halloween night/evening sky purple sky which will contrast with the bright orange of the pumpkin.

I made glow material to make its tears now instead of a candle glow like a normal Halloween pumpkin.

There are 3 major lighting for my pumpkin; the one below the chin for the classic flashlight to the face look, the purple light from the back for the atmosphere lighting and the glow from the tears that are built later after adding the glow material.

Final Piece: The Weeping Pumpkin

I am so proud of this task and it was a very fun task too, it is a small skill brushing up the task after the break. The retopping process was a pain, I didn't like that part much but the rest was quite fun. I would improve this pumpkin if I have the face with; cleaner and more careful retopping of the face area and more colours and textures on the models.

Pumpkin asset : Retoping and Substance painter

Retopping Process

The next step after finishing sculpting is to retop, I import in the highpoly model marking with HP_ and start retopping the model.

The retop was a bit messy since I didn't warm up during the break at all it was like I trying to recollect my memories with the front retop. I looks a lot better at the back.

There were too many tris and the stem ook up a lot of tris so I merged all the unnecessary lines into triangle and up as the same line at stem area.

After finishing the main part of the pumpkin, the rest is the assets

I retop the vines with tube shape and push all the verts down to the retop surface of the HP model.

Separating the vines, teeth, tongue and tears from the pumpkin as assets

Grouping all of them together and smooth group

Final retop and UV Sheets

I decided to make the pumpkin into the 2048 sheet and the vine/leaf is going in the 1048 sheet as assets with 3k tris in total

Substance painter

After finishing the retop I immediately put it in to Substance painter

I make the entire pumpkin orange and leaf out the space for other assets which will be in the lower layer of the skin so I won't have to use a mask a lot. I am really proud of the gum and teeth I made with just a blur brush and simple texture.

The other texture is from masks and brushes with texture to give the pumpkin an unclean and scary vibe. There are scratches and slashes across the pumpkin. The leaf and vine are made with the same method.