Spearhead
Sprint 4
Seek out adventure and battle as an acrobatic spear wielding knight. Use your skills to defeat enemies and collect upgrades by striking and vaulting around a plague stricken kingdom.
This sprint I did more environmental foliage and scene props. This includes a set piece, a weapon rack, and props for the weapon rack; and each their respective UVs.
Like previously mentioned toward the end of my last blog post, I was working on the Plague Overgrowth Bramble set piece. In previous sprints I worked on this set for the vines and had a general vision for this set piece. The reference I was given for this was an old large stump tree. The most similar tree I could find for this tree was a Mangrove Tree, known for its long roots that appear above ground.
This was very overwhelming for me; I had been eyeing this card since a sprint or two prior dreading this card. I am definitely not comfortable with modeling foliage yet and to model an important piece like the set piece was very overwhelming. I had also never modeled a tree prior to this so everything was new to me. I tried to break up the tree into basic shapes mainly cylinders for the trunk base and then the roots. There was definitely a learning curve when attempting this model.
For the roots; I figured I could use the curve tool to for the roots then revolve them. This did work but after doing this a few times on different sides, it didn't look natural. So I tried adjusting the scaling and manually moving edge loops to give a less rounder edge. I ended up making 2 variants of roots; one with fewer but larger roots vs multiple semi small branched roots; we decided on the larger but fewer roots.
I think the base or like trunk of the tree is what was really messing with me for a while. I fully scrapped what I originally had and went with a cylinder with the top and bottom deleted, then played around with the sculpting tool. From there I just messed with the bottom vertexes to make it less organic and more natural. I also took a few edge loops going down and slightly beveled them to give a more rigid look. I did this multiple times slightly changing it as I went around. When selecting a row of faces I extruded and then stretched out the closest edge loops for not as harsh extrusion but when softening everything, it still had that indent.
I did run into some issues when I started to UV this. Mainly in the trunk because of how I did the sculpting and then extrusions. It left me with a few polygons which I had to trouble shoot for a while; When I thought I fixed it, I would find another polygon. There were a few point that I thought would be fine left alone but I did manage to fix them by combining vertexes.
Overall, I am pretty happy with how this came out. Although I cant say that I love it, but with knowing nothing on how to tackle this, I think the outcome turned out well. I believe the details within the trunk really brought the whole thing together.
The next model I worked on was the weapon rack. I wasn't provided a reference so I look for one online to reference. I thought the one I chose would be pretty easy, since it was mainly planks held with nails which could be textured on. I did want to challenge myself and add rope which was a headache of its own.
From there, I just went with my creative freedom to finalize the rack. I actually reused a few models I previous did like the spear which I modeled for the checkpoint, except I did some minor tweaks to the spear head. Then I reused the dagger from the damage upgrade model, except simplified it.
Then lastly the shield I put on the rack actually ended up being a card which I modeled then and there.
The shield was pretty simple, I kept it flat with intrusions inward for the rims to stand out. I also added straps onto the back of the shield because It felt too plain.
I did end up submitted 2 fbxs; one with the weapons on the rack and one without. I was also told I should turn each weapon in as its own fbx (shield, dagger, spear), so my level design can scatter then around and use without having them on the rack.
The UVs were easy as the planks were just simple cuts being a rectangle and all, and the weapons were already UVed since I reused them, they just needed to be unfolded and layed out again. I am pretty happy with how this came out. For a 1 point card I felt I put a bit of time into it, and was a change of pace as something familiar rather than the set piece I did before it.
The next card was a barrel and a broke barrel. This was pretty easy since we modeled this ages ago in the beginning modeling course. It was a cylinder with extrusions for the metal beams around it with an overall plumped wide mold. I did spend a bit of time trying to fix my final result because something felt off and I couldn't put my finger on it.
After talking with another modeler on my team were did fix a few things; firstly the harsh lines seen wasn't a visual thing like I thought, after selecting it and clicking soften edges; it fixed and smoothed it out. Next was scaling it upwards, it was currently too round. My producer also pointed out that the bottom was fine, but the top was off so he recommended I cut the barrel in half and mirror to the top. Lastly was just adjusting where the metal beams were placed.
