Showreel 2nd draft/ Asset Sheet/ The future

For this week I have been working on 3 different main aims that I wanted done for this week, these been the 2nd draft of my showreel which includes moviedump, an asset and webiste sheet and also I wanted to write about what I think the future holds for me and How Im Going to get there.

Website/Asset Sheets

I am going to start off with the website and assets sheets. In my previous blog update I talked about this in detail so I wont bore you with the same information, basically I have come to the conclusion that the environment sheets are pretty good for the website and also presenting as beauty shots but when looking back on the asset sheet i actually came to the conclusion that it didn't work really well. I wanted more for the assets, i wanted you to be able to understand how the asset would work in game so i created a new asset sheert that I think works a lot better. In this sheet you also see the wire frame, bare in mind the asset on the left of the picture will be textured and wont be plain.

 

As you can see i have kep the environment sheet the same but I have changed the asset sheet so that it allows me to put a description for the asset. I like the asset sheet a lot more than the other sheet I did and I think that when I heard feeback and what I could chnage to make that better it will then be good enough for the website.

2nd Showreel Draft

For the showreel I knew what I wanted and for the past few weeks I have been getting a lot closer to reachig my goal, My first showreel draft didnt feature any fading techniques, no moviedump and also no text, so for this second draft showreel I have used all of these so i can see where needs improving and what works at the moment. I knew my showreel would feature more environments than props and that was even if there was props, but I managed to fit in one draft turntable in UDK which I am still unsure about. I am still debating whether to have any turntables in my showreel and just have environments and leave all the props for my website, but I will come to that bridge when I cross it.

I was looking around the 2.30 mark for my showreel and it around the low 2 minute mark at the moment with just screenshots of my 3rd environment so that will push the final time up to towards my target. The only thing else I would like to incoparate into my finished showreel would be a working turntable in UDK if i use props. I am currently working on this at the minute and it looks promising.

I think for my 2nd showreel draft I am getting closer to my main goal, I would like to be able to put more depth into the fading with maybe a different filter but I have time for that when I going to be finishing it. I think for the time being I am happy with it and would like to get people opinions on which parts I should change and also which parts work well within the showreel.

http://vimeo.com/17932128

Draft showreel 2 from David Keenan on Vimeo.

The video above isn,t the highest quality but if you click the link you can see a better quality version which shows the fading in more detail. 

The Future

Area Of Study

For the past 2 years I have been working out what I want to do in the future in the games industry. I've learnt this year for definite that I want to be an environment artist. I feel like this area excites me and makes me want to work more and see the finished model, I also like starting the work and seeing how the end product comes out. There is also the fact that when I do props I feel like you don't get enough time in the games industry to do it to the best of your standard, where as an environment does take time so you get the opportunity to work with other great modelers and put more detail in to the work.

How to get there

At the beginning of the year I was actually really concerned about finding a job in the industry because my skills weren't up to scratch and I didn't feel confident in getting work done in  time. It was only a few weeks back i was just looking on the internet and what skills are needed to get into the industry as an environment artist. When going through the bullet points there was only 2 areas in which I didn't feel very confident about and which I am working on at the moment, one was lighting and effects which I am currently doing in 3 environments this year and I am learning as I go along, the other one been having some sort of knowledge of sculpting software. I know how to use mud box very basically and haven't really used z brush so im hoping that I can gain more skills in this area by the end of the year.

To say i've still got 4 months left of university Im feeling really confident about the skill set I have at the moment and Im hoping to add to this skill set so Im set for the future.

Promoting My Work

Of course to get into the games industry I have to be able to promote and show off my work. I intend to do this by setting up a website that will show off my showreel and all my other work within the gallery section. Doing a website is a great way of showing off my work because I can send employers this so they can get an idea of the work I am capable of before they ask me for an interview.

I think over the year I will keep looking at how I am going to lay my website out and also the best way to present my work, I will be doing this by looking at other peoples portfolio websites and jotting down my own ideas. There are many different ways of presenting your portfolio but setting up a website is the simplest way and also the easiest I think.

Conclusion

So I think the question to ask is what has this module taught me about the games industry and how do I get a job in my specific area. Well on a whole this module has taught me that to be an environment artist you can't just be good at modeling buildings, an environment artist skill set has to very vast which includes everything from sculpting to lighting. I didn't know that this was needed at the beginning of the year but after doing reserach I now do. I have also learnt that when you get the time away from work I should try to learn something that I have yet to learn, a good example of this was for a project I am currently doing which required dust particles, I took time out to learn how to do this and now I can use this technique again be it in the games industry or on another project.

