https://hackmd.io/@MKLzYDLARp2xAVEqa7JVzw/Bk3Bc-e-a
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## GDD
https://hackmd.io/@v3Yb5OcTQ5CIYWJ-IjUjNQ/ByDUdRFgp

## Playable exe
(https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cxeVqIRjMRyUAFfNjEn9v1xZSLoboaIa/view?usp=sharing)

# Independent Game Art Studio Practice Weekly journal

## Week 1

The first thing I did was to get into a large group so that we could all collaborate to use our different specialties to create a large piece. We first cut the team into 2 halves, me being more of a character artist, I went to the character art team however, I still wanted to experiment with the environment side, as I did have experience in dioramas from a modeling background whether that be smaller stuff like integrating the model into the ground or building up the scenery for it to stand on, to create an immersive feel.

First priority however was figuring out what everyone was going to tackle as that was one of the problems with the last gdd project everyone was doing, something different and the end project felt disjointed. We settled on a grim dark Dark Souls theme with other influences like Dishonoured, Warhammer and a few others.

I mainly focused on the souls like aspect, as I was working on the undead king who would live in the castle. I was working with Helena as she designed the more standard knights that would be in the castle, so it was important the themes were cohesive between them.


Elden Ring was a massive inspiration for me with their attention to detail in the armour. I took a wide range of inspiration from a few of my favourite fantasy worlds and started concepting. I really liked the look of Orstines armour from Dark Souls. With the chest having a lot of sharp segments to it and the long armoured side skirts, but I needed to make it look more undead then its original pristine gold. I took a lot of influence from the nergal deamons from Warhammer with their rusting armour opening up to show bones and rotting skin, the metal being heavily decayed. I really wanted to have a focus on realistic weathering as we had agreed on more realistic texturing rather than being overly stylised, so rust and verdigris were very important to me. One of the stranger references that I had looked at was the anti rpg chains on the back of Merkva tanks that I had always thought had an almost medieval look to them.

I made 4 thumbnail sketches, I didn't really do silhouettes as they don't seem to work for me, not when I have the character nailed down to what they are, with this one being an undead king.

The part we had the most back and forth on was the crown the king would wear. I'd been designing it as somewhat of a halo crown with the main ring supported by some metal attached to the head and back. After a few of these designs, we settled on a mask crown hybrid. We had been discussing the family crest for the knights and had settled on crows as a theme, so I'd made a few shield designs that incorporated black and green colours. This would also be important as Elin was working on the castle itself in the diorama, so any specific themes we were using should be incorporated into the overall space.


This helmet is what we have agreed to go with so far with he chainmail veil and crow skull, a human skull face mask integrated into the crown. It's a simple look but quite effective. The face should be easier to model, but making the chainmail veil might be a bit harder, but that's something I intend to research into.


I started to do more iteration to this design, changing up parts after recommendations from the others, mainly focusing on the chest at the moment, adding more bones and a heart on the Jack's recommendation. All 10 of the characters I designed are in my main portfolio for this project, so I'm just adding snippets in here so its easier to understand to what parts I'm referencing.
## Gantt chart

## conclusion
Overall, for the first week I'm really happy with my progress with already having 10 thumbnails done and a character chosen to start iterating on and editing. Unfortunately, I would have liked to include all my work in this as I would have had last time, but Hack md doesn't like big files.

## Week 2
After not being able to include images last week, I got that sorted out by exporting the images differently, so now you can see the format I chose to present them in. I made 10 different thumbnail sketches to explore different designs, some being more armoured and others being more cloth focused. Some of the armour is more fantasy with the segmented plates and spikey edges, whereas some are more traditional with the bowed out chest armour akin to the traditional knight armour. This was a talking point in collaboration and was the main thing I iterated on.

These were the main focus of Week 2, looking how I could iterate on my favourite designs. As I said above, I mainly focused on the chest plate armour, as I wasn't really sure what to go with. I wanted a combination of cloth and metal. I started by looking at a lot of Dark Souls and Elden Ring designs. I liked the armour used on the raging wolf set as it had a really simple chest plate with a more complicated layered panel design at the bottom for mobility. I took that and then modified it to look like a traditional knight chest piece. I'd made a design with an open chest which looked good but was perhaps a little over the top. So, I went with a more simple approach of just some holes where the armour has decayed and rusted, showing the inside knight armour was not overly thick, being prone to penetrating hits mainly protecting against sword slices, so if the armour was not maintained like in this case, rust spots and degradation would be likely.

