Week 6 - Forefront Friday: Xbox and Nintendo Switch Crossplay

For the first time Nintendo and Microsoft, two of the world’s leading video game companies are working together to bring cross-console compatibility to their games. Minecraft (2011) has become one of the industry's first fully cross platform games. Gamers from Xbox, PC, Smart Phone and Nintendo Switch can now play the game together regardless of which console they are using. 

The Minecraft cross-play trailer for the Nintendo Switch.

It was somewhat surreal for me watching the announcement from Nintendo and seeing an Xbox controller in the trailer. It is particularly interesting that the two rival companies Microsoft and Nintendo are now openly advertising for each other's game system. I feel this is a red letter moment in the history of the gaming industry because it feels like this is very much a pro consumer approach. 

I believe cross platform gaming is at the forefront of innovation within the gaming industry. Now that mainstream games are becoming compatible across multiple systems, I could be starting my career as a games artists at the beginning of a new paradigm in the industry. One that requires the game art to be optimised for use across a variety of different game system architecture. This could mean that the practices employed across the industry become increasingly unified, to help games have better compatibility with one another.

I believe it will be crucial in the coming months to monitor current industry practice and adhere to these design concepts in my own work in order to remain competitive within these new business practices.

GORDON, R. (2018) Microsoft & Nintendo Emphasize Minecraft Cross-Play Together While PlayStation Sits By Itself. [Online] Available from: https://screenrant.com/minecraft-microsoft-nintendo-cross-play/ [Accessed: 29th June 2018].

NINTENDO (2018) Minecraft Cross-Play Trailer - Nintendo Switch. [Online Video]. June 21st. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l8nJ_liqrw. [Accessed: June 29th 2018].

Week 6 - Thursday: Reflection on my Project Management

I am nearing the end of week six and this marks the official halfway point of my project. Therefore I think I have had a sufficient amount of time to review the management of my project so far. I am going to be using the structure of Gibbs' Reflective Cycle to organise my thoughts below.

Over the past six weeks I have focused my efforts primarily on modelling the high poly and low poly assets for my environment. This has culminated in the first fully modelled area of the mansion scene, the entrance hall. Because I hadn't concerned myself with the lighting stage yet, everything was looking very flat and I wasn't happy with the overall look of the scene. It wasn't until recently that I added lights to the scene that have really helped it pop:

I feel just being able to see the scene lit in a nice way has given me so much confidence. Now that I have seen how the environment looks with this early lighting setup, I at least have an idea of how the final environment will look once I finish. Knowing that has helped me to speed up my modelling process as I know where the points of interest are in the scene. Going forward from here I think that I will be able to bring assets into unreal engine quicker because I know which areas are going to be seen thanks to the lighting.

So far I think that this project has been successful mainly due to the fact that it has provided me with the opportunity to model a decent range of high quality assets. I am particularly pleased with my armchair model as I used this piece as a test to help me present my portfolio better and it was met with positive feedback from environment artist Ryan Astley. I have opted for quality over quantity, as I would rather have a selection of polished assets in my portfolio than a large environment filled with mediocre ones.

That being said however, I was hoping to have much more completed by this point. I want the final game environment to give a sense of grandeur and scale and I believe I will need to have the exterior completed alongside a few additional rooms to achieve this.

As I continue to model assets and improve the lighting of the environment, I am going to be looking at other artefacts being produced by game developers to gain insight into the creative approaches they have employed and compare my own process to them. I think that a decent understanding of lighting for film and Mise-en-Scene will help me perfect the final look of the environment.

GIBBS, G. (1988) Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Further Education Unit. Oxford Polytechnic: Oxford.

Week 6 - Wednesday: Symposium Session 3

This week’s academic symposium has illustrated to me the importance of using explicit justified criteria for making judgements about my work. The session saw us split into groups and examine some posts from each other's blogs. Based on the feedback I received, I notice that so far my blog posts haven't established any external criteria that I am using to evaluate my creative decisions. I feel this is something that I need to rectify in order to maintain a level of objectivity in regards to my creative process. My personal opinion of "It looks good, therefore..." is not an acceptable justification to use for my key design choices. I am looking to establish a set criteria that anyone with a comparable knowledge or skill level to me, could use to arrive at a similar conclusion. I feel this is especially important to establish within this academic blog as my creative solutions will be evidence based, allowing me to draw directly from sources such as theorists and commentators. 

