Displaying the backyard in Unreal and final result

Importing the project into Unreal was not an easy task. I had so many assets, the majority duplicates, to which I had to assign materials individually, and also rename them accordingly, which took forever. This is the consequence of me not using Unreal as much as I should have done during the process. It just doesn't make sense for me to have so many duplicates as static meshes. 

As for the lighting, I have tried to keep it simple, while also utilizing it to showcase my assets. I have stayed true to my initial idea, of having the time of day be the golden hour, in order to furthermore emphasize the mood and atmosphere of the environment.

I also added the decals that I have previously made, which ended up looking very believable, the footprints blending in with the snow beautifully.

Looking back at the project, I am convinced that there are lots of things that I should have done differently, having mistakes popping into my eye straight away while looking at the final screenshots, such as the seams on the rooftop and also the texel density, having parts of some objects with lower resolutions. On top of that, I should have made the rooftop a double-sided material, the texture disappearing when viewed from certain angles. 

Even with that being said, I do like the overall image of the project, and I think it reflects quite well my initial vision regarding it. One particular thing that stands out to me is my improvement regarding the texturing, which can be clearly seen while looking at the crosses. The designer made textures ended up looking a bit repetitive though, but I am still happy that I managed to do them having so little experience with the software. The wood details ended up being too small, and I think that makes the material a bit hard to read.

After further feedback from my professor Katarina, it has been pointed out the very simple geometry that has been used on the house, which unfortunately breaks the immersion, and now I can not unsee it. Even the smaller objects such as the wood planks should have had some type of imperfections, dents, etc...

Working on this project has been a very valuable learning experience, and I will be keeping in mind all the flaws that have been pointed out while working on my next projects.

Finalising the sculpt of the Husky

 After some further feedback from my professors, I have been reminded that the animal should be completely functional without the saddle as well, which wasn't what was happening in my case. I haven't sculpted the hair under the saddle, so I went back and fixed that.

I have also added some final touches such as individual nails. I also went back and made a fur brush to add some additional detail and made a few more adjustments to the paws and tail. With all that done I can finally say the sculpt is done. I am extremely happy with how it has turned out, and now I will be moving on to the retoping.

Sculpting the Husky

 Now that I had the base done it was time for the sculpting. After looking at some more references I have started to shape things around more, starting with the move tool and then moving on to the standard btush.

I did the head first, carefully shaping the features so that it would resemble a Husky. One of the particular areas that I had to be careful of was the muzzle since Huskys have a very distinct shape face. For the smaller features like the mouth and the eyes, I have used Dam Standard so that I would get these nice changes of angle on the surface.

After getting that done it was time to think about how I would approach the fur. After some research, I decided to model bigger chunks of hair, so that they would imply volume and thickness to the hair. Something similar to how the artist that made the model for Dogmeat in Fallout 4 approached it. 

While doing this I also had some anatomy pictures on the side, constantly changing the form so that the dog would look as real as I could make it.

At this stage I have also decided to add the saddle, since the chunks of hair were going to be affected by its presence, and also I wanted to have a clean surface on its back so that when I extracted the topology for the cloth on its back, I would get a smooth result. 

The leather strips were quite easy to make. I used the method that Katarina showed us in class, which is using the Topology brush.

Developing the iteration more and getting the final design

 After deciding which iteration I was going to use for my final design, I started looking into ways that I could fill in the gaps. After some searching, I ended up choosing these pictures as an inspiration for the body. I wanted something scary looking, and with the already very pale skin, I thought that making the creature very skinny would be a great design choice. 

Having the outline of the character already done, I filled in the gaps and ended up with this drawing.

I have decided to give it a bird-looking face, with a beak. Having appropriate shape language was also very important to me, so I kept the sharp triangle shapes visible throughout the entire design. I also decided to utilize some curved shapes, making the character feel more aerodynamic and agile with the movements.

The face ended up looking way top friendly for my taste, considering that this is supposed to be a scary looking predator, so that is something that will need fixing and more thought in the future stages.

