https://hackmd.io/@MKLzYDLARp2xAVEqa7JVzw/H1LY-gacT

##### PLAYABLE EXE
I would put the playable EXE here but Jack still has an extension, so it wouldn't be available for my submission.

# Collaborative game art practice

## Week 1


Firstly, with this being the first week back, we had to establish what we were doing as we did not choose one of the initial briefs, instead continuing the project we had already been working on, adding to what was needed to the project to make it fit in line with the mark scheme. We had to choose one culture to research and accurately represent in our game. This was fine for us as it helped us build more story and lore and added a better overall theme to the world. We (for now) have chosen Norse mythology, but that may change in the future as its only week one. Everyone in the group is very happy with this idea. Our thinking is that eventhough Norse myths have been represented a lot of the time the names are taken, but none of the history comes with it and it is at a very surface level representation of their history, so we aim to accurately research and represent the characters we intend to use. Secondly, eventhough this is going to be set inside our pre existing world, we wanted to make something that is completely different, to show that it is brand new. Our idea for this is to represent the underworld of our current world with the player descending down a deep elevator into the caves below as it makes a great opportunity for us not be constrained by the lighting we have. *u top* but still have all the functionality and tools we built into the project initially. It's a completely new area for us to develop, but with it being smaller and more linear.

We are able to properly curate and add more detail than we could do in a huge landscape. We drew up various layouts and I designed a statue holding a chain which would lower the elevator into the ground. The next step was thinking about the inhabitants down there and who would design what. Juno wanted to design the cave layout itself, looking at adding camps and various locations throughout, whilst also populating it with various creatures. I offered to make some drauger the undead Norse warriors that protect their graves and treasure however this was not my main sculpt and would be more of a side project as that's where me and Jack come in. We wanted to make the boss arena which would be at the end of the cave. The player would reach another elevator that would take them up, but not to the surface, they would be lifted into the centre of a circular arena with roots coming down from the ceiling. In the roots would be the dragon Níðhöggr, a character from Norse mythology that is entangled in the roots of the world tree. A concept I'd loved and wanted to make. This would be my main part of the project.

Once the player is in the room, the dragon would stop chewing on the roots, but not give the player much of its attention, trying to reach down for them with its claws and tail. This would be the first phase of the fight. However, unlike most bosses you would only have to get the dragon to a quarter of its health before the second phase begins. A cut scene will then play of the main character, (something that I will elaborate on later) cutting off one of the dragon's fingers, this definitely catches its attention and enrages it, setting itself alight to burn its way free from the roots, dropping down to the players level much like the Placidusax boss fight in Elden Ring. Now free, the fight can continue. This is about as far as we got with the mechanics of the fight. Now it was my turn to design the dragon. Looking at original Norse architecture and sculpts, the dragons are almost more worm like, something often overlooked by most people who use its name like final fantasy where Nidhogg is just outside with no mention of the roots or the worm like design.


I came up with 3 possible variants. A dragon with the wings (figure 1 bottom left) as I still think it would look more visually impressive and I had an idea since the room would be dark and underground. It would be nice to have the Scorpius constellation which has been interpreted to be Nidhogg on the wings of the dragon and have them light up adding an extra layer of interest and history to the design and would be an interesting point of research.

(top left) would be more of a sleeker worm look with vestial wings that have not really grown out, keeping more of a long sleek look and these interesting horns that have ruptured with energy. This would be a theme continued throughout the dragon's design.

Lastly (top right) would have more of a root like appearance with no wings present or if they had, the wings would have rotted off adding to these root like horns which would protrude and writhe throughout the dragon with a more rotten and decaying look. The eye abscised from the design creating an ominous black hole where the eye should be.


We'd also discussed making a proper main character that fitted the theme and narrative of what we were going for. We had settled on a Valkyrie that would be made by Helena, but over the weekend, I decided to just throw together a quick sketch of what I had envisioned them looking like in my head, just to add to the collaboration and potential ideas rather than the clean angelic appearance usually associated with a valkyrie, I went for a more worn down look, the skin dry and blotchy as they could be travelling and fighting without rest for long stretches of time, so I wanted a more rugged look. Rather than the bright gold armour I designed for a brass helmet that is already in the process of oxidising with spots of verdigris. Eventhough I'm not making this character, I wanted to try and be involved with multiple parts of the design process, just to throw out some ideas and just see if any of them help the group, so I'll be bringing this character in next week to see what the group thinks.

I made my Gantt chart roughly following how my last project went, but with a few extras like rigging and retopo which I didn't have on my previous Gannt chart

### Conclusion
So far, we are off to great start. I still need to put a bigger mood board together as I'm still collating images, but I have a few references that I like. In terms of making things, going forward I will probably start drawing, but some different bodies for the dragons and also sketch the heads out. I used Zbrush to give myself a clear view of them and see which ones I liked the most.