The next thing I changed was the tabard flowing from the shoulders down to the knees. I really liked this design as it blended nicely with the long cape. I changed the ends the most, originally starting with ragged torn ends, but I didn't want the whole character to be completely ragged, as he is the king after all, so instead I went with a more kingly feathered look, with chains on the bottom reminiscent of that on the Merkava main battle tank. I liked this look, but I thought that the chains might be a bit of pain to do. I decided to just have the more refined finish. Lastly, was the lower leg armour which I changed to a slightly more fantasy interlocking style armour, reminiscent of the knight lords in Warhammer 40k and the sharp angular look complimented the gauntlets nicely and, in my head, looked more practical for the user.
These shields I'd completed in Week one, but I managed to get them into the document this week. They are just simple sketches to get some ideas down, but they are where the original crow theme started with the top right being the main one we chose to go with as we thought it should have some sort of castle insignia and themes such as a crow themed door knocker, gargoyles and other such details to add more character to the castle and linking them to the characters.
Also this week I wanted a break from drawing my main character and I wanted to draw one of the potential adventurers, so I made this samurai knight blend. I had the idea that any concept art that we don't end up using, could be put into Jack's tavern and when I get time to finish it, this would hopefully be one of those.
I also designed the sword for the Undead King, just a simple blade and hilt and the look that it has been reforged many times and rust is starting to set in.

Finally for this week, I worked on the final piece for the king laying out all the armour, but I have mainly focused on getting the bear pelt right and the metal on the crown looking suitably worn and sharp.

Also this week, I got these grass textures for Jack to use from my garden which should help him when it comes to the Unreal world. I simply went out on an overcast day so that the lighting was flat and didn't cast any unnecessary lights or shadows. Its a nice way for me to help out the environment team and means that we don't have to go and track down someone else's grass textures.

### Conclusion
My plans for next week are to hopefully have the final piece of concept art complete for the king, so that he's ready to go and then I can start Zbrushing as soon as possible, as there's going to be a lot to get through with this character.

## Week 3

The main focus this week has been on getting the final version of the character finished and it's almost done with just the grip to finish off and some small detail and refinements where appropriate. It's close to being finished now and should hopefully give a pretty good idea of the level of detail I want to aim for, especially when it comes to the weathering. The realistic and worn effect is what sells the Dark Souls aesthetic being grim and gritty. I'm really happy with the quality of this character so far, it's probably the most detailed piece of concept art I've done, with every bit of metal having 3 layers of highlights and scratches applied. First with black to outline the shadows and give shape to the armour, then a slightly brighter grey, then the base colour to mark out the high points where the light is hitting, then an almost white to mark out the sharpest edges and points where the light is gathering the most on the armour. This is then followed up with a glaze of blue in between the dark and light points to add more visual interest and denote that the armour has been reforged before and is starting to blue. Lastly, the rust starting with a fainter dark brown, then a rich orange in the recesses or around the main point of corrosion, on sloped surfaces, some lines streaking down.

It was important to have the main cloth elements to be in better condition as he is a king and that should be reflected in the quality of his garments, thus they are much more well looked after, though signs of wear are showing with the cloak starting to stain and attract mould at the bottom which I have subtly added.


I also worked on a quick Zbrush block out of the crown mask and I was pretty happy with how it turned out for how little time I had put into it, but on the whole, it gives me a pretty good idea how it should look. For the real one, I plan to make the spikes separately instead, that should help the overall topology of the model as just using the move tool on a thin mesh like this can lead to problems.

### Conclusion

Overall, this week has been useful as I have just been mainly getting the final concept nailed down which should help when it comes to Zbrushing, so there's less guess work and more modeling. Next week I plan to have the character sheet complete and maybe work on some extra designs, maybe some other weapon variants and maybe some designs for his throne, or I might just start zbrushing. Jack has also asked if I could get him some rock textures and some boulder scans, so I will also be doing that at some point.

