Final Fantasy XV- 3D artwork analysis

Final Fantasy xv is on of the most visually appealing games to me and on of my favourite games. The high quality and typical Final Fantasy stylised graphics inspire me in many ways.

The Omen trailer in particular features some incredible modelling and environments which mirror the quality and beauty of the game itself. When I watched it I was able to grasp the heavy contrasting atmosphere that the game portrays through both he characters and the environment artist Akos Szabo worked on many of the environmental 3D work featured in the XV omen trailer, he is a 3D generalist under rebellion VFX.

This environment in particular was something that both inspired and interests me and was a memorable piece of 3D that Akos Szabo worked on.  The image above features the tree of Omen, around which the nightmares Noctis mentally endures and faces begin and end, to him it was 'nice to create an asset that had such a meaningful connection to the story line and is so prominent. This type of environment was very common in the game and often featured models which portrayed a concept of life and growth yet had an atmosphere of melancholy around them, reflecting the overall story line of the game itself. I love the textures of the tree and the contrast of the spooky model to the green grass to the grey sky and the magitek drop ships in the background.

In particular I love the stylised 3D character models that reflect Final Fantasies running style. This 3D model of Noctis is of particular interest to me as aswell as being an incredible main character in the story the actual model itself is very endearing. I love the different textures on the clothing and skin. Ive always found that square enix does an amazing job of capturing realism in a fantastical and stylised way through their use of detailed character models and detailed textures. Noctis has a very unique character model and is clearly identifiable as the poster boy for the game and as a classic Final Fantasy character. His long sword, colour scheme and classic FF hair make his model stand out to even those who haven't played the game before.

Digital landscape concepts- Greyscale

 

For digital art I was tasked with doing some short concepts using greyscale tonal values. The image above was my finished piece. The idea for this concept is a rock beach landscape set in Japan or a made up place. The creeping vines and jagged shapes convey an eerie atmosphere and the arch denotes a sense of mystery and journey. I used different layers for each part of the perspective and different tonal values to represent a sense of closeness and distance. I have tried to make the shapes simplistic and clear so that if this were to be used in a pipeline artists could grasp a clear idea of the desired concept and atmosphere. Below I will include some process pictures.

Blocking out basic shapes.

Adding some simple light and shadow values.

Traditional still life studies

This week I was tasked with sketching a range of pieces from still life using different techniques in order to build up my observational drawing skill set. I initially found still life drawing challenging but as I progressed through the tasks I felt increasingly confident. I will continue to practise in order to be able to create accurate pieces of quality. 

(A 3 hour study I did in my free time)

This first piece was one of my speed drawings which I spent 5 minutes on, trying to get down the basic shapes. As I am so used to drawing from photographs, being able to pick out shapes from a 3D perspective was challenging. There was no shading for this piece, just quick sketching. To improve this I think I need to work some more on perspective as some elements can look static and inaccurate.

I spent 8 minutes on the next piece shown above, further refining any shade and detail after I had sketched down the basic shapes and layout. Again, with this piece, I think perspective wise this is not accurate, especially when it comes to the controller. I added the PS4 controller for this task as I wanted to sketch its interesting shape to see if I could get the angle right.

This piece took around 20 minutes and I experimented with some looser mark making. I used a 4B pencil and quickly tried to express values of tone in a loose way whilst still being accurate with the objects themselves. I also experimented with line weight, making some lines look darker which made the object look sharper and pop out of the fabric behind. I think this piece helped me to quickly process tonal values. Next time, I should consider how the perspective and distance of the object will affect the shade. 

This piece also took around 20 minutes and I wanted to switch it up and draw just a single object from life using the crosshatching technique which I had not done before. I think with some practise I would be able to better represent the 3D values using the crosshatching. 

This gestural piece was done using loose crosshatching to show the shades. I like how these pieces turned out as I think the cross hatching technique really lends itself well to the form of the objects as I can accurately express hard and soft lines and shades. I would like to try a more detailed and accurate piece using finer crosshatching as I would like to further refine.

This piece was drawn with my left hand. It was very difficult to get the basic shapes of the objects accurately as my hand was unsteady. I tried to scribble in some basic details too.

This piece was fun to do because I had to keep looking at the items rather than paper so I couldn't see what I was drawing. This really loosened me up and, even though all the proportions and perspective are inaccurate, I enjoyed doing this task. 

With this continuous line drawing I tried to capture the basic flow and shape of the objects. This was challenging as I was not able to take my pencil off the page.

This was an extra piece I did as part of the mark making section of this week's tasks. I wanted to experiment with line and weight combined with shading.

This piece took around 1 hour and 20 minutes to complete and I tried to refine and study the objects closely in order to capture more detail within my shading, using all the skills I had built up from other tasks. I decided to include a number of glass objects in this final composition as I liked how you could see the movement of the fabric refracted through. However, because I chose to use all glass objects, the piece looks busy and the objects somewhat blend into the background, as my shading does not reflect foreground objects and those which are further away well. I have tried to make the objects pop out too much and the piece has lost its accuracy. After feedback, I made sure to add some focus on line and weight within the drawing to make it pop out of the background as a lot of the shapes got lost. I also made an error when drawing the circular top of the wine glass. 