## Week 2
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3

To begin this week, I focused on making the 3 heads that I'd concepted last week. I kept each one fairly quick, not bothering with good topology, they were there purely to give a clearer picture of what I was thinking. I was quite happy with how all 3 came out as they were all quite different from one another. Using the polypaint tool, I coloured them in just to experiment with colouration and add more life and definition. As I sculpted them in zbrush, I made various changes to their look from the original concepts, such as figure 3 having the back horns at eye line rather than pointing down like in the original. I really liked the rough rocky texture of figure 1 and felt like it had a far more original design to it than the other 2 did. I wanted to explore it further. Once I'd finished them all, I sent them to the group Discord to see what the group thought of the designs.

Figure 2s head shape seemed to be preferred with figure 3s horns being one of the most popular designs. This was surprising as Figure 2 for me was fairly basic and boring, it wasn't bad but was quite plain, which is what inspired me to continue on with the full body sketches.

Before I did this however, I started to properly accumulate a mood board of ideas and thoughts. Starting with the key point of reference, the Norse styles, primarily looking at the unnes style, which depicts the dragons in a much smoother snake like appearance, which I quite liked the idea of, but I also liked the ringrike look. This was a more complex version in a similar style. These helped inform the long neck and tail appearance, though I would need to heavily detail the design to make it fit in a more realistic setting and tone down the smoothness of the dragon.

Looking into other various Norse texts that contained Nidhogg, I looked into the Prose Edda which is and old Norse textbook which describes Nidhogg chewing on the roots of the world tree and it appears to be trapping the beast from the world. It also describes the squirral, Ratatoskr which runs up and down the tree delivering envious messages from Nidhogg to the eagle atop the tree. This is the main inspiration for the whole boss fight with Niddhogg beneath the world tree, though the squirrel and eagle will probably be omitted as they are not necessary for the boss fight.

One of the most important pieces of reference was the drawing of Niddhog at the bottom of the world tree as part of a Norse manuscript. This is arguably the most important, as it is the key drawing of Niddhog and since we are trying to aim for accuracy and a true representation of the culture, it is important to have it at the centre of my work.

My main takeaway are the colours and the long tail. The 1 set of arms is debatable as other Norse styles show 4 legs and I think from a anatomy point of view, 4 makes more sense and that is the only part I'm changing for that specific drawing, as there are still multiple variations, iterations of the dragons and they have been shown to depict them with 4, so I'm going with that. Another reason for that is though I'm looking into Norse dragons, the dragons have permeated multiple cultures, so its important to look at the others to see what I can pull. A lot of this stuff is still up to personal interpretation, however, I wanted to look at dragons of a similar theme, that being the more worm like appearance, such as more East Asian depictions of the dragon. China, Japan and Korea all have a longer more worm like look without the presence of wings on them, but all have the 4 legs, with the main changes being in the face. However, the understanding of the dragons can be different between cultures, with Japan having a lot of stories originally found in China, but mostly being the dragons associated with water, such as serpentine creatures. Something that could be drawn in parallel with Jormgunder of Norse mythology.

China has arguably some of them most well known imagery of dragons with various customs revolving around them. They are a very important part of their culture. This was something I started to notice the more I researched into this. They are not just some creature, but have far more status and importance than what they may seem to an outsider. With examples like dragons only being able to be symbolised on clothes worn by the China's Emperor, showing just how much the dragon itself symbolised. This gave me much more of an appreciation of what I was working on, not just another fantasy creature, but something with a great deal of meaning in Norse mythology and around the world, with so many cultures having a dragon in one form or another. Though the style of the Chinese dragon is quite different to what I was envisioning as it has a far more royal and pristine style, with various patterns and ornamental extras often adorning different parts of the dragon, which doesn't really look like the Dark Souls theme we are going for, though it makes sense in the context that these creatures are given the same respect, if not more than royalty.

One of the more interesting and different stories that I found, was the Shahnameh poem from Iran which describes an 80 metre long dragon with no wings. Another similar description which I hadn't heard of and found to be quite interesting with the art work being quite nice, showed the brown dragon breathing fire. I did also look at your more standardised dragons, mostly coming from Europe, but mainly Germany, with the classic winged fire breathing dragon. I wanted to explore different cultures dragon interpretations that align themselves closer to Norse themes. I think doing this certainly informed my overall style and gave me more ideas as I started to design the dragon.

