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]

Week 4 - Monday: Project Management Review

At the start of week 4 I have got several assets created for my environment such as my grandfather clock and fireplace. Now I would like to complete the interiors that house them. My schedule has only given me a week left to do the remaining environment modelling, and I now realise that I was being over optimistic to think that I would have most of the environment completed by this stage.

 My chart with only a week left  to model the environment!

I definitely miscalculated the time it would take to model the environment, and so far I have found that I have been doing other tasks alongside the environment modelling phase. I am going to reorganise this schedule as I think isolating the different activities does not reflect how I work. I have noticed myself switching between activities quite frequently and I think this has proved beneficial so far because I have started using Unreal Engine much earlier than I would have if I had stuck to my original plan. Because of this I was able to innovate my production pipeline and speed up my texture creation process amongst other things. I also think it is refreshing to be able to switch to a different assignment when one task becomes too repetitive. This has given me a fresh perspective on my project as I am not looking at it purely in 3DS Max but across a range of programs from Unreal Engine to Substance Painter.