Textures & shaders

It's been quite a while since I wrote my last post and this time I'd like to show off my new experimentations with shaders for personal work and several textures I did for the awesome guys at Gametextures.com. This was a great opportunity to improve my workflow and experiment with several styles.

During my time of workflow improvement and texture skills improvement I have sculpted a few Insert Multi Mesh assets. For example this set of rocks.

 

Besides that I have worked on a new personal project but it's pretty much in the concept phase so that I'll have to keep for the next time. ;)

Please feel free to check out my breakdown/tutorial for creating this rain shader in UDK.

This shader is still Work in Progress, but the gif shows a clear idea of the shader in several states of wetness on the surface. But the main thing that got me stuck with this shader is the blending/animating of one wetness state into the other one, I want to create one state of wetness "flowing" into the next state of wetness. This is rather challenging for me mainly because of the fact that I'm not a programmer or shader artist by trade, so figuring this out is pretty crazy.

My first character [WIP]

Here's a quick update on my first character design. It was a ton of fun and I'm also working on my second character but that one isn't really near final so, you just have to wait a little longer. ;)

Stefan Groenewoud
Freelance 3D-artist

I am just sharing my thoughts and interesting artwork to other artists out there. This blog is used for educational purposes and/or tracking of Stefan Groenewoud his personal work.

click on the image to enlarge

In the desert

Hey there,

Soooo, I'm back again with another blogpost that I'm writing during lunch time. It's not so much of an impressive post like last time though, concerning my personal work. I did try to make a matte painting, it's still very work in progress.
And I took the liberty of starting on a new small environment that is taking place in the desert. The shader is pretty basic but it was fun to try out several setups and creating a basic atmosphere. I do need to make a paintover so I can figure out a good focal point that will pull the interest in the scene. Ah well, as an artist you always have a shortage of time, unfortunately. Please leave some crits if you have the time to do so!

For this post I was looking for a different type of artist, not an environment artist nor weapon artist, no this time I looked for a function in gaming that isn't very popular. Lighting artist! As far as I know, there aren't that many of these guys in the games industry.

Lighting artist job

The main task for an lighting artist is, of course, lighting up the environment, duh! Kidding aside, besides that post processing is also one of their tasks,this means keeping the color key of the environment in mind, LOD'ing, optimizing assets, (re-)UVing secondary UV-sets and creating paintovers to try out different atmospheric ideas. For some it might sound pretty easy but I do think it's a pretty challenging job, it's not just dumping in a few dynamic lights and calling it a day. A good lighting artist knows how to flesh out his environment with lighting and keeping the environment readable for the eyes.

Like I said, this time I'll show some work of lighting artist Tomas Lidström. He has quite the list of gametitles on his name already! Especially Gears of War Judgement and Bulletstorm are the titles that I admire. Although Bulletstorm wasn't a bestselling game, I do love the environments and unique atmosphere in the game.

Tomas's portfolio: http://portfolio.tomaslidstrom.com/

By the way, I'd like to thank all the artists out there who gave me the permission to use their work for this purpose!

I'd recommend to open the images in a new window to see the full resolution.  

Small color study, I extracted some colors to have a better understanding how lighting artists use their colors wisely to create a certain atmosphere in their environment. Lighting is very important to steer the viewers eye around in an environment/screenshot/painting. In the high contrast images the viewers eye is constantly drawn towards the lightest/most intense light source. Proper lighting setup isn't the only thing that makes an environment complete, the silhouettes are making the shapes of the environment way more interesting.

Matte painting tryout

Tile test

Desert starting point

Tomas Lidström his work:

Some color testing for one of Tomas's personal projects.

 

Thanks for reading the post and please share this if you can. =]

Have a good day!

Cheers,

Stefan Groenewoud
Freelance 3D-artist

I do not own the rights concerning the work of Tomas Lidström, I am just sharing my thoughts and interesting artwork to other artists out there.

High poly artdump

Hey there,

Well it was pretty busy for the last few weeks, been doing a course and some freelance work! This weekend I took some time off to relax a bit, playing some games again and it was time for another blog post. Another highlight of the week is, I'm considering to go back to school for a Bachelor diploma in Game-Architecture. I already got in the selection for this course last school year but my last school didn't send the paperwork in time so I got removed of the candidate list!

I'd recommend to open the images in a new window to see the full resolution.

Off-topic: Windows 8 was released recently, what are your thoughts about this? Are most 3D/2D programs compatible with this new OS?

Here's some work I've done the last 2-3 weeks:

The artist that is being highlighted this time is Brian Burrell. He has done some amazing work on Homefront (as art supervisor and senior artist) but also has very interesting personal work. Don't forget to checkout his website, this contains all the in depth information concerning his art supervising work. Personally, I loved the game Homefront, the weapons really caught my attention, unfortunately it wasn't a big commercial success, which led to the shutdown of Kaos Studio.

Bryan's personal work:

 

Work on Homefront in collaboration with other artists:

Thanks for reading the post and please share this if you can. =]

Have a good Sunday!

Cheers,

Stefan Groenewoud
Freelance 3D-artist

I do not own the rights concerning the work of Bryan Burrell, I am just sharing my thoughts and interesting artwork to other artists out there.

Dressing the bar interior

Hey all,

It has been two weeks already since I've posted the last blog post! I just have a quick update for you guys about my post apoca scene. Filling up the bar took a bit longer because I was experimenting with several ways to light up the interior. I got inspired by a book I'm reading about setting up proper lighting setups in 3D-rendering (mainly focused on Mental Ray or other non real-time rendering) but it's very helpful, for me at least. It goes from the basic lighting tools all the fancy light baking processes with GI. So for environment and lighting artists this can be quite helpful too.

Anyways, for now I'll call the bar interior done. I'll revisit the bar later when the exterior is more dressed up too.

That's it for now if you have feedback, don't hesitate to contact me! I think I'm going to play Counter Strike Global Offensive, just to clear my head for a moment.

Thanks for your time and please share the blog with other artist and friends!

Have a good evening!

Cheers,

Stefan Groenewoud
Junior 3D-artist

Post Apoca Update

Hey readers,

Right after I was done with the art test I got back on my post apoca scene I'm was working on. I wanted to fill up the bar first so I could get a decent part of the scene ready. Reason why I'm doing this is, it keeps me motivated and since it's a large scene to work on but also I can make a good screenshot already for in my portfolio. Normally I'm not a big fan of work in progress screenshots in my portfolio. But this time I really want to show off I'm capable of doing environment art, this can be modeling to texturing and set dressing efficiently. This is a huge challenge for me since I've never made a big outside atmosphere before.

Besides that, I'm also looking forward to make some camera materials in UDK. Like a vignette effect and chromatic aberration effect within the engine.

Well I'm off again, it's way too hot here in the Netherlands.

Thanks for your time and please share the blog with other artist and friends!

Have a good evening!

Cheers,

Stefan Groenewoud
Junior 3D-artist

Facial update

Hey readers,

I know it's a bit early for the Sunday blog post but I had another small update. Last weekend I've worked on a head that I had laying around. During my graduation project I started working on it but never really finished it. This time I added a bit more detail and made the head anatomy a bit better too. It's based on one of the character design sheets from Brink, you might recognize it from its distinct caricature way the face has been made. Feedback is welcome guys!

Btw. It is a high poly render in Zbrush, no low poly whatsoever.

Thanks for your time and please share the blog with other artist and friends!

Have a good weekend!

Cheers,

Stefan Groenewoud
Junior 3D-artist