angraf20’s blog

Today was a good chatting day with Eric.  we sat down and talked a little about how we’re progressing with our models and some other little things on it.  after a little i forgot how but we turned to getting in the industry through interning and other things related to work.  it was pretty cool to listen to some things Eric had to say plus hearing the info he gave us on how to get that foot in the door.  i liked that he gave us a reference book for getting work in the industry which is called “How to get a job in computer animation” and the book is great.  in the last half of the book is all references to digital companies all over the world.  plus there are tips on how to do interviews and what to put on your reel and everything else we need to know.  as we were asking questions we learned that it better to have one solid object in our reel from concept to finish that looks great opposed to many decent looking things.  also when showing your reel make it focused on one specific thing.  show that you are great at this one task because if you spread yourself too thin there will always be someone better than you in one field or the other….pick one and dominate that field.  also bringing printouts on nice shiny paper is also a plus for interviews along with cd and laptop if available.  this is good to have just in case something happens to the cd or computer….which eric gave us a nice story about that happening….not so fun.  also when you leave a company…leave in good terms.  never know if you’re going to go back there later on and it creates a good reference for other jobs and creates good contacts as well.  eric has contacts all over the place in all sorts of positions which is awesome….cause i wanna use that if able to.  which leads to another great thing….eric would love to try and work with us again.  instead of bringing in another group of people and getting them up to par where we are now, it would be great if he could keep us and just take us further along.  i would love to have that happen……i wish this will happen too.  one major thing that eric said that i was already prepared for was to be prepared to move around for jobs.  i knew that it could happen very easily and that it could strain a relationship but if i want in, in the industry i will make the leap ten times over if needed….plus i would love to travel.

notes - all job related but just as important

1 - know what you want to do and be the best at just that to begin with

2 - research the company so you can talk with the interviewers and not look like a fool

3 - always be prepared for the interview, questions about the company are always great to ask

4 - bring nice printouts of work just in case they don’t have anything to view disc or you lose the disk or something else

5 - be ready to jump around for jobs and never leave a job in bad taste so you wont lose the contacts and possibility of rehighering

6 - tris in game models are fine but don’t be too reliant on them

7 - quads are best to be kept around the mouth area

8 - sometimes it’s good not to have things too streamline and smooth on a character

9 - always look on a character for where to take out unneeded polys

10 - the silhouette is whats important for character modeling, the rest can be done by texture and normals

Well…this week was just a big downer for me.  i was sick the whole week.  had the stuffy nose, the coughing, and then a fever on the day we went to hi_rez.  the fever realy did have an impact on my productivity but i managed to get a second  light fully uv, normals transferred, and started getting some color and integration on it.  not much else to really say about the day because i just had trouble not focusing on my body.  both stanely and jo just told me not to go but i wanted to go.  i did learn a little from eric this day about overlaying uvs for objects.  talking with sean about characters and seeing about overlaying uvs i thought if it was okay to do that with objects to save uv space.  eric said it can work but just watch out for those break that you’re bound to get.  one solution he had was while texturing make some kind of a break, like a band or something to hide it.  plus the way you mirror the uv just has to make sense, and not just randomly done.  i will say that after doing my first light, which was the most complex one i had, this second one was done so much faster and easier.  normal map transferring is making more and more sense the more i do them, regardless if they’re right or not on the first try.

notes

1 - overlaying uvs for objects is okay, just have the mirroring make sense

2 -  when mirroring uvs find a way to cover that break where the uvs meet each other.  you can do it with textures, normal map integrations, or hide it under actual model parts

Now today was the best day so far with coming to Hi-Rez.  I met Sean, the lead character developer, and talkd to him for a little while about their pipeline and various hints for character modeling.  First i showed him my characters for Hanako and he said they weren’t that bad.  About the same poly count they have for their charaters, 8 to 9 thousand polys.  I might redo the kengou character now that i talked with Sean, for modeling purposes and texture as well,  plus to bring down the poly count to a better number.  I learned that going from the highest poly then down to the game version works best especially for working in ZBrush.  The extra quads help keep the geometry from folding in on itself, which i’ve been having some problems with recently; which is the reason why i haven’t really used ZBrush much this time around…..now i know.  now the best part that i learned from Sean was about how to go from high poly to low poly.  He told me about Toppo and ToppoGun.  Toppo is in ZBursh while ToppoGun is a program, but he’s not sure if there is a downloadable trial so i wanna find out big time.  But what these do is allow people to place vertexes on the model to create the low poly character.  Sean said they work great for organic models and for mechanical you can just use the high poly and delete some faces.  ToppoGun works better from what Sean showed me because once you place a vertex you can move it around for better geometry which he said Zbrush doen’t have….Zbrushes Toppo is more of a quick fix.  The texturing is pretty much how we’ve been doing it, working of the normal maps and using overlays and masks.  same goes for the spec map, not much difference in how i’ve been doing them already, except the fact that his had more break in his.  my spec maps tend to be too clean and not enough variation or break in it.  what he said about my current textures is that i need to work more on intigration pieces and the minor details.

