What I Did This Winter - Art Dump

Hey readers,

It's been almost a month since my last post, for me, 2013 didn't start off quite as well as I would've hoped! My computer had to be repaired in the second week of the year already. Thankfully the repair didn't take that long and I was able to upgrade my computer. Windows 7 is now starting within 30 seconds and Photoshop and Max are opened within 5 seconds and run smoothly with all the heavy (extra) plugins. I'm really amazed how much faster SSD's work, at first I was skeptic but I've completely changed my mind.

Besides that, my Dad (who is 71 as of writing this) has joined a computer club! He barely worked on a computer before but now he really wants to explore what these machines are capable of. I just wanted to point out I'm very proud of him that he had the guts to start working with computer at his age.

Tileable textures

The tileable textures are created in Zbrush, where I started with the high poly mesh and applied the polypaint during or after the texture composing.

Destructible Study

I was working on these destructible studies to explore how concrete reacts in different circumstances. All are sculpted in Zbrush. As you can see the top row are all concrete studies and the bottom-left one. The last few sculpts are old/rotten wood.

Organic - Hand Study

I picked this asset up after one and a half year. Back then I think I got overwhelmed with all the anatomical terms and the complex forms. As some character artists even refer to hands as being one of the most difficult shapes of the human body.

Somehow I've decided to finish off some of my older project that I left unfinished. I learned a lot of tips and tricks concerning art creation, so I've decided to put the knowledge I've gained to the test. I really enjoyed the texturing/polypaint process, it felt so easy/logical to add in small details in the texture on top of the high poly mesh. This tech is something I'd like to use more often if possible.

Low Poly - The low poly is realtime viewed in UDK with the new DX11 features like Tessellation and Subsurface Scattering  The asset was intended to be develop for a next-gen game consoles, I also kept in mind the edge-flow for animation. So if you're interested feel free to animate it!

Shader - It's a rather simple setup with the added DX11 features in UDK. Most textures are 2048*2048px except for the sub-dermal texture, for example. The tattoos, to optimize texture load I've made a multichannel texture, so in one of the green-channels I copied in the tattoos. I've also added another UV-channel, where I mapped the part of the model I'd like to show up the tattoos. The con of this method is - an extra texture (eventhough it's multichannel in this case), the pro - I can have a set of hands with or without tattoos and I have a rather high pixel-density.

Organic - Tree Branches

All modeled from High Poly meshes, baked on Low Poly planes. Was very fun to experiment with the new workflow. Texturing is done more quickly and the meshes look more detailed, compared to the trees that I've done in the past.

2D Study

As in the previous blog post I've stated I'd like expand my 2D texture skills, especially I'd like to make environments and weapons.

Cheers,

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.

My Look On The Crysis Franchise

Hello my trusty readers!

Last time I talked about Lighting-artists and some composition rules, I'm very glad this article got very well received by other artists! It's nice to see some support and it also keeps me motivated to keep writing these articles. I really do enjoy writing these small articles and keeping them diverse every time.
By the way, I recently got my hands on Halo 4 and I'm a huge fan of this game, I enjoyed it way more then some of the previous Halo games. I must say 343 Industries really raised the bar for graphics on the 360. Also, don't forget to checkout the Steam Holiday Sale, but be warned! They already got their hands on my wallet again like last year, they might get their hands on yours too.

Since last time I had in mind to compare the changes within a certain game franchise in this console generation, not only by "just" comparing the texture resolutions. My personal curiosity really went towards the positioning of the weaponry and the epic scaliness of the environments. The first game that came to mind was Crysis 3 compared to Crysis 2, these are very intense games on graphics.
It's not completely fair to compare Crysis 3 (which has not been released yet) to Crysis 2, since it's not a final product.
Side note: I recently tried out the (multiplayer) Alpha version of the game. Crytek really did a great job on creating even more believable environments. Although some might complain on the heavy chromatic aberration effect as a lens effect  I really love it but I understand few people out there might dislike it.

Weapons

Personally I don't see a huge difference concerning the texture resolution with the weapons nor the polycount. The example below shows exactly what I mean.

Also the weapons positioning has been changed in Crysis 3, the hands/armor are way more visible. The guns are more believable positioned with the barrel slightly pointed towards the centrepoint of the screen. One thing I noticed is how much space a weapon is actually using on the screen, I'm estimating it around 20% (with an exception on the bow).

Lighting

 

Environments

I really dig the enhanced epic scaling that has been done in Crysis 3. I'm guessing Crytek really knew how too push the hardware on the consoles with these huge environments that can be a big load for console and PC. Crysis 2 was their first Crysis game on the consoles and probably that's why the environments aren't that hugely scaled, for Crysis 3 they seemed to have taken more time to develop really interesting environments which payed off.

 

I just managed to complete this article before New Years in Holland haha. It seemed like a small objective I wanted to finish before New Years! One of my resolutions for next year is, creating a better portfolio and planning out my work more evenly.

Sorry if it wasn't much in-depth information on art creation but I'd like to hear if you guys thought it was kind of an interesting look on game development.

By the way, I did my first piece of (finished) 2D concept art. I really like to do some weapon concept art stuff but it takes a lot of time ;).

Best wishes and a happy new Year!

Cheers,

Stefan Groenewoud
Freelance 3D-artist

I do not own the rights concerning the work of Crytek, 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.