In my exploration of dragons, I looked at more modern media, Smaug from Lord of the Rings and Elden Rings various dragons which have a far more Germanic styling to them with the large wings rather than the more common worm like look I found. These to me are great, but not what I was particularly looking for. Whilst looking for other instances of Norse dragons, I came across Final Fantasies interpretation of Nidhogg. This is probably the worst offender of just taking the name with no interest in the original material. The name being thrown on a typical European dragon and the location of the creature isn't correct either, with it flying around outside. This is the exact thing I want to avoid, as its obvious the designers liked the name and that was about it. Smaug has always been of interest to me, especially with it being a CGI creation. It serves as a great comparison and gives me something to compare the quality of my dragon to. I really liked the way he was animated with the face flaring out with all the various spikes and shaded bone around the face, it adds a lot to the presence of the character and was something that I observed and wanted to incorporate into my designs. Along with the colour scheme, the original Norse drawing of Nidhogg shows a mix of yellows and oranges similar to Smaug, however, I especially liked the way the bony spikes go black as they get to the ends of the face, showing the hardness of the bone where the pigment hasn't quite reached. This was something I wanted to replicate as it can be seen in real lizards skin and helps add authenticity and interest to the character. Also, this is more for later, but the way Smaug was animated was very interesting to me with the dragon canting its head, as it can't see straight ahead, so it has to weave its head around to see. With the research complete, I then moved onto my first quick sketches.



First was the winged version. I just wanted to see what it might look like as I really loved their look of Elden Rings style, but it didn't fit with the look of the original Nidhogg drawing and the research I'd previously done. It was most similar to the European interpretation of a dragon with the wings being a key feature which did not line up with the Norse description of dragons, so something like this was out of the question. I mainly just wanted to see it on paper, just so I had it out of my head. However, I did combine the horns of the figure and the head of Figure 2 to make the head for the dragon, but I wasn't particularly interested in the outcome.
Swiftly moving on after warming up with the first sketch, I did a *vestigial* wing concept where the wings had started to grow but didn't fully develop, which I found interesting but overall, just felt like unneeded detail. I loved the rest of the design with the triangular carapace and sharp nose, like Figure 3, but without the horns. I was trying to make a much more aggressive version of the Unnes style of Norse dragon interpretation with the smooth underbelly of the Japanese dragon. I really liked this concept and also the enormous size of the creature towering over the hero below.
Next, was my personal favourite, the root dragon concept. With Nidhogg being described as chewing on the roots of the world and then being trapped in the roots, I wanted to replicate that more heavily in the design, with the roots growing out through the dragon and since it would be dark underground, the eyes have started to recede and would be more glazed over if I was to texture it, giving a more sinister look. I also really liked the stance of this one, much lower to the ground. When I brought this to the group, this one was very popular with a design mechanic being thought up of the player being able to climb up the roots on the arm to get on top of the dragon, which I thought was a great idea. The roots themselves though could use some work after looking at research I thought it would be better to have them crawling across the dragon rather than theses little shoots coming out of the body like I have here.

Lastly, I wanted to do another concept inspired by the first one I designed, just without the wings and I quite liked the segmented scales and especially the scaly spine running down the middle, but the stance was a little to alert for something that had been stuck in roots for years, so I still preferred the root concept.

Finally for the week, I worked with Jack to express a clearer vision of what the entrance to the boss arena might look like. I did a paint over of one of his screen shots and added more roots to match the theme and to tie everything together, which I thought was far better and gave us a much better understanding, seeing it all chipped away. The only thing I didn't add was even more iconography to the pillars, which is something we would like to have in the final version.


We also started using a Trello board to allocate tasks to each other, as eventhough we are mostly in person, its helpful to have a resource we can go back and use at any time. We colour coded it so we could see who needed to do what. I was in yellow, so had the tasks of sculpting the dragon, finishing the environment paint overs and making the guys to go in the pillars. We will probably go back and refer to this as the weeks go on. We also have are Discord which is our other primary use of collaboration, as it was with last terms project.

### Conclusion

This week has been great for getting everything together and getting a nice collection of research that isn't just research into Norse mythology, but dragons as a whole. I also had some good feedback on the Valkyrie from last week, with it sparking the conversation of the wings potentially being a problem in a 3rd person game.

Next week it's presentations, so I will be getting everything assembled and ready to go so I can clearly present my part of the group project and no doubt me and Jack will also be working on getting the whole presentation ready together.

## Week 3
Figure 1
This week I finalised the dragon design and started drawing it up. I started with the Figure 2 drawing, the entire dragon without the roots first to get a better feel for the shape and then drew over it with the roots. Once that was done, I started adding the colours mostly starting from the head. I went with the orangey colour for the scales but blended it with dark brown reds and purples to add some visual interest. I thought it would be closer to the original Norse drawing of Nidhogg, with a green hue towards the bottom to add some variation to the skin tones and denote harder scales and patches. In the Norse manuscript, it describes the Yggdrasil tree as an ash tree, so I tried to represent the drab green of ash tree roots which I think blends with the overall tone quite nicely. I'm liking how this is coming along so far as its starting to come together and I'm looking forward to starting on Zbrush when it's done.

