###### tags: 'Uni Work' 'Games art'
# <21302099>_J5Z1020_journal
[Public HackMD Link](https://hackmd.io/@v3Yb5OcTQ5CIYWJ-IjUjNQ/ry7v56cGi)
### Character and Environment Art (J5Z1020)
### Games Art BA(HONS) L5
### Jack Furlonger

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## Week One (Research)
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### Initial Secondary Environment Research

Initially, I looked at various environments to get a general idea of what theme/genre I wanted to go with for my world. I thought about various types of wide-scale cities from various games such as The Division, Stray, Cyberpunk 2077 & other sources. For the general vibe of my city's ludotopia, I am leaning more towards an abandoned setting. I took a look at DEUS EX, Ghost Runner, Stray & segments of WatchDogs along with a plethora of other titles as they utilise segments of a cyberpunk worlds formula such as the blending of cultures & focus on neon lights in dark-lit environments that really drive home an amazing aesthetic.

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### Initial Secondary Character research

For my character research, I focused more on a gothic theme to match the dark & neon city I had in mind. I mainly focused on this for the clothing style, as I would like this city to be moody yet vibrant and complex in design. The characters need to match that without becoming too dark in tone. I looked at various iterations of stylized characters with a bit more of a fantasy twist as I wasn't quite sure if I wanted my world to be grounded in fantasy or reality. I even took a deeper look into demon hunters & more modern characters to see what may fit into my environment where I can then look at applying my own twists to the elements that are commonly used between them.

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### Primary Environment Research

Whilst It may not directly correlate to the theme I have in mind, getting a look at some of the more modern unique building designs around Manchester in person allows me to look at realistic shapes that I could use to help form aspects of my city. I tried to get a decent variety of buildings within a small radius of the city to see how they can all connect together seamlessly. This along with 360 videos I took of some open spaces to see how the city could be modified to fit gameplay will help me lay out the initial blocking-out process of my environment.

- [Open Environment](https://youtu.be/hRzUCM-9dxY)
- [Open Environment 2](https://youtube.com/shorts/QUVxpJ-tlmA)
- [Tower Building](https://youtube.com/shorts/PgHvXr0ThmU)
- [Tower Building 2](https://youtu.be/ujcO42iEEgE)
- [Water Way](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGsZ5bbA2pQ&ab_channel=ItsJackLads)
- [Water Way 2](https://youtube.com/shorts/-uZqbLB59VY)

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### Thematic Research


At first, I leant fully into the fantasy side of things taking inspiration from games such as Ghostbusters & Lost in random but after taking into consideration how long it would take me to develop this style in 3D whilst working on my other project. I decided to simplify things by heading back to a more modern-day city. Doing this allowed for more simplified shapes & modern-day architecture is a lot more simple. Whilst not as fun and unique, it was required for my workflow & was something I had to take into consideration when managing my time.

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### Blockout Research

Taking a look at various blockouts for popular games & for this year's blocktober community event helped with providing me insight into the various methods people utilise when creating their level layouts. Blocking out environments is key for artists and level designers as it gives them an easy way of effective communication between departments. A lot of more competitive games require plenty of balance work & so having the level design team block out a layout before handing it over to an art department to create finalised assets gives the art team a great guide on how to design the world without affecting balance and player's gameplay.

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### Metropolitan & Ludotopia Research

I did a little bit of research on Ludotopias and found a great book by Espen Aarseth and Stephan Günzel called "Spaces, Places and Territories in Computer Games" The book discusses the understanding of how spatiality affects play and players & talks a lot about spacial theory in your environments & how games try to keep the player moving. The book highlights various games for recommendation such as Minecraft, Fallout 3, STALKER & even talks about Pokemon go and how they utilise the real world as their environment mapping, rather than limit themselves to a built world.

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### Sculpting in Zbrush - Week 1

During this week we took the time to learn how to sculpt a realistic nose. I've never been trained in anatomy before so I took some extra time to go back and revisit this to try to smoothen it up a little bit.