In regards to my reflective writing I was presented with three examples to help structure my posts:

• Gibbs' Reflective Cycle
• Johns' Model of Structured Reflection
• Driscoll's Model of Reflection (The What Model)

Gibbs' Reflective Cycle

Gibbs’ reflective cycle breaks down each step of an activity and organises them into an easy to follow chart. I find myself liking this approach because it is easy to structure my reflections using the headings.

I think this will be useful in helping me to categorise my project into individual phases and thus be able to provide clearer reflections on each unique activity.

Johns' Model of Structured Reflection

Johns' Model poses questions that are classified by type rather than the order in which they should be asked. That is not to say there isn't a logical lead in for each question, however I find myself preferring the approach of Gibbs because I find it easier to categorise things in a set order rather than by category. Below I have tried to organise some questions using Johns' criteria for reflection based on an example from Oxford Brookes University website:

• Aesthetic Questions - According to the Oxford Brookes University website, Johns' use of the word 'Aesthetic' is meant to relate to the actions I chose to take throughout the project. This is causing me a bit of a disconnect however, as I am inclined to link these questions purely to the visual aspect of my work (i.e why I have made certain artistic decisions) and not factor in the broader implications that Johns meant by using the word.
• Personal Questions - How I identify my own actions as well as the external factors that have influenced me.
• Ethics Questions - How I ask myself whether my actions were consistent with my beliefs and the accepted practice within my field. (i.e. No stealing work or using things without credit)
• Empiric Questions - These questions identify how I have learnt throughout the process and ask me to pinpoint specific areas of growth.

Just from writing these questions I can already feel that I am going to struggle if I adopt this style for reflection. It feels like these questions are quite broad and I don't know if I will be able to focus as well if I use this approach.

Driscoll Model of Reflection

This approach formulates questions and places them within the following three categories:

• What? - What is the purpose of the activity?
• So What? - What are my responses to this?
• Now What? - What do I take away from this and how can I adapt to a similiar situation in the future?

I quite like this approach for its simplicity. Although the categories are still quite broad, I feel they are somehow easier for me to define what to place in them unlike with Johns' approach. So far I am leaning towards using either the Gibbs' or Driscoll method for my reflective writing.

DRISCOLL, J. (2000) Practising Clinical Supervision. Edinburgh: Balliere Tindall

GIBBS, G. (1988) Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Further Education Unit. Oxford Polytechnic: Oxford.

JOHNS, C. (1995) Framing learning through reflection within Carper’s fundamental ways of knowing in nursing. Journal of Advanced Nursing. 22. p. 226234.
 
OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY (2018) About Johns’ model of structured reflection. [Online] Available from: https://www.brookes.ac.uk/students/upgrade/study-skills/reflective-writing-johns/ [Accessed: 27/06/2018]

Week 6 - Tuesday: Career Planning

After the visit to Codemasters and Rebellion game studios I have made use of Aardvark swift to help send out my CV to companies and apply to some environment artist positions. I am not picky about where I work, but rather that the job role suits me.

As of today I have only posted one game-ready prop on my Arstation page and feel that my portfolio isn't really good enough to land me a job if I apply for work.

 My armchair props next to the fireplace I have modelled.

 My environment is still far from completion but I have brought in some of the finished assets. I will be working on scene composition as this is something that was brought up in a review of my hangar bay scene at the Rewind visit.

The completed assets within my environment

Ideally I would like to have some shots of my mansion on my Artstation page whilst I apply for jobs, but failing that I think the inclusion of these assets will help bolster my portfolio until then.

Week 6 - Monday: Codemasters and Rebellion Visit

Today I had the opportunity to visit Codemasters and Rebellion game studios. We were given an extensive tour of both studios and it was nice to have a direct comparison between Codemasters, who specialise in racing games, and Rebellion, who are more action game oriented.

