Monday, 10 February 2014
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Overview of an environment artist
As an environment artist, it is your job to provide the level designer with the content needed to create and populate the world, e.g. the environment. Environment artists can be tasked with creating a wide range of objects from architecture to machinery to ground clutter to vegetation and more. This generally involves creating models to be used as static meshes along with the textures and perhaps the materials to be applied to those meshes.
What it takes?
The philisohical answer.....in a nutshell, is that any environment artist worth a lick can model in 3D. Buildings, props, trees, ect. are all very easy to recreate. To further illustrate my point is that most artists with any type of intelligence and no experience can get up and running in most 3D software packages in 3 to 4 weeks. Back in the good old days, most companies were willing to train on the job due to the lack of talent in the industry. That is your best case scenario in learning exactly what it takes to be an environment artist.
Samsung
Responsibility
Create high quality 3d (environment) assets to be used in the project demos and final product.
Design and supervise the art pipeline with the team (animators, technical artists, developers...) for best efficiency and quality.
Guide other artists, propose feature requests and provide feedback to ensure the final product quality.
Requirements
Vast experience as professional 3d artist in video games or movies.
A demonstrated ability to produce compelling environments in any style, with best respect of the technical constraints.
Proficiency in 3dsMax, ZBrush, Adobe Photoshop. Experience with lightmap tools and Unity is a plus.
Strong understanding of the 3d art pipeline (lightmap, exports, scripting, animation) and lighting techniques.
Pictures or document to demonstrate work, artistic background and skills (drawings, high-poly samples, low-poly samples with technical info, texture samples, lighting samples...).
New positions
A new position for an Experienced Environment Artist has opened up in my client's awesome Studio in Warwick. This position involves creating 2D (and possibly 3D) Environment Art, primarily for iOS and Android platforms.
Requirements for the role:
• A passion for games and creating environments for mobile
• Ability to create unique and original environments.
• Proactively assist in defining art pipelines and best practices against industry benchmarks.
Skills and Experience:
• Excellent 2D background, ideally including some pixel work.
• Use of Photoshop and Illustrator.
• Willing to work with Engineers to work within the technical limitations of the platform.
• Self Organised and willing to participate in team meetings.
Outline of consumer needs
Requirements for the role:
• A passion for games and creating environments for mobile
• Ability to create unique and original environments.
• Proactively assist in defining art pipelines and best practices against industry benchmarks.
Skills and Experience:
• Excellent 2D background, ideally including some pixel work.
• Use of Photoshop and Illustrator.
• Willing to work with Engineers to work within the technical limitations of the platform.
• Self Organised and willing to participate in team meetings.
Outline of consumer needs
From the research I can see that the consumer needs an environment artist to be functional in a number of different 3d packages, they must have a knowledge of adobe software such as Photoshop and illustrator. Texturing is also a must , this is something I feel I will havto improve on in order to reach this goal.
Wednesday, 23 May 2012
Week 8 The Final Journal Entry - Extended
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RvT1KDAVwmc#!
Above is a link to the final major project after being exported into the following setting as requested in the brief.
Video Format: - QuickTime H.264 codec, 720x576
resolution, 25fps and 80% quality.
Audio Format: - AAC, Stereo (L,R), 44.1kHz
Our Final Product called “The Mexican Stand off” When finalised worked well, I think we chose the idea because it was simple and we wanted to just get a grasp of techniques and an understanding of the software’s, without doubt it allowed us time to experiment as my weekly journals show, but it was still about ending up with an effective piece. I think overall it worked, but I think it could have been improved by more time spent on the animating side, by incorporating more movement into the animation, although when the Human cowboy shoots the animation, and the animation falls to the ground, I believe this is when the video becomes more effective.
I created the Model by using Z-spheres and sculpting it on z-brush, it worked very well. I don’t think I would have created a better model should I have used box modelling, perhaps instead of selecting the polygons and adding materials that way we could have researched into UV mapping, this could of allowed us to get more detail in, although our final video was tinted brown, so a lot of the colours were lost anyway therefore there may not have been much benefit.