## Week 4
Firstly, this week, I finished off the character sheet for the king which came out looking great. I made a more weathered version as the others in the group wanted to see what it would look like with less shine, so I took a more dulled down approach with some more rust and glazed in greens and blues to add to the discolouration of the armour. All I need to do now is to finish the layout as I'm still not 100% sure of the presentation of the art. Other than that, this is easily one of my favourite pieces of concept art I've made and is a great point to start modeling from and gives plenty of visual information with the variety of textures that I have tried to convey.
This week I also started z brushing and made the main body of the king. I didn't bother with adding any musculature as he's quite skeletal anyway and is mostly hidden underneath his black suit, so I opted to just keep it simple.
I first modelled the main crow mask. It's still relatively simple at the moment, with other textures being added later, though I'm still thinking I might just make most of the detail like the grooves in the beak textures. Instead to optimise the model as it is going to be an incredibly detailed character, so small stuff like that could be made a texture instead. Unlike my original block out, I made the spikes out of separate cones, then merged them to the base crown shape. The mask has some simple interior detail to add depth around the eyes with a small nasal cavity for the nose and actual holes for the eyes unlike the blockout.
The next step was a completely new tool for me, which was the gravity tool which I used to make the chainmail hood around his head. I let the simulation run a few times, but it was difficult to get it to tuck into the collar, so I instead turned on the allow shrinking option which removed a lot of the folds, but gave me a smoother mesh. I then simply dragged the hood down with the move tool which worked great and gave the desired effect.

So far, I have kept most of the armour pretty simple and unpolished whilst I get the basic look correct so that I can easily tweek and move parts around. Overall, I'm really happy with this start as getting the head looking right is one of the most important parts as it's what draws the eye first, so if it looks off, it can ruin the whole character.

## Dark souls/Elden Ring case study
Now having researched and drawn up my character, I think that I can speak more on the design of Elden Ring and Dark Souls character design more specifically the knights. The armour is usually highly ornate with filigree embossing and engraving on the armour. The concept art often reflects this with the armour often appearing noisy with plenty of detail as it is rare to see a clean armour panel. Most characters have some form of large cloak or cloth element building out the silhouette of the character. The armour is comprised of many layers adding to that sense of realism and complexity as the knights often have a menagerie of straps holding on different parts of the armour.

The colour palettes are almost always on the darker drabber side, rather than something bright or vibrant. Yellows are more washed out and most light colours are on the paler side. The designs often seem to be derived from real knight armour, but are heavily altered, adding more segments or additions. Take for example Ornstines chest armour, its shaped like a traditional knights chest piece bowing out at the chest and coming in at the waist, but unlike the real piece, its comprised of interlocking segments whereas the real one would be one continuous piece. Looking more at the style of the concept art itself, it is a rather realistic style especially when it comes to the metal, so that was something I wanted to replicate with my artwork. The lighting often accentuates the shape of the armour, as well as the detail on it really helping the design pop and at times, parts almost appear to be black lined, reinforcing parts. Unlike the line art, its more like a super harsh shadow so that the detail is lost. I think the most important part is that sense of depth created by that layered look. It creates a sense of realism, the characters feel real, the armour looks lived in. It isn't pristine. It looks heavy and old which helps to build that gritty aesthetic that encapsulates the souls like genre.

### Conclusion

This week has been great as I'm now moving into the main stage of making the character and getting it looking right, but this will probably be the hardest part, though I have started looking into Xgen and getting fur working and soon we should be booking mocap which will be great for having the characters moving, but also far some interesting poses.

## Week 5

This week I progressed further on with the crow king sculpt. I started to add more armour and cloths. I tried to keep it more low poly to make it more easily workable, but the number of parts that go into a character like this make that harder. I'd run into a problem getting the cloak to look correct which you can see here in the image above where it had noticeable ridges almost like it's a 3d print. This was because I was dynameshing the model to try and fix it, when really, I should have been using a zremesher which would have allowed me to make much more drastic changes to the mesh and it would still fix it. I'm still not finished with the cloak as I mainly have it there for the silhouette and to get a better feel for the character. This also applies to the bear pelt with just the pelt, no fur being there, just to give me an idea for the layering and overall look. It will also serve as the base plate for applying the fur. I experimented with Xgen also this week, nothing serious, just clicking buttons and seeing what happened. I managed to get the hair applied and messed around with the angle and the thickness, but there's obviously a lot more yet to do to get it right. It was interesting to experiment on. My other option is to reuse the grass painter tool in ue5 which would be better for optimisation as I imagine that Xgen is not the best for optimisation and I would also have to port it over to ue5 which could cause issues, but I would still like to try it.