We started with Codemasters and I was both impressed with the size of the studio and the amount of people they have working there, which numbered in the hundreds. I received an in-depth break down of their production process, starting with their research phase and running all the way through to the technical artists who bring everything together into their custom game engine.

I think what left the biggest impression on me was the sheer amount of research the art team put into designing each track for the game. I was shown mood boards and research presentations with hundreds of reference photos for a single level. The team were given an ample amount of time for research and they even invested money into outsourcing photographers to collect reference for them. 

As I have been working on my major project, it made me realise how useful it would have been for me to have the design of my environment completely ironed out during the production phase and should I ever find work in a professional studio, it is nice to know that every aspect of a level’s design will have gone through a tremendous amount of scrutiny. I think I would have benefited from this assuredness in my design, as I tend to second guess myself and change design elements as I am working which has cost me a lot of time.

I was keen to see how the environment art team went about creating assets and was pleased to see that everyone was using 3DS Max which is my 3D modelling application of choice. The chief reason they cited for this was the use of splines which allow geometry to be manipulated along a set path. As they are creating racing games this makes a lot of sense because they can create a road using a spline and then make their assets conform along it. This is the same technique that I used on my carpet to create the intricate pattern along the trim.

I was also pleased to see that the environment artists created modular pieces within 3DS Max and rather than export them separately into their game engine, they would piece them together beforehand in Max. This is something I do as well because I find that Max gives you greater precision when it comes to piecing assets together in certain situations.

Overall I really enjoyed seeing Codemasters and I went from not being interested in working on racing games at all, into seriously considering applying for a job there. Given that I am already familiar with 3DS Max I feel the transition to their pipeline might not be too severe.

From there we went to visit Rebellion where we had a presentation from the Oliver twins who have been in the industry for over four decades. They gave us a look at the production process for several of their games as well as some career advice. Andrew Oliver said it was a good idea to apply for work in an area where there were multiple game studios operating. He said that often times when an artist leaves one company they are very likely to get snatched up by another in the area. Both Codemasters and Rebellion are based in Leamington Spa, and from everything I’ve seen it looks like a good area to start applying for work. 

Whilst at Rebellion I also received a one to one portfolio review from environment artist Ryan Astley. I showed him my work and he told me how I could improve my presentation for some pieces. He really liked my newest asset, the leather armchair and told me that it was exactly how I should be presenting my work. This was great news as it is my latest piece and I feel reassured that I am making steps in the right direction from an employability stand point. He also told me to organise my work into categories which I have done by separating my game art work from my architectural visualisations.

On the whole it was a very insightful experience and I have gained a new appreciation for how much talent and resources go into creating triple A games. I feel I have been given a good jumping off point to start applying for work thanks to the feedback I received, as well as the Oliver twin’s presentation on finding employment.

Week 5 - Forefront Friday: Visage

Visage (TBA) is an upcoming independent survival horror game and looks to be a spiritual successor to Hideo Kojima's P.T. (2014). It is a noteworthy example of a high quality game funded entirely through Kickstarter. I cite this as an example of the forefront because it is pushing the genre of atmospheric horror to new heights. It accomplishes this mainly through its visual juxtaposition of an idyllic urban household mixed with otherworldly imagery and horror. The games sound design is entirely atmospheric and it is setup in a way that it gives hints and clues to alert the players about the dangers lurking in the house.

Gameplay trailer for Visage.

I find this to be a particularly exciting game because the developers are intending every play through to be a unique experience. The events in Visage will be randomly activated throughout each play session, with the player’s choices resulting in different endings. Visage will also be supporting virtual reality and looks to be a terrifying front runner in advancing psychological horror in video games.

The game is being made in Unreal Engine 4 and as such I will be interested to see how far the team at SadSquare Studio are able to take the game's psychedelic visuals. Originally I wanted to employ similar visual tricks in my major project environment but because I am less focused on gameplay at the moment, I will most likely not incorporate them at this stage. However for my final trailer I would like to experiment with some of the effects they have used as I feel this trailer sets a very ominous tone and I would like to replicate this in my promotional video.