The Video footage we shot as a group, By all being there it allowed us all to have an input and have different points of view to which shots look better. We filmed it using a Sony Hand Cam, which we fixed to a Tri-pod, this gave us firm control of camera angles and disposed of shaky hands, this gave it a more professional look. Because we had an action plan and an external actor the filming process couldn’t have gone any smoother, Shots were filmed first time, and only the rain stopped filming for a short interval, once this had passed we were able to finish the shoot under an hour.
The Animating of the animation was produced by Karl although I did have an input in it and completed one of the poses myself. The process was created by applying an animation layer to the skin and then using key framing to record the poses. This was the best way to create this, but I do think more research into movement could have happened and we could have put more time into this, saying this I was very happy with the outcome of all the animation and how it fit to the music track.
The editing happened as a group, I think we were all very confident about this part as we could all use Final Cut/Premier pro very well, We cut the video footage down from about 30 minutes of film down to a 55 second clip, only taking the significant parts we needed, we cut using the razor tool. We layered the animation footage over the top and used the Chroma key to take away the blue background so only the animation was left, all that was left to do was to move it into place on both the time line and the video footage. This process was very effective and I know there couldn’t have been a process which would have produced the results any better.
My aims at the start of the year were quite basic in terms of goals, I wanted to learn the techniques and tips to use “the software” by which I meant 3ds Max and I can say I feel confident when I use it, I have leant from how to box model to the basics of follow through and how to add skins to models and edit envelopes. This will allow me to use this as a stepping stone, so I have a knowledge of which I can work on when I create models in my own time. The progression projects gave me the motivation to learn how to use Z-brush, so that I can create more detailed sculptures and use them in 3ds Max.
Particular Modules have helped me more than others such as the 3d Animation, I enjoyed this so I found it easier to produce more and more work for the weekly tasks, Week 2- Basic modelling was the start of me really getting to know 3ds Max and I didn’t feel lost in the software any more. Also Drawing for Animation was an important part of my progression over the year, especially when I learnt about the muscles and there locations which at the time I didn’t expect it would come in useful, but when I used z-brush to create my model I had to get his form accurate, I did this by using the muscles as references.
When I wrote my personal my personal professional development strategy, I think I was focused in heading in the direction of drawing for animation, my aims have altered and after looking into the industry, VFX Artists could be another possible option which I would like to look into. With this in mind I tried to take a bigger interest to incorporating Z-brush into my work.
So with software in mind we knew as wrote in an article named how to break into the VFX for films, we would have to incorporate “ZBrush and 3D Studio Max”, so on the character we took great care in using this and also sculptris. 3ds max was used for the whole of the animating and as the projects go on we get more confident with software which our target area needs.
We also looked at popular techniques used in the Animation Industry, and moving away from the VFX industry, weather forecasts and many adverts to date have been blue screened
References
Above is a link to the final major project after being exported into the following setting as requested in the brief.
Video Format: - QuickTime H.264 codec, 720x576
resolution, 25fps and 80% quality.
Audio Format: - AAC, Stereo (L,R), 44.1kHz
Our Final Product called “The Mexican Stand off” When finalised worked well, I think we chose the idea because it was simple and we wanted to just get a grasp of techniques and an understanding of the software’s, without doubt it allowed us time to experiment as my weekly journals show, but it was still about ending up with an effective piece. I think overall it worked, but I think it could have been improved by more time spent on the animating side, by incorporating more movement into the animation, although when the Human cowboy shoots the animation, and the animation falls to the ground, I believe this is when the video becomes more effective.
I created the Model by using Z-spheres and sculpting it on z-brush, it worked very well. I don’t think I would have created a better model should I have used box modelling, perhaps instead of selecting the polygons and adding materials that way we could have researched into UV mapping, this could of allowed us to get more detail in, although our final video was tinted brown, so a lot of the colours were lost anyway therefore there may not have been much benefit.