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### Lore & World Building

This city is built in a more future age world. Technical creatures & ai driven robots are commonly found but rare within the vast populous of this new world which is comprised mainly of dust and empty spaces, we are focusing down on a small city left by the people who once called it home. Abandoned by its people due to the overpopulation of AI-based organisms. We would explore in more detail what may have caused the AI uprising throughout the game's story & by exploring abandoned cities such as the one we are working on our main playable character will learn why they are the last human alive.

The city is dark & desolate, yet still oddly powered by its power station, and has very little to offer in terms of protection for its people. You could wander the wasteland-like streets hearing nothing but the wind whilst searching remnants of lives long forgotten.

As for our main character. They are a hunter of sorts born into this world with no recollection of their parents. He arrived at this city looking for answers but perhaps all that awaits him are problems.

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### Game Concept

To create an environment, I must first know the type of gameplay that may go on within it. I imagine the game to be some form of survival horror akin to the early Resident Evil series (RE-2 & RE-3 Style). Gameplay would be rather slow & would focus on exploration and puzzle solving whilst an ever-existing threat keeps you on your toes such as Outdated AI robots that act similarly to zombies along with various other AI-driven creatures.

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### Week One Review

For this week, I took the research a little slow as I got back into the process of university projects, so there is not as much here as I would like to have displayed. What I was able to get done within the time, however, I am happy with. I was able to get out and expand my library of primary references for use in this project and later ones, along with being able to practice my ability to block out environments. I spent the majority of the week trying to decide on the theme of my city as I jumped between ideas constantly. Starting as a ruined, super modern city that later transformed into a post-apocalyptic concept was where I had initially set my tone, but later I bounced into a pirate theme before finally settling on this dark cyberpunk city described in my lore & world-building segment. This mainly came about because I've been playing a lot of resident evil games as of late & have been drawn into the dark atmosphere of their world. I also enjoy a good dark game in general & which is the direction I am most interested in taking this project in.

For next week I really need to get focused and start to prioritise my tasks in a more orderly fashion to bring my pace back up as this prior week was very slow and all over the place. Once I get my idea put into motion I believe that things with slowly smoothen out bit by bit.

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## Week Two (Expanded Research & Testing)
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### Concentrated Environment Research

I did a bit of research on dark cities this week to get the general vibe I wanted to design around. I focused a lot on games such as call of duty's zombies' mode & we happy few as they gave off the creepy atmosphere I am aiming to achieve with this environment.

Focusing in on building designs in already existing games I wanted to make building my city as simple as possible so I have decided to focus down on making every aspect of my city modular. Meaning different doors, floors, wall decorations & so on will be able to be used anywhere. Doing this allows me to get the maximum value out of my time when designing buildings as the more I create the more I will find I already have assets already created for that structure from previous modelling sessions.

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### Concentrated Character Research & Development

I spent a little time taking a look at the cyberpunk aesthetic when it comes to clothing & it took me down a rabbit hole of tech wear clothing that I could potentially utilise on my character.

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### Zbrush Development - Week 2 (3D Anatomy Experimentation & Research)

I spent today researching anatomy & doing some more in-class sculpting practice utilising ZBrush. My face looks more like Michael Myers than anything at the moment & I hope to improve upon it in upcoming sessions.

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### Blockout Testing

With very little experience in creating a block out, I decided it would be best to get started by just simply trying to create something. My first attempt at a cityscape focused on a high above-the-ground style of a city akin to mirrors edge but I found this block out to be very complicated and hard to work with due to how I modelled it. During the block-out process, I placed down markers for items such as trees using default maya prefab assets along with the introduction of a human model for scale.

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### Week Two Review
This week was quite quiet for me. I focused more on other projects and my personal life so there is very little to say. This week was rather casual and was more built around me spending time understanding anatomy and finding a block out method that would suit my style.

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## Week Three (Early Conception)
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### ZBrush Skills Development - Week 3

Utilising Ash's class sessions on sculpting in ZBrush I worked over the course of a few sessions staying back late to try my best to create a realistic head sculpt. I utilised a real-life skull to help with the initial shape for this & whilst It's not perfect it is a lot better than my original creation. It's very hard to acquire time to practice sculpting as I don't have access to Zbrush at home & classrooms are usually booked out fully but I have been making the most of the time I have to get progress done. Due to my lack of training & practice with Anatomy, I find it extremely difficult to sculpt realistic characters. I feel I've gained a good enough understanding to make stylised and fantasy characters in ZBrush however!

