# Cg Industry Pipeline (6G7V0036_2223_9)
#### by Hannah Staff

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- [x] Moodle: Weekly Reflection Journal
- [ ] Be honest, where I am and where I want to go. Where I'm struggling

- [ ] Do the final report by reflecting this on my journal. How is this helping my discipline?

- [ ] Effects: Show this in a showreel and a portfolio I generate

- [ ] GOAL: Generate work that will benefit me

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## Week 1 : Hello Unreal, Hello MAYA, long time no see
### First Thoughts and goals of this course
During the introduction, there is a great desire to learn something like Houdini. This industry standard program for VFXs would be a great addition to my portfolio and profile for when I want to apply for jobs later. Though I have to be realistic with myself and see this limited timeframe as a place where I should work and develop on skills I already know such as EPIC Games' Unreal Engine and Audoskesk MAYA. Rather than Only learning the basic of Houdini, I wish to spend this time on deep diving and becoming more comfortable with these other programs. Last year, when I was doing the first year og Games Design BA, I remember that we were learning Unity in The Craft of Game Development,
Become well familiar with Unreal Engine 5 and using Autodesk Maya. There is definetely a wish to use Houdini and learn an industry standard program for VFXes, but I have to be realistic with myself and see the limited time as a time where I shall develop skills I already have, and get better at those than to try to learn another new program on the surface level.

There is of course a desire to learn Houdini and become familiar with the software, though after a meeting with Nathan Robinson, we both agreed on that I should concentrate on Unreal Engine 5 instead.

**Goals**
The main goal nd who I look up to and want to accomplish for this class is Victoria Zavhorodnia on Artstation. Her "Creating a Stylized Violet House in Substance 3D Painter & Unreal Engine" showcase is something I both look up to and hope to accomplish by the end of these lessons.

The reason why I want to learn more about environmental art rather than for example character design is that the competition in the industry for character artist is extremely difficult compared to trying to concentrate on something else. It is of course not only because I want to do somethig else that is not hard to become, but also my personal interestsgo this direction.

(SET IN HERE MY MOODBOARD OF PUREREF AND MY GOALS)

## Week 2
Made a silly pokemon for the simple reason to see how easy it is to export a model from zBrush into Substance painter. Substance painter does not look as good as the expectations. Zbrush tent to look almost too organic. Should consider using Maya more to get the shape I am looking for.


Creating something in zBrush does feel slightly too organic and it is hard to control harder surfaces. The challenge for next week is to model one thing in zBrush and then the same thing in Autodesk Maya to see what program I should be focusing on for the related creatures I will be making.

### Challenge
Followed this Youtube tutorial to get into Maya again as it has been a while.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk3BhJ-W0dY

Based on the tutorial I followed on Youtube to get into the flow again of using Maya

Using Midjourney to help me create some Concept art for my robot.

Then I modeled this in Maya based on both the tutorial of creating the robot as well as trying to make the robot from the AI generated concept art.

Trying to make the same model I made in Maya in zBrush.
It was difficult to manage each component and have control over everything that I am making as it is easier to create the robot with a lot of different smaller componens than to make it out from one simple clayball

**Conclusion**
zBrush is great for organic things, clothes etc and natural shapes. Making a robot is way easier to make in Maya. This could of course be because I am most used to Maya from before so I am more sure on how the workflow goes. I would for example try to add clothes or other organic shapes to my robots in zBrush. But the robots themselves need to be in Maya.

## Week 3
(during th my test between Maya and zBrush. Asked where to move on from here. Watching tutorials by professor Paul Greenwood to get into Unreal Engine again. Then using the reference from Artstation of my "Goal", make a list of the things I know and the things I need to learn. Looking at Materials in UE5 and Lighting. Remembering the Epic games Lighting competition that took place. ( https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/are-you-a-lighting-master-enter-our-new-unreal-challenge-today)

Take inspiration from this competition to see what is even possible to do in UE5.

