Week 1 - Unit Production
Week 2 - Project Planning
The task for this week was to find references for our work and to sketch out some initial ideas. The brief for this assessment was to create a Cycladic artefact of gold that had been hidden in a cave for centuries.
Originally I had assumed we would be creating a whole statue, when in reality we were designing only a headpiece. From my research I found that most golden statues that survived this long were those of animals. From this I formed the design of a statue representing a goat.
I opted not to create a final sketch for this piece due to the simplicity of its design.
The thumbnail image for the goat head was useful in understanding she shape of the goat. The head is hexagonal in proportions, which helped outline details such as where the ears and horns should be made.
I experimented with some shapes for the horns: one where the horn is a single shape, and two where the horns segment with varying sizes. I decided that the second design was most appealing.
Week 3 - 3D Surfaces Part 1
Today we began using Mudbox in order to further shape out our model. This meant moving around the polys of the model and increasing their density in order to create greater changes.
My first changes were made to address the shape of the head. I found that the original design looked less like a goat and more like a gazelle. I solved this by squaring our the mouth of the goat, making its ears look more floppy, and pulling its horns into a more natural shape.
You may have noticed that the horns of the model are masked out. The idea is that the horns are made of a finer material than the head. To emphasize this I stencilled in some rough grading all around the idol, which makes the horns look more pristine.
To the left is my idol baked into a lower poly model. Additionally, I went into Substance Painter and did a quick mock-up of what the model should look like when complete.
Final UVs/Textures
Week 4 - 3D Surfaces Part 2
This week we focused on creating the materials for our model in Substance Painter.
To begin I applied some gold, smart materials to my idol. Note that the horns and the head use two different gold materials. I also added some rusty details to the head (which implies it may not be real gold).
I felt that the model still lacked details, so I applied some details to the model. First off I created an inscription to go across the head in Greek to reinforce the Cyclidic origin of the model. Second I found some stencils for a goat and human hand. This helps make the statue feel more sentimental, like the statue was made in honour of a goat.
Finally I added some dirt details to the model. While 'realistic', I may make changes to the dirt to make the idol look shinier.
Finally the model with its new textures were inserted into the Unreal Engine. It is fascinating to me that UE uses one texture for the metallic, roughness, and ambient nodes.
Week 5 - Lighting and Detailing
This week I finalized my scene in UE5. Fortunately there are alot of free assets within Quixel that I could insert into my scene.
Many of the scene elements come from different scenes (ie. gravel from a road, rocks from a desert). Many of the assets had to be tweaked slightly to keep a thematic color.
I wanted to tell a story about the scene. The idea is that the cave belonged to a farmer. To emphasize this I added a few sacks of grain in the corner of the cave. I also added a small rosemary bush coming out of the sack, as if it has been growing in solace for the last several centuries.
I also inserted some broken pillars in the scene. These were placed to give the scene some geographic theming.
Exporting my project to another UE project broke many of the elements as I had initially designed them. A consequence of this is that the heaven beams are not as strong as they should be.
I also created a pillar asset.