For the rest of the week, I have been focused on getting the rest of the character all blocked out and looking good. I refined the character more and more and focused on refining the legs and getting them looking good, as I had already forseen them to be difficult, but I simply masked and extracted the original leg, rounded it out, then added a thick sideways square to make the angular points, dynameshed that and then smoothed and moved it around and once happy, remeshed it, then duplicated it and adjusted it as needed. Right now, I'm working on the trim to tie it all together. I had done the arms prior to the legs and I think now that I've done them, I could probably redo them even better than before. I still need to do the lower gauntlet armour and the clawed fingers, chest tabard and fur skirt section to have it fully blocked out and ready to go, but overall, I'm really happy with how its looking.

### Conclusion
The next thing to do now is to prepare now for Tuesday's presentation and the current plan is for me to record a turntable video of the character in Zbrush and to send the character over to Jack so we can present it all at once, as he's going to make a video in the Unreal world showing our stuff so far. It would be nice to be able to give people a tour of it so far, but unfortunately the Uni's Unreal and Zbrush are not up to date, so we can't work on any projects that we've made at home, since they are not backwards compatible.

## Week 6


A big chunk of progress this week with refining the character and getting him looking good, from adding the skull to the belt, to re doing the gauntlet armour and getting it to look far smoother and crisp. I did this by doing a mask extract on the main arm rather than trying to sculpt it from scratch. I also added the claws to the fingers to enhance the evil look and then did some more basic refinement with the pinch tool around the neck armour and chest piece. Overall, he's looking much better now and I even managed to get his poly count down from 8 mill to 700.00 with some remeshing and removing old subtools. I've also chosen to make the cloths in Marvellous, now that I know there is a free 30 day trial, as that should make the cloths much better and fur can made in there. This should be a great way to do 2 things in one software and should be fairly easy to export to Unreal.

I also spent a lot of time experimenting with the character this week, as some parts are complete. I experimented with some texturing. This really came out well. I used a a charcoal texture with a black mask over it and a dark steel underneath and that made for a great cast metal look. I varied the opacity to only slightly rub away the charcoal colour, but let the rough texture stay. This added to that cast look as if when it had been made, it hadn't been cleaned up properly and still had lots of residue on the metal which had only been removed over time on raised contact points. This dark oxidized look really helps add a depth to the model and really helps sell that grim aesthetic. The next step would be to add rust and perhaps some other blues and greens to help with that discoloured effect as right now its still quite monochromatic.


Also, this week I got a low poly version of my character working in Mixamo just to see if there were any areas in my mesh that were breaking as there had been in the past. To my surprise, it actually worked extremely well with the only flaws being with Mixamo's rig not quite being perfect on my character, mainly the shoulders caving in but that's something that I will be able to fix myself in my own rig, but on the whole, it was great to see him working and moving properly.

Also, this week, we did some work in Mocap and we will be figuring out the animations for that soon. We did a range of animations from idle to walking, fighting and a 2 person fight scene between the Crow King and one of the adventurers with 2 winning outcomes for either the king or the adventurers. Overall, it was a much smoother time getting it all set up and running, which was great, so we had plenty of time to capture tons of animations. I can't wait to get those working in Unreal with the character.

### Conclusion
With next Monday being the alpha test, I'm more than ready to present my work, as I'm really happy with the progress I'm making. The character is really looking great now and with just a few more refinements, he should be done by perhaps mid next week, which would put me just ahead of schedule and give me plenty of time for texturing and trying out Marvelous Designer.