Figure 2

Also, this week we pitched the piece. We had plenty to show off but also, we realised there was still things that we needed to make to better convey our ideas, like a better idea of the cave as we don't have a blockout of that yet. I discussed with Jack since he liked the design that I'd done last time and he'd rather me have done more of the concept art for the environment since he said I was drawing what he was thinking, so he was happy to let me design more of it. As a result of this I think it would be helpful if I could collaborate with him on an overall block out, then I could do the paint over so we know what assets we need to make.

### Conclusion
This week was mostly taken up by the final concept art piece. I wanted it to really stand out, but also give me a really clear vision of what I'm making. Hopefully, it will be done my Thursday at the latest as I want to get onto zbrushing as with such a large and complex model, this will take some time to complete. I'm also happy with how the presentation turned out with all the group there and plenty of research respectively which is the most important point. We need to make sure we stay as true to the historical evidence as possible. Lastly, for this week we also went out to the Manchester Museum to try and find anything there. Unfortunately, all they had was a pile of Viking coins which was interesting as it showed to us how rare this stuff is and how easy misconceptions around Vikings can come about with so little about them in museums.

## Week 4

First for this week, I started off by finishing the final piece for Nidhogg, which came out looking great and I finished it's head on schedule with it being completed on Tuesday instead of Thursday like I'd originally thought. The colours have all come together nicely. I especially like the different pops of colour in the carapace. From reds to purples, it adds far more visual interest. The main flesh incorporating the green tones on the lower body have really come out great adding shadow and making the skin look a bit more old and worn. I emboldened a lot of stippling to give it that rough leathery look which I think has come out great. Texture was an important part of this piece as there is a lot going on. The roots don't mask the silhouette of the dragon, but conform to the shape, which was an important choice as I don't want him to be able to move with the roots attached.
Once I was done with the normal version, I had a go at adding the fire just to give Elin some ideas for what I had in mind for some VFX with the fire coming out from underneath the scales and a fiery mane coming from the back of the dragon's head which I thought was an interesting look. One little effect that I particularly liked, was the embers coming off the dragon which would be a nice addition as it felt like it would add some extra light to the arena, sort of like the falling petals in the main menu.
I also finished off the paint over for the tunnel for Jack which came out nicely. I'd based it on a 17th century depiction of hell where Nidhogg lives, with the dragon wrapped up in the roots and people stuck in there. According to myth, Nidhogg devours the dead, so I wanted to find a way to include it in the work as a nice thematic link. I discussed with Jack how I could make the pillars with the guys stuck in them and he would make the rest of the room. We could then also re use the guys in the walls for the main boss room as well. We discussed this more and Helena suggested that instead of me making multiple guys to stick in the walls, why not just rig them, pose them and stick them on which was a much easier way as they didn't need to be animated, just re posed. To accomplish this, I will work on these guys and Nidhogg at home, that way I'm not transferring the files back and forth between different versions of Zbrush. The only thing that we might change is less roots on the main walk way, which makes sense and just makes it clearer for the player.
Lastly for this week, I started sculpting Nidhogg himself. I'm still working on the overall body shape and the back scales are more of a place holder for now. Just to give me a better idea of shape, but the head is how I want it, so I started detailing it just to give me something nice to look at and to help inform future modeling decisions. One of the things that I've had to keep in mind as I have been modelling has been the rigging, such as keeping the legs splayed out and the tail straight and I'm still thinking about what I want to do about the jaw, as I want it to open and close it for fire and biting attacks, but I'm still figuring out how that's gonna work.

### Conclusion
Next week, we are going out to a church that has a Nordic stone with animals sculpted into it. With me knowing photogrammetry, I can scan it in so that we can use it in our work and it can be used as a pedestal rock in Jack's lift system which is a really cool addition to have in our work, that adds an extra layer of history and research to it, so I'm looking forward to that. Other than that, next I'm going to be working on Niddhogg more and hopefully getting the proportions finalised, so I can move on to adding more detail.

## Week 5

Starting off this week I made more adjustments to the body of the dragon, slimming it down in places whilst reinforcing muscles. In other areas this really improved the overall silhouette of the dragon with the only thing I might change still being the front claws as they could be a bit more pronounced. With the key forms now well established, I went ahead and started detailing the face which was great to see a part of the model finally starting to come together. I used one of my own pre made eyes just to add some extra temporary detail. I will leave that closer to the end as I still haven't thought about what kind of iris will look best as the horizontal line iris like I have here at the moment adds a more aggressive look, but researching more into dinosaurs, they had more circular irises, so I might try that as well.

I trailed the head down to the inside mouth, which I'm really happy with as it makes it look far more real and the secondary set of teeth drawing from the outside of the mouth was a nice touch that I kept from the early concepts. I also really like how the tongue came out, with all the fold lines it looks really dense and adds more presence to the mouth with it reaching out. I took it into Maya just to see how it would look and I'm really happy as it looks excellent and much nicer than a Zbrush screenshot. I might do that each week just to show the progression of the sculpt.
Lastly, came the most tedious part, detailing the carapace. I managed to duplicate most of them with detail on, but after moving the scales quickly, I lost their detail and they needed to be re sculpted. So, I went over all of them again. That should be the most tedious part of the model complete now, so I can start on the main body and applying scales to really bring out more of the details.