Next was the broke barrel which I duplicated the full barrel and simply cut it up and took each piece I wanted. Then I went with the bottom as the base, took some planks and adjusted as I wanted and huzzah, the final product came out nice. The UVs were pretty easy as I cut the widths and they unfolded nicely without stretching. Same with the barrel planks, they were rectangles which only needed basic cuttings.
The last card I worked on was a rusty spear. I wasn't too sure how this would differentiate compared to the previous spear I modeled. I assumed this card would be a texturing card based on the other model. I tried going for a dull and chipped blade with a handle full of chipped edges.
Actually I had to model this twice because the first time I finished the model and went to UV it, maya instantly crashed and didn't give me a crash log so I couldn't recover the file. I had to use my last save which was when I finished the barrels. I only had the video I took when I finished the model rather than the save so I referenced that and remodeled.
Spearhead
Sprint 3
Seek out adventure and battle as an acrobatic spear wielding knight. Use your skills to defeat enemies and collect upgrades by striking and vaulting around a plague stricken kingdom.
Covering my overall work for this sprint included mainly environmental models again, including a vine set, health upgrade, thorn vines, and bramble flowers. This was definitely a learning sprint for because ivy and vines get a bit complicated especially when trying to keep the shape without too many polys.
The first card I tackled was to create 'Plague Overgrowth Bramble Flower Bulbs.' Originally the reference I was given was similar to a closed rose bud, but was then altered to look more of a bloomed lily shape kind of flower. My first approach was to make a plane with multiple edge loops, then select soft select from the center and bring that down. As I experimented I duplicated the model every so often, which left me with a range of flower types. I felt they all came out alright so I went to my designer to choose.
From the variants, my designer ended up picking 3 rather than 1 flower. These flowers ended up being 2 plus shaped planes with 4 pollen sticks in the middle. The UVing of these were pretty easy because each 4 petals were 1 plane and after unfolding them, there was no stretching or cuts needed. The only cuts needed were on the pollen sticks at the center which I successfully cut without splitting into multiple separate pieces.
The next card I worked on were creating a set of vines to decorate the environment and walls. This was definitely overwhelming because the environmental modeling class would have made this much easier to break down, but it wasn't something I took yet. I definitely wanted to learn how to do foliage but had no idea where to start. After researching on how to model vines and ivy I learned there is a brush or paint like tool which sounded perfect.
To use it I made a simple wall so I could turn live and paint on a curve directly on. I thought this tool would do something like revolve or apply on the curve tool, but learned it didn't need the wire which I ended up scrapping. The paint effect worked like a photoshop paint brush, in where I dragged, it created a line of ivy. After getting familiar with the tool, I learned there were more customizable settings you could interact with once selecting the model.
I painted a U on the axis then rotated it into a C and mounted it onto the wall. The ivy turned out really nice, as you can see above but came with issues. Firstly, the tutorial I was following showed the ivy with a light grey color/no texture, but when I started brushing the ivy out, it came out black. My first thought was that it was inverted so I tried but that wasn't the problem. I also played with the settings adjusting vertexes and the amount of edge loops, still nothing. From here, I googled for 'maya model using the brush tool came out black/inverted.
I found an old post from a few years ago on reddit with the same issue. The person who created the post didn't have a solution but a reply to a reply in the comments had the solution which was 'Modify>Convert>Paint Effects to Polygons. The miracle fix which undid the black shading.
