Final renders - Vivus town house

So despite the fact that I didn't finish what I expected to do at the beginning, I'm pretty happy of how the final renders look:

 

It looks quite different after you render it up. This is just me playing with a beauty and occlussion pass so I'll definately finish the scene just as a practice. Details that I notice when wrong is the texture in the sign; I'm guessing is the flare deformation that could have altered because it look fine in previous rendering test. I could have also add some deformation to the roof to avoid making it look so asian-like. 

Final details

So at the end I managed to get a basic house together; I realised until I started doing some test renderings that probably I went in too much details with some of the textures while the ones that I left at the end are a bit sketchy. This is a final group of the house without any deformation. Not sure if being a bit less than 14000 Tris is good or bad for a game environment, but probably I could have done with less, specially on the windows (take in count that there are windows on all four sides of the house).

Also had some troubles with the roof: the main roof tilling is at different scale as the one for the sticking-out windows. I guess I should have done some testing before going through all the trouble of specular and normal maps.
There are some of the textures that were made:

Unfortunately there I ended up making more assets that I could even use like the square's fountain, road sign, chimneys, stairs and even grass. Some are textured but I couldn't put them in context for the render so I decided to let them out. Just for the sake of portfolio I'm planning to finish this scene during the summer.

Above are the unused props, the working texture for the tiles of the town square's floor and the fountain textures. This last one was the first texture I made as a test of the quality I wanted. Spent more time on it that I should have. Also I'm aware that I wasn't as efficient as I should have been; it was until the final crit that I was suggested to reduce the number of textures/shaders in the whole house, like having one or two for the whole thing. At that moment it was quite late as I was already half way through most of them. 

Next post I'll post some quick final renders. 

Magic and Transmedia

From an idea that started back in 1990 while waiting for a delayed train from Manchester to London to over 450 million copies sold across 67 languages, 7 film and game adaptations and over 15 billion dollars-worth merchandise; I'm talking about the magical world of Harry Potter.
The famous wizard and his world has surely been one my all time favourite stories and not long ago the author J.K. Rowling decided to expand this universe even more: Pottermore.


In the past, Rowling refused to publish the saga as e-books fearing piracy but it is now that she decided to distribute a digital edition along with an online experience that involves a point of meeting for fans all over the world, games, an official encyclopaedia  competitions and even readings by Steven Fry. This dream land for the fans explores over 18,000 words that the Rowling wrote describing characters, locations, objects and magic in detail.
The website can be considered as an MMO experience that revolves around the most important element of a transmedia success: the unification of a huge community in direct interaction with the author of the universe.

I remember trying it for a bit when it was first launched and it was quite a nice to go back to the beginning of the story and see all the special features while surfing around the beautiful artwork done by the New Castle-based-company Atomhawk.

Beyond: cinematic gaming

Playing Heavy Rain on my PS3 not long ago was incredibly surprising, different and (despite getting the bad ending) it kept me on the edge of my seat for the entire game.

I was really impressed how they merged such a cinematic entry with a lot of gameplay in between. Now I've heard a lot of discontent when it comes to games that involve long cinematic cut scenes and some of the main reasons are the lack of realism in the performance and, of course, the fact that its a game, not a film. 

In the case of Heavy Rain, I believe the genre fits the concept of a cinematic adventure plus I felt like I couldn't put down the control at any moment because of the interaction being so spontaneous. 

For the essay I wrote for my Context of Practice 2 I came across a very interesting topic related to the possibles narrative mistakes that takes place when videogames try to be created and delivered with the same par ouch as the cinema does; the fact that it works on camera doesn't mean it works on a game, as it somehow defeats the point of it. Now this topic is much more extensive than this, but the point the I'm trying to defend is that in the time of transition for videogames to be considered as a piece of art on its own we get the chance to experience entries that keep expanding a possible new genre in the game industry.

Beyond: two souls is the newest entry if Quantic Dream to be delivered in October 2013 featuring no one less than Juno's actress Ellen Page, among other top Hollywood cast.

Using the new engine tested on the clip Kora, the studio plans to deliver the most cinematic game yet, an adventure featuring Jodie Holmes and her adventure around her supernatural powers.

Most reviews and previews of the games look incredibly stunning and despite the fact they this represented a massive challenge for the actress, the job of doing motion capture for a 2000 page long scriptcertainly looks promising.

     

The game is not only building expectations among the game community but it also had an appearance at New York's Tribeca Film Festival featuring a recording of the first 35 min of the game.

