Third Year Projects Update

Alex Price: Blog of Aspiring 3D Modeler and Artist

I am currently developing my Final Year blog website but in the mean time most of the content from my final year projects are here in both the modeling and concept tabs. This year I am working on two 3D animation shorts in two groups. Each animation is about one minute and a half to two minutes long and would both be constructed around the 3D package Maya. So in the holidays I spent my time pre-pairing for the projects and learning the software I would need, I have also taught myself z-brush through the duration too.

For my ‘final year project’ module I am working as part of ‘Team Splashbox’ in creating our slapstick piece “Odd Sok”. This piece entails the misfortunes of a mythical goblin creature known as the Gribbler who’s major function is to steal the missing odd sock out of every pair. Like the great comedy capers of Road Runners Wiley Coyote and Ice Age’s Scrat the goblin will attempt to ascertain the sock from a washing line 3 stories above with hilarious failure. The piece is set in a picturesque idealization of Venice to draw contrast to the fetid and unhygienic Gribbler. I spent a lot of time researching into the style of this piece and probably went through about a hundred concepts for the Gribbler before I had something which I was happy with. As the art lead of the project I was also working to push the story elements to really give character to the piece and continually guide the group towards a certain look.

For the ‘Group Project’ Module I am working in the group ‘Project Penguin’ and our black comedy piece is entitled “Crime Me A River”. Based in a 1950′s film noir world the piece follows the actions of a misguided henchman Murphy who is forced into disposing of a body for the mafia. The piece takes place on a bridge along an abandoned industrial river some miles from a NYC look alike. The Mafia’s presence is represented through the terrifying colossus of a man the Don. In this piece it is through his relationship with Murphy that the narrative is driven and which makes the audience sympathize for goofy the lead character. What was originally a simple job of throwing a suspicious sack in the river becomes a world of misery for Murphy. The great thing about working on this piece is that everyone in our group is really engaged with the characters and the story even after months of development. In the pre-production phase I did a lot of research for our characters and settings and I worked to develop a range of the visual elements along with prepare an ideal pipeline for the group.

This year has been a frantic attempt to get everything ready for animation and this has been particular relevant to me. With both final year projects it has been my responsibility to build all of the characters and to setup all of the facial rigs, blend shapes and extra controls necessary for animation. The characters for both projects had to be very flexible and to this extent we have been successful, the rigs have hundreds of controls in the forms of blend shapes and deformers and they are all neatly laid out for easy animation use. I am not a rigger by any means, the bulk of rigging the body was left to Dave Watson and James Burr and they have done a fantastic job of this. The rigging and skinning parts which I have engaged in on the facial rig and the rigging experience which I have gained from reconstructing the Malcolm rig has taught me a great deal. The Malcolm rig is a brilliantly constructed rig from the AnimSchool website which we are modifying into our Murphy charcter. You can find the details of the Malcolm rig here: http://www.animschool.com/DownloadOffer.aspxThere were a lot of problems, models needed to be unwrapped after rigging, parts of the rigs were breaking, self collisions and many more the entire problem solving experience was a difficult one.

On top of this I also had the job of creating both blockouts and splitting the resulting scenes into separate shots for animation, approx 40 -45 shots per animation. This also took a hellish long time even with me working flat out, there were quite a few changes as we went along and in one instance I had to start again as we re-orientated our scenes master file due to the needs of Maya Ocean. From about a week to two weeks ago for the two projects we have been ready to animate all of the scenes.

Individually and as a group we have done a great deal more than I have briefly described here; such as having filmed in the green screen facility for a good few hours and around Middlesbrough collected reference footage. I will do everything I can to get the pieces completed and to keep pushing the visuals, the narrative and acting of the characters.

What is left for me to do now is to animate a little over a quarter of the animation in the Odd Sok project which I am fairly confident I can do quickly and a smaller portion of the animation in The Crime Me A River piece. I also have to model and texture the environment and the props in the mobster piece which I am currently half way through and working on solidly. Being primarily a modeler this is my main concern at the moment.

Same old same old

Hey all sorry if I’m repeating my posts I’m updating my blog so I’ll be moving things about xD

Amazing Tessellation Developments from NVIDIA

Just seen this new morph tech demo on Tessellation from NVIDIA. This tech is still very early but I can see this these developments being adopted into next gen games in coming years. The prospect of tessellation is very exciting, it effectively breaks down polygons into smaller pieces and uses algorithms to reconstruct them using new tris. Though displacement mapping works off a similar principle using a texture with a set of height restrictions it is restricted to the very formulaic flow of vertices. When you combine tessellation with displacement mapping you effectively get a new raised flow of tris that appears like a high poly addition but without the unnecessarily drain. Other uses include; greatly improved smoothing for realistic characters, fixing LOD problems automatically and as seen above an interesting new take on morph technology. Clever stuff.

Alex

3D Coat VS Blender

In many ways character modelling for games, TV and film is becoming steadily more ‘user friendly’. With the aid of sculpting programs we can make elaborate models very simply and now it’s possible to cut out the middle man and save hours worth of work building a model from scratch by using retopo. Personally I think its important for anyone to have built a good few characters from scratch to grasp how topology flow works. But retopo and more specifically auto-retopo suggests to me that in a few years nice topology flow will become an automatic package function. This is both bad and good, good because we are about to see a lot more talented sculptors in the 3D world and bad because this will mean a unbalance of artistic to technical knowledge. Still to avoid appearing hypercritical I love sculpting and personally find retopo to be a god send.

The two main contenders for me in retopo have to be 3D coat and Blender. The retopo function in Blender 2.5 being one of the many new exciting features. It’s a surprisingly powerful tool for a freeware package and in many ways packages such as Z-brush would greatly benefit from taking note of Blenders simplistic method. The multitude of functions and the fact that it’s a free appliance makes it an obvious choice for any aspiring games student.