I was messing with the leaves because I feel like leaves really define a vine. But as you can see, with how the brush worked, you couldn't set an amount of edge loops each leaf had which in this example came out to about 162k verts for a single strip of vines. I tried lowering the amount of stem branches along with the leavesI honestly had no idea where to begin cutting so I did the automatic UV which was atrocious. After many tweaks and adjustments I ended with a 1.6k verts ivy vine which was so much better and tried to lower the polys on the leaves as much as I could
The next card was for thorn vines, which would act as traps or something for the player to take damage from while walking. I reused the ivy vines I used previously and removed the leaves within the setting, leaving the main stem and branches, which made it look like thorns on the vine. From here, I manually adjusted the thorns and played with the non-linear curve tool. There wasn't a specific reference image for this so I played around and provided variants for my designer to pick
The next card I worked on was the health upgrade. The image provided was that of a bottle with a vine or aura flowing around it from Risk of Rain 2. I asked if my designed wanted it exactly and said I had full creative freedom. I had the idea of making a half open geode with liquid. I added tiny crystals and sculpted some pointy parts and showed my designer, which he didn't like so I scrapped the design and redid the model but more so similar to the ref.
I went with a common potion bottle in a gem like shape. I originally was going to trace a bottle with the curve tool and revolve, but for some reason it wasn't working. I ended up using a large rectangular cube and added edge loops to sculpt. I then made a cork for the top and reused the vines and sort of wrapped it around the bottle. The UVing was pretty easy, as I cut the bottle down the side, and the vines were already UVed.
Lastly, I worked on the Damage Upgrade which the reference was for it to be a dagger. The images provided were more like spears, so I tried to incorporate a dagger/spear design. I separated the dagger into the handle and 2 parts of the blade. It wasn't too hard to model but was a lot of micro adjustments to really shape the dagger. The UVs were also pretty simple since everything is mostly cemetrical.
Overall, I am happy with the work I completed this sprint. I definitely learned something new and stepped out of my comfort zone doing environmental foliage. In the next sprint, I will be working on a center piece which is like a large tree.
Seek out adventure and battle as an acrobatic spear wielding knight. Use your skills to defeat enemies and collect upgrades by striking and vaulting around a plague stricken kingdom.
Covering my overall work for this sprint included mainly environmental models again, including a vine set, health upgrade, thorn vines, and bramble flowers. This was definitely a learning sprint for because ivy and vines get a bit complicated especially when trying to keep the shape without too many polys.
The first card I tackled was to create 'Plague Overgrowth Bramble Flower Bulbs.' Originally the reference I was given was similar to a closed rose bud, but was then altered to look more of a bloomed lily shape kind of flower. My first approach was to make a plane with multiple edge loops, then select soft select from the center and bring that down. As I experimented I duplicated the model every so often, which left me with a range of flower types. I felt they all came out alright so I went to my designer to choose.
From the variants, my designer ended up picking 3 rather than 1 flower. These flowers ended up being 2 plus shaped planes with 4 pollen sticks in the middle. The UVing of these were pretty easy because each 4 petals were 1 plane and after unfolding them, there was no stretching or cuts needed. The only cuts needed were on the pollen sticks at the center which I successfully cut without splitting into multiple separate pieces.
The next card I worked on were creating a set of vines to decorate the environment and walls. This was definitely overwhelming because the environmental modeling class would have made this much easier to break down, but it wasn't something I took yet. I definitely wanted to learn how to do foliage but had no idea where to start. After researching on how to model vines and ivy I learned there is a brush or paint like tool which sounded perfect.
To use it I made a simple wall so I could turn live and paint on a curve directly on. I thought this tool would do something like revolve or apply on the curve tool, but learned it didn't need the wire which I ended up scrapping. The paint effect worked like a photoshop paint brush, in where I dragged, it created a line of ivy. After getting familiar with the tool, I learned there were more customizable settings you could interact with once selecting the model.
I found an old post from a few years ago on reddit with the same issue. The person who created the post didn't have a solution but a reply to a reply in the comments had the solution which was 'Modify>Convert>Paint Effects to Polygons. The miracle fix which undid the black shading.