I'm certainly looking forward to play this game as I'm a big fan of both Quantic Dreams' work and Ellen, I just wish it came out either before or after as Pokemon X and Y is having its world realise around the same date...I'm so sad...

Release Date: October 2013

16 for Ages 16 and up:

Genre: Adventure

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Developer: Quantic Dream

Stylised textures

So the "attractive" part of my responsive project was meant to be texturing; I had intended to have a simple and low poly environment that could potentially be used in a 2D camera as a sidescrolling with having an extra 3D/free camera angle when it came to exploring and item searching.

The hanging sign is the fist object that I completely finished:

This is just a screen capture, but I worked on the painted texture, a specular map to give it a shiny texture where needed and a normal map for the bumps.

The chains where quite tricky to get them look like actual geometry when they're just two plains, but I thing that by exagerating their normal map it worked out quite well.

For the normal maps I used Quixel's software called nDo2. It works as a plug in for photoshop and it's pretty easy to use. The idea is that once you have a texture you can convert it into normal maps by the click of a button, instead of going all the way of having a low and high poly mesh and bake it. Probably it's not as precise and it does have better results when you work with photographic textures rather than hand painted ones, but it sure makes life a lot easier, specially with features like live 3d preview, live sculpting, presets and a good panel control to adjust all levels of the normal map.

I'm aware that it can make specular , height, diffuse and other maps, but at least in specular maps I think I prefer to work on them on my own. I found this video on youtube that can show you an understanding and importance of a good specular map. It does come a lot harder when you are working with hand painted assets as you have to create everything from scratch. 

I've also been working on other assets like this fountain below. My main problem at the moment is the time put a dedicated amount of time on each asset as it drains a lot of time by doing so. I thought for my submission I could just focus on having as many assets as possible but with good finishing quality rather than having many unfinished. I'll aim to have a house finish, but I can't certainly assure this at this point.

A Kingdom of Transmedia

Warning:  Yes, this is another blog post about Kingdom Hearts.

People that know me closely know about my massive affection towards the Kingdom Hearts franchise. I has everything I like in one video game  Disney, Final Fantasy, RPG, action, decent storyline, great graphics, amazing game-play  great soundtrack and more. I thought it could be great to talk about the transmedia journey so far, but I'm not talking about the adaptations of the same story line to a manga (comic) way or the countless products of merchandise or even the cross-platform remakes of some it's entries. What I want to talk about is the transmedia done along the story itself. 

I feel like I can't go around naming characters as potentially someone reading this might not follow just by what I'm saying. If anything, I found this "simplified" version of the story so far. (In case anyone is interested). 

The interesting part in this case is the arrange in which stories/entries have come out and how they are intertwine between each other. This table below shows when the games came out and for which platform they did:

While KH and KHII are considered the main storyline as they're made for consoles, all the other entries that have been made for portable devices have been used as a link. The story has a lot of characters, most of them are linked to each other in complicated ways, and this is where they used game entries to explain reasons how the character got there in the first place and why it behaves the way he/she does. 

On the time line below you can have an idea of how stories are used as links and some even happen at the same time as others. 

This certainly doesn't affect the main storyline; if anything I find it fascinating how they manage to fill those story gaps and even if Square Enix is doing it just for the sake of feeding the fandom or because the story was originally intended to expand this much I just can't help to want to play them all and know everything about it. 

I have to admit that I bought my PS2 quite late, but only for the reason of playing this game. After this I became quite affective to Sony's consoles, and I felt again by buying a 3DS to play KH3D; all I'm trying to say is that even when transmedia it's not intended to capture all the market possible in a greedy way, I have to admit I've been a victim of this commercial strategy. (and I love it!...please give me more) 

Forum community and support - collective knowledge

One of the most frustrating parts I've found trying to achieve an artistic/creative product with technical/mechanical techniques such as 3d is the lack of knowledge on a specific tool; that horrible feeling of knowing what you want to make, but not being able to solve a problem of tool-using.
It's impossible to have professors around all the time and even if you could there would probably be many thing they wouldn't be able to help.
After spending hours and hours of looking on tutorials on youtube and not being able to find exactly what you're looking for I ended up turning (more for whining really) to forums and communities seeking for any hope.
I didn't really had much expectations as, I must admit, it never went really went well for me in early interactions with places like Deviantart, where instead of help of feedback you just get a 'looks cool' reply.
I was surprise to see how much support and helpful feedback one can get from more mature forums where like-minded people help you or point you out in the direction you're looking for.
I started opening accounts in the main forums of my interest on one side to get help when needed but also to start stablish contacts with people, that even if they're far away, it's always nice to expand ones social group of people with similar taste.
This are a few of the best forums I've recently joined and highly recommend joining some of them:

