2D Week 15 - Free at Last

This week was a hectic struggle to finish all of the projects that had been assigned. For this one, we figured out what our MVP was and split the tasks accordingly. My task was to get the animations for Dracula to fill in for Kim being in Japan. I decided to do 3 animations - one of him breathing, one of him breathing with his eye implant moving, and one of him shifting in his seat.

Without eye movement:

With eye movement:

Fist clenching:

2D Week 14 - Wax On, Wax Off

A bit of a slow week after Thanksgiving, but we were able to start polishing up the level. My main tasks this week were to make an actual model for the egg sacs, and to rig up Dracula and the ghoul for animation. I am showing the ghoul rig, which is the better of the two due to the nature of how little movement Dracula needs, that I thought that simple FK animation would suffice the small idle movements he would make. The ghoul's rig:

And rendered out in the engine, which I love how much I hate it:

The remodeled egg sac:

2D Week 12 - Godrays and Purple Haze

I worked on three major things this week. One, I implemented godrays into the scene to get a stronger sense of the cathedral feeling. 

Two, I used the program I wrote about last week to add a more customized skybox to the game, making the player feel more like they are in another world. I used Zach's original concept art to get the colors of a yellow nebula surrounded by reddish space.

Finally, I implemented the proxy models that were given to me by my teammates, and gave them some basic textures just to help liven up the scene, which you will see in our demo.

2D Week 11 - Level Iteration and Research

Much of my time this week was spent experimenting and researching like a good tech artist. The first half of my time was spent going back and forth between Unreal and the VR station trying to get a good feel for the scale of the level. I was able to get the navmesh working on the level, so we could explore the space better. It still felt too wide, but not to the degree that you had thought in class. I do think that it looks better at the new scaling though, and changing out the walls in the main area made it feel more grand and imposing.

As for the research, I had four main topics I wanted to look into this week:
1) Having an effect on the floor to simulate the effect of glass or some other translucent material, with a host of corpse giblets beneath. Using Ben Crawford's Shaders 201 talk from GDC2017, I was able to get this effect working, but the values will need to be significantly experimented with once I have the actual textures.

2) I also looked at Ben's 2016 shader talk to try and use his environmental effect shader (which he uses to get grass always facing world-up on an object) to be able to cheat the flesh lattice effect and save on geometry. I was not able to figure a way to do it for this week, so for now that will have to be accounted for in the geometry budget.

3) Something that had been talked about and Cat put in her sketches was godrays. I have found a tutorial for how to create them in UE4, and used sparingly they should be able to not crash the framerate while adding a definite ambiance to the scene. Also, in my research I discovered that the nature of the lenses in some VR headsets causes a "natural" god ray effect, but I think we would prefer one we can control.

4) Finally, I looked into SpaceScape, a program that will allow us to create a more unique skybox to truly sell that space feeling. I feel comfortable with the program, however I will need to meet with Zach to get the specifics of his vision down.

2D Week 10 - Environmental Sacs and Level Layout

This week I worked on some more concepts for the hanging sacs that will decorate the environment. I wanted to get a mix of charnel and extraterrestrial concepts. I think 1 and 2 are my favorites, and I am wondering if there is a good way to combine the two. 

Most of my time this week, however, was spent setting up the greybox for the level. I based the design on St. Peter's Basilica to get the gothic church aesthetic just right. In the final build, we are envisioning that the pillars will be holding the parasite worms or be ribbed like bone, and that the negative space between the ribbed vaults will be filled with a hex-patterned glass to allow the player to see out into the gaping maw of infinity outside of the ship.

The view from the throne looking towards Van Helsing:

From the exterior:

2D Week 09 - Vampyre Silhouettes

 This week we started on our semester projects. I was drafted into the Vampyres in Space team, lead by Zach M. I had the job of silhouettes some of the minions that would be around Dracula's ship. First, were the regular ghouls, humans in mid-transformation. I wanted to have a separate group for heads, which could be put on any of the bodies to either create a variance or allow for two decent ideas to come together as a good idea.

Next, I did the ahool - a man-bat creature. Again, I wanted some separate silhouettes for the body and face to get a sense of detail for both and allow for easier mixing and matching for later. 

Finally, I created a few concepts for the Mindsplitter - a vampire that hypnotizes and paralyzes its victims with psychic powers and a poisonous fog.

2D Week 08 - Concept Rd2

This week I mostly spent just making touch-ups to my image and adding some extra details to fill up some of the dead space, such as a fan (which I had to add after resizing the image to 8.5x11) and a phone. I wish that I had 3D modeled the environment first to get a better sense of scale and perspective, but by time I had thought of that it was too late.

Portrait by: Pedro Martin Rojo @ https://www.pedritoart.com/