Semester 3 Week 5

More prop modeling! I'm steadily chipping away at the asset list. And now, after some side projects and stuff, I have another 3D artist, Conlen, helping with props. Right now, he's working on a switchboard/radio communication system thing, which I think will take a while, especially because it will have several interactive elements.

I'm having fun with my current balance of familiar and new techniques. Most assets I've made thus far have had at least one new element, while not being overwhelming (aside from the hula doll, which I will get back to). That's one of my favorite things about this field: no matter how long I'm at it or how hard I work, there will always be something to learn or a new direction to go.

This week's general direction was toward Substance Designer. I had 2 projects that made use of it: a notebook and a can of beans. The paper line pattern on the pages of the notebook was made with Designer, and for some extra flair I made a warped version for the paper edges. I roughed it up a bit in Painter, and viola.

The other Designer project was - BEANS . Baked beans, in fact. This can of beans will be interactable, with a sealed and open versions. I got to thinking about the bean texture and I got pretty exited. It was a perfect project. Organic patterns, simple shapes, several elements, and unusual properties of light. At this point, Mr. Compton suggested I learn about FXMap nodes. These are complex, but powerful and well worth learning. Each FXMap node has it's own graph within it, and each of those graphs can have multiple function graphs within them. I'm happy to say that I mostly grasped all of that within a day's work (although the more complex math in the function graphs are far beyond my grasp). I have the can modeled, but I'm awaiting a label image to include in the texture.

One interesting workflow our team's created this week is for the wall posters we'll have on the bunker walls. The 2D art was done by Huy, and then recolored and worn by Belle. I modeled the meshes, put 'em in Painter, weathered them more, and added some wrinkles. I wanted to add tears without too much geometry, so I messed with opacity. It took some tinkering, but I got the material have opacity in Painter, and then more tinkering to do the same in UE5. Now I know how to do that. There's at least one more poster on the way.

Every once in a while, Mr. Compton will assign an art challenge. They are completely optional, but usually a good opportunity to make something I wouldn't think to make on my own. During the art meeting on Monday, he started writing various lists of words on the whiteboard, and then asking a student to pick one from the list. For example, the first words were: person, creature, place, and thing. "Person" was selected. This repeated and got more and more specific until we ended up with the prompt: person, non-human, humanoid, future, tired, rich, distressed, protagonist, learning, at home-city. That's a lot of notes to hit. I decided to work on a cool robot model, though the ultimate idea for the piece has been flip-floping a lot. So far, I have a neat arm and most of a head. Not much, but if I find the time to finish it, I think it'll turn out well.