Common Art Interactive Experience Stage 4 - First Bake - 'B' Stage

This week, I was mostly focused on creating a polished experience. First, I added a menu, with some pre-selection animation for the menu items and a fade-in/fade-out effect.

I updated the blueprints in the game to work with controllers, and set up the Sneak animation for the killer.

Finally, I made an ending sequence after the killer hides the old man's body.

I also added a lot of sound effects - the menu sounds, the updated footstep sounds for the sneak animation, the impact sound during the murder, the murmurs of the old man, the maniacal laugh of the killer, the schizophrenic voices in his head, probably a few more. Overall, this week was a lot easier than prior weeks and all I really needed to do was look for areas to improve things. Oh, and I touched up the lighting a little. I will focus more attention on the lighting next week since the menu and sounds are now working. Here is a video of the current state of the game, make sure to turn sound ON to hear the new audio!

Week 09 - Initial Block Out - 'F' Stage

This week, I was responsible for preparing the block-out mesh for basic animation. Once I received the  is mesh, I used a default mocap skeleton as a base and placed the joints in the model by hand. During the process of placing the joints, I wrote some Python scripts in Maya to help me orient the joints and copy the transforms of the joints on the left to the joints on the right. Finally, I brought the model into Unreal engine and set up an IK retargeting system to place the character in the game using an adapted version of the default Quinn character's animation blueprint and transferred animations.

Here is the character skinning in Maya.

Here are some of the custom shelf tools I made.

"Select" is merely a hierarchy selection tool, because it is tedious to go into the menu each time. The Orient tool orients the joints and automatically detects end-joints and orients them correctly to their parents. The Symmety tool enforces symmetry on joints by copying the matrix from the left joint, finding the right joint, and scaling the left joint's matrix by -1 on the X axis in order to create mirrored transforms. The Mirror tool is the same, except it creates the joints, too, setting the parents correctly in symmetry. FInally, the Reload tool forces Maya to read my Python module again. It assists me in developing my tools in a standalone way that is portable and easy to update.

Here are the tools in action. It gives the user a text box input for the Left and Right ID's and a choice between X, Y, or Z axis for symmetry.

Some screenshots from my VSCodium project. On the left is code for the UI, and on the right is code that the UI tool calls to do the rigging tasks.

Here it is in Perforce at //CLASSES/Cohort22/Classes/Art/CommonArt/Semester_01/InteractiveExperience/TellTaleHeart/Source/Characters/Killer/killer.fbx

Here is the Killer blockout character in the game environment.

Week 6 - Use of Composition

Here is the finished illustration. I wanted to have a circular composition for this one, with the eyes
radiating out of the image from the center. Although my illustration also fits Radial and Iconic composition types fairly well.

Several stages of the image:

Here is the final draft. (Below)

Here are a few screenshots from inside of Blender. This one is looking down from the ceiling!

And finally, a few render passes.

   The wireframe.

Shaded view.

The Depth pass.

Cryptomatte. I didn't actually use Cryptomatte because I thought the transparent image planes and volumes would mess it up. But it didn't!

Finally, the albedo (Diffuse color) pass. There was so much metallic and emissive material that most of the materials didn't have diffuse color. You can see the very little bit of work I did on the textures in this image... everywhere else it is kind of overwhelmed by the compositing. Oh well. I didn't spend much time on it!

I had a lot of fun with this one, but now it is very late. Here is the final image without compositing.

And the final draft again, below.

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.

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.

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 😭