Hey guys, I haven’t posted but have lurked for awhile. I’m posting an Art Postmortem here for my senior year game project at Columbia College Chicago. I graduated in May, this is some of the work we got done. I figured I would write a bit about the artwork here to share with you guys and maybe get some feedback. So here is the write up I did:
When creating Warden of Raal (in Unity 3D) the biggest aesthetic challenge was balancing the artistic vision with the academic experience. The character and environment artists had various levels of ability at the beginning of the project. The aim was to find a direction that allowed people to learn some new tools without affecting the end goal of the game’s art. In other words we wanted the game to look like a student project as little as possible and really push ourselves beyond our limits. I didn’t want to go to stylized or cartoony, it gives the impression of being “easy” but its not and can easily end up looking cheap. I also knew a push for realism would be dangerous as well and quickly expose our faults as student artists. So the goal was a fine balance between the two.
The environment work followed the same principle but focused on two goals. Looking good as an individual piece and also looking good as a composition. In other words running around the world you could appreciate the structures up close, but pulling back the environment still looks real and carries a design aesthetic with attention to detail in lighting, shape, color and atmosphere.
Our pipeline included Maya, Zbrush, Xnormal, Ndo, CrazyBump, 3DS Max, Unity 3D and Photoshop for the most part. Below are some sample images from the game. Polycount limits ranged from 2000 to 3100. Nothing is lower or higher than that number.
[attach=263066]wrMarRender2.jpg[/attach]
[attach=263067]wrMarRender2.jpg[/attach]
I chose to build a mesh to completion in Maya based on strong concepts. I would then bring it in to Zbrush and adjust the shape and form before sculpting. After the sculpt was finished I would lay out the UV’s in Maya.
I created Spec, Emmissive, AO, Normal and Diffuse maps for every character. I utilized several techniques to combine maps in order to produce the best possible normal map in photoshop. This included Transfer Mapping, Xnormal, Crazy Bump, Zbrush and Ndo Normal map creation to get the sharpest/cleanest maps. Normals would be baked into the Diffuse along with AO and Spec. Likewise all maps were baked into the Spec to reinforce detail.
Other artists chose to a common method of bringing in block models and sculpting it to completion. Then bringing it into Topogun or other software to retopo. I will leave the rest of the explaining to the images and my classmates if they want to chime in.
Characters by Anthony Sixto
[attach=263069]wrPawnPL.jpg[/attach]
[attach=263070]wrPawnMR.jpg[/attach]
[attach=263071]wrForemanPL.jpg[/attach]
[attach=263072]wrForemanMR.jpg[/attach]
[attach=263073]wrBizPL.jpg[/attach]
[attach=263074]wrBizMR.jpg[/attach]
Characters by Chris Ozouf
[attach=263076]cOzoufBigPresentationSheet.jpg[/attach]
[attach=263077]cOzoufMedicPresentationSheet.jpg[/attach]
[attach=263078]BigMedic.jpg[/attach]
Here is some environment work.
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