Revised Research Question

Old Research Question:
Can a visually pleasing aesthetic be created using low poly models by exploring cubism, deconstructivism, and then used to create a game level that can be tested and iterated on to create a fun player experience with artistic validity?

New Research Question 1:
By exploring stylised games and cubism, along with experimentation with 3D software, can an interesting and appealing visual style suited to game art be developed and then used to create a simple first person flythrough level that evokes a mood within the player, and demonstrates the effectiveness of the developed visual style in a game environment?


(will be updated with new research questions until I find one that is totally clear and interesting)

First Supervisor Meeting

Today I had my first meeting with my supervisor Ken Fee, I went over my project and the biggest issue is clarity, I need to make my aim much clearer and the research should be much more focused towards that particular aim.

To come up with a better aim I need to rationalise what I'm planning to do and why. It must be clarified in a way that other people can understand it. I need to identify what I mean by realism and also exactly what faceted 3D is in a way that I can easily explain it to people. I should also not talk about low poly games because games aren't defined by there poly count.

One thing that became quite evident is that I'm looking to make a game thats fun, which may not be the right way to go about creating my final piece, because there is so much that goes into game design it would be difficult for me to make a game by myself. On top of environment design, and creation, I would also have to program, create the sound, think in-depth about gameplay mechanics, UI and GUI design, its all abit too much and although I always said simple player experience there is probably a more feasible way to implement the 3D designs rather than make them into a game.

Ken suggested I talk to a game art professional, Timothy J Reynolds seems like the obvious choice at the minute due to his experience in games and use of low poly environments many of which are faceted 3D style, by talking to him I could gain alot of insight into why he chose that style, how people percieve his work, and what influenced him. along with many other possible questions that will be defined once my aim is clearer.

Although I had taken the focus group out of my proposal it may be a good idea to have some kind of observation, or feedback from other people to determine the most effective level design or what about faceted 3D they find effective. 

Due to my project being related to game art I should be researching many more games, to do this I should look at books about landmarks in games, two examples Ken gave of games I should look at are "The Sentinel", "Rez", and I should talk to 'Stormcloud Games' (who are situated within abertay) about their game "Mr Shingus Paper Zoo" which is 2D but talking to the artists may grant some insight into the paper style.

The Sentinel

Rez HD

Mr Shingus Paper Zoo

Inspirations 5

This week I haven't had much time to look at inspirational material because I have been working on my research proposal but I did go to an interior and environmental design exhibition at the Dundee Art College and it was interesting to see that quite alot of people seemed to be influenced by cubist and deconstructivist shapes, with many styles reflecting the faceted 3D style.

here is a video that uses projectors and 3D animations to create illusions and interesting visuals.

Abstract Mountains

This piece was largely an experiment into materials and rendering settings, started off I wanted to make a lot of faceted multi-colored mountains and then developed as I went on, the renders below show the process and I will explain some stuff about the rendering and materials as I go. The first few steps aren't included but its all processes I have gone over before.

 Initially I wanted the mountains sitting on water, I made a floor 5 different mountains and a physical sky.

 I then duplicated the first set of mountains and changed their proportions and layout abit.

 I decided that I wanted to make the piece more abstract by putting mountains facing downward above, to do this I grouped the first set and rotated and moved them into place.

 I then changed the physical sky to create my own lights and sky, first I made a gradient but it didnt work very well until I changed the mapping below.

 Even here the gradient isn't that easy to see I think this is due to the size of the skybox, If I wanted a gradient behind it, it would be better to use a plane rather than the sky, though I decided against a gradient in the end.

 Here I moved some of the mountains to try and improve the composition.

 This is what happened when I used global illumination lights and sky sampling all at the sametime, I tried not to do it again because its horrible.

 Here is the same image as above but without global illumination, the background is still horrible.

 something went wrong with the sampling (I distinctly remember having sky sampling, and area sampling turned off) but it came out with this mad green version, it wasn't intentional but I thought I'd put it in cos it informed the final piece showing how lighting can bring together a scene.

 I wanted to check if changing the sky would get rid of the weird mountain colouring, it did not.

 back to normal, and a darker sky gradient with sampling on.

 played about with the galaxy texture, it gave interesting results for the global illumination but I didn't really like it for this piece.

Added stars in the background but its really hard to see and there are so few of them that its not really effective but I did like the black as the background colour, although it is the most basic choice it doesn't detract from the mountains like so many other backgrounds did.

