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.

New Research Proposal Outline

•   What is the proposed research about?

3d environment design specifically focused on low poly and faceted 3d to develop a visual style based on trends in design and optimisation for games.

•   What is it trying to find out or achieve?

How trends in design affect 3d art, and what types of design are most effective currently, and how through this knowledge design can be improved

•   What is the body of relevant literature?

books and journals on Level Design, Design, trends in design, 3d art, player experience, game design.

•   How does the literature support your arguments?

based on what is already known about design and the trends within it I will be able to establish an argument for minimalist design and faceted 3d being just as effective as high poly realistic models.

•   How will you undertake your research?

I will do level tests, media tests, case studies (probably on low poly games), research the relevant literature, research art, and continue to address gaps in my skill set as I go

•   What methods, materials and tools will you use?

Maya, Cinema 4D, UDK, Photoshop, Mudbox will all be used to design levels from concept through to a game level.

•   What are the expected outcomes and benefits?

a final game level that can be iterated on until a polished product is achieved, this will create a strong portfolio piece and will enhance my skills as a 3d artist and level designer.

Crit Review

My Crit presentation went quite well I think and I got alot of useful feedback, Brian (Robinson) seemed happy with the route I was taking and pointed out that cubism started as an abstraction of landscape which could be useful for my research and further experiments, Lynn (Parker) also recommended two games I should look at 'Fez' and 'That Dragon, Cancer' which both include quite stylized low poly models, Fez, journey, and proteus will be the games that I analyse using my critical framework.

Lynn also suggested I look at other artists and experiment with recreating 3D art in their styles, my friend Alex (Grahame) also suggested I get a student copy of cinema 4D because its really good for creating faceted 3d environments. I am now much more confident with the direction of my project.

Low Poly Mountain Texture test

I decided to texture the low poly mountain model to experiment with how different texturing techniques may look, I began by mapping the model and then painting the texture in mudbox.

I then rendered this version and combined the smooth shading, and non smooth shading renders.

This seemed abit flat so I added a bump map using a photoshop normal map filter, normally I would sculpt the normals using mudbox but due to the low polys of this model it was difficult to create detail without subdividing which would change the shape of the model.

This didnt look great but the shading was more interesting, unfortunately my painted texture seems to have left some streaky marks but I will be aware to avoid painting it in such a way in future. I then experimented with a few other bump maps already existent in maya.

granite

 noise

 fractal

Finally I mixed a couple of the renders together to make a final render, It can still be much improved but it's given me a better idea of what works visually and what doesn't, I think that normal maps can work with low poly models but it is best when they are simple, and I believe alot of the appeal in low poly shapes is that the edges are very obvious and bump maps can detract from that if not created correctly.

Cubism Experiment

I wanted to try something that somewhat encapsulated cubist ideals and i thought an interesting way to achieve that in 3d is to have the same cubes reflected from lots of different angles.

I created a triangulated plane that I deformed and then applied a highly reflective material to (blinn full reflectivity), I then created 3 different sizes of boxes and coloured them individually, then duplicated the boxes to cover the whole scene. I then took renders of the reflective plane and played about with the blinn's material attributes.