The Video footage we shot as a group, By all being there it allowed us all to have an input and have different points of view to which shots look better. We filmed it using a Sony Hand Cam, which we fixed to a Tri-pod, this gave us firm control of camera angles and disposed of shaky hands, this gave it a more professional look. Because we had an action plan and an external actor the filming process couldn’t have gone any smoother, Shots were filmed first time, and only the rain stopped filming for a short interval, once this had passed we were able to finish the shoot under an hour.
The Animating of the animation was produced by Karl although I did have an input in it and completed one of the poses myself. The process was created by applying an animation layer to the skin and then using key framing to record the poses. This was the best way to create this, but I do think more research into movement could have happened and we could have put more time into this, saying this I was very happy with the outcome of all the animation and how it fit to the music track.
The editing happened as a group, I think we were all very confident about this part as we could all use Final Cut/Premier pro very well, We cut the video footage down from about 30 minutes of film down to a 55 second clip, only taking the significant parts we needed, we cut using the razor tool. We layered the animation footage over the top and used the Chroma key to take away the blue background so only the animation was left, all that was left to do was to move it into place on both the time line and the video footage. This process was very effective and I know there couldn’t have been a process which would have produced the results any better.
My aims at the start of the year were quite basic in terms of goals, I wanted to learn the techniques and tips to use “the software” by which I meant 3ds Max and I can say I feel confident when I use it, I have leant from how to box model to the basics of follow through and how to add skins to models and edit envelopes. This will allow me to use this as a stepping stone, so I have a knowledge of which I can work on when I create models in my own time. The progression projects gave me the motivation to learn how to use Z-brush, so that I can create more detailed sculptures and use them in 3ds Max.
Particular Modules have helped me more than others such as the 3d Animation, I enjoyed this so I found it easier to produce more and more work for the weekly tasks, Week 2- Basic modelling was the start of me really getting to know 3ds Max and I didn’t feel lost in the software any more. Also Drawing for Animation was an important part of my progression over the year, especially when I learnt about the muscles and there locations which at the time I didn’t expect it would come in useful, but when I used z-brush to create my model I had to get his form accurate, I did this by using the muscles as references.
When I wrote my personal my personal professional development strategy, I think I was focused in heading in the direction of drawing for animation, my aims have altered and after looking into the industry, VFX Artists could be another possible option which I would like to look into. With this in mind I tried to take a bigger interest to incorporating Z-brush into my work.
So with software in mind we knew as wrote in an article named how to break into the VFX for films, we would have to incorporate “ZBrush and 3D Studio Max”, so on the character we took great care in using this and also sculptris. 3ds max was used for the whole of the animating and as the projects go on we get more confident with software which our target area needs.
We also looked at popular techniques used in the Animation Industry, and moving away from the VFX industry, weather forecasts and many adverts to date have been blue screened
References
Ehow.com (1999) How to
Break into VFX for Film and TV | eHow.com. [online] Available at:
http://www.ehow.com/how_2305219_break-vfx-film-tv.html [Accessed: 23 May 2012].
Thursday, 17 May 2012
Week 7 Journal Entry
This week was alway going to be the week when it all came together, it did but not without a little problem.When we recieved the mapped model from Charlie somehow the skin had unattached itself from the bones , the envelopes had been lost. we had one of two choices, re-do the envelopes or re-do the materials.
We decided between us that the easiest solution was to just re-colour it. So I started on that why Karl made a start with the presentation.
I again used a Multires, just because this would have took sooo much longer if I hadnt of because of the amouth of faces there were.Then i selected the majority of a part using the element selection tool in the edit poly column under modify, and if there were any stray faces i missed , i selected them seperatly with the Polygon tool, once this was all selected I just used the material editor , picked the material, and dragged and dropped it on to the highlighted surface. this was a relativly easy task and took me around about an hour to finish.
Once I had completed the materials, I passed it over to Karl to make it move.
