Eagles Rest

The time has come to reveal my first project for the new portfolio, Eagles Rest. For a long time now I have wanted to create a modular, medieval settlement environment and I believe now is as good of a time as any. Originally the idea was to create a small town environment, using as few tiling textures as possible, this sounds great but not quite challenging enough and not something that would stand out in a portfolio. After stumbling across a fantastic concept from Fable 2 (see the main image in the 'Location/Setting image below), I knew I had to use it as a major influence in the project. I will use this as a main layout but I will change certain aspects in order to fit with this project. So after some thought I have come up with a short back story to help with the planning of the settlement:

Settlers searching for a new home stumble across an isolated piece of land overlooked by, what they believe to be, an ancient statue of an eagle. Driven by their belief in their eagle God, they decided this is to be their new home.

In the past I have jumped into a project too fast, without careful planning and style guides but this is a new start! Inspired by some fantastic members on Polycount (www.polycount.com is a fantastic forum for digital artists!) I have included four starting images which briefly outline key elements of this project. I plan to create a few more of these pages (which I hope to upload in the next few days) but the two next biggest elements are a top down map of the area and then a 3D block out to properly plan the settlement out.

Thanks for reading, I hope to see you back here soon!

A New Hope

Well I think an apology is in order! I promised regular updates and that is not what has happened so far. To make up for this I have decided to share a few helpful tutorials with you all, I will do this on a regular basis and even if it helps one person it was worth it. You can find the links below or on the main panel to the left!

The theme of this round of tutorials is modular asset creation. Modular assets are a really efficient way to create environments. Recently I have noticed quite a few students on Polycount who haven’t been shown this technique so hopefully this will help someone:

• Creating Modular Environments in UDK: http://www.thiagoklafke.com/modularenvironments.html
• Modular Fantasy Building tutorials: http://wiki.polycount.com/ModularMountAndBlade
• Working with Modular sets: http://www.philipk.net/tutorials/modular_sets/modular_sets.html

Ok, now that we are friends again I’ll also mention a friend’s blog I have linked (just above the tutorials). He is a great guy who is looking to create a brand new portfolio too so please take a look across there and give him some art love!

Now, back to the work! Last time I promised you more details on how I plan to try and make sure I reuse as many textures and assets that I create. I will do this with by using two main techniques, tiling textures and an asset library.

Tiling Textures

Ok so tiling textures aren't exactly new, they are a great way of getting the most out of your texture space and are an efficient way of working but what am I going to do differently? My plan is to create my own texture library of hand crafted tiling textures created using a combination of Maya, ZBrush and Photoshop. ZBrush has some very handy tricks which lend itself well to creating tiling textures (tricks I intend to share with you all!) and I plan to take advantage of them all!

Asset library

This is the more obscure of the two techniques I plan to use, it entails keeping a library of all assets I create with the intention to reuse at a later date. For example, if I'm creating a tiling wood floor texture in ZBrush I will need to export an .Obj file of wood planks which I will then take into ZBrush and sculpt. The plan is to keep a copy of both the .Obj file and a copy of the ZTool (ZBrush asset file) so that they can be used at a later date in another scene/texture.  In a nutshell the technique for creating tiling textures in ZBrush includes combining multiple assets to form a texture, so having a library will be extremely useful.

As you can see, these two techniques should go together well and I hope it will prove to be a fantastic time saver in the long run!

Thanks again for checking in, the next post will be very soon (tomorrow?!) and will include the planning for my first major portfolio project, ‘Eagles Rest’! Once again I apologise for the terrible title, maybe I’ll make a thing of it…Anyway, hope to see you back here soon!

A New Beginning

Well, January 1st seems like as good a day as any to start the new blog! A new year, a new me!

You will have to excuse the cheesy and obvious first post title, as terrible as it is, it really does sum up how I feel. I am ready to make a fresh start, create a new portfolio, learn new skills, take on the art world and document the whole process here!

With that said here is the plan of action with regards to the blog: I intend to make a post at least once a week (every Sunday but ideally more often!), share my art journey with anyone willing to join me and hopefully help a few people out along the way!

So by now you must be thinking..."Ok, ok, we get it, a fresh start, but how are you actually going to go about the work?!" Well that is a fantastic question and I'm so glad you asked!

My focus will be on my main passion which is 3D environment art whilst dabbling in extra skills that I have always wanted to try/should have continued to practice over the years. I think I will break down the next 12 months into four main environment projects with a few weeks here and there for contingency. I will ensure that all work is used as often as possible by using it to create my own texture and asset library (more details soon!). I also plan to break the environment projects up with smaller projects in ZBrush.

Thank you for putting up with my waffle, the next post will outline my portfolio plan and how I intend to keep libraries so I can reuse assets!

As a great man once said:

"It's time to (Pixel)Suit up!"