I offer anybody interested who owns Xenoblade Chronicles X, or is still considering it, a pair of online documents/guides that function effectively as a Miran Pokédex, detailing everything about the enemies Mira, how they fight, and what they can offer in the way of loot. This has been a labour of personal peace of mind for myself as I felt I ever truly conquered this game. But through meticulous playtesting and delving into the game’s datamine, my collaborators and I have pulled up a veritable motherload, all of which is compiled in these.
There is also a spreadsheet equivalent, available here - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m5kKS_69chohllO4r5xaP3_aMKbwmxeOMQq7CMhVyLc/edit?usp=sharing
These guides have also been given the rubber stamp by the Xenoblade X Wiki’s moderators for implementation into their species pages eventually. For now, all of the information is here for your needs.
Hybrid environment, based on the industrial hub area from Polytron's FEZ
FEZ - Industrial Area Remix
A Hybrid environment, based on the industrial hub area from Polytron’s FEZ. My second go at producing an environment. This was made for Msc Advanced Environment Design and Research.
Down below this is a little look into how it’s been built.
I don’t pretend to know of any principles of stylisation. The aesthetic and workflow was paved as I translated the voxel environment. So for example, all of the repeatable geometry is built to fit inside a 1mx1m space, because that’s how I translated the pixel tiles to 3D space. I used snap settings appropriate to those units too. Later down the line, when the outliner grew crowded, I also built actor blueprints for clustered meshes such as the cables, the piping and other portions of the structure.
All of the materials derive their Normal maps and Ambient Occlusion either from trim sheets or combined UV maps, and they derive their colours and PBR from 3Vectors and Scalar paramaters rather than baked albedo/roughness/metalness. The details were grouped together based on their repetition in the level. The first trim sheet can be applied to over 70% of the level assets without changing anything except for colour or other scalar values. The final component in the master material is a mask, which gets used with linear interpolation to allow for a secondary set of values.
Masks play a key role in the whole aesthetic. The pixel style uses very spartan colour scheming; gradients, blending and grunge barely exist, but almost all of the tiles have an apparant primary and secondary material, which the masks are built as such to emulate. They denote differing areas of colour, opacity, emissiveness, roughness, metalness, even wear to apply additional normal data etc. The blueprint is simple but very easy to iterate with.
The resulting Material Instance is incredibly flexible. Every object in this environment, except for vegetation employs this master material in instanced capacities. It’s also given me the chance to play around with making my own material functions. Amongst what I’ve made are -
Functionality to manually adjust texture coordinates in the Instances
Functionality which handles the masking of the 3Vectors outside to the master material, streamlining the main workspace.
Functionality to adjust the intensity of normal maps, using a scalar parameter in the instance
My own Crevice shader, which uses the ambient occlusion to darken or lighten crevices.
None of this is made using a borrowed workflow available online, mind you, although it does use certain techniques. I’d never used Unreal Engine 4 in an art-based capacity before this. I hadn’t even built a working environment, period. The assets, blueprints and materials have all been built with the level they’re being used for in mind. The foliage, the decals, the clouds, the sky sphere, the masks, the snapping units. All of it was new to me before I made it.
I was almost tempted not to upload this, since it’s a very dubious piece when placed in the wider spectrum of industry. It could be a diorama as much as an environment, and it doesn’t follow any of the conventional rules. There’s no mind paid to texel density, or draw calls, or the player’s path, since I was already learning about blocking out, lightmaps, trim sheets, decals, foliage, scene lighting, the spawning functionality which makes the clouds, and all of that jazz as I went. It follows no established workflow, nor is it ‘game ready’, either visually or technically.
I also think, in hindsight its a bastardisation the original level. FEZ, a game which I have no limit of respect for, maximises the ability to play and manipulate the conventions of 2D pixel graphics and isometric camera, so creating a 3D environment with a perspective camera is disservicing the original. Phil Phish, if ever you see this, I apologise for what this is doing.