7780'S STUDIO. (2014) P.T.. [DOWNLOAD] PlayStation 4. Tokyo: Konami.

GAME TRAILERS (2017) Visage - Official Gameplay Trailer. [Online Video]. June 22nd. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1sOQcHYwE4. [Accessed: 22/06/2018].

SADSQUARE STUDIO. (TBA) Visage. [DISC, DOWNLOAD] Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One. SadSquare Studio.

Week 5 - Thursday: Project Dissemination

Artstation:

I've been considering where the best place to distribute my project online will be. My main platform will be Artstation as this gives me plenty of options in how I display images of the environment, video and individual asset pieces. The site is widely used by creative practitioners within the games industry, and I have been using it for several months now to house my professional portfolio.

Youtube:

I will be posting my promotional video of the project onto Youtube as I already have an established Youtube channel and would like to continue to expand my audience. As the most popular video sharing website, I feel this maximises the chance of my work being seen by a larger audience.

Autodesk - The Rookies:

The Autodesk competition The Rookies, is also a great way to share work with fellow practitioners. The competition is open to both graduates and alumni and although this project won't be finished in time to enter this year, I intend to submit it next year.

Instagram:

I want to make use of social media platforms such as Instagram as well because the tagging feature lets you share images with an audience across a variety of different interests and specialisms. This gives my work far greater exposure than if I keep it to professional sites like Artstation.

I am hoping by hosting my work on these platforms I will generate interest in my work and establish an audience for my future projects. I will be doing some research into other vectors of dissemination, as the ones listed here are my starting points.

Week 5 - Wednesday: Amended Project Schedule

I am now five weeks into the production cycle of my major project. So far I feel I have been making decent progress but unfortunately I wasn't able to hit the mark of my original schedule which had me completing all major 3D modelling by the end of week four. I feel that my original schedule was a bit unrealistic with the way that it was structured.

My original project schedule.

Therefore I have made the following amendments. I have increased the duration of time allowed for environment and asset modeling, as well as the time for UV mapping and texture work. Over the past 5 weeks the vast majority of my time has been spent on these three areas and I foresee that I will need more time here in order to bring the project up to the standard I want to achieve. In addition to this I have also made sure that these three areas run concurrently with each other as it makes more sense for me to work on each area as I go, rather than segment them up into individual tasks which I will tackle one after the other. I think this stops me from getting over zealous and creating too many models without enough time to implement them into Unreal Engine 4.

My updated project schedule with the activities extended and overlapping.

I have crossed off the weeks that I have completed so far, leaving me with just over seven weeks of the project remaining. Whilst I am not at the point I would have liked to have been, I believe things will speed up from here onwards. When I created assets during the early weeks of the project, I wasn't aware of the "exploding" technique when doing hard surface transfer in Substance Painter. This resulted in quite a big loss of time as I had to separately bake all the elements of the high poly model. Since changing my methods I have been able to create assets much faster, resulting in quick implementation of these assets within Unreal Engine. Also as the design of my environment has been coming into focus, I am finding myself with greater confidence to quickly create elements of the environment that fit in with my design.

My Project Calendar.

With seven weeks left I believe I will have enough time to meet my project goals and perhaps exceed the amount of assets that I thought I would originally be able to create.

Week 5 - Tuesday: Props Armchair

Today I completed a high poly prop for my mansion environment. I was inspired by the artwork of Joseph Hobbs a former student in the year before me. His Artstation portfolio is of a very high quality and his is the level that I am trying to reach by the end of this year. I was impressed by an armchair model which he had created, and wanted to test myself and see if I could create one of my own.

The armchair model created by Joseph Hobbs.

I wanted mine to have a more contemporary feel and finally settled on a design that I liked, this leather chesterfield armchair:

Vintage leather armchairs.

I created a high poly model in 3DS max and manually added creases to areas where I thought the surface should be taut. I had a Turbo Smooth modifier applied to the model which I toggled on and off to check whether the creases looked correct:

Toggling between smoothed and unsmoothed versions of the model.