It was a good job we made the origional grey copies of the movements because we were able to try them Chroma key'ed into the video footage, and from that we realised that we would havto put the model against a blue background as when we tryed it with a black background we got a black haze around the figure, we changed the background colour by going to the rendering option, then environment and to background colour.
Karls Movements on 3ds max...
The long shot was created using a camera at medium length, so when scaled down in size on Premier Pro it didnt lose any detail or Quality.
once we had these shot it was a fairly simple task of using the Chroma key and inserting them into the video footage on Premier Pro.
Thursday, 10 May 2012
Week 6 Journal Entry
This was the last week of any of the modules, Blue screening went really well in video audio, i managed to get Duncun onto the still image background perfectly.
Again this practice will come in very usefull when we are editing the animation onto the video footage on Premier pro.
Again this practice will come in very usefull when we are editing the animation onto the video footage on Premier pro.
The aim this week was to get the walk cycle sorted so it stands properly, we drag down the foot arrows down so that the body is stretched, it looks ok but still doesnt work right.
Karl uses the curve editor to change the whole look of this cycle, and this is what we got on attempt 2. He takes off alot of the swing and rotation from the pelvis.
This is the second attempt at a side view so that its easier to see its movement. the leg has come out of place in this though so will havto have anouther look over the envelopes.
Note: At this point Charlie has started Mapping the origional 3ds model using, We decided the easiest way to do this is to go to Editable mesh, the select by vertex and select an area and unattach it so its a seperate poly. then we will be able to add differant materials to each bit.
So at this point I will be Collecting all of our work together to put into a Presentation, as I've produced all I need to for now, Karl is practacing the movements of the cowboy , while the main target of the week sits with Charlie to get the mapping onto the cowboy.
Below are a couple of test animations that Karl created , just to see how they looked....
This video above works very well, may haveto think about flipping the video footage so that this can be shot on this side, maybe needs abit more speed , but this is quite successful.
This week Visually hasnt been as productive but it has come to the point which i said in my firsts weeks journal , the little things have took alot of time and patience.
We are still on target to finish this , Slightly early if anything which would allow us to make a few minor changes to the finished product.
Thursday, 3 May 2012
Week 5 Journal Entry
Audio and Visual was a huge week for us this week as we needed to know how to add an effect onto video footage . Using the chorma Key under the video effects in keying. I was able to take away the matt plain background and insert the bullet and smoke effect so it looks good. This will withouth doubt help me with the gun shots in our mexican stand off.
This Week I wanted re-material my model to add anouther option for the group to use, I took the origional model back into Z-brush, and used a range of Texture brush's untill i got to this point below.I wanted the model to look more rugged and not as clean as the other model... I did this by creating darker patch's on the knees of the jeans and using earthy colours.
My next step was to get the model from Z-brush to 3ds max, So I exported the model as an object file and imported it in, this gave me the model without mapping. from here I inserted a CATrig and moved the bones untill they sat it a correct place were they would sit inside the scin (model).
When I get to this point, where i can still see bones sticking out from inside the skin, i havto do some touching up and just keep playing around with the structure untill it sits in properly.
The envelopes was the stage of the model which really threw me off to be honest.Didnt quite get this at first untill i seeked help from a tutor, when explained it made complete sense, red and yellow effect which parts of the model move by bone and blue is hardly effected.This on its own took me probably the best part of 8 hours to complete.
Also a problem occured when doing this, the model had far too many polygons as i had sub-divided in Z-brush in order to get greater detail, so the way i had to deal with this was to just ad a MULTIres to each piece of the skin and decrease all polygons to about 10% of the origional amount, this didnt effect the detail in the slightest, i then just attached all the pieces of the skin in edit poly.
In the motion menu I added a walk cycle to the model and it came out rather wierd. Me and Karl will havto take a good look at this next week.
Our Plans have changed very slightly next week because the model isnt walking correctly, so we will havto get on with that before we can start to make the movements to the film.