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### Initial Environment Blockout

My initial environment design was planned to be in a gulch but due to finding rocks a bit too complicated I opted to work on another blockout following this that was a little bit flatter for ease of creation. Though I did love this design and utilised EU5 free assets to help design the initial plan, It just wasn't going to happen in a reasonable amount of time.

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### Initial Character Concept (detailed sketches)

I spent the better half of today focusing on the character I wanted to have a match with my city. For his design, I reviewed elements of the clothing & city theme previously researched to try to create some form of fitting blend that I felt worked well within my world. Usually, I would have done more iterations on this but I developed this character during a class session and his iterations came in the form of his development as over time I removed and replaced parts of his attire until I was happy with his final look. Due to the tools available in class, I didn't really have the option to record this process but It created an end result I was rather happy with design-wise. I decided to give him the usual hunter aesthetic by giving him a hood & since a lot of cyberpunk fashion tends to include mechanical parts & masks I tried to blend them into his suit. The entire concept of his clothing is made to be as practical as possible. Tighter clothing is made to reduce the chance of being snagged on the environment & designed to reduce interference with body movement. I came up with the idea of giving him a slight disability by replacing one of his arms with a bionic/robotic replacement. I left this in as an alternate option as I liked both designs and could not pick between which of the two I liked more.

Sadly, however, I have come to terms with not being able to sculpt him in ZBrush. The lack of having access to the tools at home has made it impossible for me to get the hours of practice I need in to achieve this & with classrooms that have tablets with ZBrush available being always fully booked out It has been hard to find sessions where I can come in and work. I managed to get into some of the first-year sessions, thanks to a few friends and Adam but this did not give me enough time to finish off anything of value when it comes to my model so I have decided to leave my character where it is at this stage and focus more on environments to finish the project up as I can access the tools required to finish the other portion of this project.

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## Week Four (Focus On Environments)
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### Zbrush Session (Skulls)

Entering into week four we had skull anatomy practice & thanks to my previous sculpting utilising the skull in a prior session I've had a little practice with developing a good shape. I spent approximately 4 hours on this which is the fastest I've been able to produce something of this high quality using ZBrush. I made efforts to separate the bottom jaw from the rest of the head to allow for animation (even though not needed)
and spent a lot of time utilising the dam standard & smoothing brushes to refine the shapes & details around the jaw and eyes. This session really focused on my use of the move tool to form the skull shape a lot faster than I was originally doing it & as a result, it also helped me to create a more realistic head sculpt.

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### Environment Blockout (Stage 2)
After taking some time to review my previous block out I decided to refine it a little bit more than what I had previously. The last block out would have been ten times the work than what was actually required and would have eaten into the time of my other projects. So after some careful thought, I managed to simplify the layout by removing a lot of the more natural structures and overall making the block out more city-like by design. As shown in the images above I set a pre-installed human asset to the scale of 5ft 9 and used him as a reference when planning the sizes of any structures around him which allowed me to keep the city very close to a 1:1 scale without making things too complicated.

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## Week 5 (Focus On Environments part 2)
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### Building development

After deciding that my last blockout would be the final, I decided to put more work into developing the unique shapes of buildings that would define my street. These were planned to be a way to break up the more "copy & pasted/reused" assets I had initially planned to slot between them as filler buildings. These block-out models were not exactly the best as they were made in a rush and did not have any form of good topology. Essentially these ended up just being placeholders for what might go there later but due to events affecting my personal life, I would later have to shrink the scale of my project down once again to accommodate for my lack of available time.


