SEMESTER 2 WEEK 4
In 3D digital literacy this week Alec introduced us to Substance Painter after we had prevously downloaded it for this purpose. We started off by experimenting and messing around with the default character you have at your disposal in Substance Painter.
We started by watching a short tutorial Alec prepared showing us around the Substance Painter interface and guiding us around the tools we have at our disposal. There were dozens upon dozens of different textures and materials we could transfer onto our model, and all sorts of different things we could do to warp it — adding height to a certain symbol and putting it on the character made it look like it had a little badge for example, and we could add scrapes and wear and tear to our models as well.
I created a small little astronaut when I was experimenting. It’s very basic as I didn’t know what I was really doing, but I had fun all the same figuring out what I could do. I gave them a little blue helmet with some badges on it, and a metal suit with a symbol etched into it. I’ve no doubt I’ll get much better at using Substance Painter as time goes on but for a first crack at it I think it’s very cute.
After I created this small character, we moved onto a secondary excercise. We watched a short lecture pre-recorded by Alec on baking maps for smart materials, and then another video on exporting said maps from Substance to Maya or Sketchfab. We took this information and use it physically by using one of the models we had previously UV-unwrapped for class. We took this model and transfered it over into Sketchfab, we baked the maps so that when we took it into Substance we could add textures to the model!
I added old green chipped paint and a metal texture to mine.
In terms of assignment 1 I made plenty of progress on my staff this week! I’ve even come to a final design which is the one below. I did heavily consider a sea themed staff but as I tried to refine it and make it a finalised concept it just wasn’t turning out the way I wanted it to. I entertained the idea of a mushroom based staff or a bone based staff, but I liked the aesthetic idea of a tried and true wood staff instead. I decided to work on a staff made of gnarled wood with an object as a centrepiece and source of power. I thought about a few different items to put in the centre but found the one I thought looked the best was the crystal or stone.
I wanted to add some interest to the wood of the staff, so I decided to add some leather scraps, rope and a metal ring decorating around it so that it’s not all one wood texture, and so that it breaks up the staff into segments.
Here are some references and inspiration I collected while I was designing the staff I finally decided to settle on.
I designed a more solid front and back of the stone/crystal that will adorn my staff, and did the same with the front and back of my staff. I’m going to need to draft up some ideas for the sides of both, but this is a very good start so that I can finally start modelling.
I’m in the infancy of my modelling journey right now and finding it very difficult to create organic shapes like I want to, to help me on my attempt to create this staff I’ve been following a maya tutorial for beginners by Game Dev Academy, as well as a few other YouTube tutorials I’ll look at that’ll help me create wood and a crystal-like shape. My modellng looks a bit messy to me but I am still at a very basic knowledge level with it, and I can always redo it if it turns out terribly in the long run at the expense of time, but I am trying my best.
Before I decided to use the staff I did, I did one more test draft for the sea staff idea I had, It’s centrepiece was based on the pockets of air that are held in bladderwrack seaweed as I thought that would be a good concept to explore. I still think it’s a very cool idea but the shape of the stick on the staff I just couldn’t find a design that sat right with me, so I decided to move on and try something new. While I was sad I couldn’t go with a cool concept, I think the one I chose to do finally is also really good and I’m very excited to make it!
Below is some staff models and art I thought looked very cool and used in my research and inspiration to create my own.
I also continued to add inspiration and research into the pinterest board I’ve made for this assignment that I linked in last weeks blog post:
