And as the Hero reached out to touch the well's magical waters, they saw a different place before them...right behind the enemy...
We recently had an assignment at The Game Assembly where we needed to sculpt a prop in the Heroes of the Storm artstyle. I wanted to challenge myself a bit and practice translating something from a realistic game. For this I chose the Realm Travel Device from God of War (2018) by Kevin Quinn. It was quite the challenge but I'm quite happy with how it turned out. Once I felt I had translated the original artwork, I went ham. Adding the orb with the falling liquid, making the well liquid behave more aggressive, and added in some rocks! While the end result isn't a finished game asset or "portfolio-ready", I felt like it was an experiment worth sharing as a blog post nonetheless :)

In any case, I call it a Realm Well. The basic idea of it would be that a player in Heroes of the Storm would interact with it, and be teleported to another Realm Well captured by their team. Similar to the Waypoints in Diablo.

It's been really fun and I could definately consider doing more stylized art in the future, especially these ZBrush sketches. A big thank you to my teacher and classmates at The Game Assembly, as well as the Stylized Art Collective Discord for some invaluable feedback! Also a big thank you to Michael Vicente (Orb) for all the great ZBrush resources. Now then, on to the next project!

Last week I finished the Wilkerson Dental Chair. That prop serves as a quality bar for this "new" project. I mentioned it back in the first blog post for the chair, and now it's finally time to get going with it! The project is based on a concept by Dai Nguyen, but cutting it in half just using the upper floor in order to make it a smaller project :)

Apart from starting blocking out things and setting up a UE4 project from the get-go, I've also made a small inspiration board with techniques and inspiration I want to use for the project. Mainly so far it's filled with the works of Scott Homer and Ognyan Zahariev. Be sure to check them out for some awesome art! That would be all for this week. See you in the next one!

Detail normals are in! Thanks to Jeremy Estrellado and his great explaination on detail normals I've figured out the missing link to my chair and finished the missing piece! A few final light tweaks and I should have a final portfolio post up in the coming days! For now please enjoy some wip renders, as well as setup and demo of my current master material. Thanks everyone, and see you soon!

This past week has been all polish! I've changed the footrest plates to be of wood instead, as well as the lower part of the armrests. Furthermore, I've added brass to the edges of the metal parts to make the whole chair more ornamental. There's been a lot of going back and forth between Painter, ZBrush and Unreal, which has been good as it's taught me the value of having a good lookdev scene in your final render engine, as closely matching my Painter setup to it. I've almost exclusively been viewing the model in Painter in the different render passes rather than the full material view. Instead, I've relied on Unreal for final material views :) (William Faucher has a good video on how to match your Painter to Unreal)

So what's left? Essentially making the metal match the quality of my other materials, as well as getting a detail normal for my leather set up in engine. Then it's render time!

Rework, rework, rework...

This week has been a lot of reworking and experimenting with materials. I've also learned a ton of new things in Painter and really expanded on my texturing skills. I also finally brought the chair into Unreal Engine 4 with a basic light setup consisting of an HDRI and a directional light.

Next week I will keep working on the textures, adding more wear and tear to the leather, as well as getting some color variation on the metal parts going. I'll also revisit the highpoly to add some slashes to the leather. If there's time I'll also tweak the lighting in Unreal :)

 

The texturing has begun! Bake issues have been resolved and I've finally moved on to texturing! This past week I also got the lowpoly reduced by a third. I also did a slight bit more sculpting, adding some tension folds to it. Still not happy with those so that's something I'll definitely revisit down the line. Right now I do want to work on the texturing though, getting a break from all else. As of yet the textures are still in an early exploration phase where I'm trying to figure out what direction I want to take the prop in :)

Next week will focus on creating some more materials, improving my general texturing skills while at the same time expanding my material library. These materials include various metals, both painted and raw ones, as well as wood. I'll also tweak my existing leather material and see where that brings me. See you then! (PS: The wireframe of the armrest ornaments is bugged, hence it's all black :()
 

The lowpoly and UVs are done!!! Well, at least for now. Most likely I'll make a final optimization pass at the end of it, collapsing unneccessary edges and whatnot. I also managed to get some test bakes done in Toolbag, and so far they've been turning out great! Next week is all about finalizing bakes and getting the Painter project set up. I'm also planning on finally getting the Twitch stream back up and running next Saturday (8PM CEST), starting with the texturing for this thing! I personally can't wait, see you all in the next update!

The Rookie Awards 2021 just came to an end, and I am happy to announce that I just recieved my certificate! Not only did I manage to land a spot in the Draft Selection, but I'm also happy to say that I've managed to increase my ranking to a B from last year's C-ranking!!!

I wish to thank everyone who's helped me out, supported me throughout this past year and helped me get to where I am today and keeps pushing me forward.

Furthermore, congratulations to all the winners and runner-ups. And a big thank you to the staff and judges at The Rookies! Everyone's been pushing out awesome entries this year. I couldn't be more happy to be a part of the game art community. Here's to another year of art!

My entry:

• The Rookies: https://www.therookies.co/entries/11192
• Artstation - Château d' Ardennes: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/oAeGGk
• Artstation - Keppler Vintage Fan: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/0n6nDw

Hello there.

It's been a while since my latest update. Some stuff has happened here and there (not to mention the massive heatwave...geez). Nevertheless I've managed to get a slight bit of work done. I went back to ZBrush (yes, I know, back again) and made some of the details harder and more intense details in the sculpt. I got the highpoly decimated, brought it into Maya and got started on the retopology and UVs.  Despite being a bit of work left on that front I'm hoping that'll be done soon™ (whenever the heat decides to take a break).

Refinement, refinement, refinement. Yes, I did go back to ZBrush. Despite calling the highpoly "done" last week. I exported a decimated version of the chair and compared it to my original blockout which went great! There's a couple of adjustments that needs to be done with some extrusions and moving a couple of edges, but nothing too major. I did however go back to ZBrush to refine some of the details. Adding more seams and folds where it was justified. I also added in claws for the paws on the base of the chair, and added in some more welding lines. All in all I think it was completely worth it! I feel much more satisfied with the highpoly now and feel that it's actually where I'd be happy to bake it down. But more on that in the next update. Have a great week everyone and I'll see you there!