Painting Lab: Inspiration from Mirror's Edge

 

An Inspiration from Mirror's Edge

 For this week I created a piece inspired heavily from the look of Mirror's edge. To start my project I created a PureRef for my references and payed close attention to how color was used. In Mirror's Edge there is a lot of different shades of blue to show depth while the main character is able to pop against the blue with her hints of red. 

Inspiration and Reference

Once I decided on the look of my piece I knew I wanted the Character to be the main focus.  I grabbed the mannequin's controller and put a parent and scale constraint on it to easily move and scale the rig.  I then brought in some reference and began to manipulate the character's joints into the position I wanted them to be in to give the falling feel. 

Posing the Unreal Engine Mannequin 

From here I then began to create my background with simple primitives and using extrusion to create some interesting buildings.  Because you would only be seeing a the one angle I created a small scene that is dedicated to only being in that one angle versus creating an entire city. 

Building the City Background

Once I got my city set up I created my render camera.  The trick to getting the angle was to have the dual panel layout because you can see that your render camera is looking at in one and then use perspective to manipulate it into place. When I rendered I also rendered 5 different passes so I can set up my passes in Photoshop to create different effects. 

Camera Angle and Bringing in Posed Mannequin 

From here I brought everything into photoshop and used the different passes to create my fog, ambient occlusion and base colors.  I used the same technique demonstrated in the previous assignments to set the stage for this piece. 

Fog, Ambient Occlusion, and Base Colors

I then began to hand paint in details in the midground buildings to give them a little bit of pop.  I also added the sky behind all of the buildings with a color fill layers so that the background buildings can be seen.  

Creating the Background, Giving Depth

From here I began to work on my character.  because the mannequin is mechanic looking I created a design that gives him some more mechanical areas.  I used a dark grey and red to pop him out from the background and left the color fill color as his main color to fil the other areas. For the extra design elements I hand painted them onto the mannequin. 

Working on the Mannequin Character

For the last part I worked on the foreground building.  The foreground building was difficult because I did hand paint over it and finding where the extrusions are became very difficult since they do blend in with where the windows are.  I colored in where I thought the windows were and made each window lighter as they got further away.  On top of creating different shades of blues for each window I also made a ground with the window pieces and made a gradient that went over all the pieces to blend them together. 

Foreground Colors

  To make the window more interesting I created some white lines that show the perspective and give the building a little design.  I also added a second gradient that effects the extruded parts so that they get lighter the further away they are.  Lastly I added a slight reflection of the character in the windows.  Using my ID map I selected the character and gave him a grey fill color.  I then used transform to flip him over the horizontal axis and then distort it a little bit. One I got the placement for the reflection I used the opacity and then used the gaussian blur filter to create it's final look. 

Adding Mannequin Reflection, Gradient, and Perspective

Perspective Study

 

Perspective Study

For this project I worked on the concept of perspective.  I was heavily inspired by the idea of the way cities show perspective and used buildings from Chicago for inspiration for my building designs and then letting my own imagination to evolve the look and concept. 

Reference and Inspiration

After looking at some reference, I modeled four different buildings in Maya to create my city with. 

Creating Four Different City Buildings

To make it easier to create my city, I exported my buildings as obj's and saved them in a folder that my content browser accesses. 

Creating a Content Browser Folder for My Buildings

When I was building my city, I payed close attention to variety by scaling and rotating individual buildings.  I then explored one point perspective, two point perspective, and three point perspective. 

One Point Perspective

Two Point Perspective

Three Point Perspective

My favorite was the one point perspective scene and I added the unreal mannequin to add some fun!

From here I rendered an ID, normal, ambient elusion, z depth, and beauty pass to bring into photoshop. 

Beauty Pass of One Point Perspective

From here I brought all my renders into photoshop and used several filters and paint brushes to create my colored scene. 

One Point in Photoshop

Use of Composition

 

Use of Composition

For this piece I worked a lot on composition.  I was mostly inspired by the colors used in Destiny on the moon destination and the idea of someone waiting on a mysterious planet.  I also really wanted to incorporate a planet in the back ground.

Reference and Inspiration

When coming up with the idea for the kind of composition I wanted to do I found that the rule of 3rds brought it out the best and before I created my scene, I really tried to make sure that the mannequin was placed in a spot that caught the eye.

Rule of 3rds

To start my project, I began in Maya with a scene full of space and mountain assets.  I moved the assets around and created a sphere for my background planet.  I also added some more lights and adjusted the lights that were already in the scene and created a camera for my beauty render. 

Putting Scene together in Maya

I then created an ID map, normal, AO, Z depth, and toon shader render layers to use in Photoshop.

Layers in Photoshop

In Photoshop, I began making different layers with the render passes.  I used the ID map for selecting objects to individually put color or gradients on them.  The AO map was used to bring out the shadows and a few highlights.  It mostly set the mood in the illustration.  I used my toon shader to create the lines and details in my illustration and Z depth was used to create a slight green fog over the environment.  I did not use my normal map but it was helpful for showing me where the highlights and shadows are. 

Using Toon Shader

To bring more character into this piece I created some FX to give my building into the distance some light, rocket blast to my space ship, and heavier green fog or light to my environment.  For all these effects I painted them onto my scene with an airbrush that had color dodge and then I would adjust the opacity.

