Artist Roadmap

 1. If you could project out past graduation, what is your overall career goal? 

To work somewhere where I can make enough money to live off of, and also continue to grow my skillset in 3D, whether that's through my job or personal portfolio work. 

Would you like to work in AAA game development? 

Yes, depending on the company.

Would you prefer a midsize team? 

Yes, DE is a AA studio, so I believe it falls under a midsize team.

Would you like a smaller team? 

I would not mind, but it would not be my first choice.

Would you like to be on an Indy team? 

I also would not mind this, but again would not be my first choice.

Would you like to work for a simulation company? 

Maybe, but I would rather not if possible.

Would you like to work in the theme park industry? 

Sounds fun, so yes if the opportunity presented itself.

2. If you could project out into starting your career, what sounds the most appealing to you? 

Prop Artist/Hardsurface Artist/Weapons Artist/Character Artist (these are not necessarily in order) 

3. What are some of the top companies that you are interested in working for? 

Digital Extremes, however working there is a longer term goal, say maybe 10 years from now. 

Inspo board:

Soon there will be moretm

PureRef Board file

Cannon upres + UVs

For this part of the project I transferred over to Blender for ease of use for uvs and subdividing/beveling my model. I first started off with making proxy uvs, utilizing mirroring and uv packmaster to get the most out of my uvs. Padding is 16px for a 2048 x 2048 texture map.

These are what my proxy uvs look like, the 2nd UDIM consists of mirrored parts of the cannon.


Using a texel density checker addon for Blender, I got these results:


After I finished my UVs, I moved onto upscaling my model, adding on subdivision modifiers and a bevel modifier in Blender to get crisper edges. This is the wireframe in Blender of my upscaled model:



Once my model was ready to go, I then imported it into Zbrush, here is how it looks in Zbrush:


Additionally, here is how the cannon looks imported into Unreal:

Cannon Blockout

For this weeks assignment I blocked out the cannon and imported it into Unreal, making a basic lighting setup for later renders. Here is my render in Unreal:


Here is my wireframe render, done in Blender:

The cannon is currently 2,722 triangles.

This is my attempt at camera matching in Maya, I unfortunately could not get fspy to work properly with Maya.


Here is the reference I used:

Stickers!

Printed out stickers:



Sticker design:


Cricut design layout:

I decided to make a new pass over of my design from the shapes around. I decided to do something a little silly, and make the colors of the wolf the same as death from puss in boots 2! :] I think next time I try printing these I'll definitely need to lighten up the colors though, some of them got darkened to the point of their visibility being low.

Wayfinder chest pt. 3

Base color only render:



Full render with lighting:

Base color render with wireframe:



UVs (2048 x 2048 texture):




I had a lot of fun with the end part of this project! Unfortunately I couldn't go back and sculpt in some of the details that I missed, and some areas were not fully touched painting-wise. My uvs look a little odd because some of the chest parts are mirrored, such as the antlers, head, and legs. Definitely planning on coming back to do more polish later if possible!

Wayfinder Chest pt.2

After prepping the mesh to to into Zbrush from Blender, I began sculpting on the mesh, following along with the sculpting renders on ArtStation. I unfortunately was only able to do one pass for each mesh, and missed a couple along the way while doing so; such as the hinges on the back. Here is my BPR render for the current state of the chest:



Once I was done in Zbrush I then transferred the mesh over to Blender for retopology with retopoflow. Generally trying to establish silhouette first, I then made smaller cuts along the mesh to capture any smaller details. I also was unable to finish the low poly, and was unable to get to uving. The current triangle count for the retopology is 4,272 triangles, here is how it looks thus far:

Wayfinder Chest pt. 1

For the prop assignment, I decided to take on the challenge of one of the wayfinder chests. Picking the chest that had a creature on it that resembled a bear, I began by breaking down the chest into parts. I sorted out what was mirrored, what wasn't, and noted other specific elements on the chest.

After I finished my breakdown of the chest, I jumped into Blender, first establishing the scale of the chest, and importing any references I wanted to use. After that was done, I began to block out the chest, disregarding good topology for the time being as I plan on doing retopology once I am done sculpting. I modelled out the basic, large shapes for each part, making sure I was matching proportions correctly.






After finishing up my blockout, I set up my fspy camera in Blender, matching the perspective of one of my references.



Once my fspy camera was set up, I began to prepare the chest for export into Zbrush, adding a subdivision modifier and creasing edges to maintain sharpness.