I also created some renders of the high poly model to add to my portfolio which you can see below:

Rendered images of the high poly armchair.

Once the high poly model was completed, I created a low poly counterpart ready for surface transfer in Substance Painter. Normally I tend to be as stingy as possible when it comes to the amount of polygons I use for the low poly model. This has resulted in some ugly silhouettes for my past assets however and I wanted to avoid that this time, so I used more polygons on the edges of the armchair to make it look less jagged:

The high poly armchair next to the low poly model.

To avoid the issue of incorrect details projecting onto unwanted surfaces, I made sure to explode both the high poly and low poly models when I exported them into Substance Painter:

The exploded armchair model ready to be taken into Substance Painter for texturing.

Below you can see the fully textured model as seen in Substance Painter:

This is the portfolio piece that I will be adding to my Artstation page.

The completed model is 3510 Tri's in total:

I have included a wireframe shot in my portfolio to show employers that I can surface transfer properly.

Overall I am very pleased with this piece as I feel individual assets are something that was missing in my portfolio. Whilst I am pleased with how the model turned out, I think that had I sculpted the high poly version in ZBrush instead of using 3DS Max, it could have looked better. Joseph used ZBrush to create the details for his model and I feel because of this, he was able to achieve a higher level of detail and fidelity.

My modelling process is an area that I would like to improve on as I have a lot of ornate assets left to model and not a lot of time to do so. Whilst I acknowledge that ZBrush would likely be a better tool to use for this purpose, I don't want to risk investing the time into learning to use it like a professional. I feel that any work I create with it now could end up being sub-par due to my inexperience with the program. As this is my stand out project, I am going to stick with what I know in terms of 3D modelling for now. However it is clear to me that ZBrush is the way to go for high poly details both in terms of time and quality. I spent a lot of time moving individual vertices of my model around to make the creases for the chair, when I could have just sculpted those details straight onto the model in ZBrush.

HOBBS, J. (2017), Vintage Armchair [Online Image]. Available at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/E0kL8 [Accessed: 19/06/2018].

THE CHESTERFIELD COMPANY (2018), Manchester Vintage Leather Fireside Armchairk [Online Image]. Available at: https://www.thechesterfieldcompany.com/leather-armchairs/manchester-vintage-leather-fireside-armchair/ [Accessed: 19/06/2018].

Week 5 - Monday: Identifying my target audience

My main goal with this project is to create a standout portfolio piece, one that will help me find employment within the games industry. Ideally I want this project to serve as the culmination of my skills and be the project I go to first when showing my work to other artists. With this in mind I have been tailoring the project for art directors, lead environment artists and prop artists within the gaming industry.

I have been making sure to spend a good amount of time on the individual assets within my environment so that I have more than just a "pretty" finished piece by the end of the thirteen week development period. These individual assets will be uploaded separately to my Artstation portfolio so that I can give each asset the attention it deserves. I am particularly interested in working as an environment prop artist, so I want to make it clear that I have adhered to the current practices of the industry. This will involve presenting my work in a way that demonstrates clearly how I have made each prop. For example I will include wireframe breakdowns as well as the low and high poly meshes for people to view.

I hope that by doing this I will show that I am a professional creative practitioner as evidenced by every element of my completed environment. My presentation of the finished environment will be crucial so I will continue to organise my online portfolio so that it is obvious to other professionals that I am creating content worthy of triple A gaming.

I am currently working on another prop for my environment, a leather armchair. I will be posting it to my blog and Artstation page as soon as it is finished. Once I have a game-ready prop in my portfolio I will begin to apply for jobs in the industry.

Week 4 - Forefront Friday: Photogrammetry and Realism in Games

Photogrammetry is the process of pulling visual data from an array of photographs for the purpose of generating fully textured high poly models. Recently this process has begun to be seen within video games with EA’s Star Wars: Battlefront series being a stellar example of the stunning graphics achievable with this technique.

I found an interesting article from Indie game developer Andrzej Poznanski, who talked in length about how his team utilised photogrammetry techniques to create the visuals for their game The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (2014). Whilst this is not a new game Andrzej highlighted something that I felt was pertinent in regards to my approach as an environment artist.

