Common Art 3 - Sprint #6 / Final Delivery

For this delivery, I did final touch ups on a number of effects and some functionality issues.

The charge beam and arm cannon had a couple more effects layered on top. There is a new mesh that acts as the projectile trail that also spawns with the charge beam. A new sphere spawns with the effect when the charge beam collides with an object. A panning texture will also appear on the arm cannon the longer the charge beam is charged up to a point. A new beam effect was added to the arm cannon and hand so that you can tell where they are pointing. The left hand menu was also fixed and functions properly now. The left hand joystick moves the cursor and the arm cannon can point to the menu and trigger the different buttons.

The magma and water environment effects were also touched up. The panning emissive materials were changed to use several caustic textures layered onto each other. The niagara systems were also touched up so that they spawn spheres instead of VATs that deform from world position offset within the materials. The water also will spawn a splash effect when colliding with objects, including the arm cannon.

The new EMMI model was skinned to the rig. The EMMI scan effect will now scale up and down at the appropriate steps. The navmesh in the game over area was reduced so that it is less likely to spawn outside of the level streaming volume. The navmesh in the main room was also adjusted so that you can't teleport on top of objects that you shouldn't be able to nor outside of the room and level streaming volume. The win timer was moved to be over the ending illustration instead of over the ending credits.

 

Common Art 3 - Sprint #5 Delivery

 For this sprint I touched up on a couple of effects. The charge beam vfx has some new particle forces for some randomness. There is also a new particle effect for when the projectile hits an object. The EMMI has a new effect when it gets shot in the head with a charged shot: the head will glow more and more red for each full charged shot. When the player wins or loses, there is now a camera fade to black or red respectively. Collisions were also touched up a bit to make the projectile colliding with objects a bit more consistent.

Common Art 3 - Sprint #4 Delivery

 For this sprint I worked on fine tuning a couple effects. I created 3 VATs, 1 for a start of the water drip, 1 for a water drip loop, and another for the magma drip vfx. They still need some touch up, mostly the magma, but are making progress.

I also touched up the Arm cannon vfx. A new swirling effect was added going around the projectile and a ribbon going around the projectile while charging and the original sprites were elongated moving towards the projectile center. The pipes UVs and positions were all adjusted so the panning material on them all move in the intended direction to the next step.

Emmi also now takes 3 full charged shots to kill instead of 1.

Common Art 3 - Sprint #3 Delivery

For this delivery, I worked on several different things. There is a new game over area for winning and losing to display the end credits. The arm cannon had a number of changes. There are sound affects attached to the arm cannon for: starting to charge, charging while holding a full charged shot, shooting a non charged shot, and shooting a fully charged shot. The arm cannon also will move randomly in a small area while charging. There is now a haptic feedback while charging the shot and the right controller will vibrate.

The HUD received some updates. There is now a display for what each button does that can be hidden and recalled when needed. Some adjustments were made to some timings to accommodate new animations. A number of animations also have sounds attached to them, primarily for the EMMI moving around.

Common Art 3 - Sprint #2 Delivery

 For this sprint, I spent a good portion balancing audio so that the Emmi sound effects, the music, and the ambient sounds wouldn't be too loud compared to each other. I also helped out with connecting the new scan effect to the steps so that only the current active step would highlight while the others would not. The Emmi blueprint was also adjusted to have 2 more movement states, a scanning state and a strictly idle state, that get called at different times.

Common Art 3 - Sprint #1 Delivery

For this sprint delivery, I worked a lot on the EMMI state machine and blueprint for simple AI movement. The EMMI will patrol in the factory between 2 points and will idle for a short duration when reaching the points. The EMMI that spawns at the end will chase the player and when close enough will transition to the lunge and then perform an additional attack. 

Also worked on getting the emissive material for the switches to start off, then flash when they are the current active step, and then turn on once activated.

Common Art - Sprint #7 Delivery

 Worked a lot on audio with the steps. Most audio now has a position, attenuation, and is binaural. Also adjusted the timing of sounds from triggers to help guide the player. Removed the floating numbers to get a test of how well the different steps can be understood by a player.