Friday, 27 April 2012
Week 4 Journal Entry
In video and Audio this week we looked at the sin city effect which can be applyed in Final Cut/Premier Pro. We have been thinking we might want to tint the colours brown so its almost sepia, so this could be used to give it that slightly more unique look.
I researched into the use of Z-spheres in order to expand on my first model, tutorials like the one below was a huge help as it showed step by step and i was able to pick up quite easily techniques and short keys.
This video has been linked from You-tube and is not my own.
I used Z-sphere's to build a Human body shape and moved them into the wanted position, once I was happy i changed the Z-spheres into a Polmesh3d, this allowed me to then edit the Poly, allowing me to subdivide to get more details into the model and sculp onto it with the brush's.
I then added colour to the model while still being in Z-brush, this was relatively easy in comparison to the sculpting part, although it was important to take time to get a clean finish, several layers were applied to the shirt in order to see the chest coming through.
Because i completed the model a few days in advance, i will have a few days extra next week in which i will be able to mess around with materials and just experiment.
This Week also We Finished the Filming of the live action part of the video. We organised an actor to come in which was a plus because there was no messing around and scenes were performed instantly. Karl edited the film to the music very well, and this looks to be the final cut.
This was acted out on campus as specified in the brief, we were very happy with the background shots, also the actor was given the props to use, and i think they look very good. Only thing i would point out is the blue guns, these wont matter though when the film is tinted brown to give it a western feel.
Note: Charlie starts to create a Opening title screen in 3ds max, his idea is to have saloon doors opening to the the film title of "The Mexican Standoff" and it will zoom in and through the text into the rolling video.
This week has been the most productive yet , getting all of the filming out of the way and having the animated charecter 75% complete, each member of the group is producing good quility work which without doubt should it carry on will create the video we visualised at week 1.
The plan for next week is to all be happy with the model, Import it into 3ds max and get a CATrig inside it, so we can start making it move.Karl needs to research into Cowboys being shot and even just work cycles, and charlie should have finished his title scene with the intent to start the mapping for the model.
So my main aim this week was to create a MORE realistic 3d model , and after about 8-9 hours straight of playing around and trying to keep to my Photoshop picture, i get the result i was looking for....
I researched into the use of Z-spheres in order to expand on my first model, tutorials like the one below was a huge help as it showed step by step and i was able to pick up quite easily techniques and short keys.
I used Z-sphere's to build a Human body shape and moved them into the wanted position, once I was happy i changed the Z-spheres into a Polmesh3d, this allowed me to then edit the Poly, allowing me to subdivide to get more details into the model and sculp onto it with the brush's.
I then added colour to the model while still being in Z-brush, this was relatively easy in comparison to the sculpting part, although it was important to take time to get a clean finish, several layers were applied to the shirt in order to see the chest coming through.
Because i completed the model a few days in advance, i will have a few days extra next week in which i will be able to mess around with materials and just experiment.
This Week also We Finished the Filming of the live action part of the video. We organised an actor to come in which was a plus because there was no messing around and scenes were performed instantly. Karl edited the film to the music very well, and this looks to be the final cut.
This was acted out on campus as specified in the brief, we were very happy with the background shots, also the actor was given the props to use, and i think they look very good. Only thing i would point out is the blue guns, these wont matter though when the film is tinted brown to give it a western feel.
Note: Charlie starts to create a Opening title screen in 3ds max, his idea is to have saloon doors opening to the the film title of "The Mexican Standoff" and it will zoom in and through the text into the rolling video.
This week has been the most productive yet , getting all of the filming out of the way and having the animated charecter 75% complete, each member of the group is producing good quility work which without doubt should it carry on will create the video we visualised at week 1.
The plan for next week is to all be happy with the model, Import it into 3ds max and get a CATrig inside it, so we can start making it move.Karl needs to research into Cowboys being shot and even just work cycles, and charlie should have finished his title scene with the intent to start the mapping for the model.
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