Environment Analysis

I've been recently re-watching the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars and I've been captivated by the environments they have been using. The environments vary in sizes yet they are all made up with simple shapes and forms. From looking at these environments, I can now see that majority of environments are created from simple shapes with excellent textures and lighting. From these environments I can see that I will definitely need to work on my lighting techniques as well as my unwrapping and texturing skills. 

The images I have included below are some of my favorite environments in the series. Each environment below demonstrates that simplicity is the key to a magnificent piece of work. The lighting captures the mood as well as the atmosphere of the planet where the scene is placed. Each model is made up of simple shapes such as circles and shapes that have then be warped into place to create a unique architecture design. The textures range from high to low detail but the common link is how simple they are. For future projects I will be looking to keep my environments simple and will continuously look at other examples of this work to further improve my workflow and skills. 

Self Reflection take 2

For this trimester I have been working on these two environments as well as watching numerous tutorials from Digital Tutors that were about lighting, scene creation as well as texturing. I've dedicated a lot of my time to my first environment over the tri. Originally I planned to do four environments however I personally did not realise how long an environment would take to build. Once3 I realised this, I thought it would be better to take my time with the environment so that it wasn't rushed and built with any errors. I never fully grasped the meaning I was taught as a goalkeeper "Quality, not quantity" until this trimester when I started building my first environment.

With it being my first environment, it took a lot more time than expected but by taking my time I have learnt spline modelling, lofting, uv unwrapping, texturing and I have also been able to improve my modular workflow so that I can, in future, create environments of a better quality in a shorter amount of time.

With my corridor environment, although I do have a completed version I have imported the environment into Unreal 4 and will hopefully have the finalized work up on this blog before I fly over seas on Friday.


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Below are some interesting topics I found during my final week before holidays.

http://www.3dartistonline.com/news/2014/02/create-stunning-3d-games-environments/

https://cgcookie.com/unity/2013/01/07/efficient-planning-and-modular-workflow/

http://forums.3dtotal.com/showthread.php?t=52975

http://blog.digitaltutors.com/two-easy-methods-rendering-wireframes-3ds-max/

http://www.themantissa.net/blog/2013/12/31/roundup-three-free-fragmenting-tools-3ds-max

Work this trimester

I've started looking into bump mapping for my environments. From what I've seen so far, I believe I will be able to generate some pretty sweet looking textures for future environments. I've also included a quick render of a city scape environment I'm currently working on for final project.