Did a lot of testing with the HUD, which we decided to go back to the widget as there were problems attempting to switch it to a model. Since it was actual geometry, if you got too close to objects then it would start to clip through them. However if we moved the geometry too close to the player camera then it ends up squeezing the image together due to the left and right eye and eventually starts cutting parts off. Also, the closer the model was to the camera, the blurrier and more out of focus it becomes. While there is some issues with the widget feeling like it is going through objects when placed further away and a similar problem to the geometry when too close to the player camera, since it always displays on top of objects it doesn't have the clipping problem.

Common Art - Sprint #6 Delivery

For this sprint, I assisted with the step blueprints. I helped connect lighting to the blueprints and swapped out a couple steps from the shooting to the plugin. I also fixed the arm controllers so that rotation matched with the latest update, and animation was working again for the left hand grip.

I also worked on importing some of the new textures and models along with a good amount of testing with the lights.

Common Art - Sprint #5 Delivery

 For the Sprint #5 delivery, my major update was the EMMI rig. There is now IK for the arms and legs as well as FK/IK switching for the legs, arms, hands, and feet. We are looking in the future to change up the rig and model a bit to add in a second elbow for the arms, but for now they only have one elbow. Now the animators will have a better rig to work with and can make better animations compared to only having FK controls.

I brought in the updated environment model assets as well as connected the updated arm cannon to a basic rig and to the hand controllers. I also assisted Ally with the blueprints she was working on to make sure sounds and animations were playing when they should.

Common Art 2 - Sprint #4 Delivery

This sprint was really short, just 1 week, so 3 hours. Worked on a second pass of the lighting. Lots of tests and many lights scrapped. Increased lightmap resolution for many objects since otherwise the lighting and shadows came out very pixelated. Also updated the destructible block fracture so they break up into many more smaller pieces. Helped troubleshoot a some animations and blueprint stuff.

Common Art 2 - Sprint #3 Delivery

I spent most of this sprint troubleshooting issues across the board while doing little of the work that I had planned. The door was changed so that a fixed unbreakable door exists first and at step 7 it gets swapped out for the breakable door. I adjusted the material for the switches a bit so that they can start off with no flashing but hasn't been implemented yet. I brought in the updated assets, so the new sprites for the effects, the new models for one of the walls and the window, and the new walk animation. I also swapped over all of the lights from movable to static and dimmed them a bit. The goal is to tie some lights to the steps when possible.

As for troubleshooting, I assisted with the menu, the blueprints for the different steps, and import problems with a number of assets.

Common Art 2 - Sprint #1 Delivery

For this sprint delivery, I worked on assets needed to swap the default controller out with the arm cannon. A basic rig was created for the arm cannon as a skeletal mesh was required. Using a Static Mesh or the gun blueprint with the swapped mesh caused the controller to break, no longer displaying any model and losing all controller functionality.

I also adjusted the projectile blueprint slightly to have an invisible sphere that would collide with environment objects. This would allow any fractured objects to act as if they collided with the projectile and break apart.

After the team updated their models for this sprint, I updated them in engine and adjusted the materials as needed. Our asset list was updated to now have priorities, show who is working on what asset, and to show the current quality level of each asset.

Common Art - Week 12 - Art Style Guide - Custom Style Guide and Start Prototyping

We started to work on custom art for our Metroid VR project this week. I have focused heavily on nailing down the story. Our first couple of ideas were over scoped, but not we have a good direction that we are going with. We are focusing on a couple feelings for our scene: danger and self realization. Samus' strange powers keep interfering with her abilities but at the same time are the key to defeating the major enemy, the EMMI. We are going to explore this story within an Escape Room based on the different environments within the Metroid serious with a heavy focus on the factory EMMI locations.

I started working on the proxy environment to get an idea of scale for the play area as well as the objects themselves. I tried making some adjustments with lights but I wasn't able to test too much. Lastly, I worked on getting a naming convention and folder structure document put together.

Common Art - Week 11 - Developing Our Own Style

This week we really focused on the style that we would need for the specific scene we are aiming to do in Metroid Dread. There was plenty of running around to make sure we narrowed down our scene but there is plenty more we need to nail down in the coming weeks. For now, we are focusing on a scene where Samus is pushed into a corner against a deadly enemy, the EMMI, and has to use whatever she can to survive. Ultimately, she uses a power that recently surfaced to absorb the energy of things. She is scared and unsure about this power at first but comes to accept it to survive.