We also went out and did some photogrammetry work and photographed the Nordic pillar which we can now use in our environment. It came out really nicely and even the lighting looks to be alright, but fortunately it will be under a light most of the time so it should look okay. The level of detail in the textures was also really impressive, so it should fit nicely into the environment and bring some true history to the project.



lastly, I worked on the guys that would be trapped in the walls for Jack, only having to make the torso made this a far smoother process and I had the model built, retopologised and Uved in a day and I textured it the next day, so now that's over to him to rig and put into the environment. He was very happy I could get that to him as fast I did.

### Conclusion
Overall, this week has been really productive, going out for the photogrammetry work, getting the environment asset guy complete and the most laborious part of the dragon is finished. It's been a very busy week, but I'm also ready to push on with the dragon as its back to being my main focus. I'm hoping for maybe 2 more weeks tops, then it should be complete, as whilst we were out, I got tones of tree textures which I can turn into Alphas and get the roots done much faster than the over parts as I'm not hand sculpting the detail.

## Week 6


This week I finished the base version of the dragon so that now I have the base version to work on and apply the roots to with the basic forms in place. I looked at dinosaurs and lizards for reference when it came to all the folds in the skin, with some key areas being the folds around the abdomen as that is present on nearly all larger dinosaurs and on iguanas. These were important to get right as they define the main shapes of the model, giving life to the skin so that it actually feels believable that there is muscle under there and actually looks worn. My personal favourite part is the folds on the back feet as it really conveys the weight pressing down on them and the angle at which they are curved. I'm really happy with how he has come out so far, as he's starting to look pretty realistic and is getting close to my concept art.

I also added some poly paint in Zbrush to experiment with some colour schemes. One of the things I really liked was the idea of more patterning as after I looked at so many dinosaurs for reference, I wanted to include that somewhere as it would add another level of interest to the skin. The hard carapace armour is exactly how I want it, with the deeper colour and various shades in between. I'll be modifying it once I take it into Substance, but it gives me a good idea of what I might do.


Lastly, I started adding the roots to the dragon. I'm building out the whole shape first, then I'm going to start breaking the roots so the dragon can still move.

### Conclusion

This has been a very productive week with the dragon getting extremely close to completion and Jack has already got the wall man rigged up and in the scene. it's great to see that it worked. I'm still aiming to have the roots finished for before Thursday's presentation so that I can present the whole dragon finished.

## Week 7
After getting the roots blocked in, I went in and refined them this week by masking out and removing certain chunks so that he could have more of a range of movement rather than being restricted by the roots. I tried to make it look like it they had broken off from different places as the dragon starts to move which I think looks quite effective.


I then decimated the model and sent it over to Jack for him to put in the boss fight arena, which was great to see the dragon in the place it will eventually be. It also gave a much better sense of scale when you could run around the model and really get a feel for the size and what parts you will be seeing the most from the players perspective.

After that I got the roots finished and ready for the presentation, but I still wasn't quite happy how they were too round and lacked detail in comparison to the rest of the model. It was mainly the mid frequency detail. There wasn't a lot going on and there wasn't anywhere for the high frequency detail and textures to bite into. It still looked flat, so I went back and completely overhauled the roots.


I went for a walk after the presentation and found some roots that I really liked. The thin detailed looks and the criss cross nature, made the ground look like it was teaming with roots. This was something I wanted to replicate on the dragon. Having more roots that looked like this, rather than just tubes.


Here is the final model that I'll be taking forward to retopologise next week. I am extremely happy with the model. Its by far the most detailed and accurate model I have produced with some really nice anatomy and detail that really seals the size and weight of the creature. Having so much texture applied in the face. I'm hoping will translate nicely to some really higher resolution scales that should hold up at the players height. Its great to have something that accurately represents the concept art that I'd drawn up and then some with the extra detail I've added. The retopolage is going to be quite a lengthy process, but it really needs it with the finally model being around 100 million polys. I will probably be doing most of the retopo myself as this guy should be animatable so we will need higher resolution in some areas than others, something that zremesher just can't do.

Lastly for the week, we had the presentation which went great with the main feedback for me being to retopo the model and look into how detailed boss creatures should be. We looked into Elden Ring and we think we will aim for 70k which I think is doable. Helena got some feedback saying to make the character look more iconic, so I helped out with adding some potential extras and some colours and she ended up quite liking the colour of the wings, which I thought would make a big difference as having some more pattering on them significantly helps the visual interest.