As Andrzej points out, the thing that really set their Photogrammetry assets apart from traditional methods was the logical way the textures had been broken up. Repetitive tiling and texture seams are not obvious and whilst it is possible to disguise these without photogrammetry, the variation that comes through real photos are not randomised. They have a logical reason for looking the way they do scuffs for example aren’t added without thought, they appear where they would logically. As he puts it: 

“The floor might be more worn out around the front door, or where your chair wheels constantly scrub a patch of the floor, and the outer wall might be darker from the side that gets hit by the rain more often, etc. … Like in video games. Even if on the unconscious level, your brain points out to you all those perfectly tiling textures, all those evenly worn-out surfaces, those stains placed in all the wrong places – and whispers in your ear: LOL!” 

This is something that I have often struggled with doing correctly. I have been aware that I needed to add texture variation to my environment however I am guilty of doing this randomly. You can see this in my Hangar Bay environment below, where I added dirt to random locations to try and break up the texture:

From here on I intend to pay close attention to details and recreate them sensibly in my scene. I feel this will be a subtle but important contribution to making my environments feel real. Of course I can’t contend with real world scanned textures created through photogrammetry, however I feel at least I can adopt a logical approach as Andrezj says and really emulate details in the proper locations whereas before I was doing this without thinking.

DICE. (2015) Star Wars Battlefront. [DISC, DOWNLOAD] Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One. Redwood City: Electronic Arts.

POZNANSKI, A. (2014) Visual Revolution of the Vanishing of Ethan Carter. [Online] Available from: http://www.theastronauts.com/2014/03/visual-revolution-vanishing-ethan-carter/ [Accessed: 15/06/2018] 

RUSH, J. (2018) Photogrammetry for Games. [Online] Available from: http://www.cgsociety.org/training/course/photogrammetry-for-games [Accessed: 15/06/2018]

Week 4 - Thursday: Modelling a Chandelier

During this week I have been practicing my prop modelling skills. I have been watching a series of tutorials on Pluralsight.com by 3D artist Dan Cox. He discusses the fastest methods to create props and focuses on ways to optimize the assets.

A large part of the course is spent using ZBrush which has illustrated to me the importance of using digital sculpting in my workflow. Cox was able to sculpt a high poly mesh in ZBrush and then toggling between varying levels of detail using Subdivision levels. Lowering the polycount in this way is incredibly helpful as it keeps the sculpt's silhouette intact across the different levels of detail.

I have tried to lower the polycount of my models in 3DS before but I have had to be very careful when doing so because deleting the edges and vertices of a model manually can sometimes make the low poly's silhouette too different from the high poly version. Because ZBrush has some great tools for retopologizing a model such as "dynamesh," I can always import my high poly models from 3DS Max into the software and use its tools instead. This won't give me as much control as if I had sculpted in ZBrush to begin with but it will save me time in my current workflow.

I have also been browsing the Polycount forums and trying to determine what differences there are between a game artist environment pipeline and prop artist work pipeline. I found a short thread on Polycount with the general consensus being that depending on the studio, I may have to do both environment modelling (with care for composition) and prop modelling (working in isolation on prop assets where there placement within the level is not one of my duties).

With this in mind I will be creating props that I can both use in my environment, but are also good enough to stand up to scrutiny on their own. I have created a chandelier asset that will be one of the focal points within my environment.

The high poly chandelier model. I only created one arm so that I could duplicate it once it was textured.

I started by creating a single arm that would hold the candelsticks and then exploded the model so that I could bake it in Substance Painter:

On the left is the low poly model and on the right is the exploded mesh ready for texturing in Substance Painter. 

Below you can see the texture maps I created for the chandelier in Substance Painter:

The texture maps I baked out of Substance Painter.

 Below you can see the finished asset in Unreal Engine:

The chandelier in Unreal Engine.

I will be modeling some other props for my portfolio during the next few days as I really enjoyed creating this. I will be using ZBrush to help retopologize some of the geometry as this helped a lot with this asset.

