BA3 - Architecture Study #4

For my last study I decided to make some sort of tileable texture, I have done this before but because I knew it would be handy when making my final I decided to refresh my mind and create another one. Since a lot of the Gothic architecture are built using sandstone I wanted to create some sort of Sandstone floor. I found a material I liked and then a floor pattern and decided to mix the two.

The reference pictures I decided to use

I decided to use 3dsMax for this instead of Maya because I find 3dsMax grid and coordination system a lot more reliable than Maya, after all those two are very important when it comes to make a texture tileable. So, to start off with I created simple boxes in the pattern I wanted my floor to be, I placed them so they could fit next to each other and after this they were ready to import to Zbrush.

3dsMax

In Zbrush I sculpted in the details to make it actually look like sandstone. I also used the noise tool to give it a bit of texture.

Render from Zbrush

Now when the sculpting was done it was time for baking. Now I used the same method as I used for the scales back in BA2. I made a simple square plane and placed it beneath the sculpted floor. I placed the floor tiles so it covered the whole square and also gave them different colours so I could easily select the different stones in Photoshop using Magic Wand tool.

I then baked it using xNormal, when the bake was done it was time for texturing. I imported the bakes to Photoshop and used the AO map and a mix of textures from CG Textures to achieve the result I wanted.

BA3 - Architecture Study #3

For my next study I decided to create some sort of fountain. I searched on Pinterest and found a very nice and decorative fountain that was made in the Medieval times.

Reference Image

What I really liked with this reference are the carvings which I thought would easily be achieved using Zbrush. Also I like how the water goes through a sort of leaf shaped sphere.

To start off the model I blocked out the basic shapes because this time I didn't have a frontal view to base my shapes of. After the basic shapes were in place I could quickly make a high poly version to bring into Zbrush for sculpting. The leaf shaped sphere was a bit of a thinker but I managed to solve the issue by using soft selection and rotate tool to create a sort of bend, to later do some further adjusting in Zsphere using Move tool.

Progress from left to right

After this I imported the model to Zbrush to start carving out the details. I carved it using a custom carve brush from a custom brush set. I also added some quickly sculpted water to the fountain. I decided to do this because since it's a fountain it looked a bit off without the water, of course it would not be added like this for a game but purely for presentational purpose.

I also made some beauty renders using Marmoset Toolbag 2.

Since it was a very easy model to create a quick low poly for, I decided to do a Low poly and bake as well just to see the results.

BA3 - Baking Software

Because this brief involves a lot of baking I figured I'd make a comparison between the different software's to see which one will fit my needs the most. The different software I choose to test was 3dsMax, xNormals and Maya. There are many more baking tools out there but there 3 are the most common I know about. To test this I will do a test bake of the door from my Medieval doorway I created for my first study.

To start off with I will show a picture showing a bake from the 3 software's to later compare them and write both pro's and con's. I set all the software to 256 rays and decided to render 4k textures because this is just for comparison purposes. All bakes have AO and Normal maps applied and comes straight from the oven (baking process) without any editing.

Autodesk Maya:

As we can see, this bake show lots of detail and did a very good job with the baking. How ever, it did not capture all the normal data very well as you can see on the nails. Compared to the rest here the nails looks very flat compared to the other ones where you can see some of the detailed shapes I had given them. It also created a not so realistic black shading around all of the objects which looks pretty but is not very realistic and gives it a bit of cartoony feel.

3dsMax: 

This bake came our very flat and weak. It did a very good job with the normal map by capturing all the information from the high poly but the AO came out very low. I believe with some photoshop editing this one would be good but compared to the rest this one was the worst one, AO wise. I believe with some adjusting to the settings it would look different but I wanted to compare them all with just simply adding the rays amount and nothing more.

xNormal:

xNormal did a very good job in both areas, it was also the quickest out of the 3. It did capture all the normal map data well and also did a pretty good job with the AO. It didn't overdo the AO like Maya did but maybe it could capture a little bit more. Especially with the nails.

Result:

The software I will use for the future is xNormal. It is not very shocking because how this tool is one of the industry favourites. It is a separate software but the time you save when baking with good results is worth it. After all, time is very important in this industry. It did not capture the AO as well as Maya did but with some photoshop editing they always comes out very well.

BA3 - Architecture Study #2

For my second study I wanted to try my hand at creating some of the decorative architecture that Gothic is known for. Since with my first study I made a game ready asset I now just wanted to make a high poly and focus on getting the shapes right.

For reference I choose a Gothic window I found during my trip to Cambridge.