## Case Study on God of War Raganrocks - Nidhogg



When I was designing my version of Nidhogg, I became aware that Nidhogg also featured in God of War Ragnar and I specifically avoided looking at it until I was finished, so I could see what similarities there were between mine and their version and now looking at it it's quite surprising. The early concepts have a lot more versions with roots which is really interesting to see. They started in the same way I did and without wings. It's really cool to see that we both approached the designs in the same manner with the dragon engulfed by roots, but perhaps more interestingly, they completely changed the look when it came to the final version. This version is completely different from my dragon, but it has 2 legs instead of 4, which is technically more accurate if you're only using the original Norse manuscript with the drawing of Nidhogg, but other than that its quite the deviation from the other looks and is more sea serpent esc. I really like the face and patterning, but some of the earlier concepts are more unique. It's just interesting to see that they followed a similar route to me in terms of design, however, the colour palettes have stayed quite different throughout. We as a group had agreed that we liked the colours in the original manuscript, so I tried replicating them in a realistic manner, whereas their designs have been far more pale.

### Conclusion
This has been a pretty big week with the dragon being finished and the presentations, but overall, I'm on track now with just the retopo being the only time consuming part coming up.

## Week 8

This week has mostly been technical stuff, not really anything visually interesting, but I went about retopologising the dragon using a mix of Quad draw and remesher. I focused in on the body first, concentrating the topology around areas that would require more as they would be bending, like armpits, legs and the tail. This also applied to the large jaw muscles in the mouth that would need to compress when the mouth closed. My aim was 70k polys and my final number was 90k, so I'm quite happy. I potentially could have gone lower, but I wanted to keep the project moving. Once I was happy with that, I moved onto uving, which went relatively smoothly. There are still some issues that I've found, but on the whole it came out great.

Now where I did start running into issues, was the baking process with the high poly details being baked into the model, specifically the high teeth detail being baked into the tongue. After a lot of trouble shooting, I finally found a video describing the same issue which said I needed to make a custom cage for the part which was one, by duplicating the low poly and enlarging it accordingly. Sure enough this worked and you can see the results below left, the fixed version and right how it looked before the custom cage. Now all that's left is to make a cage for every over part as having a custom cage means that you can't use the normal bake slide, so that make take some time, but its worth it to get the model looking crisp.

### Conclusion
This has been a really laborious week as I'm not the biggest fan of the technical parts, but I'm glad I finally got a solution, as I didn't want to have all that sculpting being for nothing if the textures were completely messed up. Next week, I will hopefully have the model textured.

## Week 9
After hours of baking, I finally got it correct after going through what felt like thousands of tutorials. I kept having the same issue with the cage, where it looked like it was just projecting the uv map onto the model at completely random angles which gave me just completely horrible bakes. So, with what I had thought to be a fix to my problem now giving me more problems, I decided to go down the UDIM route, which I hadn't used before. This actually worked incredibly well, but with 10 texture sets, whilst the model looked excellent, I knew it just wouldn't be great inside the game engine, but it did work, which gave me a back up at least, but I went back and tried again without the cage and I found an issue that eventhough I'd colour matched the parts together, they had different names in the uv set editor, so once they were combined, they would lose their uv. This was a simple enough fix, just re name everything in the iv set editor and then finally it worked. I still went back and forth a few times as I would find errors in uvs that would need changing, like the front left hand roots and the back tones, but with those sorted, I could begin texturing. Sticking close to the concept art, I've gone with a nice dark orange texture. The one I used was originally meant for fabric, but it had some nice elements to it, so I stripped it back to just the parts I needed. The height edge dictation, which is what helps the ridges pop so much. The skin so far has been painted in by hand and I'm really liking the way it blends with the earthy tones of the carapace armour.
Also, this week, I started rigging the model which so far is looking excellent and the re topology on the arm joints is really helping, even without weight painting they are folding correctly, so I'm probably going to leave those the way they are. The hard part is going to be the jaw as that is going to need to move with the teeth and the shoulder having a tendency to fold inwards, so that's going to need some work, but the rest is looking great.

### Conclusion
It's been quite a busy week of trouble shooting problems, but it's starting to come together now with the rig and textures in production. I'm quite happy with how they are both turning out.

## Week 10




This week I fully retextured the dragon and I'm extremely happy with how it came out looking. All that time spent sculpting the details has real paid off as it's come together to make a really impressive character that feels quite realistic considering what it is. I chose a fairly earthy colour palette since the creature has been stuck underground, but I still kept pockets of colour. I focused in on purples, blues and greens, primarily in areas where the skin will be moving and getting more roughed up. I think this really improved the paint job and helped it feel alive. I kept referring to real life references like lizards to look at where the colours should go, with a common theme being light on the bottom and dark colours on top. I think this helps with the realism as it is accurate to the closest real approximation of this creature.