Notes

1 - having the last three fingers combined works best for games.  they save polys and most the time they’re closed anyways.

2 - scale thing up so they look better in the game.  heads, hands, feet, and weapons tend to be scaled up than their real world counterparts.

3 - model a decent amount of detail on the model before bringing them into zbrush for better performance.

4 - to get the low poly character use zbrushes toppo or look at a program called toppogun.

5 - sometimes it’s benificial to overlap matching UVs unless you want similar objects to not be perfectly symmetrical.

6 - when making clothing block them out with planes to get the general design then once decided upon create the extra faces.

7 - if Zbrush is slowing down some work on just one specific item.  that way it’s faster and you can work with a higher poly count.  2 million is nothing.

8 - toppo and toppogun work best for organic shapes(bodies and clothings) and not so much for mechanical.  you can just delete unwanted faces on those…..easy enough.

After last weeks visit this weeks was a little less informative for the modeling and normal mapping.  I was able to finish up some integration pieces for my light and get things ready for textures when Eric came over and gave us a few hints again on normals.  on good thing he gave us was that again if the normals are breaking try to break the edges in the UV and give them some space.  apparently there are a lot of things that can break normals that i never thought of before.  after that i went back to work on my integration that i was trying out.  i wanted a part that had some wires or tubing involved but for some reason i couldn’t figure out why parts of the normals were transferring straight black.  i asked eric and he solved my issue by saying that everything has to be in the envelope when transferring, which i forgot to adjust.  another thing he tld me was that pieces dont all have to be the same geometry.  there can be as many pieces as needed and then some as long as they all fit under the envelope and look right to you.  later on i wanted to go to the character team and see about their pipeline and see what else i will be able to get from them, but when i got there they seemed to be in a meeting or something so i looked at the concept art for design ideas for more integration on my light and future reference.

Note

1 - Remember to keeps everything in the envelope when transferring normals…….things just don’t look right if they’re outside the envelope.

2 - try breaking the edges in UVs and add space as another means to fix broken normals.

3 - integration pieces don’t all have to be one geometry.  they just have to line up correctly for the normals.

I would say that this day was the biggest day so far.  Not in terms of what we got done but what we learned.  Eric did his usual rounds while i was finishing up my UV maps when he came over and explained how to create integration pieces without actually building them on the model itself.  After he gave us the how to me and Mike went ahead and tried it a few times to try and understand it and it worker great.  I figured i can use this technique to help with my characters which got me to thinking about how the HiRez guys do theirs.  I have a mission on figuring out how their character pipeline is now.

Note

1 - To create integration remember that you project down to a simple plane so only model on one side.

2 - you can create anything possible as long as it looks right from that single view.  bolt, hatches, wires, grates, textures, anything is possible.

3 - one thing to remember is to have as few 90 degree edges to the camera as possible.  meaning each edge should have a slight angle for better reading while transferring normals.

4 -  When transferring normals make them at a decent map size so that you can easily size them up or down.  1024 is usually enough.

Hurray….we got food.  And not the left overs either.  We went up with everyone else and just got our food and talked a little with other people.  Not the main high light of the day but we now know we can eat there and not have to be starving on our way out.  On the work side it was a good day i would have to say.  I finished up the UVs for one of my lights( the most complicated one, why…..I have no clue) and started to do the medium and high resolution models to do the normal map transfers.  Me and Mike were having a hard time with the normals always turning out messed up no matter what we did so he called Eric over for some help.  After the help we then went back to our low res models and had to redo a couple of things, mainly the edge loops where to close to the edges or not enough edge loops to hold the edges.  They need room to breathe and hold the normals.  Trying to figure out the whole normal thing is taking longer than initially thought but Eric says it’s ok and that we should just take our time so we are able to understand things and produce good work.  I love how easy going these guys are.  Makes me want to work harder for some reason, mainly cause i don’t want to disappoint i guess.

Notes - mainly key notes on helping with normal transfers

1 - one thing to try out if transferring normals seems to fail is to delete history of every item before transferring the normals.

2 - the low res model is mainly for making the UVing easier and faster then depending on the difference between the low and medium models will be used in game

3 - if the normal map looks broken bevel some edges to help the process.  the bevels will break the UVs so fix them afterward.  i like to use the split edge loop tool then delete the middle edge loop if needed cause it keeps the UVs together

4 - having some curvature in the low res model helps with normal transferring also

5 - when baking lights if there is light where it’s not needed or not possible try to bake lights with bake shadows also checked.

