Portfolio

Portfolio

My portfolio is presented in a 2D (renders of models) as well as 3D format (complete or "work in progress" models) as it follows:

• My 2D rendered images of the models are displayed in my Carbonmade portfolio at: http://lauravarga.carbonmade.com/

• My 3D complete or "work in progress" models are presented in my Sketchfab portfolio at: https://sketchfab.com/lauravarga

Industry specialism report

Industry specialism report

Being in the second year of a design for games course, I have been exposed to a few various aspects of the gaming industry: from concept art, to the contextualisation  side of games, to writing narratives, and, most importantly, to 3D modelling and animation. This is what captured my attention and what I would like to develop further, to gain more and better skills at, and ultimately, this is what my ideal job will be after graduation.

In order to gain experience in this sector, I have secured an internship during my second year of studies, with Interactive Systems Studio, part of Plymouth University and who are also involved in delivering the very popular Computer and Game Development Course inside Plymouth University.

 Before I have started this internship, and in order to figure out what was expected of me, I have done some research into what the 3D artist job in the gaming industry entices. The first job description I came across, was on the Blitz Academy website. 

Below, is what they consider the main duties and responsibilities of a 3D modeller to be.

3D Modeller & Texture Artists

As the name suggests, the 3D artist's working day consists of creating objects, characters and scenery in three dimensions. Most of this work will usually be achieved in one of the major 3D software packages, such as Maya, 3D Studio Max, Softimage XSI or Lightwave among others.

The artist usually works from a piece of concept art and creates the model (otherwise known as an art asset) from start to finish. This includes building the initial model, the creation and subsequent application of texture maps, the addition of project-specific blind data, and in some cases visual effects nodes, and even hardware graphics shaders. Though this all sounds rather daunting, the ability to model and texture well will get you through the door - after that the rest will come as you learn on the job.

Some companies make a job role separation between 3D Artist and 2D Texture Artist; however, most expect the 3D artists to complete the texturing phase as well as the modelling.

( http://www.blitzgamesstudios.com/blitz_academy/job_roles/art )

When I applied for this Design for Games course, my intention was, once graduated, to create my own IP, in the form of an animation, cartoon style, or a mini game for children. I have been exposed to a lot of cartoons in the past 4 years or so, due to the time spent with my daughter, and all this, has opened my mind and my imagination. I have a few ideas that I would like to develop, but the main role I am looking to fulfill in any project, would be that of a 3D artist. However, I realise that it might be very difficult to develop an IP straight away, so taking the employment route first, would probably make more sense to start off with.

For this, I was very interested to find out what the local gaming companies are requiring from a 3D artist, as, due to family commitments, my intention is to stay local. The main gaming companies in the Plymouth and surrounding area are:  Remode Studios( which while I am writing this, unfortunately has closed its doors...), Mutant Labs and Total Monkery.

Unfortunately, there are no job vacancies for 3D artists / modellers in either of them, even though, on the (still active) Remode Website, it is stated that: " We’re particularly interested in artists who have a broad set of skills from concept art to 3D modelling" 

( http://www.remodestudios.com/pages/jobs ).

Searching for Game 3D artists on the internet in general, though,  I have come across this:

"...

3D ARTIST

Liverpool

Back to search results

Job Type

Permanent

Pay

£35000-£45000

Reference

2064581

• Applyfor 3D Artist
• Add to job shortlist3D Artist

3D Artist – Game Development – Liverpool - £30000-£40000

The ideal candidate will have impeccable skills in character modelling, texturing and animation. You'll be working as part of a team of game developers. The environment is a matrix managed; fast paced development team and you will assist in helping drive the delivery of 3d gaming products.