Lighting Artist pt.2

Hey all,

Welcome back on the blog and I'd like to continue with my "special" on the job function called Lighting Artist. Last time I showed some color simplifications to visualize more of the color tones that are being used to set a certain mood in game environments. I haven't learned anything concerning color usage and composition during my study, but as I am writing these blog posts I am learning to understand these topics better. It's not a professionally written post but more or less the findings I discovered and my interpretation of artists' their work. If I'm wrong with any statements I make during these posts, please leave a comment!

Intro

Before I go any further with the lighting artist special, I just wanted to tell what I've been up to lately. This weekend I've been polishing my online portfolio. Mainly adding some extra screenshots for projects and adding some description. Also optimizing jpg's is a big thing! The smaller the images the quicker the site loads, I kept this in mind but of course you don't want your high poly mesh showing up as pixel art.

Another thing that has been on my mind, one of the biggest game stores in the Netherlands shutdown all of their physical stores and is only going to sell games through their web shop. I'm somewhat disappointed this is happening. I can't imagine any more game stores disappearing because of the economic crisis.

One last thing, I wanted to wish all the people at Trion Worlds who got laid off last week, the best of luck. I think it's a bit of a nasty move to lay off 40 staff members just 2 weeks before Christmas, unfortunately lay offs are a common trend in the games industry.

Lighting Artists pt. 2

The following examples show off how crucial color contrasts and silhouettes are to make a believable and good looking scene. With the example that I showed off last time, concerning Tomas Lidström his work, I took the liberty of showing the differences between the edited and original version. The color contrast is very noticeable at this point but also the importance of silhouettes are becoming more clear.

Halo 4

I'm a very big fan of the artwork in Halo 4, although I haven't played it myself (yet). The environments are highly detailed and has an incredibly awesomeness of varying atmospheres. Most of you have already read the article on the Environment Art on Halo 4 but here is the link anyways.

I used several screenshots of the game and took the first example a bit further. By adding some orange lines I'm pointing out one rule of composition. It's referred to by some as "edge flow" or "lines". This means the eyes are being drawn towards the point of interest because of all the edges that lead the viewers eyes to this PI (point of interest).

In the screenshot with the hallway, all the piping and  paneling is hinting the viewer towards the door at the end of the hall. Maybe it's even luring the player/viewer to let him explore what's behind that door.


With the organic/outside screenshot I added orange lines to landscape, I'm pointing out the necessity of having enough positive and negative space usage and the interest of shapes. For example the rocks have a very interesting and organic look and feel. From a distance it's already noticeable that the objects are rocks, that's why we're using silhouettes. Having shapes of objects be as clear a possible to the viewers eyes, e.g. the rough figure of rocks are very easily recognized -> makes the scene more believable.

You're probably asking, why the grey scaled images? Colors can be very distracting at times, by making them grey-scaled, I made it visually more understanding for myself. It helps to see where all the shadows and light sources come from, another important aspect is the sense of depth. Objects from far away become desaturated/blueish tinted.

The contrast becomes lower the further you look away from the "camera", the grey scales are your visual evidence it works. Of course this rule is mainly applied for outside environment/landscapes.

This blog post turned from just Lighting Artist also towards a few rules for compositions haha. I'm gonna end it here, I'm out of writing material even though I haven't discussed everything yet, but feel free to leave your thoughts down below.

One last line, "Happy Christmas and a happy New Year!".

Have a good day!

Cheers,

Stefan Groenewoud
Freelance 3D-artist

I do not own the rights concerning the work of Tomas Lidström nor 343 Industries, 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.

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.

Playing with compositions

Hey readers,

It has been a while since I've done my last blog post. As you might have noticed I was very disappointed in the way (some) game companies have treated me over the last few months. I took some time off to evaluate myself as an artist and look at ways to improve myself. Also, I have received an email from another (entry level) artist which was very helpful for me to continue making game-art. This email also made it clear to me that I'm not the only entry level artist that is looking for a job and is having a hard time finding one.

In the last few weeks a lot of things have happened and (strangely) enough I got contacted by several studios. Not sure if it had something to do with my outburst blog post?

Besides that, I wanted to share my update with you guys (and girls?) for the post apoca environment I'm still working on. I'm still figuring out the composition a bit and just tweaking here there some assets to make the scene feel more alive. I also did a quick paint over and I'd love to hear some feedback on this.

Paint over of one of the main screenshot. I'm not much of a concept artist but it's very helpful to establish my ideas rather quickly.

High Poly Wall Render

Also, this section of the blog hasn't been done for a long time. But I've decided to take some time for this and do my research again! It's time for the artist of the week (or of the blog post?) not sure how I should call it.

Polygoo a.k.a. Alan van Ryzin is a freelancer 3D-artist and he makes weapons, vehicles and assets. Alan has worked on a lot of game titles like Hawken, Rage, Homefront and the list goes on. As you can see his work has an incredible level of detail and believability. His textures show off, in my opinion, one of the most inspiring and best texturing skills I've seen.

Don't forget to checkout his portfolio.

I love those terrain textures, they show off so much detail just awesome.

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

Have a good weekend!

Cheers,

Stefan Groenewoud
Junior 3D-artist

I do not own the rights concerning the work of Alan "Polygoo" van Ryzin, I am just sharing my thoughts and interesting artwork to other artist out there.