The longest part was hand painting in the denser scales, the lower arms, shoulders and hind legs, but I think it adds an extra layer of detail to the character and I specifically chose to make them more glossy as opposed to the rougher skin to add some extra contrast to the textures and make it fell more natural overall, rather than just one homogeneous texture. The roots are fairly simple with just a wood texture. I edited it to have more green in it, then when everything was painted, I went over the whole model with various dirt washes to make it more weathered and natural, starting with the lighter dust and gradually building it up, keeping it rather matt as this should be dried on, then going darker with more recent wet mud with more of a glossy texture, mostly focused around the feet and other areas that would have ground contact. Overall, I'm incredibly happy with how this came out looking. I think it does the original sculpt justice and certainly makes the problems from the weeks before, worth it.

Also, this week I've been working on rigging the jaw which is working aside from one poly that refuses to move, so I need to look into getting that working, but other than that the rig is going well.

### Conclusion
Another great week of progress, with the main thing now being the rigging which isn't something I particularly like or have a great understanding of, but I want to try my best to try get him moving and animating to at least get it into some interesting poses for render shots, so there not so static.

## Week 11


Another big week and I'm very close to the end now with the rig being practically finished and just some smaller adjustments needing to be made with controllers and things like that, but he really does pose up nicely and move extremely fluidly after a week of weight painting. The only thing I could just not get working has still been the jaw as at some point I adjusted the weight joints position and it broke every time I reset the pose on the dragon, which obviously wouldn't work, so I ended up deleting the joint, but the rest works perfectly with the arms and legs being the 2 stand out features. The retopologise just paying off massively giving me a really convincing arm bend. As I've gone through this, I feel like my knowledge of rigging has expanded massively, with one of the biggest things I've learned being able to move the joints and paint as I go, then resetting them afterwards. This helped massively in understanding the position of the bone and where the mesh should be and in addition to that, understanding blending the influences together to get a smooth transition between the joints, especially in places like the tongue.


I also started rendering out the latest shots of the dragon, before getting it into Unreal and with it now being poseable, it's incredible to see it moving and finally coming to life after weeks of work.

### Conclusion
Really getting there now, so I'll be able to help out with whatever needs finishing, but hopefully moving it from Maya to Unreal should not be too painful.

## Week 12


This week I essentially completed my part of the project with the dragon being finished and in engine. He can be posed up nicely and Jack messed about with the rig and was pleased with the range of motion that I'd managed to get out of the dragon. We just both wished we could have got the jaw working. Once we had it in the world and all lit correctly, I was extremely happy with how it came out. I asked if we could light the room with a blueish hue as I wanted the purples and blues in the skin to really pop out, whilst also subduing the overall colour palette of the dragon, toning down his bright points and subduing him more into his environment. The lights also helped to show off the different textures and surfaces, especially the scales on the skin which really stand out with the roughness of the skin and the shininess of the larger scales. It's great to see the dragon finally working after weeks of work and I'm just happy to finally have it finished.



Once the dragon was finished, that left me open to get to work on anything that needed finishing for the group. One of those being the statue that would be taking you to the cave. I decided to make the statue Hel, the goddess of the underworld. Since Hell the place is said to be beneath the world tree in mythology, it all links up nicely. Her attire was to be in keeping, this being traditional 10th century Norse clothing, thus I went for this baggy clothing and a long tunic look. Using some tall boots that I liked from looking at reference. This was in keeping with the theme of the character. She wears a large hood obscuring her face, leaving only a partial view of her skull visible.

With the size of the statue, it certainly is imposing and the spear gives an added bit of height to the character. The player will climb into her hand where a cut scene will play and the player is then lifted into the air and teleported into the cave, still in the statue's hand and then lowered back down. I had originally thought to texture her like a typical stone statue, but as time went on, I wanted to make her stand out more than just another rock, so instead went with this obsidian look, with this golden brass in the cracks, almost like it was at one time a prestigious statue, made by the gods, but it has become corrupted over time. It just adds to the evil aesthetic that I was going for. This sculpt only took a day from start to finish, so it was quite efficient to get done. I have already had it in Engine and there are just a few changes I want to make, mostly concerning the weathering, where I want to add a little more dried dirt just to take the shine off a bit more.


Lastly for the week, I built the roots for the Boss arena which should help finish the area.

### Conclusion

## Week 13


This week I have pretty much finished everything that I realistically can do. I added more dirt to the statue so that it fits in with the world a lot better. This really helped take the shine off it, which was far too noticeable and took away a lot of weight away from the piece, whereas this conveys size and scale far better. It feels larger, as the dirt has settled on it and the grime has been washed down the statue with rain leading to this dusty, grimy filter, but some spots still shine through, which looks great with the contrasting textures.


Jack also got it into engine and its looking great with the fireflies around the hands giving a slight indication of its power. This is the version the player would find inside the cave rather than outside, so this is after being teleported and the intimidating silhouette is in full display, with the hood casting a menacing shadow across the face, but still showing the jaw.