We are looking for a hard-working individual who can fit into our current team and also bring the team forward to be a leading edge company within 3d gaming products. They must have a thirst for the latest developments within the 3d gaming sector and instil that attitude within the team.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

§ Design and creation of 3d models (animals, humans and scene environments)
§ Character rigging and animation.
§ Developing visually stunning textures.
§ Improving the quality of existing 3d models
§ Assisting the development team with ideas for improving the quality of the visual effects
§ Develop high quality realistic game environments.
§ Modifying and improving motion capture animations.
§ Brainstorming with the team to develop ideas for project scope expansion

SKILLS & EXPERIENCE

Skills expertise:

§ Proficient with Blender or 3DS Max.
§ Realistic human and animal modelling and animation
§ Understanding of requirements for Unity3D and workflow from your preferred animation package into Unity3D solutions.
§ Expert with Photoshop or Gimp
Able to understand technical constraints of the systems and work within these constraints

Knowledge and experience:
§ A proven track record of creating beautiful models and realistic animations.
§ An up-to-date portfolio of work demonstrating your skills.
§ Understanding of conceptualising new artwork in line with an existing product.
§ Appreciation of project development cycles and timelines.
§ Some knowledge of shaders would be advantageous but not essential

Attributes:
§ Outstanding interpersonal skills and the ability to establish positive relationships with employees at all levels of the business as well as external partners.
§ Resilient, approachable with the ability to work successfully in a dynamic, fast paced pan – European environment.
§ Ability to operate as a team player, with a flexible and positive attitude.
§ Always operates with the highest levels of honesty, integrity and fidelity, acting in the best interest of the business at all times.

Ability to work to tight deadlines, effectively prioritise and deliver to a high standard whilst under pressure."

Looking at the skills required by this job, I have decided to set myself SMART targets, for the next 3 months initially, while on work placement, and for the next year after that, until I graduate and will be looking for a job. This is SMART targets are:



And this is what I have set for myself:

My SMART targets

Specific - increase my 3D modelling skills
Measurable - create at least 10 different models, starting off with various primitive shapes
Action - Complete 1 model per week, different from others built before
Realistic and Relevant - Minimum requirement per week, is to build one different 3D model from any previous ones created before
Time based - Time limit is end of March


And through setting myself these SMART targets, I have realised there are a lot of things I need to learn in order to achieve my targets, so a SWOT analysis was the next logic step to do.

My SWOT analysis

Strengths - I consider my main strength to be my commitment and my ambition to learn and develop my skills, my determination to be able to be called a 3D artist

Weaknesses - My family life and my equal commitment to them will probably be my weakness. But I know I can overcome it with good time management, planning and organisation.

Opportunities - My eyes are always open, I am constantly keeping myself updated with what happens in the industry. I have signed up for monthly emails from Gamasutra, on Twitter,  I am following a few influential "players" in  this industry,  such as Infinite Playground, ExPlay, Digital Art Group, Union of Artists, Guardian Tech. I have got a LinkedIn account, where I have connected with reprentatives from the industry (see https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=227470510&trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile )

Threats - My main threat will probably be time...And by this I am referring to the time I will allocate to work outside college, due to the constant balancing of family and personal development (college work) time I am dealing with.

Hats for Snowmen

One of the levels in the game is an Ice level and the protagonists are snowmen. In order to make them more interesting and follow the cartoony theme the entire game has got, I was asked to create some hats for these snowmen. No particular idea was given, so, it was left up to me to decide what would work and what not.

First step, was research into hats and try to find interesting ones, hats that would stand out and would give character to the snowmen. The ones that drew my attention, were a witches hat, an aviator's hat and a top hat. These, I felt, would give ordinary snowmen the edge and transform them into unusual snowmen. The reference images I have used, were the ones shown below. (Fig 1 - Fig 4)

Fig 1

Fig 2

Fig 3

Fig 4

First hat I have modelled, was the top hat. Using a cylinder as the starting point, I have deleted the bottom polygon and scaled and copied the border obtained. That gave me the bottom side of the hat. After giving it the shape desired, following my reference image, I have then, used the Shell Modifier in order to give the model the thickness required. After unwrapping, texturing and optimising, the top hat I have modelled, looks as shown in Fig 5:

Fig 5

 Here is the wire frame of the model, showing the flow of polygons and giving a more in depth idea of how I have built it: (see Fig 6).