Gothic window

When creating this asset I used above reference as a background plane in Maya and tried to replicate the shapes by starting with a plane and doing edge extrusion. I started off by creating the wall frame, after that I created the middle frame of the window to be able to extrude inwards. By extruding inwards and adjusting the vertexes I managed to get a similar shape to the reference. Because the shapes on both sides were the same I just had to create half of the window to later mirror it. I worked only using planes while creating this window.

Progress from left to right

Here are some renders of the end result.

BA3 - CS - Propp's Theory

Propp’s theory in ‘Hauron and the Sea of Stories’

Propp’s theory about ‘spheres of action’ includes that in every folktale there is a list of roles to fill and every story has them. As an example, every story has a hero and for there to be a hero there always needs to be a villain. The different roles can appear in different forms but they are always there, according to Propp’s theory. In ´Hauron and the sea of stories´ we also encounter all of these roles. We of course have Hauron himself who is the Hero character, who encounters several helpers throughout his adventures like the plentimaw fish Goopy and Mudra the shadow warrior. Iff the water genie would be considered as a donor, not because the connector he dropped but because he gave Hauron the wish water. For me, the princess in this story is Hauron’s mother and not princess Batcheat. This is because in the beginning of the adventure she runs off with another man, to later in the end return to their family. This reminds me of the classic princess tales where the princess get’s kidnapped to later be saved by the hero.

Picture that explains Propp's Theory

The character I have chosen to re-design is the Walrus, the head of P2C2E. I would place him as a “Donor” in the spheres of action. Because at the end of the story he gives Hauron a happy ending and brings back his mother. He could also be considered as a Hero because how he brings back the “Princess” character which is Hauron’s mother back into his life.

Reference:
Picture from: http://image.slidesharecdn.com/medianarrativeproppandtodorov-100607085507-phpapp02/95/media-narrative-propp-and-todorov-8-728.jpg?cb=1275900971

BA3 - Architecture Study #1

For my first study I decided to take it all the way to a game ready asset. This meant creating a High poly model to later turn into a optimized Low poly, then onto baking and finally texturing. As reference for my first asset I choose a Gothic doorway with a pointed archway from a building in Edinburgh.

Reference for my first asset

Ref: http://nub4sh.deviantart.com/art/Medieval-Door-171559179

I choose this doorway because it included some of the things I had researched about, such as the pointed archway. It was also small enough to let me create the study quickly but still make it into a game ready asset.

When I had my reference sorted it was time to create the High poly model, for this I mostly used edge extrusion and primitive shapes. I prefer starting with the High poly to later make the low poly because it gives me full freedom in the beginning of the creation process to later think about optimization etc. I do have the low poly in mind when creating the high poly tho, such as when I made the doorway I knew the door itself would just be a flat plane so I could add lots of detail to it without any performance impact. I decided to create the wall itself into just simple blocks to later sculpt in Zbrush.

High poly before sculpting details in Zbrush

In Zbrush what I started off with was to sculpt the wall, I found the wall texture on the reference photo very uninteresting so I decided to find reference on a wall I found interesting and also was using the same material, in this case Sandstone.

Reference for my wall

The wall is now sculpted

Since the scene will be very small I decided to add a lot of weathering to it to make it a bit more interesting. 

To make the scene even more interesting I wanted to add some sort of medieval torch to the scene to give additional light sources. So I quickly made one in Maya and sculpted in fitting details in Zbrush.

 I also added some weathering to the archway itself and damaged the pillars. I had to be very careful when damaging the pillars because to make the silhouette look good it meant adding more polygons to the low poly.

Picture of the finished HP sculpt

Now with the High Poly done it was time to create the Low Poly. I created the Lowpoly mostly by cleaning up the High Poly by removing a lot of loops etc, also I decimated some parts in Zbrush and merged them into my Low poly. However, decimation can lead to some very messy topology so by some feedback given on the Crit sessions I cleaned up the decimated parts alot and here is the result.

And here is how the final Low Poly model looked including the baked Normal and AO maps which I made using xNormal.

When I baked this model I also took the time to compare different baking softwares, I will make a blogpost about this test. 

Up next was texturing stage. I was thinking about using Physically Based Rendering for this model but I decided to do that for my final instead. First I tried to fit it all into one single texture but because of the details on the doorway are very small compared to the rest of the model they became very pixelated and blurry. Therefore I decided to create two textures for this model. For the torch I went with very simple Physically Based Rendering texture as a small practice for my final model. 

The textures were made using Photoshop, I did some further normal detail using Pixplant for the rocks.