 I then put a relatively dim light red area light over the whole pieve to try and bring the colours together alittle bit. the below renders are all me playing with the ambient occlusion to get an effective result that shades most of the facets but doesn't go overboard the final image was the one I settled on.

 Ambient occlusion contrast: 20%

 Ambient occlusion contrast: 30%

Ambient occlusion contrast: 40%

From creating this piece I learnt that I need to work on my backgrounds and that its probably best to not do anything with global illumination until the final scene. I also realised how important unified lighting is to tieing a scene together and that ambient occlusion will always make something look good you just have to find the right setting which will likely be different for every scene. 

Inspirations 4

Over the last week I have been looking at a lot of paper styled 3D games which use low poly stylised designs.

One of the games I have been looking at is "TearAway" for PS Vita, it uses low poly models that look like folded paper, achieving a beautiful low poly aesthetic, but the design is very closely linked to the very unique gameplay mechanics that allow the player to interact with the world by sticking there finger into it and tearing away at the paper environment.

Another game that uses the paper style but I think has nicer art is "Paper Fox", this really uses the faceted 3d style at a level I would like to be able to achieve. The art direction seems to be more the focus in this game and the design doesn't seem to affect the gameplay it seems more like a well thought out art direction possibly to give a pop-up/story book feel.

The final Game I have been looking at this week that uses a low poly style is "Godus" it uses a faceted 3D style that does not look like paper, this style of 3D seems very well suited for a top down god game, the simple landscape design of course becomes more detailed and interesting as the player interacts with it shaping it in the way that they choose.

My friend Paul also showed me this blog which shows the results of a duo's ten 3d experiments over ten days here is the link and below it my favourite of the pieces.

http://theinspirationgrid.com/geo-a-day-low-poly-illustrations-by-jeremiah-shaw-danny-jones/  

I also came across this music video that uses some cubist geometry styled visuals and a little bit of low poly 3D I think.

The mad use of colour reminds me of an experiment I did that went wrong and crashed luckily my friend took a photo of it while it was frozen.

Research Proposal Abstract

I said earlier that I would post the outline of my research proposal but it seemed sort of unecessary and I have pretty much finished the whole thing now so here is my Abstract along with my questions, and my aim and objectives.

Abstract

3D for games is quite set in convention, few games challenge this and most 3D art relating to games is usually pushing for higher poly counts with ultra realism, similar to the way fine art made the move to modern art this paper aims to explore a possible outcome of 3D expression, looking at the design methods implied in cubism, deconstructivism, and product design to find out what aspects of design can inform the 3D creative process, some games that are typically not triple A already use low poly art styles focusing on overall aesthetic through the use of colour, composition, sound and animation among other things. From the theory of relativity stemmed the avant-garde way of thinking, modern art embraced this and brought about cubism, surrealism, and eventually these went on to influence post-modern art creating structuralism, deconstructivism, and now it seems like the right time for these art forms to influence digital arts. The paper focuses on the effectiveness of faceted/abstracted 3D in relation to art, games, and other interactive media, it also discusses how the creative process can be researched and tested to form a visually interesting and engaging player experience.

Question

Can a visually pleasing aesthetic be created using low poly models by exploring cubism, deconstructivism, and then used to create a game level that can be tested and iterated on to create a fun player experience with artistic validity?

Aim

To explore trends in design to develop a low poly visually pleasing aesthetic suitable for games, based on the research conducted; this design will then be applied and tested in a game level.

Objectives

Research must be conducted in different fields of design, modern art, post-modern art, to gain more knowledge of design and inform the practice-based research.

Using 3D software (Autodesk Maya, Autodesk Mudbox, Maxon Cinema 4d), Photoshop, and UDK, media tests will be created based on the design research.

Finally a final level will be created that will be reviewed and iterated on until a final piece is achieved that demonstrates the developed visual style but also embraces an enjoyable but simple player experience.

  

Under Sea Redone

Well it wasn't as painful as I imagined it was going to be but the under sea environment is now at the level it was at before and alittle bit more, and it is saved now so can be iterated on further though I did find the scene started to get alittle confusing round about the time I started putting seaweed in so it may be worth drawing up a specific cinema 4d pipeline to streamline the process. here are the renders as they progress through the scene, I used most of the same tools as last time along with twist for the seaweed, poly reducer on a few stubborn models that didnt work correctly with connect, and some other little details.

inspirations 3

I'm a bit late with posting my recent inspirations so this will be quite a big one, recent games that I have been looking at are Journey, fez, and antichamber.