## Week 7



This is the final version of the character after all the projection mapping is finished which was a long process of upping the resolution on all the armour parts and then exporting the low and high versions so that you can bake the details on in substance, but it does have a much more refined look with plenty of detail and cleaner edges. I didn't bother messing with the cloak and other cloth elements as I want to try Marvelous instead and see what I can do with that, hopefully get a better look which is something I will talk about later. I'm still really happy with how he looks and how he's slowly turning out and should look even better with textures.
I also refined the bear head this week, adding gums, teeth and blocking out the overall head shape. The detail on the head is still relatively simple as most of the shape will be made up with fur, so that's why it's quite plain.
After all the projection mapping had been done, I could continue texturing in full. The crown's textures have been changed and I am mainly working on it at Uni, as Uni's Substance is out of date, so if I worked on it at home, I wouldn't be able to work on it at Uni, so I'm keeping it there, so I can still make progress on different parts. At home I'm focusing on the core armour parts. I've been working on the leg armour, ankle armour and the neck. I have been very focused on achieving that rough cast texture which adds loads of visual detail and interest to the model. I did this by first placing the steel scratched texture, than adding the charcoal texture over the top, then adding a white mask and with a low opacity, slowly stippling and building up an interesting texture. It is a slow process at times, but it really enhances the look of the character and its worth it. Once all the silver is applied, I will then do all the discolouration at once to help with the consistency. I also want to be a little more subtle on the rust so that it doesn't over power the silver. It should just be a nice addition.

Lastly for the week, I experimented with Marvelous Designer and made a longer tunic for the king. There's still a lot more to learn with this software, but it's something that I'm already enjoying using, with its ergonomic design and it is fairly simple to understand. The next thing is to try and get the coat underneath the belt, like in the concept art, but that might prove more difficult. If not, I will probably just change the design, but right now for a first test, I'm quite happy. I will probably try exporting it next, just to see if there is anything more, I can do with it.

### Conclusion
This has been a really productive week and I'm getting really close now to having the character fully textured which will be brilliant to see so I can then get him rendered and sent across to Jack, as he has been working on a title screen from the project and only has one of my older versions, so I want to get the updated one sent over.

## Week 8



We had quite the busy week this week, as we were not expecting there to be another presentation, but we wanted to have our work ready to do a proper demo which for me mean't getting an updated version of the king ready and textured to go on the home screen. I really focused on just getting the base textures on this version above. It is actually how he looked at the end of the week. It's more of a worn look with more weathering applied. He's still not quite done, but he's looking much more grim now than he did before with just the base metals applied, it really brings out the detail in the character and adds far more visual interest than before. Next step is to add a few more bits of colour to the rust and then start weathering the leather parts.


I also put down a base coat for the bear head, so that I knew where to add fur when it came to it and so there would still be colour there to add depth between the gaps in the fur.

Lastly, here's the king in our UE5 project, looking great with the textures on him. As I said before, this was before I fully textured him, so he's still a little shiny, but it was good enough to show off for the demo which went great even if we did have to crunch a bit the night before to get everything into the project. The next thing really is to get it rigged so that he actually moves and isn't just A posing. Also, I still need to re make the cloth elements, but I have been watching tutorials for Marvellous and have some more ideas on how I'll get that to work.

### Conclusion
It's been a very busy week this week, just getting everything ready for the presentation, but we are getting close now to having a full project to show off and present. Going forward, I plan to have the king fully textured by Wednesday at the latest and then I will re make the rest of his cloak and tunic in Marvellous, texture them, then hopefully move to adding the fur. Whilst at Uni, I will be making the sword for the king and also looking into rigging.

## Week 9


This week I did a lot of testing of things and different techniques that I planned to use. Looking at the fur first and trying Xgen. Here, above you can see me experimenting in Maya, rendering some of my older mask textures and testing out how Xgen looks. On the whole, I don't think it looks particularly bad. Theres obviously some refinement needed to get it to where it should be, but overall, not bad. My only problem is that its only good inside of Maya and doesn't in fact work inside a game engine, so this method would only realistically work for renders and things like that, which is something I might try later, just to do something really nice looking for a box art cover or something else like that. So that lead me on to trying to create the effect instead in Substance with a normal map which can be seen later.


