Not Much to say today really

After having to postpone my work on this project. 

I got back to working on it today. It has been slow progress and not much got done really.

I have mostly been working on getting some textures completed and doing the first pass on the lighting for the environment. 

I have noticed that there are a lot of small details and props scattered around the environment which will, in the end, give it character. I am also trying to optimise my textures to ensure that they are not to high res.

  Update Render

I can't believe it's time for an update already! Oh, how time flies when you're having fun!

Some progress has been made but not that much, I've made a few extra models and started to unwrap, bake and texture them. 

Some models were fairly easy but the time-consuming part is the texturing. I really pop in the end.

Over the last 2 days, my focus has mainly been on the sofa as this contained a lot of detail. I wasn't too sure how to go about modelling it. But once I did I could sculpt it and retopologize. This contained its own challenge as my initial way of modelling caused issues with the new mesh, in the end, I had to completely recreate a low poly mesh which I could then use. I also spend time on creating books that are scattered around the environment. For these I created 3 sets of materials and 4 different models, this allowed me to simply just change the material set in order to get more variation of the books.

Day 2: Blockout

High Poly Sofa

Low Poly Sofa

Sofa Textured and Displayed in Marmoset

Books Closeup 

My First Post: Week1

Where does one start? What am I missing?

These are questions I always ask myself, before starting a new project.

I think I finally found the answer. So let's go back one week.

I recently took a trip to Sheffield, in order to attend the Grads in Games Awards. Unfortunately, I did not make the finals, but I saw it as an opportunity to talk to some lead artist within the industry and to find out what I am missing from my portfolio. 

In the end, I got a lot of positive feedback, with a very small amount of what is negative. The main two things mentioned was that my environments were either to clean or simply to procedural. Causing them to lack the Wow factor

What does this mean?

Well, it's all very simple really. The environments were either so clean that it seems like nobody has ever been there or some textured looked like they basically just had a substance mask placed on them, before placing them in the environment.

This is bad. So how do I fix this?

Well, simply by making a smaller environment. So that is what I decided: 3 weeks for a small environment? I can do this!

After looking around I found a very nice concept piece by @Eugenio Garcia Villarreal, it is a noir detectives office set within the 1930s. I decided that this would be a perfect piece to recreate due to the amount of storytelling each piece can provide. From every scratch, coffee stain or cigarette burn, my plan is to bring this piece to life, to the best of my abilities. 

So keep a lookout for the updates every Monday and Wednesday, to see how it progresses.

WIP Shots:

 First Initial Blockout

End Of Day 1

Detectives Desk: High Poly