For my first fully designed asset, I wanted to start with something fun and simple. With a cyberpunk city being such a huge clash of cultures I decided a Japanese style of vending machine would be a fun little detail I could utilise in decorating my world. For this, I decided to not reference any in real-life examples of vending machines. I probably should have but I wanted to have fun with this asset since it was my first and decided to allow myself full creative control using only what I could remember. The vending machines themselves turned out great. I drew up some small cartoon sketches of my own characters to help decorate them a little bit & give each machine its own theme. I wanted to squeeze as much modularity out of these as possible, hence why there are three of them. It allowed for me to mix up the order when I place multiple together in a confined space & I even went as far as making the bottles inside the machines modular. The bottles can be taken out of the machines to be displayed on the ground around them, and they can be re-ordered within the machines so no two machines look the same & I just found this a lot of fun to have a few minor little changes that made each machine unique from the rest.

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### Week 5 Review

During this week a lot in my personal life changed & it required me to take a lot of time away from working just to focus on other things. Whilst this isn't an excuse for the lack of work done this week, it did affect what I have been able to get done. I made the most of what I was able to have time to work on however & I am quite happy with the outcome of both my block out & the finalised vending machines I created to use in my world. Coming back to this now I realise that even my current block out may be a bit much and require some reductions in size as my ambitions where too high for this current time frame but I imagine I can come up with a great solution after putting some though into it.

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## Week 6 focuses on finishing environments

Whilst there were many weeks of work during this project, I didn't really have the chance to work during all of them that's why entering into "week 6" of work we are now looking at trying to finalise my city in a way that makes it look the best it possibly can!

To start of this week I set out on creating one modular building that could be utilised to create as much of the city as I needed to make up for the lost time. Every aspect of this had to be repeatable so I took this into consideration when putting together each element. Signs, doors, windows and pretty much any section of this building could be removed and placed somewhere else. Utilising a tier system I made the heights of the building adjustable also giving me the option of variation in height. Modelling the building was rather simple but as per usual UV mapping took up a lot of my time as I have never had to UV map a model that was comprised of this many parts that had to fit together. Matching up texel density & texture positions took a lot of time to give the buildings the best look they could possibly have when starting to design them in substance painter.


After finally being able to get all of the UV maps into a good condition for use, I started the process of moving everything over to unity. I had plans to try to make the city look the best it could & so I wanted to utilise the VFX and post processing to help with this. After laying out some buildings in somewhat of a random but organised fashion to resemble a similar shape to my planned block out I realised this was a good alternative to making multiple buildings in the first place so I got to work making textures for them including variations of sign art that utilised a mix of new and old assets as references to previous projects to help give the city some life & colour.


Following the process of laying out and texturing my city, I applied some simple vfx & post processing to my environment along with a better skybox to fit the time of day I was looking for. I placed it in a temporary floor & moved around a few more buildings to help make the area feel much more like a playable space where some action could take place. I remembered to add reflection probes which I almost missed out on using and tried to make sure that the post-processing effects had a perfect colour balance for the time of night I wanted.


Following the post-processing process, I went back and designed a custom floor utilising the Mash tool in Maya to set up a nice pattern design which I found really brought the city together. This with some applied fog particles & adjustments to my bloom and emission parameters brought my world into somewhat of a final state I was happy with. If I had more time I would maybe add a few more building shapes & create a few extra sign textures to reduce that duplicated building effect but even whilst utilising only one building design, thanks to its modularity I was able to make this section of the city feel pretty good.


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### Final Project Review

Looking back over this project there is a lot that went wrong, unfortunately. My life took a bit of a downward spiral which forced me into a position where working wasn't really an option. I feel that due to this the scope of my project was constantly being dragged down from what It could have been and with the lack of tools such as Zbrush I was really forced into doing as much as I could with the environment to compensate. Though with what time I had to work I am pretty happy with the overall end product of both my character concept & my environment design. They are both definitely not perfect and there are elements I'd like to go back over if I had to chance to clean up but that isn't possible at this time. I made the best that I could on this project and learnt a lot about ZBrush and being able to create modular buildings for use in wide-scale projects that I hope to put to use in later projects. I'm looking forward to giving zbrush a proper attempt when there is more space available to use it as I don't have the financial ability to pay for software ontop of my living costs & university fees right now. Either way, This was a lot of fun to work on though I feel quite overworked with doing three projects at once & Now I'm happy to have finally handed in something I can be semi-proud of.

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