Unity 3D
Polycount
CGHub
3DTotal
gameartisans
CGSociety
ConceptArt
Digital Tutors

Unreal Engine / UDK - first look

So after trying to get my head around what project to do for the responsive module, I decided to make a game level. Because of the time restrain it was intended to just a small part of it and more likely just a video giving an example of how the game would look.
Having the time at the end, I could potentially try to put in a game engine and have it as a interactive walk-able area.

I was undecided at first whether to make a part of a forest or the starting village. Because I remember the problems I had when I made my very old environment with having too many plants and transparent textures I decided to go for the village.
At the same time as I went into the modelling part I started watching the Digital Tutors beginners lessons for an Introduction to UDK. This is a 16 lessons project that guides you from the point of downloading to installing the software to basic addition of sound, textures, level blocking and gameplay.

Now UDK or Unreal Engine has always caught my attention for the vast use of it in the professional industry. After working with unity 3D for a while I wanted to change a bit and experiment with it to have and extra software in my curriculum. So far in the tutorials I manages to get my head around the interface and it's actually not as difficult as I though; if anything I think it took me more time to manage my way around Unity.
Half way through the lessons I realised I wont be able to have put the environment in the engine itself, but I will definitely finish the lessons and give it a try over the summer.

Fairytale's interpretation

Fairytale

1
a : a story (as for children) involving fantastic forces and beings (as fairies, wizards, and goblins) —called also fairy story

b : a story in which improbable events lead to a happy ending2
: a made-up story usually designed to mislead

The interpretation of old stories or fairytales over the history surpases barriers of what the original tales was probably intended to. We have all heard at least one and now a days we have seen more than one interpretation of each one of them. The concept or moral of the story is usually kept as it's usually the core of the plot; the characters, depending on their importance vary in looks and slight behaviour but it usually swings around the same concept.
This is a bast topic to tackle, but if they where copyrighted there's no doubt that the authors of every fairytale would be filthy rich.

Examples below are the stories of Rapunzel and Snow White; both simple, yet with small variations it has been taken in diferent adaptations, from animation, film, teathre, dance, illustrations, photography and probably many other medias just with the only purpose of delivering the core message of their own personal stories. It's fascinating to know how attractive and versitile simple stories can become even after hundreds of years of its creation.

Rapunzel 

 

Snow White

 

 

Modular Game design

When planning how to approach this decision of making the starting village in such a short time, I had to look up into modular design.
I came across a blog by Joel Burgess in Gamasutra.com that covers the modular approach to Level Desing using open games like Skyrim and Fallout 3.
I pretty much invite people interested in game design to have a read at it and also to the article written back in November 2002 by Lee Perry (then Epic, now BitMonster) called 'Modular Level and Component Design' as pretty much it covers the whole process behind the time saving method of tilling props for the creation of a game environment.
Clearly the ideal way would be to make every single part unique to give a more realistic feeling to the world, but in a real working flow in the game industry, time constrains are always against game designers pushing us towards working in modular ways.
The creation of the props or kits of props comes easy to make once you understand the process of planning; the use of grids and scales becomes your best friend.
Before I even had the time of panicking of the amount of work I still had to do, even when using a repetition method I was glad they talked about the amount of team work that it's involve in the process and that usually this process is spread between the modellers  level designers and the art team; this only to spot any mistakes and make this props as reusable and efficient as possible, specially in open world games.

This is an examples of a kit used for a dungeon in Skyrim ready to  go to the 'Build-out' phase. 

For my own project the number of props is reduced to a slighly embarassing number as the time it would take me to texture them all would be more than what I already have, but at least I managed to get and experience of working under this modular concept. When I started working on the modular production of the houses I couldnt help to get this flashback of basic architectural planning that I learned years ago, and it turns out that once you understand the basic function and the way of avoiding it looking to 'square' the rest of the workflow seems to run a lot faster.

This is the type of concept I had originally for the style of the village. Looking messy, unsymmetrical and full of detail. With the time constrain, I was fearing of this being overly ambitious, and even though it was to an extend, I hope I managed to break down the key aspects of it and portrait them into my modular assets.