##### Doing materials and lighting based on Paul Greenwood's tutorials
source : https://mmutube.mmu.ac.uk/playlist/dedicated/1_r8vi8fkc/1_g3opemc6



## Week 4
### Working together with my mentor.
As I am lucky enough to have my menotrship still running since last year, my weekly meetings with Nathan Robinson is a place for inspiration, feedback and idea creations together. The meetings are always very inspiring and I get this feeling of a boosted inspiration whereas all I want to do is to explore my projects more.

New program introduced to work together in which is used within the industry when creating Levels.
"Unity Plastic SCM is a version control and source code management tool built to improve team collaboration and scalability with any engine"
from: https://www.plasticscm.com/

What is great about using this tool together is real time changes we can both do in the same project as long as we are in different level sections of the project. We don't have to re-download the project, make changes and re-upload it like one would have to do with Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive. Here, it is always saved at the same place and changes we both do will be visible for the other person.

### UV Mapping with Andrew King

Doing Texel density and UV mapping with Andrew helped me understand better and getting into how textures can be optimilized and reused for several models.

### Tech artist talk with Shomair Hanuk 24.10.2022
The talk was extremely inspiring and helpful to have a positive view on the future job possibilites out there. Every time I have a talk with Dan Hobson, it is uninspiring, depressing and a hard reality check that this is a difficult work direction and no one will get a job. The talk with Shomair Hanuk was at the opposite end of the scale and completely changed my view on that and gave a boost of confidence.

#### Afterthoughts
I beleive I need to have my thoughts in-between these two extremes. With Dan Hobson, there is no hope, with Shomair Hanuk, it is extremely easy and I will get a job immediatly after University. I need to place my head and goals between these two and have hope for myself when it comes to finding a job after university, but also be realistic with myself and see the competition out there.

### Trying to make a Komainu Lion-dog
Looks more like a strange mouse

### Failing at making a simple screw in Maya

## Week 5
Need to do more Unreal Engine, have mainly just been working in Maya and finishing off the Komainu Lion-dog. Got some help from a colleague student to fix the head and the mussle to make it more "lion".

Inspiration
from: https://www.nippon.com/en/views/b05206/

Final models, it even has tiny screws for teeth!


## Week 6
Session with Dan Hobson: https://www.scanlinevfx.com/contact/

Mata fundamentals. The session itself is for very basic Maya users, but I will use Dan Hobson to help me bring my models into Substance Designer and Painter

Training on the Duplicate Special Tool

Making Swirls

A quick process pf working and blocking out ideas.
Whiteboxing (in gaming industry) - Kit Basing (film industru)

Arnold Preview Render

Remember: common mistake that people make is to not make it up to scale enough, so the lights and shadows doesn't feel natural and i doesn't fall properly. With the model being properly scaled, the lights in the render feels more natural.

Example of a larger scaled model with more natural setting to the lights

The point of 3D modelling is to get it to the correct scale so textures and lighting get to as close to believability as possible. The scaling should follow what they would look like if they theoretically was places within the real world.

Changing the scaling in MAYA is possible, but the scaling of lighting will always stay the same, so if it is changed, they will not add up to be the same. So keeping it ad CM is the best.

During Session:
Didn't manage to do much since Unreal Engine 5 is not running that well on these computers due to the shaders spending 2 hours on compiling

## Week 7

### Working with Unreal Engine 5 in the University computers
Compiling Shaders is at 2% after 1 hour of processing. Enough said.

Why does a 40 minute youtube tutorial of making grass take about 6 hours to complete?

Change of gameplan: Can only work with MAYA and Substance and so on the uni computers and Unreal only from home computer.

### Grass tutoriials from Victoria Zavhorodnia
Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/akbutea

WOOHOOO GRASS TUTORIAL DONE!

Using Adobe Colours to extract colours from Princess momonoke reference

## Week 8

Making a wire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4igTVJOEJw0

And sketching arms:

Finishing off thse arms as well

### Maya Fundamentals with Dan Hobson
Doing the very basic within Maya, very helpful to be reminded of some very basic tools and shortcuts that might have been forgotten when I get into my own flow. Also a good reminder is how to set up a project properly and not just opening the scenefile at once so projects don't crash


When I work in my own system too much, I get a tunnel vision of what is possible to do with the software and doing either MAYA fundamentals with Dan Hobson really helps to be reminded of the possibilites behind MAYA. Also just jumping on some tutorials help to also of course learn some new tools. When creating a new model though, it is always best to try myself and see if I'm able to do it myself first before looking up a tutorial. Like the screws early on, I learned that I can easily extrude the surfaces of the flatplane, but messing aound myself and trying first breaks the feeling of the boundary that I cannot do it.