I was messing with the leaves because I feel like leaves really define a vine. But as you can see, with how the brush worked, you couldn't set an amount of edge loops each leaf had which in this example came out to about 162k verts for a single strip of vines. I tried lowering the amount of stem branches along with the leaves
I honestly had no idea where to begin cutting so I did the automatic UV which was atrocious. After many tweaks and adjustments I ended with a 1.6k verts ivy vine which was so much better and tried to lower the polys on the leaves as much as I could
The next card was for thorn vines, which would act as traps or something for the player to take damage from while walking. I reused the ivy vines I used previously and removed the leaves within the setting, leaving the main stem and branches, which made it look like thorns on the vine. From here, I manually adjusted the thorns and played with the non-linear curve tool. There wasn't a specific reference image for this so I played around and provided variants for my designer to pick
The next card I worked on was the health upgrade. The image provided was that of a bottle with a vine or aura flowing around it from Risk of Rain 2. I asked if my designed wanted it exactly and said I had full creative freedom. I had the idea of making a half open geode with liquid. I added tiny crystals and sculpted some pointy parts and showed my designer, which he didn't like so I scrapped the design and redid the model but more so similar to the ref.
I went with a common potion bottle in a gem like shape. I originally was going to trace a bottle with the curve tool and revolve, but for some reason it wasn't working. I ended up using a large rectangular cube and added edge loops to sculpt. I then made a cork for the top and reused the vines and sort of wrapped it around the bottle. The UVing was pretty easy, as I cut the bottle down the side, and the vines were already UVed.
Lastly, I worked on the Damage Upgrade which the reference was for it to be a dagger. The images provided were more like spears, so I tried to incorporate a dagger/spear design. I separated the dagger into the handle and 2 parts of the blade. It wasn't too hard to model but was a lot of micro adjustments to really shape the dagger. The UVs were also pretty simple since everything is mostly cemetrical.
Spearhead
Sprint 2
Seek out adventure and battle as an acrobatic spear wielding knight. Use your skills to defeat enemies and collect upgrades by striking and vaulting around a plague stricken kingdom.
Covering my overall work for this sprint included environmental models, specifically rocks and vines. This sprint I completed a total of 20 cards which included; 4 vine variants and their corresponding UVs, multiple rock types, and a checkpoint model.
I was a bit anxious learning I was modeling rocks because I wasn't even sure how to start it. I was told it was pretty easy, it was just playing around with a cube in sculpting. I have never touched sculpting nor even made rocks so I searched up tutorials and experimented as I followed. The references provided in our style guide wanted these to be used to keep the player in the level. 2 of the rocks are to be large and tall, where the other 2 are more round.
For the 2 bigger rocks I really wanted to keep it like harsh edges like the image, but didn't work out so I was pulling around vertices with soft select on. It was a lot of that with trial and error as I smoothed out some awkward parts. At certain points where I felt like it looked fine, I would duplicate it and keep playing around with the shape. I did the same process with the rounder medium rocks, molding them until I was happy with it.
For the medium, I was told to make it a bit more blocky, kinda of like a cliff. Along with the last 2 small/medium rocks I made, I tried to make it a bit more diverse of one being a bit more pointy and one a little more round. Right when I finished all these rocks, I was told I needed to also shape the bottoms of the rocks so my level designer can rotate them around for more diversity in environment.
I had to ask for help with how to UV the rocks because at first I was told I wouldn't need to UV it but once I finished it I asked again and was told to UV it. It was overwhelming because of how complex the sculping made the vertexes, so I did the auto UV to break it up. This sort of worked, but also made a lot of small cuts of just 1 face planes which I had to stitch together. I repeatedly stitched as many parts until it showed red/blue, then I undid that and left them alone. Each rock probably autoed into around 12 pieces and by the end of it, I got it down to 2-6 parts.
While I was at it, I made an assortment of smaller rocks which was a bit earlier since now I knew how to go about sculpting the rocks. I tried to make some a bit longer or a bit bigger, then auto UVed them and stitched together as much as I could.
My next card was to work on a checkpoint for the player to save in certain areas. This card was described to be a pile of rocks with a spear of sorts stuck in the middle. I found myself a reference and started to model the spear. The rocks I reused from my previous cards so I set them around the spear handle. I also wanted to add a cape tied to it which I attempted but I modeled it flat after discussing it with my designer since they can make it cloth psychics within unreal.
I did run into some issues while extruding because some parts couldn't be cut to separate; specifically the pointy metal part of the spear. Another part I struggled with were the handles when I was cutting up the spear. I manually cut the UVs for the spear along with arranging them on the plane and then moved onto the cape.