For my final beauty renders I used Marmoset Toolbag 2. 

BA3 - CS - Group Project

For our Contextual Studies we have to read and study the book "Hauron and the Sea of Stories" written by "Salman Rushdie". After doing this we have to in teams of two select a character each in the book that we want to re-create in 3 different art styles.

The art styles we were allowed to choose from were the following:

• Graphic Novel (Telltale Games, Scott Pilgrim, Anime, e.t.c)
• Minimalism (Thomas Was Alone)
• Pixel Art (The Deer God)
• Painterly (Okami)
• 'Realism' (Real World - GTA)
• Fantasy (Guild Wars)
• Surrealism (Machinarium)

I will work together with Charlotte. She is specialized in 2D and I am in 3D so I believe we will do a very good team where she focuses on the 2D concept while I will throw in some 3D in there. The characters we decided to create were Mudra, the Shadow Warrior. And the Walrus, the CEO of P2C2E.

The art styles we decided to work with are the following:

Graphic Novel

What we want to work with is a art style that resembles the one used in the video game Borderlands. We choose this style because we both really appreciate what the artists at Gearbox Software created and would love to create something using this style.

Fantasy

With this art style we went two different approaches with our characters. The approach we will use for Mudra is to create a classic fantasy character such as Aragorn from 'Lord of the Rings'. While for the Walrus, what we will create is a character that resembles the style from the movie 'Rango'. Where they took real life animals and humanized them.

Painterly

With this art style we want to achieve a art style similar to the game 'Child of Light'. A game with a very painterly and beautiful style. 

BA3 - CS - Synopsis of Hauron and the Sea of Stories.

Synopsis of

Haroun and the Sea of Stories

Book written by: Salman Rushdie

In the country of Alifbay there is a place called the sad city. In that city there lives a boy that goes by the name of Haroun Khalifa. This novel is about him and the massive journey he will embark on to the Sea of Stories.

One day when Haroun is on his way back from school something have happened that neither him or his father Rashid expected. His mother have run off with the upstairs neighbour. Because Haroun’s father is a famous storyteller, he blamed his father for his useless stories. This had a great impact on Rashid. After the incident Rashid decides to take his son with him on a storytelling job where he have to perform to some politicos in the Land of G and Valley of K. However, Rashid fails to perform because when he tried to tell his stories the only word that came out was “Ack!”.

After the failed performance, Haroun and Rashid starts their journey home by boarding the mail bus headed for the Valley of K. When they reach their destination they stumble upon the politician Mr.Buttoo, who have heard of Rashids fantastic stories so he offers them to join him on his travels.

On Mr.Buttoo’s yatch Hauron encounters Iff, the Water Genie who he firsts mistakes for a burglar.  Iff dropped his wrench by mistake when hiding from Hauron. He explains for Hauron that his father have cancelled his subscription for Story water, and he needs the wrench to turn off the story stream. Because Hauron refuses to give it back, Iff tells him to bring it up with the Walrus in Gup City. After some convincing Iff agrees to bring him there.

To reach the city, Iff transforms a bird of Hauron’s choice into a massive one as a means of transportation.  Hauron names the bird to “Butt the Hoopoe” and they can communicate telepathically. They soon arrive to the Sea of Stories of Kahani which is located on Earth’s second moon and is a library in liquid form. This is where the story water is located but also where the Wishwater can be found. Hauron drinks of the Wishwater and wishes his fathers subscription to story water to return but cause the lack of focus, Hauron starts thinking about his mother and concentration is lost after eleven minutes.

When that plan fails Hauron drinks from the story water where he relives one of the classic “Rescue the Princess” stories.  However the story takes a very dark turn because it is poisoned by a person named Khattam-Shud. Iff knows that it means trouble and together with Hauron they head to the Land of Gup. Here they meet Mali the Water Gardner, it turns out the Chupwalas have kidnapped Princess Batcheat. Everyone in the Land is now in war.

Now as a spy for the army, Hauron helps them win the war against Khattam-Shud by using Wishwater to destroy his plans. As a reward for his bravery Hauron is given a happy ending, the sad city have now turned into a happy place and his mother have returned home.

BA3 - Trip to Cambridge

After doing my research it was time to grab some photo reference and look at the architecture in real life. To do this me and my classmate Charlotte went to Cambridge to gather some reference photos of various Architecture. The day was very rewarding and we came back with hundreds of photos. Cambridge have a very interesting mix of architecture, we found both Gothic, Romanesque and Georgian architecture spread out in the city.