### Meeting with Dan Hobson 23-11-2-22
#### Then also the meeting with Nathan robinson
Substance Designer vs. Substance Painter
A hard reality check with Dan Hobson, yet again. Who would have thought that he would manage to make me feel uncertain about my entire desicion about these studies as well as uncertain about the entire future. Well, he did it. After discussing the pros and cons between Substance Designer and Substance Painter, we concluded that the best direction for me to go is by trying to get a better understanding for Substance Painter rather than Designer. One argument about doing Designer is that because Painter is gaining so much popularity and so many studios and games will be using this, a lot of materials and textures might end up starting look very similar, but being able to use those tools better and having an understanding of what one catually can do, it should be possible to change them enough so that they doesn't en dup looking the same.
"Jack of all traits and master of none" is Hobsion's favourite quote and he helped me decide on only doing Painter from now on.

So plan for next week is to work in Painter!:

#### Mini lesson from Andrew King

## Week 9

### Substance Painter
What I find helpful for myself when I am working in Substance Painter is my former background in Graphic design where not only the layout of the software looks very similar to other Adobe programs like Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator, but the functions of the effects work very similar as well. The behaviour of Layers are the same as well as even the Blending modes are literally what one would use in the other Adobe programs earlier mentioned.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZElEDyuECc&t=681s&ab_channel=EsmailGhadrdani

### UV Mapping and Texel Density
Breaking MAYA While trying to UV map for the correct Texel Density so I can then pull this into Substance Painter


Optimizing Texel Density

Optimizing Texel Density 02

Finished the Models finally and UV mapped them

### ~29.11.2022~
UV maps cannot have overlapping UVs for Substance Painter

Better UVs

NEW:

Better

Substance Painter stylized base colour as a smart material
https://youtu.be/FbYLqzW4Z_Y


#### What is Ambient Occlusion
https://www.pluralsight.com/blog/film-games/understanding-ambient-occlusion

#### Uni computers suck:


Process:

OPTIMIZING, AGAIN!


FUNKYNESS



## Week 10

### MAYA Fundamentals with Dan Hobson 06.10.2022, Texturing

PBR

PBM
(Real world properties)

Arnold takes longer, but is more real world realistice because of all of the calculations for lights, sizing ect.

Physically based and non-physically based materials

HSV = Hue, Saturation, Value



Using Real life images always as references


diffuse/albedo/colour = all the same

### Komainu Lion Dog

UV Mapping in MAYA

First test on adding materials in Substance Painter

Optimizing the UV map, smae materials go to the same squares and so on. As long as everything fits into one square, it can be scaled up and down

Optimizing 2

Saving as an OBJ doesn't smoothen the edges like it does with FBX

## Week 11

### Finalizing Substance Painter
(That was the plan at least, but the quality of the model is too low)

## Sick with covid
Does Covid even exist anymore?

## Final Push

Trying to make the UV go over two tiles instead of one to see if the quality gets better

Importing an FBX

Figuring out how I can work with double UV tiles. One for the head and one for the body
If I assign a metrial in Maya, for example lambert1 to the head and lambert2 to the body, the two different layers will be automatically imported into Substance Painter

What I found to be the best learning is to simply assign a smart material and start looking through the details of what already exist to get a somewhat understanding of the possibilities

### Learning how to use emissive colours
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhrjZCeiApw&t=420s


Creating a Blueprint model to collect all of the seperate assets and materials

Because it all imported like this:

Material creation

Render in Unreal Engine

Reference_Colours

Open Mouth

Polygon filling the emissive colour

Detailing

## Portfolio
if i was to use this for a job, how would i show it