Now this week I've also been working on Marvellous Designer and trying to get that working, but ultimately, I have run in to a lot of problems with trying to get the desired result and it not really being correct or useable without a lot of clean up, so I have decided instead to revert back to the Zbrush model instead, as the cloth and fur components on those are far more workable and are more similar to that of the concept art.
Following on from that, I textured up the cloak and fur. The fur has been a bit of a challenge, trying to make it look realistic and this version will not be the final method as I think I will attempt to make my own normal maps to try and create better fur textures and add more variation. I really like the look that the Xgen gives, but at times, it can look a little too flat and boring and doesn't really convey the look of fur correctly.

The most frustrating part of this week though has been the problems with texturing as I have mistakenly messed up the overall character texturing workflow as all my parts have been textured separately, thus creating tones of different texture sets rather than just head, chest, torso and then extras. In my case like cloak and fur, this has been a real setback as right now it's looking like I may have to re texture the model all over again and maybe re UV the model. I have also had problems simply combining the model into one mesh for Substance. This is quite a difficult problem as it does set me back a bit, but hopefully I will be able to find a solution and get back on track.

### Conclusion
This has been an experimental week, but it's been difficult to get anything solid done and isn't great when I don't really know where I'm going with my textures yet. I still need to figure out a solid plan, but that's for next week and I'm sure I'll figure something out once he's all textured and absolutely finished. I can then start rigging the character, making some animations and that's pretty much it. So, it's just frustrating to be back to texturing, but worst case, I still have one version ready to go, its just not as optimised as it should be, but it's my backup.

## Week 10




So, from the disappointment and annoyance of last week, I managed to complete the model in no time at all and to a better quality than before. The fur texture is far better now and the cloak has far more details in both the filigree and the interior lining which adds a far more realistic feel. He truly now feels like a king. This time around I kept the weathering much closer to the concept art. The dark steel being still recognisably metallic, but not as much as the first time with batches of dirt still being present to break up the light on the surface. I also found a good chailmail texture which looks excellent and really holds true to that original concept art. I'm really happy with how he's come out now and hopefully this is the last time I will have to texture him.


Secondly this week I also completed the sword quickly. I wanted to experiment with actually modelling the weathering on the model rather than just using a height map and it actually came out great and is probably something I will use again as it enhances the built in height map. It really makes the sword look worn and well used. It was simple to do, a combination of the clay build up brush and Dam Standard brush over the parts. Once it was done, the texturing was simple, just glazing over the metal to create the heated metal effect that I'd originally come up with in the concept art. I also glazed various colours over the hilt to add visual interest and on the whole I'm really happy with the result, even the leather straps, which was as simple as masking and separating polygroups. This is a technique that I will certainly be using again in the future.

### Conclusion
This week has been really great. I'm finally back on track to finish and all that's really left is to rig the character for Thursday so that its ready for the show case which hopefully shouldn't be too hard as I've experimented with it before. In a few weeks my main goal is to at least get the arms looking correct as that's what will mainly be seen on the home screen, so they are the most important.

## Week 11

To start the week, I began with rigging the King so that I could get him in a better pose for the home screen, rather than a standard arms out A pose. I used the step by step quick rig in Maya to get the points I wanted, then posed the arms. The armour still bends in incorrect places, but that's because I haven't painted weights on there yet. I also made a version where everything is attached together and parent grouped, but that made the cloak move with the arm which did tend to look strange, but when exported to Unreal, it came with a physics object, so it rag dolled around, but only the spine and that looked quite good when being picked up and thrown around.


This week was our show case which turned out great with everyone getting their stuff together to show off and all collaborating together to figure out what should go where. It was great to see the king in Unreal as it looked far better than it did in Maya as it was plugged into the correct nodes this time and having a proper stance really enhances the character. The textures and uvs are also a significant improvement, especially when the 2, old and new are stood side by side. The new version has far more depth to the metal and the overall textures look better.

### Conclusion
This is the last big week before Christmas and it was nice to see everything come together, even if some parts were still unfinished. I'll be focusing mostly on refinement and messing with the rigging. Other than that, making changes to the writing where needed and other general bits.