However, this environement also represents a great deal of progress in my own skills. And as a piece to look at, and pan around as I’ve edited, I still think it’s pretty gorgeous. I think I’d want to just take a nap here, then maybe see what was behind those doors.
This placed 13th in its category for the Staffordshire Unversity Final Year Students Showcase
The final submission for half of another Master’s Project, but more importantly, the first piece of a new series of models, which, when finished, will create a much grander piece that I can’t wait to share. This is the Red Lion Zord, the power animal of Cole Evans, the Red Ranger of Power Rangers Wild Force.
Historically the longest I’ve ever spent on a texture for any of my models has been one to two days. This, however, has been given a week, for me to try and chisel in as much detail as my observational judgement and my knowledge of Substance Painter can muster.
There are already more marks of use painted into these than I have any right to be a qualitative judge over, certainly compared to the textures I’ve developed previously. But I’ve done my best in my inexperience to place them where I would imagine the marks to be, and drawn some inspiration from a few places. I’m very pleased with the distance I’ve managed to climb from my previous runs at a hard-surface model material.
3DSMAX & SUBSTANCE PAINTER
This is a piece of fan art for Power Rangers and Super Sentai, and a recreation of a character from the show. The design isn’t mine, but the model and maps are all my own work.
Produced over a 16-week development cycle for a Masters module in 3D Game Design. Two years on from my previous attempt at a highly technical transforming robot, this one is inspired by the robots from Xenoblade Chronicles X, and is an attempt at recreating one of the Skell models from the game - the Inferno, within a current-generation games engine, along with some of his weapons.
I made the piece with the intention of improving everything I possibly could about the way I developed assets through the various stages of a hard-surface pipeline, particularly looking to produce excellent map bakes, versatile materials and a true lighting setup inside Unreal Engine, unlike the approach previously used where I relied on Sketchfab for presentation.
This model is capable of transforming into an armoured vehicle and has customisable paint and light colours on the armour and weapons. It’s as close to how it appears in-game, both in constructionally and technically as I could get it within my allotted time and skills.
Monolith Soft, if you see this, forgive me for not asking first if I could use Takayuki Yanase’s concepts and your designs, and if you’re looking for an artist to bring on for future Xenoblade games, do please consider me!
how much would it cost for the oblivion and oathkeeper models that u have on sketchfab
Sorry this is a late reply. You still interested in the models? They weren’t in a condition to put a price on before, but that’s now changed. What’s your native currency?
This was created with no prior animation or modelling tuition. A promotional trailer for an app game of my own concept, originally made as a final piece for Media coursework, prior to university, and although it’s rather dated, the character of it compels me to showcase it.
I used a combination of storyboards and self-choreography to make the character animation.
MOBO is now being developed by me in my spare time. All prior research and concept work can be found here
Wonder how Sonic would look, running along this beach? And in this style, no less, because originally that what this piece was going to be, albeit far from this kind of look. But what was originally a blockout for an illustration has become an abstract, moody scene which manages to make a respectable little bit of canvas poster appeal.
And that’s probably been the first entirely unintended piece of artwork of mine in years, and certain one that’s been made digitally. I don’t think even in my A levels this happened with one of my works. But hey, I’m pretty chuffed, and it only took an evening. Hope you can ruminate on it for few seconds of browsing.
This mural is based on the concept of Chaos in the Sonic the Hedgehog series. Particularly the arrangement of the lines, the impressions of the seven chaos emeralds, and the symbols which are adjacent to them.
The kind of diagrams which work to arrange the elements of a profound concept, in such a way for the user to make sense of them, and frame them in their mind for the sake of producing something like a material, or a spiritual energy, or a force of nature.
As for the centre of the circle, which would normally be the core principle of the concept, the fact that it’s smashed off can have all manner of implications as well. It’s all in the interpretation.