'Journey' is a beautiful game, the environment is relatively low poly and nicely stylised, the textures are quite simple, but the composition of each scene is fairly close to perfect from the positioning of 3d models and the colour schemes chosen and finally the use of level design to best show off environments, the lighting changes in every level and is always excellent conveying new feelings in the player, this is complimented by the changing music that always seems to capture the mood extremely well.

'Fez' has a really interesting visual style, it is almost completely unique in that it combines a 2D platformer with a 3D world allowing the player to jump to very far away objects very easily depending on his perspective, in this sense it is an excellent game it did something very different and combined the two styles very well although the character is 2d he feels very much part of that world, the 3d models are for the most part quite blocky, simple and modular, but have a certain stylised look that is completed by the wonderful variation of textures. although fez is very good and very interesting but as soon as the player has traversed the first few worlds it starts to get alittle confusing and level designs start to look less and less original.

'Antichamber' brings puzzle games to a new level, and is incredibly fun and rewarding, yet has a very simple visual style, similar in a way to 'portal' but with much less detail, again the game is largely formed from blocks with the exceptions of some modular pieces linked to puzzles and some very abstract shapes to create a more interesting player environment. the colours only exist in the form of light, force fields, and coloured blocks that they player can fire, everything else is white with a black outline, there are a few more detailed pieces like the players gun and certain puzzles but detail is not important when maintaining a minimilast, clean visual style, and the lights do more than enough to direct the player and colour the environment.

I have also started to become interested in deconstructivism as an architectural movement because of the non-rectangular abstract shapes that are reminiscent of faceted 3D or rather faceted 3D is reminiscent of deconstructivism, this also led me to looking at deconstructionism in art, I have only started exploring this subject area but I feel it could be very relevant.

Terrapeople.ru. 2013. Untitled. [online] Available at: http://terrapeople.ru/terrapedia/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/6.jpeg [Accessed: 27 Nov 2013].

Photobucket. 2013. miloe88's image. [online] Available at: http://i581.photobucket.com/albums/ss254/miloe88/Malaysia-Singapore/IMG_9032.jpg [Accessed: 27 Nov 2013].

Michaeljamescasey.com. 2013. Untitled. [online] Available at: http://michaeljamescasey.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/zaha1.jpg [Accessed: 27 Nov 2013].

Under the Sea

I started combining the techniques I learned from the abstract 3d tutorial and the low poly tutorial to create an under sea environment from a thumbnail I used this as an opurtunity to explore different shaders lighting techniques and fog in cinema 4d, here are renders of the progression.

Unfortuneately as I was finalising the piece windows unexpectedly updated and closed everything so I lost quite a lot of work and will remake the scene and improve upon itat another time but for now im abit disheartened, (to remind myself: I fixed the issues with the darkness between the sea and the land and also added some more pillars and a domed building on the left, futher improvements could be seaweed, and light shafts.)

I have been working on my research proposal alot lately narrowing down my research methodology along with my aims and objectives I will post them very soon once they are completely clear.

Learning Cinema 4D

I downloaded a student version of Maxon Cinema 4D on monday based on Alex's recommendation, the program was very easy to use and after watching the basics video I was able to see were most of the tools where and how to move around the scene and move objects in the scene, I then played about with some shaders to swee if it was much easier than it is in maya and it is, all you have to do is create the shader and play around with it and Cinema 4D will make it look pretty here is the first scene were I was trying out some basic shaders and material attributes.

I then started looking into some tutorials on cinema 4D, the first one I looked at was a really basic look at creating low poly mountains, using a landscape mesh, a displacer and a poly reducer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82gQUi_PJCs

the second tutorial looked at ways of making abstract low poly shapes, it showed me how to use the connect tool, symetery, gradient materials, ambient occlusion (which is much easier to do than it is in Maya), and shows how to properly organise your scene.

http://vimeo.com/54563392

the resulting work after doing the tutorials is shown below.

mountain tutorial

 

Abstract Low poly tutorial

The following images are those of experiments I carried out using similar tools and experimenting with others.

made using two symetry tools and rotate

made using an array on the above image

 created using an atom array on three spheres

 same image with poly reduction

 same image with an extra sphere with different shaders

 same image as previous one with displacement on the outer layers

made using two spheres one of which i added an explode to

made using extrude, bevel, and extrude inner

 same sphere as above with an added twist

Cinema 4D is a fantastic program, very easy to learn and above all is alot of fun. I look forward to posting up more work soon. my next practical objective is going to be to recreate a surrealist painting in low poly in Cinema 4D.