But to me it’s still not the best. 3D coat has a very simple toolset but is an incredibly powerful package. I have been using Mudbox for a good while now and I love the toolset but 3D coat has something in its Ushanka. 3D voxel sculpting capabilities are a revelation in modelling that allows total freedom to the sculpter unlimited by topology flow. Granted Z-brush can cope with 10 million polygons so very sharp results are practical  but it just doesn’t have the flexibly of voxels. Then there is 3D coats automatic retopo function, just a few guide lines cast across a sculpt can generate near perfect geometry. 10 hours of work in 3 minutes, this is fantastic.

Alex

Thursday Febuary 24, 2011

Gaming Legends: Shadow of the Colossus

Image via Wikipedia

Game Review: Shadow of the Colossus

Game Review: Shadow of the Colossus

Most of my fondest memories of games largely came from the PS1 and the PS2. The Prince of Persia, Final Fantasy X, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, Crash Bandicoot, Medevil to name  but a few. So to be completely bias I am going to review the game which always stood out to me the most as not just an obvious art statement but in general a masterpiece of gaming design. It has to be Team Ico’s The Shadow of the Colossus.  The contrast of its game-play between roaming vast beautiful expanses and combating the monolithic Colossus is nothing short of inspiring. Sure the mechanics has a few holes in it’s leaky hull and the repletion of the game mechanics are spread thinner than a Yugoslavian banquet, but it just goes to show how much can be archived with a limited but quality controlled scheme. It is a near perfect marriage of clever game mechanics and a powerful art backing. From a game standpoint it’s most remarkable feature is that for all its vision of scale and artistic imagination only one word can truly encaption this game. Minimalist.

This general plot is all about ‘Wanderer’ our pre-claimed miniature hero and his ongoing quest to resurrect ‘Mono’ a dead woman of some presumed connection or relevance but I guess that the game lets you figure that out for yourself. Only by overcoming the giant seemingly invincible colossus can you save Mono from her eternal slumber. You play as ‘Wander’ who prudently spends his time roaming barren wastes and cavernous expanses with his horse companion  ‘Argo’ in an ongoing hunt for creatures which can only be described as angry hairy buildings. Director Fumito Ueda made a point when developing this game he wanted to keep the 12 Colossus’ as the central focus for the player, rather than filling the game with generic meaningless enemies. Each colossus has a programmed a personality, their mechanics are designed to make them seem as organic and responsive as possible. Each represents a personality or animal of some description, these bosses act as a platform level or what can only be compared to a twitchy mobile jungle gyms; you climb them, they will flail their arms until you are tossed unceremoniously face first into a wall like of a sack of potatoes and then you will eagerly scurry back up again to repeat the process.  The game mechanics seem to have a sort of love hate relationship with the player, as you clamber up the hair and stone architecture that protrudes from the on the colossus’ bodies you will be put through a wild vertigo roller coaster ride. Sure the game will punish you for not being clever enough able to work out one of it’s puzzle (From such genius ploys as diving into their mossen beards and when they are not looking and stabbing them in the chin till they die).

This is a game which encapsulates learning by failure, failing it’s exercise regime equals hurtling back to a familiar place.  It’s like the game is isnsitant of increasing it’s longevity by bringing you within a hairs breath of your prize and they tossing you back to the start. However the game does try to make up for these shortcomings by introducing breaks from fighting the colossus to wander the beautiful landscapes and  gives the illusion of hunting the beasts down. These segments are very much a Prince of Persia vein, a free roaming experience with no real sense of direction bar your sword compass companion.. you heard me.

But enough about the mechanics what about the look. Well overall it is a return to the greeny brown filter and for some reason Team Ico has this theorem that if the screen isn’t blinding you with bloom you’re not having fun, Bloom of the Colossus. Bloomin eck (sorry) still the environments are breathtaking with a refreshing variety of locations and an epic sense of scale. The ancient architecture I found particularly impressive and I probably spent more time admiring the craftsmanship of stone walls than playing the game… but that’s probably just me right. The character designs are original, iconic, convincing and blend perfectly with the world. The VFX are subtle enough but effective and the stylistic look of the game well makes up for the small production team. Brown never looked so good.

The gameplay and the narrative isn’t complex. Wandering aimlessly and being egged on by some sinister voice to kill strange monsters, absorb their evil souls in exchange for candy, I mean human resurrection. Now there is a deal that couldn’t go wrong. However this again is a game which pulls of simplicity rather well and you find yourself captivated by the journey throughout. I did feel for the first few lumbering beasts as I unfairly clubbed them to death with my magical sword whilst they were presumably out on a morning stroll to the colossus convenient store. But after the extended hunt and overplayed fights you will sigh a relief as you widow Mrs colossus. Sometimes though the free roaming filler are frustratingly overplayed as these are the sort of creatures which go for a morning stole in a secret valley, behind a secret wall, in a secret wood, in Mount Doom. The narrative is so open-ended that it transcends social barriers, so that anyone can play it for what it is, an excuse to kill cool looking monsters.

With this game, it really goes to show it is not what you can put into a game it’s what you can take out. There is no extra UI clutter, no side questing and no stashing bananas to get to the next level.What is the result. Every part of this game is designed to makes you feel in awe but more importantly you feel like you are living an adventure you have never seen before, one which you have near complete control of. It is through your initiative and perseverance that you hunt down and slay the mighty colossus and each time you feel empowered by the challenge. Tea Ico has really worked to set a strict foundation and stick to it and it is a prime example of art construct through it’s own limitations. I would argue that Shadow of the Colossus comes closest to the scope of imagination and theatricality that you would only normally see in blockbuster films. A lot can be learnt from this game.