It took maybe a week or so, I’d say. If we go, paper, illustrator, photoshop, then yeah. About a week. I couldn’t tell you how I made it look this way, because my only goal was to naturalize my initial graphic onto a more stoney surface, and the result is actually better than I thought it would be.
Made over roughly three weeks worth of late evenings, and some oak bark references. Making your own tree bark is a practice I don’t encourage, but checking a tree’s characteristics is invaluable, and oak trees are great for photography in any season. This one is early autumn morning.
Originally a pencil sketch, very rough but with a clear idea, turned over to photoshop and applied some lines. I will always favour illustration, in the pollution of soft lineless concept, but you can’t apply the same to natural forms. I’ve never practiced the techniques I’ve used here before. I just trusted my observation and the tools I know, and I trust the piece will tell itself.
Interpret how you wish. Sonic belongs to SEGA and Sonic Team.
Those of you who’ve played Pokémon X or Pokémon Y will recognise this beautiful floor pattern as the arena upon which your fight against Diantha - The Kalos League Champion, takes place on. It’s entirely Illustrator made and it’s taken about two and a half days of mouse clicks and aggravating my parents. Purely my fault. Work interuptions give me the grouches. You artists and designer’s’ll likely catch that slip-stream but in all seriousness.
This was a piece long left clanking abouts in the ‘Intend to someday create’ bucket. Seems I’ve lightened that bucket’s contents a bit now. This floor design in the champion’s room is oozing beauty and symbolism and ALL of those messy pallet swatches of yours. I’ve wanted to create the pattern in high definition digital art form for some time now, and I’ve always been surprised when I’ve gone to search results and found nobody else has tried to do the same. All you’ll commonly find are screenshots from the game, but the resolution of the Nintendo 3DS means that much of that detail is pixelated.
This is my tribute to this gorgeous stained glass arena, a’ la Kingdom Hearts HD remake overhaul (if you’ve seen the stained glass floors in the dives to heart you’ll catch my slip-stream). And it was really fun to create. Hope it appeals to yourselves.
Also disclaiming that this artwork is not my original design, but a recreation of a texture used in the Pokémon series, which is copyrighted to the Satoshi Tajiri, GameFreak, and the Pokémon Company.
These are pieces of what was originally a larger image, which also included Super Sonic. These are seven of the principle wisps found in Sonic colours, excluding Rocket, Frenzy and Void (The latter of which aren’t true wisps), which correspond to the colours of the seven chaos emeralds (Rocket would be as well if we’re talking Classic Sonic). The implication with this piece is that the wisps contained the chaos power of the seven emeralds, as denoted by the colours; something I took note of whilst playing Colours. I was going to call the piece: The Wisps Show Their True Colours, and I made the sketch for the whole image back in 2011, back when Sonic Colours was new. I’d never independently touched digital drawing before then, and it does show by the date these are being posted. But thanks to this picture, and some further practice between then and now, I can use photoshop readilly, and now most of the tools: Blur, Smudge, Layering, Masking, Filters, Layer Adjustments, Brushes, Colour Replacement, Mixer Brush were all learned from doing this and others.
The whole image isn’t complete at the time of uploading these pieces, and with everything together on one canvas it looked crowded, poorly composed and had too much going on. So instead of uploading that, I’ve separated each wisp out into its own image, and by themselves they’re perfect. They’re really where I’ve put all of my work into and you’re not missing much with Super Sonic’s absence.
Sonic isn’t owned by me, and credit for the chaos emerald I’ve used goes to the achievement image from Sonic Generations. I made these pictures as proof of self production and progress, instead of letting them sit in my imcomplete folder.
Part of a modelling project as a homage to Kingdom Hearts.
This tome is known as the Book of Retribution, wielded by Zexion of Organisation XIII, which contains magic powerful to conjure physically damaging illusions.
First of a series of models I’m making, as a homage to Kingdom Hearts. This lance is one of six, collectively known as Lindworm, which is wielded by Xaldin of Organisation XIII
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