Fig 6

The reason the bottom side has got sharp corners, is because due to the size of the ode when featured in the game, it was not worth keeping more polygons than this.

The second hat I have modeled, was the witches hat. This was slightly more complicated than the previous one, as it had more detail. First of all, I have started with a cone and applied the same steps as for the top hat, in order to create the bottom side of it. But in a funky witches hat, the top side is the one giving it personality, so I have decided to create some folds, some pretty large ones, visible from a distance. 

Then, I have proceeded to reshaping the basic bottom side, and adding some character to that as well. By just moving groups of vertices, I have created another fold and rolled the border, giving the hat the thickness required. I am really happy with the final product, as when placed on the snowmen, it certainly makes them stand out.

creating modular organic shapes - flower

Frangipani

This week, I have been given the task to create some vegetation for one of the levels in the game. Again, for final product quality reasons, I had to find a flower that would be formed as repeated modular items, meaning that if one petal is created and copied and rotated, it will give the final product. And by doing this, the whole model will actually consist of one small piece of geometry, repeated and overlapped onto the UVW map and texture map. So the texture will have higher resolution this way.

After doing some research into this, I have decided to model a Frangipani.
These were my reference images. (Fig 1 an Fig 2)

Fig 1

Fig 2

So following these images,  the first iteration of my model came out as shown in Fig 3 :

Fig 3

However, looking at it, I have realised that the folding edges of the petals didn't have enough thickness as in the reference images, so I have carried on working on them. I have shaped it better, so that when texturedm it will give the sensation of thickness. When finished and textured, the back of my model looked as in Fig 4, while the front looked like Fig 5.

Fig 4

Fig 5

In order to create variety, I have taken the individual petals and rotated them, in order to create a flower in bud  and a slightly opened one (Fig 6).

Fig 6

I have learned a lot from this mini project, and the main aspect that I am taking out of it, is how to work efficient for a certain platform, IPhones in this case. Because the memory required to run the application is limited, we had to create such models that will not require a lot of memory space. Again, in order to increase the texture resolution, the quality of the visual aspect, I have learned to create modular products (create a petal and repeat) and overlap in the unwrapping and texturing phases of the process.
I feel that my skills have improved again, through repeating the modelling process.

week 12 - optimising, retopologising and baking a texture onto the model

After I have built an Ice crystal formation out of only modular elements, I came up with a really nice final product, but it had too much information, too many polygons were hidden and hence unused, so that was basically overloading the system unnecessarily.

These are the 2 basic crystals initially created.

Using them and scaling, rotating, moving and duplicating, I have achieved 3 separate Ice crystal formations to be used in one of the levels of the game to be released. 

Here are the renders of the elements created. 

Ice_Crystal_03_MESH

                           

Ice_Crystal_02_MESH

Ice_Crystal_01_MESH

However, as I mentioned before, in order to be included in a game aimed to be released on Ipads and Iphones, I needed to reduce the information and I have retopologised the meshes.

The first one I have started with, was Ice_Crystal_03_MESH, and for doing this, I have used the Freeform option, and PolyDraw with step Build. This basically, allowed me to recreate polygons using the outer surface of my model created, ignoring the information not needed form the inside.

So, my actual final model to be used in the game looks as the following image will show, and the difference is, not so much in the look of it, but in the number of polygons, significantly reduced (from 229 in the original model, down to 138 in the final one).

Ice_Crystal_03_optimised_MESH

Here they are, side by side, just to give a better idea of the differences (or lack of them) in visual aspect:

Ice crystal 03 original and retolopgised (optimised)

Next step, was unwrapping and texturing. 

