Before I enrolled at SAE a friend of mine who studied here told me that if I was serious about animation then I’d have to survive the three studios, and now two years later I’m about to see just how serious I really am. I’ve taken the first step and I’m now one week through and I can now fully appreciate what he said, it’s all self-directed and everything has to come from me, there’s no strict guidelines anymore showing me where to go and what to do. It excites me because now I can finally do whatever I want, within reason.
After the first lesson I knew what I wanted to do, something that’s been slowing brewing in the back of my mind for about a year now. Over the year I’ve collected bits and pieces, different concepts for characters, environments, Civilizations, Races, Monsters etc! and I want to wrap them all up in a cohesive story world.
During the Mega Wednesday lesson we essentially did a workshop on Unreal Engine 4, learning the basics on how the controls work, handy shortcuts and such to prepare us for the Aftermath Bootcamp. Honestly I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of making a scrappy room to test us in turn taking away the time we could have had toward the Aftermath Project itself but it turned out to be extremely fun. I had originally planned to create a Wooden cabin on a floating Rock formation in the middle of space where the player can jump off of the deck of the cabin onto floating bits of wood and debris. Of course I scaled that back a bit as it was only Bootcamp and I have to get other things done, but I still wanted to give the player an experience, to tell a story because after all that’s half of what we do in the Aftermath project.
What have I made this week?
On Tuesday I wrote out a concept I had that I could use toward my Story World, it will act as a force of antagonism much the way the Zombies in The Walking Dead do. In a nutshell the land is plagued with Demons; ghastly apparitions that individually pose no real threat, however they can link together and once enough have linked together they will form a higher tier of Demon entirely. Read the full thing with this link! (Hopefully it works? If not it’s in my google drive)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dbWj89shsEfNpjZM0OxnTboMwAJ55leaOq5Waqy-P7c/edit
Wednesday, Rough character concept WIP
Knight / Soldier caught in a blizzard
Wednesday through to Friday I’ve been working heavily on my Bootcamp Project! Before I mentioned that I wanted to tell a story or to create an experience, and I wondered if I was able to depict what falling unconscious in the shower might be like, perhaps you slipped and hit your head, or just dropped from exhaustion due to SAE giving you too many assignments. This idea came from someone in class making a comment that my tillable kit looked like a shower, and so I made it one.
Early on I found out that Planes don’t make good floors, as you just fall right through them so I wanted to use that as a mechanic throughout the map. This is the first room that the Player spawns in; I used an extremely polished Steel variant and dialed back the roughness to zero covering the entire room with that material. I tried to replicate the effect that Mirror rooms have, with limited success. The glowing light is simply the material from my ceiling lights that I put on just to see how it looked, to my deLight the two effects create a sense that the player must walk into the light.
(GPI design, 2018)
Once the player walks through the light they fall down a long glass tube in the middle of space; a transition into the next room. I really only made this tube as i didn’t want the player to be able to walk back and forth between rooms, and I wanted to show off my custom Skybox. The Glass tube gave an unexpected effect, reminiscent to that of a kaleidoscope.
Again I made use of the Planes, it allows the Player to fall through into the Shower but if the player looks up all they see is the Tiled ceiling. I also played around with a few particle effects from the Soul:Cave pack; scaling down waterfalls to shower size was oddly satisfying.
I tried for quite some time to set up a trigger for the shower to turn off and on but to no avail as I was unable to animate the particle effect, perhaps next week I’ll figure out a way. However I did set up a trigger where if you get too close to the shelves you knock over the statue. I set it up in reverse but it looked extremely unnatural floating back up so I decided to get rid of that and leave it on the floor.
Friday – Saturday I took my Demon Concept and followed through with some concept art and designs. I when onto Artstation searching for some reference material and I found some great ones.
(Javora, 2015) (Eie, 2017)
(Gabriel Silva3, 2016)
Going into the Concept Art I knew a few features that I wanted the Demons to have, Long scraggly fingers, no facial features and some kind of shadowy smokey effect to show they aren’t physical.
After drawing the Second Concept I knew I preferred them without legs, and so I went on to change the proportions of the first one which is how the third and final was born.
I took the third design into Photoshop and searched for a smoke effect tutorial and I essentially created the effect by installing a brush set and combining the different brushes at different strengths.
What have I Leaned this week?
This week I’ve learned so much more than I was expecting to during the first week back like how annoying it is adjusting to the controls each time you switch between UE4 and Max.
Generally speaking a huge crash course on UE4 will teach you allot, how to set up materials and master materials as well as creating variants within them. How to animate within UE4 and how to create triggers to well… trigger said animations. I’ve learned how to create Tillable kits in max and import them into UE4 so I can use them over and over again. How to make and use Emissive maps along with how to texture and UV Unwrap in reverse. I’ve Learned what the heck NDO is for and the basics of it. Finally I’ve learned how to create a custom space Skybox in Spacescape an how to get it to work in UE4.
Additionally how to import brushes into Photoshop and how to use them to create smoke effects.
What Resources have I found or Used?
This week I mainly focused on smashing out my Bootcamp project, as such my resources will heavily reflect that.
- Video Tutorials: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B7-r4vIFJiECdzVHdUZyUGxnUzA
- General Research on UE4: https://answers.unrealengine.com/index.html
- Spacescape: http://alexcpeterson.com/spacescape/
- UE4 Tutorial: Space Skybox Creation:
(FRAGALICIOUS, 2015)
- Photoshop smoke effect Tutorial:
(Letsgettoit, 2016)
Toggl Report
Link to report:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1PSsGn6h8BM5K3BdifZdhrIy62HABcvXk
References:
boqn deyanov yordanov. (2016). AMV – Ajin Fight. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=69&v=nFmj7Ghwwgs
Eie, M. (2017). The Plague Wraith. Retrieved from https://www.artstation.com/artwork/YEAm6
FRAGALICIOUS. (2015). Unreal Engine 4 Tutorial: Space Skybox Creation. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSRsQpRfDlk
Gabriel Silva3. (2016). Ajin Main Theme. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnDHBT8kP2Y
GPI design. (2018). Infinity Mirror Rooms. Retrieved from https://gpidesign.com/2018/01/thursday-salute-to-originals-infinity-mirror-rooms/
Gwendi Bian. (2016). Four Arm AJIN. Retrieved from https://www.artstation.com/artwork/G6qg3
Javora, J. (2015). Forest demon. Retrieved from https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rJvgL
Letsgettoit. (2016). Smoke Effect – Photoshop Tutorial. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GRUl4U8jik
Luchian, A. (2014). Ghost. Retrieved from https://www.artstation.com/artwork/DQ2G
Peterson, A. Alex Peterson | Spacescape. Alexcpeterson.com. Retrieved 8 February 2018, from http://alexcpeterson.com/spacescape/
sylvanfeather. (2018). Destiny Hunter Taken Shiver. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRJhqN0crPU
UE4 AnswerHub – UE4 AnswerHub. Answers.unrealengine.com. Retrieved 8 February 2018, from https://answers.unrealengine.com/index.html
Cameron McLean 
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