Task Four - Detailed Design and Production Timeline

A timeline is an essential and extremely helpful part when it comes to creating a project, it keeps you on task it tells you if you're behind or not, makes it clear on what to do and is vital for the industry to succeed in what they do. It is also key in showing people if they are on track or not, like the clients they work for, so it is a great idea for me to create my own to keep me on track and see what I need to be doing to meet deadlines.

A timeline should include every stage you plan to do and have it linked to a certain time period, I split mine up into the different areas of CG I will take part in, it is a good idea to plan ahead so you don't fall into an complications later on, like certain aspects you missed out.

Research & Idea Generation

1st - 22nd April

At this stage I will just be researching other artists and getting as many influences as possible for my final major project. Arguably this is the most important part of the pipeline as it guides you in the right direction and springs life and ideas into your head, that is why I am spending a lot of time on this part of my pipeline.

For this part of the timeline, I managed to stick to it and completed all my research tasks without fail, this allowed me to progress with a  relaxed approach and having a good amount of workload as I was on schedule. 

Concept

22nd

For this part of the pipeline I created the character concept using traditional tools and also a bit of Photoshop retouching. It helped to visualize what I was creating, and it didn't take a great deal of time, therefore it is definitely a wise move to create one.

I managed to successfully create this concept in the given time and an added bonus I was pleased with the results I had, you can see the character concept in the production phase. 

Character Modeling
22nd - 29th
This is one of the biggest and most difficult stages of my CG pipeline, the character creation involved a lot of effort time and knowledge. I had to use as much reference as possible and continually refine my model until satisfied. I would be using Maya and ZBrush for this stage. I'll start by doing a base mesh then progressing on and detailing the model until I'm happy with the results.

At this point I fell behind schedule, the character modeling stage to hours longer than expected and held me back in the production phase, although I did have an enjoyable time doing it, I did have to find ways to make up for lost time, but as I had been told by a tutor, not many actually manage to keep to a production timeline.

Shading
19th - May 1st
This is one of the more simpler tasks, it is to create a basic material shader for my character, this is what defines the surface material properties of an object. This is an enjoyable part of the pipeline and gives great pleasure to experiment and see what different kind of effects I could come up with.

During this phase I managed to successfully keep up with my schedule and get myself back on track with where I was suppose to be. I decided to make my character slightly translucent almost as if he was a clay model, I thought this was very effective when it came to the render. 

Lighting
May 1st - 13th
During this part I had to create a basic light setup for my 3D scene, there was lots of reference and tutorials online that I could use for something like this. Lighting has always been a passion of mine when it came to doing CG, therefore this was a phase I was looking forward to doing.

The scene was lit using the common three point lighting rule, just three lights creating a key light, rim light and others. I used a mix of warm and cold colours to create nice contrast on the model, I used three area lights to light up the character.

Rendering
13th - 27th
This part was more of the technical side of CG, it involved tweaking values until all of the noise is removed from the render and it becomes nice and crisp. There are many more in-depth controls that can be used and gives great control on the overall appearance of the scene such as the anti-aliasing - it gives subtle differences but can have big effects.

For my scene I rendered it out with a new renderer called 'Arnold' it worked in a way that all the lighting was physically accurate and I only had to adjust the values to remove any noise coming from the render. This bought me some time as opposed to using a renderer like 'Mental Ray' which takes a lot longer to perfect your CG render.

Post-Production
27th - June 20th
For this part of the pipeline I will have to composite my render and colour correct it until I am satisfied with the final look. It is basically touching up the image in Photoshop and making any minor tweaks I can to improve the image as a whole using basic tools.

This part was probably the most enjoyable for me, it allowed me to experiment and see my final image come to life, I could spend hours playing with the colours seeing what different kind of effects I could come up with. This phase went reasonably well without any problems. Here I successfully tweaked the image and got it ready to be printed at 300 DPI.

Task Three - Idea Generation, Presentation and Approval

PROJECT PROPOSAL

Summary of project:
Currently my project is a character set in a post-apocalyptic landscape, for this project I will be using 3D as a tool for illustration. I will be producing a single, high resolution image - involving heavy detail of 3D objects using the software package ZBrush. In conjunction with this I will be using Maya, to involve a number of technical processes. However, I still will have strong artistic input on my image, ensuring my initial vision is projected accurately into this illustration.