The unwrapping was a little bit complicated due to the number of faces and angles the object has, but in the end, my UV looked like this: 

As I said, it might look some how untidy, but in order to keep the original shapes, I wanted to keep it as organic a s possible. And by doing this, I managed to keep the stretching of polygons to an absolute minimum. Here's how the checkered map looked on the object. :

Ice_Crystal_03_Optimised_MESH

Before starting the texturing process, I was advised to do a "bake" of the model, in order to pick up the details and have a starting point for my texture map.

It was the first time I have actually done a "bake" so, here are the steps that I have followed:

First, I have selected the model and applied a white material to it from the Material Editor in 3DS Max.

Then I have introduced a skylight in the scene, in order to create ambient occlusion and obtain realistic shadows.

Then, by opening the Rendering menu from the top bar of the screen, I have selected the Render to Texture option. This opens a window with a lot of parameters to chose from, so a lot more options. the basic ones that I worked with, were:

Output - I have selected where my rendered image will be saved

I have then ticked the option below this, which said Rendered Frame Window

The next element is Objects to Bake and if the element is selected, then under Name, my element name already appeared( Ice_Crystal_03_MESH).

Underneath, the Padding is set to 2 by default, and for a 512 x 512 texture, that should be enough, as padding is basically "The amount, in pixels, that edges are allowed to overlap in the flattened (“unwrapped”) texture." (3DS MAx Help)

Next step, in the Output section, the file name should already be displayed. Underneath, there is an option "Add", by clicking on that, there are several texture elements available to chose from. I have chosen BlendMap, as I only want to do a basic texture bake.

Next, I have chosen the size of the map, and I have chosen 512 x 512.

I have changed the Black default Element background colour, to a light blue, as I would find it really difficult to work on a black background in Photoshop.

And the baked map looks like this: 

Bake map

The difference between this render and the previous one is the slight shadow detail added, which can be used on the UVW map.

At the bottom of this window, there is the Unwrap Only option, which, if chosen, it will render only the UVW map with the baked information on. And that will be the starting point for the texture map in Photoshop.

This is how my baked UVW map looks like: 

baked UVW map

Week 5

Week 5

This week, my task was to create a third tyre, (for one of the cars) and bring together the tyres textures and map the tyres to it.

This meant that I had to put all three textures into one single file, and arrange in such a way that individual texture will not overlap. Each element of texture needed to be arranged with keeping in mind of what and where the other elements in other files were. By doing this, I have obtained one file image in which I had information (texture) for 3 different tyres and 3 different rims. 

This was like doing a puzzle initially as I have never done anything like this before, but I totally understood the reason for it and I have managed to do exactly what was required, with, I must say, great satisfaction.

By importing this image into the UVW editor in the 3DS Max software by using the "pick texture" option, I have then Imported and Merged all 3 completed wheels (tyres and rims) into one 3DS Max file and started organising the UVW maps to correspond the texture map. By doing that, I have put all three wheels and all three textures into one file, making the whole process much more efficient.

This was another challenging but very rewarding week. I have learned a lot in both programs ( Photoshop - working with and organising layers and 3DS Max - importing and merging models into one file).

Week 4

Week 4

This week, I was asked to produce another rim for a different type of tire. Applying everything I have learned in my previous week, I have done just that, and achieved a very nice, slightly unusual rim. 

There is not much more to say about the process as it was discussed in detail in my previous post, but of course, by repeating the process, I have improved my skills and gained more confidence.

The second rim I have created, was for a 4x4 car, so the design needed to be a bit more funky, more unusual, and not so simple as the previous one.

Here is what I have created:

Initial colour was applied using materials in the 3DS MAX software. I was trying to see how this rim would look as a two toned version. But, with some feedback from Paul (my supervisor), I have changed the colour scheme, and when the model was textured, I have inverted the colours and experimented with various combinations.

Here is how it looks on the actual 4x4 model used into the game:

4x4 car used in the game with the rims created by me.