Creating Fog

The last effect I added to my scene was the stars in the background.  To create my stars I applied it only to the background and under the planet.  To create this effect I used the noise filter along with the gaussian blur filter.  I then adjusted levels and on the effect itself I added outer glow.

Creating Stars

Value and Contrast

 

Color and Contrast

This week I learned about value and contrast.  As someone who is still learning Photoshop I was both excited and intimidated about the project.  To start my project I went to look for references and ideas for the look I was going for.  After restarting my project multiple times I had the idea of having colors similar to the colors used on the vehicles from Tron.  From there I thought about other references that has neon colors and then I thought about the colors used in the KDA League of Legends music video and my idea grew from there. 

Reference and Inspiration

To start my project, I had several renders from Maya with the vehicle and the mannequins that all had different data on them such as the line work and normal maps.

Scene with Line Work

I first brought my normal map into Photoshop and then looked at the red, green, and blue channels.  I made a copy of each of these channels and worked heavily on the green channel.  I copied the green channel and created a solid color layer to create color in the environment, vehicle, and mannequins.  Overall I had three of these layers in my file which were the main source of color on the objects. Two of these were to create a color on top and the last one selects the inverse to get the color on the bottom.

 

Photoshop Layers

From here I started to create groups for all of my different renders and groups to hold all of my different colors for individual pieces. 

Creating Groups in Photoshop for my layers

Then I imported my ID render and had it as my top layer.  I would use my magic wand tool and turn down the tolerance to 1 and turn off contiguous.  This allowed me to select individual pieces of the vehicle and mannequins so I could change the color individually.  I did this for pieces such as the wheels and windows on the vehicle.  I did a similar process for the pieces that have some gradient on it.  Instead of having it be a solid color layer there would also be a gradient layer that is above it to create the gradient.  This is an example of a few of my individual colors and gradients.  I also added the Ambient Occlusion layer which had a big effect on all of my colors.

Creating Gradients

Determining the colors for this project was really hard because many of the colors would compete against one another or the color combination did not compliment each other the way I was looking for them to.  A big part of getting the colors compliment one another was getting the background colors to pop out the colors used on the vehicle and mannequins. To start I put a black background and I thought about what needed to be on the outside of the vehicle to make it pop.  I got my idea of paint splatters after looking at some photos of the KDA video and began making my paint splatters.  Right around the edges of the vehicle I used the opacity of 100% but as I got further away I brought the opacity down to 30%.  I chose to use the colors cyan, pink and orange.  I then created fog using the Z depth render and made that into a light cyan color to create my background. 

Adding Fog

My last step was to create some small FX.  I used this to create the small glow on the mannequin's helmet, lights on the vehicle, and beam coming from the satellite.  I created a layer and put it on the color dodge mode.  I then used an airbrush and put that too on the color dodge mode and selected a color.  From here I did some painting in the areas that needed some glow. 

Creating Glow on the Mannequins

Ship Silhouettes

 This week I created some silhouettes of nine different spaceships using Maya and Photoshop. 

Ship Silhouettes

I started out in Maya with a spaceship model that was already completed.  To get the scene ready, I used my perspective camera to get a top view of the ship and then duplicated the camera and made small adjustments to the placement.  Once the camera was in place I created a keyframe on the camera in case I accidentally move it.  I then hid the lights in the scene to turn the model black. 

Already Completed Ship

From here the model was ready to be modified!  By duplicating, scaling, using soft select, creating new objects, and extruding, I was able to create new ship designs.

Modified Ship Design

Once I got the design I was looking for, I took a screen shot of the ship and brought it into Photoshop.  I set up my Photoshop file by creating two color filled layers to create the background and the bar at the bottom of the file.  I then created some simple numbering for the different ships and added my name and file name at the bottom.  From here I created a layout for the spaceships and created two groups for the top and bottom rows which are held in a big folder for holding all the designs.

Photoshop Layers

From here I created all my ship designs in Maya and imported them into Photoshop.  I cleaned them up with the magic wand tool to take out the background and scaled them and repeated until I got the final result!

Snowy Minecraft like Level

 This week I learned more about Unreal Engine 4 as I created my own Minecraft-ish level.  This was a fun project as I had many ideas for the kind of level I wanted to create and ultimately chose a snowy sakura tree environment.  

Snowy Minecraft Level Angle 1

Snowy Minecraft Level Angle 2

Snowy Minecraft Level Angle 3

Before I started anything, I though about the colors I wanted in my level and took reference from nature.  After looking on the web for examples I made a board to get my idea across and the general look of the colors. 

Reference and Inspiration

To start my level, I opened Maya and created a cube.  I added bevels and in the UV editor I organized my UV's based on the face they were and cleaned them up. I then got them ready for Photoshop.  In Photoshop I created 7 different textures.

Creating My Textures

After I finished created all my textures, I brought my textures back into Maya and see if they were working.  I applied the textures by creating a Blinn material and applying the textures in the Hypershade. 

Applying Textures in Maya

I set up a small scene to see how the cubes would react to lighting and having multiple cubes in the scene. 

Creating Small Scene 

From here I exported out my cube as an FBX and imported it into Unreal Engine.  I created a new level and began working in the material editor to get my textures and materials working.  

Material Editor with Textures

I then began the process of creating material instances for each of the textures.  After getting the textures in, I changed the settings on the materials so that cubes with the ice texture have a different effect than the snow and ground textures.  

Unreal Engine Materials and Textures

From there I began building my level!

Built Minecraft Level