Treasure chest project

 For this project we were tasked with modelling a low poly treasure chest which opened and closed on a hinge. I really enjoyed this project as I was able to pick up even more skills and different tools to use in order to improve the quality of my work. I already have some ideas of how I plan to texture my chest once I have finished unwrapping it. Below I will insert some screenshots of the process, mistakes and how I fixed them. In this project I also tried to make sure that my chest had nice topology and could be game engine ready if it needed to be once unwrapped and baked. I was excited at all the possibilities I had when modelling this as I added some of my own touches using some tools that I previously picked up. Later on if I have time I may add some extra details such as more objects inside or out.

This is my finished result with my dagger stuck in the sand- below I will show some steps I took in achieving this.

Here is the start of the base of my chest, along with chamfer, bevel, inset and extrude I was able to create this using a basic cuboid shape. On this screenshot I had just extruded the faces of my chest inward to create a more dimensional and aesthetic appearance, later on I go on to adding a second bevel to further refine the shape.

 I also connected up some edges and target welded some verts in order to create this shape so that when I extruded it inward it would create a nice almost lock like shape to it. 

This was the finished result of the extrusion I am pleased with how this shape looks and how much dimension the box now has. 

I then moved onto to the lid and did this is a similar way to the base but using a cylinder sliced in half, I added the chamfers and bevels to stick with the shape of the base.

Once the main body of the chest was done I added some simple feet made out of cubes which I sculpted to have a more aesthetic appeal and also some ring handles either side which I made using the spline tool. I struggled a bit getting to grips with the spline however I think it turned out ok in the end.

I then went and corrected any problems I faced with the topology and geometry of the mesh. Here some of the geometry had gotten tangled and there was some strange verts on the inside of the model from where I had made changes to the shape of the chest. I fixed these by target welding these verts and connecting them up so that the mesh was no longer tangled.

This was the finished result after untangling the verts and mesh. 

Another issue I wanted to fix was the topology of the chest. As you cant have shapes that are more than 4 sides I used a tool which pointed out all polys over this count and then connected verts up in order to split these shapes into ones which only had 3-4 edges as this is what would need to happen if it was going to be put into a game. Once this was all fixed my chest had nice topology. 

Here is how I dealt with the previous issue, the shape has now been split into a 4 sided poly and a tri. 

Another issue I had was this strange fold that had been created on the lid, to fix this all I had to do was weld the 2 verts to the vert at the point in the middle and the geometry was fixed.

Here is a picture of the finished topology of the chest. I also added some little studs using the pyramid tool.

This was the final outcome, there's a lot I would have liked to have added but some of it I'm not sure how to do. In the future I would like to take this into zbrush and sculpt it using that. I am pleased with the outcome and I definitely leant how to troubleshoot a lot of issues during this process which I tackled. I would also like to experiment a bit more with the shape of the chest as I think it could look more interesting. This project was a challenge but I learnt how to use many new tools in the process.

Dagger Project- Unwrap

For this project I used a range of techniques to model a low poly dagger in 3DS MAX, this was my second attempt at modelling an object after my previous project of a table and chairs. I have no prior experience with 3D modelling so this was a new and exciting challenge for me. I was optimistic and excited to lean new skills when starting this project and now having a fully unwrapped and model I am pleased with my progress of learning the basics through making mistakes and solving them through out the process. The images below show a range of steps I took through out my process to create the unwrapped model. I started out with the basic shapes and played around with some tools in order to make it my own, I am planning to texture my dagger like it is made of Jade in order to create a 'Jade dragon' themed dagger. 

After taking the basic steps in making the blade, grip and pommel I wanted to unwrap my mesh so that I could begin texturing. When modelling I added chamfers in order to make some parts more rounded and smooth than other to really bring out the jagged ice like shape of the blade. I then added smoothing groups onto the polys so that hard and soft edges flowed the way I wanted them to. I added some little torus shapes as rings or twine around the grip for aesthetic purposes. 

I dropped this basic ice and stone like texture onto the model before unwrapping it as I wanted to see how the texture would apply to the model.

Here I am beginning to slice down the handle so that I can peel and relax the mesh in the UV editor. I used a combination of the break and relax tools along with welding some edges back together. When unwrapping I noticed that on the handle I had some double edges and verts, I corrected these by welding them together so that my unwrapped mesh would function correctly.

As you can see the checkerboard texture is no longer distorted on the blade and all squares are even in proportion so that when come to make the texture it will lay nicely on the model. I then went on to optimise my UV mesh by snapping and flipping one side of the mesh to the other in order to use less space in the UV plane and therefore this would use less memory and be more optimised for use in a game. I will insert a picture of my final UV below. I tried to use the space in a well thought out way however there is some left over space.

This was my final UV render ready to be painted on in photoshop, I will make a separate post on how I have done this. 

Overall I did find this task challenging as I am completely new to modelling however I think I was able to develop my skills and next time I will know what elements to look out for that could cause problems for me later. I will take care with spotting double edges and verts and sorting out any geometry which is tangled or incorrect. I really enjoyed creating this dagger and have some good ideas for how I will texture it later.