COX, D. (2016) Game Prop Modeling Fundamentals [Online] Available from: https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/game-prop-modeling-fundamentals [Accessed: 14/06/2018] 

POLYCOUNT (2011) Difference between Environment and Prop Artists? [Online] Available from: https://polycount.com/discussion/82424/difference-between-environment-and-prop-artists [Accessed: 14/06/2018]

Week 4 - Wednesday: Symposium Session 2

For the second academic symposia session I documented and presented my strategy for approaching the forefront of my industry. Below I have defined my relationship with the forefront into three distinct areas:

My relationship with the forefront of the games industry. I have broken it down into three areas.

The relationship of my creative process to the forefront, is one where I identify the current industry practice for environment design pertaining to video games and apply it to my own workflow. For me, this means adopting techniques such as modular level design and hard surface transfer, both of which contribute to my adherence to industry practice. By building my pipeline around these techniques. I hope to be able to show that I am capable of working to the standards of the industry, thus making myself more appealing to future employers. I also examine other techniques that I could potentially utilise in the future and lead to an efficient workflow. As time is the most valuable commodity at play any major breakthroughs at the forefront of the field must be evaluated. Methods such as using trim sheets to simulate bevelled edges across multiple assets is an example of an approach that I had not considered before but see a lot of time saving potential with.

Identifying my creative process in regards to the forefront.

Secondly I identify the technology at play within the industry and the software that drives creative change within the field. Upon giving my presentation I received some feedback to expand this area of investigation to not only include software but hardware as well. I felt this was a very pertinent observation as the computational limitations of the current generation very much determine the graphical capabilities of video games. After all there is not much good in making something ridiculously beautiful that isn't going to be able to run on current hardware! The limitations of hardware and building games to specification is an interesting topic for me as an environment artist and one that I must be mindful of as I create 3D content for games.

Below I have made specific mention of the software that I feel is at the forefront of the video game industry in terms of innovation and quality. I cite Unreal Engine 4 as the driving force of innovation not only within video games, but film and architecture as well. With the engine becoming freely available to use in 2015 coupled with the ever improving quality of real time graphics, I believe Unreal Engine is helping to build a unified methodology across all aspects of 3D visualisation, with a large benefit of this being a global community of artists providing each other with constant feedback and creative insight into problems. For me this is especially helpful as I am almost guaranteed a solution to any problem I may have as an artist. In terms of the technology and practices at play within the field of game art, this is most certainly evidence of Marshall Mcluhan's concept of a Global Village in action.

The technology I have identified as being at the forefront.

I have also made a direct comparison between Allegorithmic Substance Painter and Adobe Photoshop, highlighting the advantages the former has given my texture creation process over the latter. Indeed upon reflection, I have only used Photoshop a handful of times so far throughout my major project, whilst all of the textures for my environment have been created entirely within Substance Painter. This has been a remarkable change for me, as previously my texture creation pipeline was built exclusively around Photoshop. The instant feedback provided by a real time display of the texture on the model, has been a huge time saver and has given me complete control of how I want my models to look. This is something that Photoshop just can't compete with at the moment and the importance of using this software throughout my project's this year cannot be understated and for this reason I cite it as a key innovation at the forefront of the field.

Finally I conclude with an examination of the people and companies that are at the forefront of the industry, as well as noteworthy products from different mediums beyond that of video games. I do this because we live in an ever connected world and breakthroughs in one medium always have an effect on another. An example of this could be Neil Blomkamps Adam (2016) which used the Unity game engine to create its special effects thus showing that game engine technology is being considered for use in film by directors.

This slide is a breakdown of the artists, studios and pioneers whom make up the forefront of the industry.

I also wanted to place an emphasis on my approach to identifying artists at the forefront of the field, one where I would cross examine what each artist was saying and evaluate the accuracy of what they were saying. As illustrated above by the hammer versus the paintbrush, one artists approach may differ greatly from that of another artist. I believe that being able to evaluate their advice and compare it against what others have said, is better than taking what they say at face value.