For this project I plan to go for a realistic style, to achieve this I'll be using advanced lighting techniques I have researched, such as Global illumination. Modeling of the character and the detail presented on him is what I will concentrate on. There will not be any textures as this is merely a modeling task. I'll prioritise my character over the environment, putting a majority of my time and effort into it as it will be the main focal point.

The illustrations main influence is from the recent television series and game 'Defiance'. The game is a great resource for myself, the content is unique and has a similar style to what I want to achieve. I've been looking at some of the 3D artists work on Polycount.com, it's been helpful for me in this project and the preparation involved.

Inspiration for project:
For the project I've decided to go ahead with a post-apocalyptic theme, seen in the likes of games like Fallout 3 & RAGE. This means I will make most of the objects in the scene appear grimy and weathered down. I plan to make it seem like this character is set upon a baron wasteland, you'll get the impression that it is a hostile landscape by the offensive appearance I plan for my character.

Much of the influence for the image will come from games set in a similar genre, specifically 'Defiance'. Furthermore  I've been looking at character artists to give inspiration for mood and intricate details- like the one you see on the left by Sebastian Schoellhammer. The atmospheric lighting and realistic shading, particular emphasis on the skin shader, is something I want to try and achieve.

Intended production plan:
For the production phase of I will be using Maya for the base modelling, setting up the scene, lighting and other various tweaks. Arnold will be used for the rendering process. ZBrush will be used for the fine details on the character such as skin pores, it will also be used for rendering out displacement maps to transfer from ZBrush to Maya. Mari will also be introduced into my pipeline which is a learning curve in itself for me, I will be using this for 3D texture. Finally, Photoshop will be used for some texture tweaks and compositing the render passes in the final stages.

Timeplan:
Week 1
Characters Design
3D Modelling

Week 2
Finished Character Modelling
Environment Modelling

Week 3
UV Unwrapping

Week 4
Shading

Week 5
Lighting

Week 6
Rendering

Week 7
Post-production

Preparation of evaluation:
For my evaluation I will ask myself questions like: What could I improve on? What am I pleased with? What would you do differently? What would you change in your production pipleline? I'd also get feedback from someone doing a similar subject area, therefore I would get relevant feedback. I could also post it in online forums such as cgsociety.org, this means I can get feedback from people internationally.

IDEA GENERATION
After figuring out what I want to to do for my final major project, which is a 3D still image used as an illustration. But this was only ideas coming from myself and it is always helpful to get a different set of eyes view on things which may end up making the piece of art better. I found it was important to ask others for their opinion and I shall do so thought my stages of work.

I interview a number of friends in my class and furthermore family at home, this gave me a broad insight into view of others at a variety of age groups. The main objective was to really see if they thought my idea was a good idea and if it should be changed at all, here is what I asked each of them:

What is your favorite genre out of the following:
- Steampunk
- Post-Apocalyptic
- Dark/Horror

As a weapon, which would be more unique:
- Pickaxe
- Sword
- Hammer

Do you typically expect a character in a situation like this to appear heroic?
- Yes
- No

The results I got from the questionnaire were vital in moving forward with the decision of what I wanted to do and ideally, a majority liked my initial idea the best which led me to move on forward, but I did gather some helpful suggestions which I shall implement into my final piece.

To further my choices I decided to make my own mind map just to visually see what possibilities I had, it definitely opened my eyes to things and many more ideas started springing into my head. I put the mind map into six sections: assets, weather, character, environment, weapon, style. This would give me a strong insight into every aspect of the image, you can see the mind map below.

Having this mind map made my life easier when it came to choosing the smaller details of my image. It allowed me to move forward and confirm the ideas in my head, which meant I could go ahead and sketch out a quick concept for my character, I felt this is the only thing I would need to sketch as it is the main focal point of the scene.

Sketching is an important part for my development on my final major project, it allowed me to put all the ideas and inspiration down on paper and have something to go by when it comes to actually 3D modeling it, I could not do it without it. Much of the inspiration came from films and games I had seen and specifically games like 'RAGE' and 'Defiance'.





My sketch incorporates a civilian look mixed with a military type appearance, I think this is something you would commonly see in a post apocalyptic environment. My skills do not lye with drawing so I am please with what I have produced and will be using this a concept when it comes to modelling. The next stage would be to take it into Photoshop to play around with tone and colour.