I have also learnt that spreading my ideas out and getting on with them helps me out in the long run, by this I mean before this year I was only interested in doing run down environments because I liked the idea of been able to grime up the environment. In this year I am doing 3 environments all of them requiring different kinds of texturing and only one of them been a run down environment. I think this helps me considerably because i now know more than just box modelling.

As for the question how do I get to the industry, well If I carry on working like I am doing and start to work on the areas that I am not so good on I believe I should be good enough at the end of the year to look for the job I want. I hope that in 4 months time I am writing that the skills I wasn't so good at I am now getting really good with the software and I am feeling confident in getting a job

Asset and Environment presentations

When looking into how to present my work on my website I had a load of different ideas, some being realistic and others not so, but what I did notice when looking at other peoples online portfolios was everything was simple yet it worked. When i create my website I want both props and my environments to be shown on screenshots as well as my showreel.

Of course in my showreel you will be able to see more detail in the environments because most of my time has been dedicated to my environments, where as the props don't really get long enough., because of this I was having the problem how to present everything in a even manner.

To solve this problem I started looking at other environment artists online portfolio's to see hoe they had overcome the problems I was having. I noticed straight away how they had solved the problem and by doing this give me time to put different ideas in to my portfolio. What the artists did on there website was the main page, which is the page you see when the link is clicked presented the showreel, which I thought was really good. There was also the option for you to click the links at the top of the webpage which then linked you to screenshots of work that may have or may not have been shown in the showreel, either way you got to see the props and environments on there own in more detail.

http://www.jaredskold.com/ did this really well in his showreel because his showreel I think was very outdated, I think that his showreel is what got him jobs in the industry and since then he had worked on different games whcih he showed within the environment/prop link. I really liked this idea of putting every piece of work you think is good enough to go on your website within the gallery side of things because it allows people to look at the models and Maps in more detail than it does within the showreel video.

This then left me with the question how do i present my screenshots on my website gallery. When doing some research I noticed everyone had the basics down E.G. there name and contact deatils, but what they never had was what software they used. This for me was shocking because I like to know where the models are rendered.

They also presented screenshots of there assets differently to there environments, which made sense because for the assets you also have to present the maps. After a lot of research into how to present my work I took all the information and made my own asset and environment sheet.

These are not final but I haven't seen any like this before and I think they can work well within the gallery on the website.

 

 

I have used the same template to present my work but obviously for the assets I have used different angles so other people get to see the model in more detail. The prop models will be textured when there finished and they will probabily been on some sort of structure so you can see the shadows. As for the environments well the gallery side of theings will basically contain beauty shots, the rest either been on fly through video or within my showreel.

None of these templates are for certaina and are just drafts, I would like comments on what good and what you think i should change to give the shots better quality.

Moviedump

My main for this week was to get moviedump working so that over christmas i can focus on putting togther a better showreel. I was still having trouble exporting the video out because every time i loaded the shortcut the game would crash. After searching around on the net and asking freinds I worked out the problem.

Matthew renshaw tolded me that for it to not crash I had to put a player spawn down which I then did and finally got movie dump working. My aim was to get the exported video working so i could put in on to this blog too show you the quality difference.

I want the finished version to be something like this except I want it to start off with no textures and start in wireframe, then as it gets further into the video have the textures fade in slowly to see how it has deveopled.

I will be doing this with all of my environments, this video is just a test to see if moviedump worked and also to see the qaulity. I am hoping for next week to update my showreel with moviedump added to it rather than the fraps i used in the first showreel.

Showreel Draft1

This week I have been working on turntables and getting my first draft done of my showreel. By first draft I mean first draft, I still havent been able to work out how to do dumpmovie because our tutor was ill last week so I am currently still using cam studio to capture my videos and I having a lot of issues doing what I actually want in my showreel.

In my showreel I will have 3 environments and they are all quite big, I want to show them off the there full potential and by doing this I though panning through the level would be a good idea. I know dumpmovie is the way to get the video out which isnt the problem. I want to be able to fade from just the model into wireframe them fade the textures over the model which is really simple In maya, but I want this all in UDK. I havent come across the method on how to do this just yet but I know it's possible because of showreel's I have previously seen.


This is my first draft of at least 5 becasue I want my finished showreel to look like i have imagined. In this showreel I have faded out the model into wireframe using maya because no methods found yet in UDK, I have then faded them into a pan through in UDK which isnt brilliant but you get the idea.

This is why I want to be able to fade models into wireframes then into textures in UDK becasue the camera is at the same angle and same height, so everything would fit nicely together. Also the music in the background isnt what im having in my showreel, its just give the showreel some life.

As you can see from the video above I have had to inprovise around areas where I couldnt get certain methods to work. I am hoping for next week I have dumpmovie fully working then i can carry on working on my showreel.

If the video is unclear then the better res one is here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQI7T_j_lBY