The third day at Hi-Rez and we just learned that we are allowed to eat the great food that they get every Friday.  Every time we go we get there around 12 and we are greeted by happy faces and good smelling food.  We normally thought that it was for everyone else but us but we were later told otherwise.  Then we learned that if we wnat food we need to get it ASAP,  it’s gone within the hour.  Besides the great news about the food Eric came by and looked at the concepts the Jo did for a generic light fixture.  He liked a few of the ones that Jo did and then we decided to run with them.  I wasn’t so upset that Eric only looked at Jo’s lights but i took his general idea and ran with it my own way.  I was very thrilled with the way they came out in the end.  Working with someone else idea kind of gave me artists block for a little while and then i just decided to do anything and everything i could.  I came up with about seven designs and Eric seemed to like the profiles of them and told me to go further with them.  I picked my favorite one, which turned out to be the more elaborate one, and started to UV it.  Still need to finish the UV but i bet i will finish that and get onto other things by the end of the next visit.

Note - not much in the form of technical notes this time around

1 - when making objects remember to stay with the grid space and everything is appropriately sized.

2 - when making objects it’s good to just make quick references to other ways the object can look in Maya.  just don’t spend too much time on them….they’re not finalized yet.

3 - beveling an edge loop really helps creates two equidistant edge loops in the place of the selected one.  already stated but i loved using that tool.

4 - to help keep geometry nice and clean sometimes it’s better to insert some edge loops opposed to extruding inside a face to get a quick fix.  also great for quick and easy conversions for multiple variations of objects.

I have to say that the second day of visiting Hi-Rez was more productive.  Not only because we didn’t have to wait thanks to the awesome badges we got, but because we got more down time to finish up the tutorials and explore a few of the maps.  I have to say that once we started viewing the environments my perspective on modular building has increased.  Just by seeing the a small section of a wall is repeated hundreds of times as is pipes and all other sorts of things is just mind blowing.  Some times i would think a piece is one whole thing but find it’s made up of several or the exact opposite would happen.  After exploring a little I went back to just going through the tutorial and finished up on the good parts……TEXTURES.  I will have to say that was another thing where i thought i knew something and then was thrown for a loop…but it wasn’t so bad.  After the tutorials where finished I went back into the levels to get a deeper feel for the game and try and understand their art direction.  When we were leaving we saw that there was some left over food from an event earlier and that it was just going to be thrown out so me and Mike dug right in.  After that we played a quick game of foosball then departed.

Notes

1 - Project Normals - rendering>light shading> transfer maps> source meshes> add selected(the high res object)> display = both (keep object in envelop or bad things will happen)> output maps> normal> targa> tnagent space> Maya common settings> connect output>assign shader>Maya common>Width/Height settings> transfer = world> sample = medium

2 - Ambient Occlusion - color> batch bake settings> objects = selected> bake = texture> optimize = one> bake set override> color mode = occlusion> resolution settings> targa

3 - Lighting Pass - create light as needed> render settings> mental ray> quality = final gather> batch bake settings> color mode = only light> orthoganol reflection> texture editor> UV snapshot> size> name

4 - always export obj with ASE first and have ASE folder in project settings

Can’t wait for next week.

Going to Hi-Rez on Friday was great.  Even though we had to wait in the lobby for a while we never got upset, but just kept thinking about what we are going to be doing here.  Once Eric let us in we were led around and shown the ropes a bit and then went straight into the tutorial videos.  Not much is different from what we have already been taught, or learned from constant usage of Maya.  I do love the Mel scripts that Eric provided us, they’re going to make UVing so much easier.  After a few hours we were able to play test the game again and get a general understanding of the game and their art style.  I had fun playing the game but because i couldn’t play as a sniper I kind of gave up on actually playing and just wandered the environments and tried to get an understanding of the art style.  Eric said that he would get us in the levels latter on so we don’t have to try and dodge bullets and constantly die while trying to get a feel for the game.  Over all I am extremely looking forward to going to Hi-Rez every Friday and see what I can learn from them and hopefully down the road provide some content for them.  What i was really surprised about in their pipeline was the way they UV objects.  At first i was kind of non-believing that they didn’t use a program like headus but then I figured from what I got out of the tutorial you get better control over the UVs without any program.  Will have to see after used a couple of times but I think it will work out.

Notes.

1 - Maya setup.  measurements in centimeters, near clipping at 1, far clipping at 100,000, grid length x width at 2048, lines 128, subdivisions at 8.     These help to go back and forth from Maya and Unreal.

2 - Beveling edges helps keep edges uniform in objects.

3 - Use the Edge Loop tool settings so as to get the edge in the dead center.

4 - The move vertex merge tool is great, just remember to move the vertex that you wish to merge to the other.  Easy enough to see when doing.

5 - Move objects with snap to grid on.  Keeps objects in great layout and proper size for Unreal.