With everything pretty much tying up for me now, I wanted to reflect on this project as it's my last one and easily my best. The technical work that I put into it has far surpassed anything I could have thought I would have made when I started in first year. From my 3D work with my time based game art plane to my concept art with my samurai character for 2d and experimental, it's great to be able to look back and be really happy with the progress I've made. When I started, I didn't have any means of digital drawing, nor had I ever studied anatomy, so drawing a character was difficult to begin with, with lots of practice of drawing characters over and over again. Zbrush really unlocked 3d for me, with it having a more hands on approach to modelling than Maya did, which I never liked and still don't, but Zbrush was far more approachable, eventhough I still needed lots of practice to create what I wanted and then to get the character out of Zbrush was a whole different ordeal which I had to learn.

Third year has been the year I have learnt the most by far. Actually taking my models all the way through the games art pipeline and getting a full understanding of the workflow. The dragon being the greatest example of this, from concept art, to sculpting, to retopology, UVing, texturing and even rigging, it's been a long journey to get it finished, but I could not be more happy with the progress I've made.

Reflecting on this project specifically. I'd wanted to make some form of creature as I've always been a big fan of them. Creatures like Predator and the Elites from Halo being some of my favourites from games and film. Me and Jack had been discussing making some sort of boss arena after we'd completed the last project. Originally, I'd wanted to create a bipedal lizard character, somewhat akin to Alien or the Death Claw from Fallout, but once we got the brief and I started doing research into Norse creatures, Nidhogg quickly became the clear winner for me. I'd never done a quadruped before and I was very excited to design it, with some of my early concepts being winged dragons, but as my research continued and I looked at various other cultures interpretations of dragons, it became very apparent that the wings were much more of a western design and it would be far more accurate to model the dragon without wings. I think this was a great idea not only from an accuracy and research perspective, but also from a technical pont of view as I would have had to model and then rig these huge wings that would have been far more complicated than what I've already done.

I was really happy with how the sculpting process went with the detail being near perfect to what I'd wanted to capture, with all the scales, skin folds and detail to make it a truly brilliant design that really stands out and looks believable which was a big focus for me. I really wanted to convey that this thing is real and didn't have any noticeable mistakes whether that be in anatomy or texturing.

The rigging was also massively important for me as I'd wanted to get him posable to at least bring him to life, a bit more than just having him stood there and this was a task on its own to get right with the weight painting being particularly difficult across all the roots and trying not to bend them too much for fear of ruining the illusion of the roots themselves. The actual limbs of the dragon were a particularly difficult task, getting them to conform with the folds I'd sculpted especially round the legs, as those can be particularly tricky, but also in the elbow joint and the knees. I had to make sure they deformed correctly for both the weight painting and the retopolagy. When it came to group work, we worked very efficiently with most of us being there in person, even over Easter. We did record larger group meetings that were about every month which Jack recorded and will be submitting. Unfortunately, I don't think they are ready at the time that I'm submitting this as he has an extension. I do have a few screen shots of some of our conversations when I'd asked for feedback on some of my early designs.


Even as I'm submitting this, Jack was showing me the dragon in the Home screen of the game and eventhough the lighting isn't final, it's great to see it come together in the the game and be featured on the loading screen, which looks great and I have a great sense of pride to have contributed to make this concept come to life.

Finally I have really enjoyed this project, even with how much time has gone into it and some of the problems I've had with it. Working together to make it has been excellent and has really helped keep me going with seeing everything come together as I worked on the project. I only wish I could submit this with everything finished, but as pretty much everyone but me needed an extension, that will be coming later, though I hope you can still see the collaboration work that has gone into this project.

Time Based Game Art plane

2d and experimental

## Bibliography

#### Websites

Aga Khan Museum (Date Unknown) *Rustam kills the Dragon* [Online] [Date Accessed 11 Feb 2024]
https://agakhanmuseum.org/collection/artifact/rustam-kills-the-dragon-akm100

The Collector (7 Nov 2023) *Dragons across cultures and mythologies* [Online] [Date Accessed 27 Apr 2024]
https://www.thecollector.com/dragons-across-cultures-mythologies/

CLI (10 Dec 2023) *Chinese Dragons: Their Types, History, and Significance* [Online][Date Accessed 27 Apr 2024]
https://studycli.org/chinese-culture/chinese-dragons/

Art Station (2 months ago) *Nidhogg Concept Art by Stephen Oakley* [Online] [Date Accessed 27th Apr 2024]
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/g0lBOQ

Viking Society Web Publications (Unknown) *Prose Edda*[Online][Date Accessed 3 March 2024]
http://vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/EDDArestr.pdf

#### Books

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

York Archeological Trust (Date unknown) *Jorvik Viking Centre Guide* Unknown Publisher.

BBC books (2011) *Planet Dinosaur* London: Ebury Publishing.

Dorling Kindersley Limited and Editions Gallimard (first published 1989) *Eye Witness Dinosaur*. London: Dorling Kindersley Limited.

Marks and Spencer (2008) *Dinosaur*. London: Roar Publishing