It's all about the 3D

We had our formal reviews a couple of weeks back, or it could be one week back-I lose track of time. While the majority of the course's jimmies were rustled because it was the first review of the year, I was sitting giddily. My influence on the container city project landed me with a 69% which essentially gives me a first for that project, which is just awesome. My character project was arse. I knew it was, I mean you look at it, it's so blatantly dreadfully made. But it takes that little knock on the head from someone else to tell you-actually that's pretty bad. That's the advantage group projects have over solo ones. That constant looming fear of letting your team down and the surge of feedback that comes from a group. So, time to make amends. Over the past couple of weeks I started learning a few programmes that are helpful to character modelling. I learnt zbrush of course. 3D coat, substance painter, marmoset and keyshot for some reason. Zbrush for the sculpting, 3D coat for retopology. Substance painter for texturing and marmoset for rendering. Keyshot, well I installed that then found out it doesn't support PBR. At least not to my knowledge. I went back and took a look at my old character. I realised a few things wrong with it. Topology was awful. The model clocked in at 4000 tris. Why. Just why. Triangle limit isn't a thing, engines don't stutter if you hit 10k. Triangles are the easiest thing engines have to deal with. I set my limit to around 20k for my new character which is standard fair for most modern games. Not going any higher because there's no point. I also upped the texture space from the original to 2k because that's also standard for most game characters.

After three days or so I had the base sculpt down. All three million polygons of it. There's more substance and detail to the character with way better anatomy. And then below is the 20k nearly completely textured version. And I'm totally aware it's incredibly shiny. I had the wrong settings on in marmoset.

Going back to the review, there was one thing that lingered on my mind and it sparked a really important question. I'm not entirely sure if it was as literal as I interpreted it or even if I'm remembering correctly but, my tutor mentioned my 2D work was great and that it'd be even better if my 3D work was on par. I replied with, 'well, it depends who you want to work for'. After this hunt for 3D knowledge these past few weeks it's all a little confusing to me. I really have no idea who I want to work for. Initially I just wanted to concept things. And then it went and got all complicated with 3D being used in concepts. Something necessary for you to be as good as the other concept artists. But then I became infatuated with 3D, and 2D became just a hobby. Maybe game art isn't what I want to do at all. Maybe I'll quit England, move to some Norwegian mountain top and open a tea shack. My future and what I want with it is an enigma shrouded in secrecy wrapped in the foggy depths of the unknown. I just hope my skills will prevail and gift me the ultimate job, whatever that may be. On a side note, the Alice gardens are coming along nicely. Probably. I mean, I haven't worked on them in over a week. My character is draining all my attention. I'm not too worried about the Alice project; The actual environment is pretty much finished, I just need to add the game mechanics which are fairly straightforward.

On the other side of the side of the note, or something, I'm working with my Dad to create a website. Yes, a website. It's a texture resource website. Similar to cgtextures but with more. See, cgtextures only offers textures. In video game terms, it's offering the diffuse or albedo map. I've still got to make the other four maps. We're going to offer PBR sets where you can download say, tile floor which has all the maps pre-made ready for engine. Another big feature will be the photogrammetry sets. As you know from my previous posts, I've hyped the hell out of photo scanning. And the hardest part of it is getting all the images. So why not have a resource for all of the photos in one place which you can simply throw into 123dcatch. Science.

That's all for now. Sorry if I appear a bit despondent, but it's three in the morning and I'm slightly exhausted. I'll leave you with a painting I did earlier on in the week. Cheers.