## Final week


So final week, in honesty I was finished on the weekend leading up to the last week, but I just wasn't quite satisfied with my final renders. I had everything written up, but I kept thinking about building a diorama like in the initial brief and with still having a week remaining, I thought why not give it a go and I'm really happy I did as the final scene really elevates the character rather than the king just stood in a light box. Firstly, I wanted to practice making a creature for the next project, so I quickly sculpted a dragon. No concept art, I just looked at the concept art for Elden Ring's ancient dragons and went from there. I mostly used the move tool to build up the forms which sped up the process. something I'd picked up on watching other creature sculpts in Zbrush. I went for a rocky appearance, with the undersides of the horns resembling a scoria rock but with the dragons flesh showing through below. Once the key shapes had been established, I went in with the dam standard brush to add more cuts and goudges and more detail. In all, the head took an afternoon and uving and texturing took a morning, so the next part was to make the terrain.


I didn't just want to use mega scans and I knew that Jack wanted some boulders and rocks for the next project, so I wanted to try actually sculpting them for myself. I started with just a sphere and then started pulling it in different directions until I got a misshapen oval. I then used the trim dynamic tool to flatten it out and add hard ridges which gave it a much more rocky look, but for added detail I went back in with the Dam standard to add goudges, cracks and other details. I repeated this method on the tall rocks and the main rock for the Crow King to stand on. This came out great using the slate texture in Substance. It really did look like rock. The 3 all in all took about an hour to make, so making the diorama was actually a really quick process.

I'm really happy I went back and did this as it helps elevate the character in the scene and feels more like a proper final piece for the project and I'm sure some of these can be used in the main game next term. Me and Jack were already talking about having the dragon head mounted on a plaque inside his tavern as a decoration.

## Final conclusion

This has been the most I have ever put into a project and also the most I have learnt throughout. Taking a character all the way from concept to game engine. I've never managed to get it quite right in the past or get it looking correct whereas this time I've significantly upped my Z brushing skills and come out with a character that I'm proud of. It has actual armour parts unlike my first attempt that was all sculpted as one. Working with a group has undoubtably helped in this regard, being able to collaborate and help each other with problems that would take longer to figure out on our own has certainly sped up the work processes and has also helped me improve my own processes like optimising the textures to just be 4 parts than each one individually. It also allowed me to help out with the environment team where possible, with Jack needing various grass textures and me having a good camera that I use for photogrammetry. I could go out and get some photos of various grass and mud textures which we used in the final game world.

Collaborating on the character side of things was also helpful as only through discussion and collaboration did the final design for the crow kings crown mask finally come around and a dark green colour scheme to match. It's been great for getting feedback on designs for what works and what doesn't and being able to give that feedback as well to help guide the project. There's still more to expand upon with this character, like replacing the Unreal mannequin with my character so that he's playable. This was something I tried, but it didn't come out quite right. I would have loved to try and get Xgen working, but it's a lot more complicated than I thought to get it to work in game so it's something I might come back to next project.

One of the big things that has really opened up my possibilities for sculpting has been projection mapping. Early on my main focus was keeping the topology low and as such I didn't really add quite as much detail as I would have liked. Once I'd figured out how it worked, I tried it out on the sword which has far more detail with scratches and hard corners but is still low ploy. Now having gone through the whole process, I know I can get away with far more detailed sculpts than before, which is something I've already been practising as we as a group have been discussing what we want to do with the continuation of the project and for me I want to create some kind of Dark Souls creature for a boss fight combining everything I've learnt from this project and taking it into the final.

I now also know what I can do well and what I can't, so I can tailor the design around that to create something that should be a brilliant show piece. I would also like to start fleshing out more with smaller creatures and continuing the work on the mocap animations as we never quite got them working despite our attempts, but hopefully that's something that we can resolve next time around. That could really save a lot of time on the animation, though I imagine I will have to hand animate the creature. I'm extremely happy with how this character turned out in the end, even with the ups and downs, I think I have still ended up with a character that fulfils the outcome I'd had in mind and delivers on the dark Souls fantasy style. I look forward now to starting my next character.

## Bibliography

From Software (2022) The art of Elden Ring Volume 2. Ontario: Udon Entertainment

From Software (2022) The art of Elden Ring Volume 1. Ontario: Udon Entertainment

From software (2012) Dark Souls Design Works, Ontario: Udon Entertainment

Games Workshop (2003) Warhammer Bretonnia - A Warhammer Armies supplement. Nottingham: Games Workshop