I mistakenly organized everything separately, so the spear, cape and rocks weren't all together so I had to manually redo that.
Then lastly I worked on 2 rock pile variants to make the environment more filling, which I reused and played around with scaling of my previous modeled rocks which were also already UVed.
The last chunk of cards I worked on this sprint were vines which the player will partly be walking on but also decorative. The vines were similar to rope which I thought would make modeling pretty easy because I remembered Professor Connor had a tutorial of a bucket which had a rope handle. After looking at the video, I thought he made a rope handle, but instead made it a bar so I had to loop up a specific tutorial for vines.
Following the videos they used EP curve to make a wavy figure, then used the sweep tool to shape it. From there I played with the settings like how many vines I wanted, taper, twists and other parts. This made the shape I was going for, as can be seen as the bigger rope like model above. Like I mentioned, it looked too much like rope. I tried to size down the amount of twists from 5-->3 which sort of helped and shrunk it.
I tried experimenting a different way by making 1 big vine then manually twisting and adjusting 1-2 smaller vines around it, but it just looked a bit off and was a struggle to manually wrap. After talking with a group mate, she suggested I add more gaps and diversity in how the vines twisted. Which meant I had to manually move vertexes and edge loops. Doing this made it look much more like vine than rope even though it took more time.
I then tried mirroring it for a longer version and then stitched the two together, but the problem that came from this was that everything but that area was smooth. Leaving the mirrored area with harsher edges. To fix this I pressed 3 and smoothed out the model which actually fixed another problem I had, which were the ends of the vines. The ends I originally tried to shrink down slowly were off but smoothing it made it squish it into a cylinder like shape.
With this, I duplicated it and adjusted for how each vine was wanted. There was the base one which was a straight line, a smaller sloped version, a medium S shaped and a large arch. The curve tool wasn't working for me so I had to use the deform nonlinear tool to shape my vines into curves which made things a bit more difficult but eventually shaped it without causing too much stretching or compacted areas.
The UV part was pretty easy because before I duplicated the first vine I made, I UVed it and did 1 long cut down a side since it was a cylinder and made them into strips. I am happy with the work I did this sprint because I got to learn how to make environmental props which was something I never had to do, along with learning a bit about the sculpting and twisting tools.
I mistakenly organized everything separately, so the spear, cape and rocks weren't all together so I had to manually redo that.
Then lastly I worked on 2 rock pile variants to make the environment more filling, which I reused and played around with scaling of my previous modeled rocks which were also already UVed.
The last chunk of cards I worked on this sprint were vines which the player will partly be walking on but also decorative. The vines were similar to rope which I thought would make modeling pretty easy because I remembered Professor Connor had a tutorial of a bucket which had a rope handle. After looking at the video, I thought he made a rope handle, but instead made it a bar so I had to loop up a specific tutorial for vines.
Following the videos they used EP curve to make a wavy figure, then used the sweep tool to shape it. From there I played with the settings like how many vines I wanted, taper, twists and other parts. This made the shape I was going for, as can be seen as the bigger rope like model above. Like I mentioned, it looked too much like rope. I tried to size down the amount of twists from 5-->3 which sort of helped and shrunk it.
Spearhead
Sprint 1
Seek out adventure and battle as an acrobatic spear wielding knight. Use your skills to defeat enemies and collect upgrades by striking and vaulting around a plague stricken kingdom.
For this project, I am one of three 3D modelers. I'll be starting off working on normal and elite enemies. This sprint I worked on 4 models and their corresponding UVs. This included the Small Beetle model and Stinger Dragonfly enemy along with their elite versions.
The start of this sprint, the first week was mostly remembering how to model and getting into the flow of things. My first card assigned to me was the Beetle enemy which was intimidating at first because I never took a modeling class that covered non inanimate objects. I did have a little confidence because of last years experience in 495 in which I learned to model over 15 types of fish. As it was the first day, the style guide and references for the enemies weren't fully complete so I was mainly experimenting as I went. I tried to reference my experience with the crabs I did last semester in the sense of legs and body type.