On my end for our presentation, I worked on the slides for the mood board, visual effects, iconography, technical considerations and special design considerations. I also assisted with some of the other slides to make sure they were focused and had relevant images such as with the environment and lighting/atmosphere slides. For the most part, it was about condensing the information from last week, where we dissected the game, to just what would be relevant to the scene. I had to swap out some images for stuff that would better represent what happened but there was a decent amount that also stayed the same since the style was already established.

Common Art - Week 10 - Art Style Guides - Metroid Dread

For the second week of our VR immersive experience project, we focused on studying the art style of Metroid Dread which we are going to base our VR experience on. We reviewed playthroughs of the game, boss fights, cinematic sequences, and the art book to get a better understanding of the style the Metroid Dread team developed. I focused on establishing a mood board, researching visual effects, iconography, technical considerations, and special design considerations.

For the mood board, I tried to focus on several big points throughout the game but also showing off the variety of environments and the feelings they were trying to invoke. For visual effects, I tried to list off a large number of effects that you could see throughout the game. There ended up being so many that I started to categorize effects to try and simplify things. With iconography, I realized there wasn't as many icons throughout the game as I thought there would be. It focused on a couple designs to match the alien environment but a lot of it showed through UI.

Technical considerations consisted of a number of challenges that could prove difficult within the pipeline and things they had to watch out for. Special Design Considerations mostly applied to our goal of switching from a console system to VR seeing as VR is the most unique challenge we will face.

Common Art - Week 09 - Art Style Guides (Understanding Story)

This week, we were tasked with creating a side story based off of a pre-approved franchise. Our team decided to dive into the Metroid Dread Universe as part of our larger VR experience that will continue through the end of our 3rd semester. Our side story follows some of the story points of Metroid Dread but also is inspired from Metroid Fusion and reintroduces the SA-X as the main villain. An X parasite was experimented on and Metroid DNA was combined with it, and after failing to take over Samus, becomes a major threat to her and the galaxy.

As for the work that was needed from our teams, we needed to photobash a series of images to explain the different hours of the hero's journey and establish the characters. The images I created for my team were for the final 4 hours: Return, New Life, Resolution, and Status Quo. I used images directly from the Metroid franchise and layered them together to tell a different story.

Metroid Side Story, hour 9, Return

Metroid Side Story, hour 10, New Life

Metroid Side Story, hour 11, Resolution

Metroid Side Story, Status Quo

Common Art - Week 6 - Perspective

I decided to create a Warp Gate for this assignment meant to represent transportation and to go over perspective. Originally I was thinking of doing a spaceship and during my searches for references I really liked the idea of doing a futuristic warp gate. I liked the idea of combining the frequently seen series of torus with odd shaped rails. I also liked the extra added details of the cubes randomly sticking out. I played with the idea of having an energy type of field between the different torus' but ended up removing them as they became very distracting.

Reference Board

3D Model Beauty Shot

Final Photoshop Illustration

Common Art - Week 5 - Composition

Reference from Sparth, more of his work can be found at https://www.artstation.com/sparth

 

Here we focused on composition types while also taking a look at a variety of artists and trying to incorporate a part of their style into our illustration. I really enjoyed Sparth's designs revolving around sci-fi environmental pieces and really enjoyed how visible his brush strokes were in all of his pieces. 

I decided to make a radial composition of a space station built into an asteroid that had a spaceship crashing into it. I started off creating a proxy composition inside of Maya and getting some basic idea of what lighting might look like. I toned down the brightness of the orange light in the final scene as it felt like things got a bit blown out in a number of areas. I feel like overall I missed the mark quite a bit and it didn't come out that well.

Common Art - Week 4 - Use of Basic Lighting

This was a lighting study done using a screenshot from UE5 with primitive shapes and a 3 point lighting setup using lumen and then using it as reference to paint inside Photoshop. The shape outlines were traced over directly from the screenshot but all painting was done using it as a reference. I approached the shading in a similar non-destructive approach as the contrast assignment using many solid color layers, masking them, and using a variety of blending options. Overall, I think I matched the screenshot fairly well though there are definitely some areas, such as the green triangular prism, that didn't work out as well.

Common Art - Week 3 - Value and Contrast

For this assignment, we took a piece of linework and shaded it non-destructively. I decided on an environment piece which turned out to be very challenging and time consuming but exciting to work on. This is the first time I have done shading in photoshop but using solid color layers and masks felt familiar with the process of texturing in Substance Painter so the concept was easy to grasp.