Texture Painting - A lesson in modeling and style

So since my last post, I acted on changing up the shapes on the cart, I updated the UVs on the cart, and I began painting the cart.

What I learned from this session was that I really need less uniform strokes and more contrast/saturation. I was watching a tutorial by Tyson Murphy (ArtStation link) @ Udemy (link to tut), and I pretty much tried to loosely follow his technique. I immediately recognize that it doesn't resemble his style, and I don't like my result.

This texture was something that I made during a short break at work. And I already like what I see here. Alot more saturation, more contrast, and clean (ish)! I want to lean more towards this style again.

I also learned a lesson in UVing. How do I prevent stretching in my texture? I've noticed that some artist would separate the edge of the wood (inside grain), so that they could just focus on the largest part of the asst, and have more UV space for the exterior wood. Atleast, thats my observation. I also noticed that some Blizzard artists would create only one side and spread that detail around. So in my next session I will be removing the edge of the planks.

Here are some useful links to the inspiration I had while work on this:

http://jessicadinh.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_18.html
http://fafart.blogspot.com/p/warlords-of-draenor.html

That's it for now!

Cannon Intro!

So here's a cannon that I will be texturing, maybe rigging, and creating particle effects for. The big part of this will be the particle effects!

I want to make my blog posts more informational, so I'll start with this:

Shape is important.

I started with a regular looking cannon, and then thought about my overall style. It needs to look fun, round, and something that puppy people would look cute standing next to! So I shortened it, made it rounder from all angles, and removed alot of 90 degree angles from the cannon. Looking at it now, the cart for the cannon could use those qualities too.  (Hey, typing this out really is helping!)

For all my models, I will be working on my speed. I believe it is very important as a commercial/entertainment artist. Work fast with as little technical errors as possible; such as stray verts, double edges, or inside faces. Optimization can always come after the model is done. I think speed first, then optimizing later is a good way to prioritize things. As I continue to model, I can always get better at optimizing while I model.

With this particular model, I will experiment with PBR on the metal parts. I want to achieve a painted texture style that incorporates physically based rendering. I don't know if Final Fantasy 14 uses this technique, but I loved the way metal looks in that game. How it shines in the sunlight, and seemingly reflects the glow of the moonlight at night.

For orgazation, I am using Trello for personal asset tasking. I like that I can keep specific tabs on myself. It also satisfies the itch for keeping track of tasks and schedules.

I am currently watching videos on Youtube about PBR, and so far I've seen:

PBR for Artists by Andrew Maximov

Unite 2014: Best Practices for PBR by Anton Hand

I need to rewatch them to fully understand the info they discussed, but I am definitely learning! Not sure what program I will be using. Substance, Quixel, other? At this point, I am leaning towards Substance. And then I will importing everything in Unity.

Well...until next time!

Never too early to start a countdown!

227 days until BlizzCon!

Where dreams come true and epic loots will be everywhere! Let's just say today marks a personal occasion where it is do or don't. Which will it be....?

Pirate of the Meow

Chubster the Pirate!

Working on a side project that will involve ship battles and cute animals! It will be a low poly environment, so I won't be adding dense amounts of details to this guy (and anybody else). I have my progress below to show some of my workflow and thoughts.

Part were made in pieces! Legs, head, eyebals, arms, and ears!

Started merging the body parts with Dynamesh and fixing the shape of that head!

Jumped into creating clothing really soon after that!

 Created a quick paintover to get back the appealing shapes.

Focused on creating blocky shapes so that I had a style guide for the rest of the body (and in the big picture, for everybody else's design). Added the face fur tufts.

Dynamesh-ed the face fur tufts. And then continued to work on the clothing detail as you can see in the first picture of this post!

Next up! Belt detail and texture pass!

All the in the texture painting!

So I started on my pauldron for my character! Still not finished, but its been a good learning session. Finding out what brushes to use. Learning how to mimic the Blizzard detail. It truly combines my love of painting and modeling. I often used bakes to base my paintings off of, so this has been a fun challenge for me!

I also have been taking the opportunity to learn 3ds Max on this, and a little bit of Blender for the base texture & design layout.

Full pictures! Concept fun time!

Hello! Been working on a Blizzardfest contest entry!

It was fun concepting the Naga Druid I came up for the competition. Basically I am suppose to choose an existing "unit", and turn it into a "hero" character. Right now in WoW, Garrosh is doing all kinds of BS in Azeroth and he is pissing off alot of people.  Something is about to happen in the world that will lead to us [the players] to going back in time when the orcs still lived on Draenor, their original homeworld. So I imagine this character originally had a strong love for the land when she was a highborne. At some point after the Well of Eternity exploded, she got separated from Queen Azshara and was left alone to embrace her passion for nature. She is now a Naga of the Forest, living in the rivers and swamps.

By the way, I forgot to mention I am now playing World of Warcraft! The game has changed so much from when I first played back in beta. I have been watching and reading up on the lore of Warcraft, and I am so amazed at how much has happened. I have also been playing alot of Hearthstone, but thats beside the point.

About the contest. I will show you my work from when I started up to the point I am at now.

Loose sketches to figure what I wanted in a first impression. Her personality.

Now I am starting to get into details. Finding armor designs i like.

I love drawing gestures. So this sketch was obligatory.  It helps me to visualize the mood.

At this point I remind myself  that my contest entry isn't the concept art. So I began to photo bash.

This is where I decide a frontal design is more important than a posed character.

Starting to get more comfortable with painting in color. Regaining the old rendering muscle memory. lol

Filling in spots to make this a finished concept.

Done with the front design! Now working on the back. Drew out a general idea of what the tail looks like.

Finished concept!

Working on the model now. I plan to focus on more texture painting, so I won't be going the usually Zbrush sculpt everything route.

I've also been painting for practice, so this was a quick sketch of a pauldron. I really want to get better and faster at doing stuff like this.

Be back later with more progress on the Naga Druid. If you happen to have any good names for her, let me know at Twitter @Evolvyn. lol!

Sketch of the Night

Finally back into art-ing after moving across country!

Btw, I never mentioned that I got a new job! :P Well, I am back on the West Coast! Working at a mobile casino game studio! Hooray for finally making it into the game industry! A step closer to my goals!

As for now, I am working on art at home. So.... I'll be back with more!