As well as the individual artists, there are also the game studios that make up the industry. Taking a look at vastly different companies, comparing their business strategies and seeing how they are affecting the gaming industry. For example EA games is somewhat notorious for having microtransactions in their games. Most notably EA's Star Wars Battlefront 2 (2017) was met with backlash due to the inclusion of loot boxes. Whilst they made the game considerably more profitable, the gameplay suffered because of them. The fear was that should loot boxes continue to be implemented within other triple A games, the quality of those games would decline and the gameplay would in turn be built around the loot box system. I feel it is important to examine how both bad and good practices are being implemented at the forefront of the industry, and the affect this may have on me as an artist.

DINGMAN, H. (2015) Epic makes Unreal Engine 4 free to use [Online] Available from: https://www.pcworld.com/article/2891432/epic-makes-unreal-engine-4-free-to-use.html [Accessed: 13/06/2018]

FAILES, I. (2017) How Real-time Rendering Is Changing VFX And Animation Production – Cartoon Brew [Online] Available from: http://www.cartoonbrew.com/tools/real-time-rendering-changing-vfx-animation-production-153091.html [Accessed: 13/06/2018]

FIORE, Q. & MCLUHAN, M. (1967) The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. Corte Madera: Gingko Press.

KAIN, E. (2017) Why EA Is Wrong To Say That 'Star Wars Battlefront II' Loot Crates Aren't Gambling [Online] Available from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2017/11/16/why-ea-is-wrong-to-say-that-star-wars-battlefront-ii-loot-crates-arent-gambling/#583346302d6c [Accessed: 13/06/2018] 

LIPTAK, A. (2017) How Neill Blomkamp and Unity are shaping the future of filmmaking with Adam: The Mirror – The Verge [Online] Available from: https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/4/16409734/unity-neill-blomkamp-oats-studios-mirror-cinemachine-short-film [Accessed: 13/06/2018]

Week 4 - Tuesday: Getting inspiration from Neil Blompkamp's Adam (2016)

Since making the switch from an architectural visualiser to 3D game artist, I have been trying to close the gap in the visual quality of my work between using rendered and real time imagery. I have been looking at some of the work that filmmakers have done using game engines to help put in perspective what is now achievable with real time graphics. I think this new perspective will help push me to achieve better results within my own work.

ADAM (2016) is a series of ongoing short films from director Neil Blompkamp and the VFX company Oats Studios. These films are a noteworthy example of the forefront of the industry because they are rendered entirely in real time using the Unity game engine. The first short was showcased at the Game Developers Conference in 2016 and showcased the high graphical quality that game engines were able to achieve.

From an interview in 2017 with the Verge website, Oats Studios explained how they used the Unity game engine to not only create the films visuals, but also change their approach to the filmmaking process. In the article Chris Harvey, Oats Studios VFX supervisor explains that the main appeal of using real-time rendering was that it let the filmmakers make adjustments to the film on the spot. “Literally, you could put a hat [on Adam], hit play, and watch the film with that.”

The director Neil Blomkamp explains that with Unity he was able to make shot adjustments immediately stating that the team were easily able to change the lighting of the film without the need for reshooting the scene at a different time of day.

I believe films like Adam are revolutionising the film making process and blurring the lines between video game and film development. I find this film particularly interesting as a case study because the success of films like this, could determine my future career path. As technology becomes increasingly integrated into the film pipeline, a working knowledge of game engines could become a necessity for artists wishing to enter the industry. As special effects become more game-engine centric I could find my skillset in high demand.

When it comes time to edit my promotional video I will be thinking of films like Adam as the benchmark of visual quality. I want to push myself to get the best I can from Unreal Engine and now that I have seen what is achievable, I have a high standard to reach for.

LIPTAK, A. (2017) How Neill Blomkamp and Unity are shaping the future of filmmaking with Adam: The Mirror – The Verge [Online] Available from: https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/4/16409734/unity-neill-blomkamp-oats-studios-mirror-cinemachine-short-film [Accessed: 12/06/2018]

UNITY (2016) Unity GDC demo - Adam - Part I [Online Video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44M7JsKqwow [Accessed: 12/06/2018]