Finalising the pumpkin project

 After the formative feedback session, I went in and fixed everything that my professors pointed out. I played with the roughness maps more, and I also ended up giving the props a lighter colour in order to make it more interesting. 

For the lighting, I have researched more the types of setups that I could approach, and i ended up using multiple lights of different colours and intensities to light the pumpkin, and also give it a more spooky look. I also placed it inside of a dark box, so I wouldn't have anything else distracting the viewers' eyes from the pumpkin itself. I also placed a light inside of the pumpkin, as I initially thought too. 

Thinking back at the project, I would say that I am quite satisfied with the result, but there are lots of things that I would have done differently. One example would be not wasting as much time on not-so-important processes, such as retoping, and focusing more on texturing. For the future, I would try to come up with better and more efficient ways to do it, that are not so time-consuming. Another thing that I would have changed is adding something under the pumpkin, because the floating look is not particularly appealing. I really need to start prioritizing more important stuff during the workflow and think about what part of my work could be done more efficiently in different ways. 

Week 16- Focus on Portrait

 This week's task was very challenging. I am not that experienced with charcoal, even more so regarding portraits, Thankfully, Teodora was there to guide me through the steps. 

Charcoal is a very soft material, which applies to the paper quite easily, and also rubs away just as easily. One big difference that I have noticed is that you definitely can not start with the details, or work on specific areas alone. The best way to approach it is to work on the entire image as a whole. Applying charcoal to the mid-tones, the to the darkest parts, and after erasing the highlights, if they haven't been left white from the get-go.  The details should be applied later.

Another big challenge was retaining the dark skin tone in my drawing, which meant having a darker tonal value present from the get-go. 

This material allowed me to work quite fast, even with the frustrations that appeared at the start of the session. I was actually able to finish most of it, which meant huge progress. 

After having that done, and with some further feedback from my teacher I decided to add a dark background to the right side of the drawing, which gave more definition to the contour of the face and also made the highlights pop more. I also used some charcoal pencils to get the smaller details.  

I am really pleased with the result.  still have a long way to go regarding using charcoal, but for my first attempt, I am quite happy that I was able to pull it off. 

For this task, I used charcoal sticks and charcoal pencils. 

Maing the iterations

 Having the initial mood boards done, It was time to start shaping the projects into something more specific. After some thought, I decided that I wanted my creature to be something humanoid looking, but that also has animal elements to it, so a hybrid of some sort. Also, I do want to keep the very pale complexion of the characters that I have previously seen, so I decided to look for some more references and tailor my project around that. 

Having a very pale character meant that it typically won't be exposed to much sunlight, so I kept that in mind while looking for inspiration, but I am still keeping my options open regarding the environment.

The next step was starting the iteration process. I have noticed that previously on my past projects I was spending way too much time on the concept stage, so this time around I will stop second-guessing my every move and start following my gut more. Overthinking in general can lead to the destruction of such good ideas, and that is definitely something that I do not want to happen.

After some further feedback from my professor Craig, I decided that the iteration from the left bottom corner for my character is the most interesting one, so I will be taking that separately and developing it more. Having a creature with wings, I started making some iterations for the environment as well, and I ended up choosing the cave setting, that being the most plausible one for a bat-like creature, 

Making the blockout of the Husky

 The most important thing while working on a living creature is getting the anatomy and proportions right. So before I started to work on anything I needed to feed my brain with as many references as I could. I created a pin on my Pinterest and started to add lots of pictures to my collection. Here are some examples. 

After gathering those I started working on my blockout. I have used the method that has been shown to us in class, which is starting with primitive shapes such as spheres and cylinders, stocking them together to get the general form of the animal. I also took it a step further and made some small adjustments to the shapes with the move tool at this stage, to get a more accurate look. 

After I was happy with the general shape I dynameshed everything together, Zremesh it afterward to get rid of the ugly sharp edges that have been created, and then started shaping the Husky with the move brush.

Since Huskys are very furry dogs, it is unnecessary to start sculpting the musculature that is not going to be visible, but I do need to keep an eye for the shape of the legs and paws.