I had to reverse image search one of the reference because I wasn't sure of the name which I wanted to look up for more angles, which ended up being from the game Enshrouded. I first tried to tackle the legs because visually they look like 3 rectangles and an extruded shell on one of them. I learned from last semesters crab that joints are needed for my animators rather than just leaving it empty or overlapped. I felt like I was hyper focusing on the legs so I moved onto the main body.
The main body I did free handed. To me it was like a oval or cylinder shape with a wide top and a thinner, more brought inward bottom. It honestly came out pretty chunky so I tried squeezing in some edge loops to give more form, but it still didn't sit well with me. I also tried to add a helmet like piece which I was inspired from the light blue circle at the top of its head on the reference. Another part I tried was something like a neck guard thing? Which would be at the neck all the way down the middle of the back, which made the body look more bulky that I didn't like so I ended up scrapping it.
I moved back to the legs after getting inspiration after staring at the reference legs which I redid but made it similar to a bent tube so I my animator could add a joint at the bend. This worked well because it was 1 part rather than 3 separate parts per leg. At this point, my model reminded me of Arceus from pokemon. From this point, I did lots and lots of minor tweaks of the legs but I think the best understanding of the leg was drawing over it.
Next was the outer shell which I was originally going to keep as 1 set of wings but when talking with my animator, she suggested I add another pair right beneith.
Lastly, I did the pinchers which actually came out well on my first attempt other than after finishing it and looking at the vertexes and such, I had a few ngons which I had to take a bit to trouble shoot where the problem started. The UVs came out nicely, along with organization. The main take away from last semester of 495 was manually organizing the UV layout.
Lastly, I did the pinchers which actually came out well on my first attempt other than after finishing it and looking at the vertexes and such, I had a few ngons which I had to take a bit to trouble shoot where the problem started. The UVs came out nicely, along with organization. The main take away from last semester of 495 was manually organizing the UV layout.
Overall, I was pretty happy with how my first model came out especially how uncertain I was. I think improvement wise for the future I should do more higher poly models. I think I have become too comfortable with using low polys because of last semesters workflow.
Next was the elite version of this bug. This will be roughly the same model, just with a few add-ons. At this point, the style guide was updated with custom model references which I took one of the features and refined it a bit, which specifically was the helmet like the part I originally planned for.
The last major add-on were spikes along each leg. This was a nice touch I originally wasn't going for but was suggested after getting it verified by my designer. My first attempt was adding individual spikes ontop, but with where I had my edge loops on the leg, I decided to extrude within the small squares left between each loop. I did run into some issues trying to figure out how to UV it, like how to cut it. Originally I was going to cut out each spike from the leg but after asking around, I kept them as is because of how small they are.
I did end up doing minor tweaks to the leg when I was adding spikes, so I hope when my animator gets to the elite version, they could still salvage some of their previous rig parts.
My last model of the sprint was the flying enemy which was based on a dragonfly and bee. I referenced the style guide custom model and put it in maya as a png. I then made a plane with enough vertexes to get the silhouette and extruded from that. From that point, it was a lot of minor vertex tweaking until I was happy with it.
Originally I had the wings bent but it was brought to my attention for my animator, it would be better if they were flat and straight, so I ended up readjusting. Going back to the head I added a slanted eye because I felt that would look better than a textured print/drawn version. I also extruded a part of the head to form a helmet/mask to match the beetle. And to keep the extrusion theme going, I extruded the tips around the stinger for a sharper/deadly vibe.
Lastly, was the elite version of the flying enemy. I added a lot of spikes, firstly I added a row to the top of the head on the helmet area. I got some feedback by someone next to me and made the closest spike to the eye larger, kind of like a unicorn horn. Next I added a kind of scaly eye guard part next to the eye. Honestly I was just messing around and some how felt right so I left it. Looking at the add-ons, it reminded me of a dragon, so I wanted to include those whisker like parts onto its face. Lastly I extruded the stinger a few times!
Overall, I am happy with how both enemies and their varient came out.
