Samantha Hernandez | Year 2

3D Animation and Games

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Production Assistance: Alternative

Over the two week period we were meant to assist the 3rd year students, I was eager to lend a hand to a group. A third year student reached out pretty quickly and I looked forward to working with a new group of people. We had a meeting about what the game would be and what would be expected of us. It was abundantly clear from the get go that the leader of the group wanted myself and two other members to prioritize working on their project above all else. They also informed us all that we weren’t at the level of production they expected. After hearing this, I decided to turn down the opportunity and fine tune my own work. 

I chose to polish up this particular model I used for my portfolio pieces. I was given feedback that I need to make my objects look less perfect and add things like grime and dirt to make the assets feel lived in.

The two images above are the before versions of the model. They are both very shiny and perfect looking, so to adjust for that I added a bit of grime, dust, and scratches to make the models look a bit more used. 

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Life Drawing

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Specialist pathway

For the specialist pathway assignment I decided to keep my three objects similar enough so they would come from the same environment. I wanted to practice keeping a similar style throughout the three objects and applying certain styles to more than one object. Two of my references came from the Sherlock Holmes museum from pre-covid times, where a parlor and several rooms were set up with 19th century décor. These were my main source of inspiration, though limited with the number of angles I could see for some of the objects so I looked to ebay for help with the chair and the clock assets. Each asset provided it’s own set of challenges. The immediate issue with the chair was figuring out a way to model the tufting without creating bad geometry. The best way to solve this problem was by creating one square model with the tuft pattern and duplicating it so that it covered the entire surface. ...

The clock asset proved to have it’s own challenge with the box the clock face itself sits in. I kept thinking of ways to create the round base without creating ngons in the geometry but in the end I extruded out a cylinder so that only half of the cylinder would be used and the other half was a cube. Additionally, the two spiral columns were a bit of an issue, but by using the helix polygon option, I was able to manipulate the settings to get them sitting just right. 

The fireplace asset was the most difficult despite the simple look of it, the curves around the mirror were a challenge as well as the geometry around the stone base of the object. These were hard areas to keep clean geometry

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Portfolio Project Week 2

For my portfolio project I have chosen to focus on environment design. In order to fulfill the brief I decided to go with a diner theme so modeling a jukebox and bar stool seemed like the appropriate assets to sell that idea. Alongside the two main assets I decided to include a checkered floor and brick wall to convey the idea of being in a vintage 50s style diner. The presentation style was heavily inspired by Robin Tran’s work. He includes the final render of his assets with renders that include the wireframe in several angles. I took that concept and decided to add the UV maps and closer renders of the assets. 

5 Chosen Artists

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/d8g0dX

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/0XeNR4

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/oOOVNJ

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ll9La

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Portfolio Project Artist Inspo

concept idea :https://www.artstation.com/artwork/raV65

Slawek FedorczukPRO: https://www.artstation.com/slawekfedorczuk

Robin Tran: https://www.artstation.com/robin_tran

Erica Cai: https://www.artstation.com/ericai

Nick Carver: https://www.artstation.com/nickcarver\

Shua Llorente : https://www.artstation.com/shuallorente

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Walking Simulator

Each week our group came up with tasks for each team member, I tended to stick to modeling or concepting work for each of the environments. Throughout the project, we learned how to quickly block out environments, assets, and keep them low-poly enough so that they don’t overload unreal. The next greatest challenge with the assets was understanding how to cleanly texture them in Substance Painter at a workable resolution without creating problems in Unreal Engine. The same goes for understanding how to easily package the textures for Unreal so that they could seamlessly be handed off to Shaun for assembly. I did my best to be as proactive as possible and lend a hand any time I wasn’t busy or had completed my tasks for the week. The end goal was to get the project up and running successfully. 

One of the things myself and Shaun made sure of was making sure the Miroboard was up to date with our own work as well as our group mates work. Each week we would go through our tasks and tick off what was completed for ourselves and others so we were all on the same page about how the work was being distributed throughout. A lot of the concept work was done by Ryan and Jilani, I only did a few inspiration boards near the end of the project but we all did our best to convey our visuals clearly through images. Overall this team did a great job of checking in with one another to make sure that we were all putting the work in. Shaun took the heaviest load with learning and putting in the most effort with any Unreal work, my aim is to become more familiar with that engine so I can be more helpful with those tasks in the future. Ryan did an excellent job of taking on any texture work that we were struggling to get done, while Jilani was great for modeling complex organic assets. 

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Life Drawing

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Life Drawing

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Creature Animation

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Motion Graphics

For this project I was mainly inspired by infographic poster and some informative advertisements that are text heavy. I decided I would create a quick infographic-like 30 second video about house plants. To start I drew out each of the elements I would like to include in each little clip and how I would transition between each clip as well as how I would animate each little element in order to keep everything visually interesting. After completing a quick sketch, I made up a colour palette so that the entire project would look complete and cohesive.

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Life Drawing | Week 8

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Diorama | Week 4

The final stage of the diorama was probably the most labor intensive part of the entire project. Originally, I planned to use Substance painter in order to texture my object but ultimately decided against it because I did not think it fit the stylistic choices I made with my model. After watching a few YouTube tutorials I figured out how to use the 3D setting in Photoshop to see how my hand painted textures would sit on the object in real time. I set up my workspace so that I could see both my UVs and my object at the same time and painted highlights and shadows based on where I thought they hit the object best. After painting each individual object, I imported each painted UV into a new lambert material in Maya so that I could see each textured object together. After some trial and error adjusting the textures and reimporting them, I moved on to the lighting stage. I thought the most efficient choice in this case would be to use the Arnold renderer in Maya since this is what I am most familiar with. I started with a basic 3-point lighting system but then added several other lights around the scene to create the sense of passing this dimly lit building in the night. I started with the obvious option of the street light and then moved on to the store sign and even some extra lighting for the windows on the second floor and the roof so that your eye would continue to move up the building rather than getting stuck on the first floor. 

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Life Drawing | Week 7

During this session the model went between two posses, each time we add a little more to the image and make adjustments as the model moves each time. 

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Diorama | Week 3

This week I focused on fixing my UVs as I added detail to the final model. The first step was UVing and laying out the blocked out version of my model, then as I added more edge loops and more assets I began updating the UVs as I went along. The biggest challenge I faced was working with the repetitive objects in the diorama like the railing on the balcony. At first I struggled with the overwhelming number of faces that total the number of rails that make up the steps and platform of the balcony. To combat that I UVd the first rail and then duplicated the UVd version of the first rail so that all the UVs would be the same throughout the balcony. The same step was repeated with the platform and the steps.

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Life Drawing | Week 6

The main focus of the lessons this week was to see the shapes of things and see how they come together to make an image. We often see things by their ‘names’ and not for the shapes that they are and therefore we get caught up in making it look like the name and not the shapes. At first I drew out the outlines of the shapes I was seeing and saw how they came together to form the curves of the model. After a while, I thought it might be useful to work with colour. This way I am encouraged to stay within each shape and avoid going into the adjacent areas with the wrong colour in order to achieve the object name.

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Diorama | Week 2

To start off the modelling process I began with putting up my concept art in the background on a free image plane. This helps to keep my concept front of mind and give me an idea of where to start. I started with the main part of the building first and then began working with the kinds of assets I thought looked the most interesting. Because a building can be a little boring, I decided to add little things like a slight bend in the shape and adding things like a tv dish, balcony, and awning to help break up the silhouette as well as tell a little story about who might be living there. I played around with the placement of things like the dish, store sign, and air vent in order to balance the dominating shape of the fire escape/balcony that trails around the right side of the building.