Module 2 Week 06 Simple Crate

 Sculpting in ZBrush went OK until.... help me?

I am already a third of the way through my life. I don't have time to do this in Maya. It took maybe 10 minutes to do in Blender.

I made the ID map with vertex colors. I would have liked to practice doing this in ZBrush. Alas, there is no time. It was easy enough to do in Blender. Interesting workflow. I wonder what the purpose is?

Baking the maps in Painter. It was faster than I expected. I like being able to bake a few different kinds of maps that are hard to bake in Blender. 

No beauty shot this week. I don't have any more time. Alas, what could have been.

Week 6 Game Animation

 Here is the group of models animating in the Unreal scene.

in order to get everything to work, I had to do everything a few times. What a pain. It turns out, having the root joint in the Archer character was messing everything up and I had to re-export and re-import everything and start over.

As a gif:

Some pics:

I had to get rid of the root joint o fix the IK retargeting. now the pelvis bone is the top of the hierarchy.

For whatever reason, these controllers are in the rig, even though I had them deselected when exporting selected from Maya?

Here is the retargeting working on the archer after I fixed the joint hierarchy by removing the root.

And here it is working the other way!

It is on Perforce at //CLASSES/Cohort22/Students/Joseph.Brandenburg/TechArt/josephBrandenburg_hw/HW6/Content/level/JosephBrandenburg_HW6.umap

Week 5 Use of Perspective

 Here is the 3D model. Since it is a bed, I was able to do most of the modelling with a cloth simulation. Easy!

A compilation of references. In the end I decided to keep it simple and minimal because I like the modern, minimalist look for this asset..

Here are the render passes:

A value/ black-and-white image.

And the mist and AO passes:

Finally, the finished illustration:

Week 5 Simple Crate

 Today I wanted to make the same crate as the video (This is my reference).

I am not really sure what I was supposed to do this week because I wasn't there for the lecture and I tried to piece it together from asking others and seeing what they did.

Establishing scale with the mannequin.

here is all of the parts in Maya

And a screenshot in Maya... what happened here?

and the beauty render with Arnold.

and in Unreal.

Tech Art Simple Rigging

 

Above: the archer, posed with the FK rig

And here is the joint/control hierarchy. This can't be the right way to do this? Having all these offset groups seems like a sin. And duplicating the entire hierarchy is a total waste of time. Surely there is a better way?

Here is what the joint hierarchy looks like with the constraints. 

This character is submitted to Perforce at to //CLASSES/Cohort22/Students/Joseph.Brandenburg/TechArt/josephBrandenburg_hw/Rigging/josephBrandenburg_HW5.mb

Basic Lighting

The illustration looks like this in isolation...

I think the colors are bad in the Photoshop file but I don't know why.

Well, I am at a conference and this is the best I can do in the time I have. I've still got to review the slides for my own presentation! But I am excited. I think I am gonna fill the room -- and the room is bigger than I expected!

 

Modular Environmental Creation Part 3

 I am in Amsterdam this week for Blender Con 2025... so this is all I was able to get done.

ZBrush was really crashy with the knife tool. I found that I had to run Dynamesh every time I used the knife to avoid a crash.

HW4 Intro To Blueprints

 I used my HW3 project. The giant Vase is the object that changes a material parameter with "G". It switches through a few different states and lerps from one to another with a timeline node. I found it very silly that I couldn't put a timeline node in the function!

The crate is the event trigger volume object. It will turn the vase by 90 degrees. It is also using a timeline node to do the turn. All of the blueprints are in the "blueprints" folder. I have submitted everything on Perforce by selecting the project folder and choosing "Mark for Add".

The Vase's construction script. The blueprint is called "bp_vase_dynamic_material". 

And the Event Graph for the vase. It uses an int variable, a "wrap" function which seems to be the same as a modulo function, and a switch statement to toggle between a few different states. Each one changes the material a little bit. The timeline provides an animated blurring between phases. The actual material parameter is set in a function graph.

Here is the function. Simple. But I thought I was gonna be able to do the timeline in here, too. It feels wrong putting it before the switch and checking the switch statement every frame. Bad performance, probably.

Here's one of the timeline graphs.

This is the blueprint for the crate. It is called area_trigger_thing.

And here it is all coming together. Notice that the vase turns when I enter the volume, and its material changes color in phases as I press the G key several times.

The map is saved to Perforce at "Cohort22\Students\Joseph.Brandenburg\TechArt\josephBrandenburg_hw\TechArt_Lighting_HW3_4\Content\maps\HW4Blueprints.umap".

Week 3 Value and Contrast

The line art, and then the flat.

I experimented with adding the shadows of the floorboards over the old man. In the end, I decided to remove it because it obscured the character. Perhaps I should give it another go, though.

This version has some subtle gradients.

and finally, we have the finished presentation!
 

Modular Environmental Creation Part 2

 This week was very rough 😣

I just didn't have time to futz around with Maya this week so I made a Geometry Nodes modifier to do it procedurally in Blender... sorry

"it's a cup of dirt just put an F on there and let me go home"

anyhow... materials

   making things spin

and setting up the level blueprint

and the level blueprint some more

and the character control. this jump height is unruly

and a little lighting. going for a moonlit night. but I couldn't find a way to make the light falloff linear like how I wanted. whatever. I just made the light really big and strong

this one made me suffer for many hours even though I cut every corner I could and then some. please have mercy 😭