Moodboard of some of the pictures taken that day

When we walked outside the college of Cambridge I found a building that had those very decorative and beautiful windows. For one of my studies I will use these windows as reference.

BA3 - Architectural Research Extended - Gothic

The architectural style I choose to extend my research on is Gothic style. I choose this style because I am very interested in Cathedrals and how they are built, and most are built with this iconic style. To begin this extended research I looked up several sources including books, documentaries, internet etc so this will be quiet a in depth and long blogpost about this very decorative style.

Extended Research - Gothic Architecture

The transformation from Romanesque to Gothic began 1144 AD during the construction of 'Church of Saint Denis'. As an advisor for two French kings and a Monk, 'Abbot Suger' was the architect and visionary behind this church. He wanted to change the Romanesque style that had been used for years , with it's thick walls and small windows, Abbot Suger came up with an Architectural style that allowed the creation of thin walls and massive windows. He did this by introducing pointed Archways and Buttresser, which I will explain more about later in this blogpost. Abbot Suger called his new Architectural style for 'Modern'. Critics against this new style started calling it by the same name of a infamous barbaric tribe 'Goths'. The name stuck and that is why it is now called 'Gothic'.

Church of Saint Denis in Paris, France

Abbot Suger saw light as a symbol for God, therefore he wanted to introduce massive stain glass windows to the churches. This meant more light which would bring people closer to god. However, by the help of massive support arches the windows also worked as walls for the cathedrals. Because most people in the medieval times were illiterate they decorated those massive windows with stories from the bible as pictures.

An example of how stain glass windows also works as walls

What allows the cathedrals of this time to achieve such great heights is because they learnt to master a pressure called the 'Stress-line'. This is the pressure that prevents archways from collapsing. The way it works is that it sends pressure from the key stone which is the stone located in the centre of a Arch, and evenly distributes the pressure to the ground. However, when building taller arches this made them collapse because the stress-line was pointing sideways. Because of this Abbot Suger invented the pointed archway. This allowed the construction of tall archways with the stress-line pointing downwards.

An image describing the difference between the two kind of Archways.

Another invention by Abbot Suger was the addition of 'Flying Buttresses'. Their job is to by the help of an external structure help leading the gravity of the massive arches inside the cathedral towards the ground, and also evenly distribute the weight of the entire cathedral. Since building those arches was like building a house of cards, one error and the whole cathedral would collapse. There had to be an extra addition to secure the structure from collapsing. A common reason to why some cathedrals has collapsed is because of a miss placed buttress, which have distributed the gravity incorrectly and there for made the entire cathedral to collapse.

An image describing the function of the buttress and how it effects the Stress-Line to change

(Click to Enlarge)

An image showing the distribution of gravity in a cathedral.

Since the purpose of building these great cathedrals was spiritual and to bring people closer to god, many of the great cathedrals were built in the shape of a crucifix. It is believed that some of the medieval architects used measurements from the bible as a blueprint while building the cathedrals. Many of the cathedrals height measures to be 144 cubic metres high which is the height of solomon's temple and a number that is repeated several times in the bible.

 This image shows how the crucifix is built in most cathedrals

This image shows two different cathedrals where both reaches 144 cubic metres.

Around 1180 AD England wanted to break their ties with the French architects and there for developed their own Gothic style, which today is known as "Perpendicular Gothic". While the French Gothic style focuses a lot on decorative sculpting, Perpendicular focused on being clean and having a lot of vertical lines that would drag the attention of the viewer upwards towards god. This new style became England's first national style of architecture.

Pependicular Gothic, as you can see it is very clean and vertical.

References: 

Documentaries: 

Nova - Building The Great Cathedrals

BBC - Architects of the Divine, The First Gothic Age

E-Book:

The splendour of English Gothic Architecture - Written by: John Shannon Hendrix

Websites:

http://www.athenapub.com/14gothic-architecture.htm

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/medieval-world/latin-western-europe/gothic1/a/gothic-architecture-an-introduction

BA3 - Architecture Research - Renaissance

Renaissance Architecture developed in Florence during the early 15th century. It replaced the medieval Gothic style and re-introduced many architectural traits from Ancient Roman style, which includes the use of columns, round arches, tunnel vaults and domes. This is why it is called 'renaissance' which means 'Born anew' in French. Renaissance architects found the proportion to be most important factor for a building to look beautiful. They managed to find a harmony between the human proportions and buildings and from this be able to achieve very beautiful constructions.

This new architectural style spread across Europe by the help of two books, the first one written by Giacomo da Vignola and is called 'The Five Orders of Architecture'. The other one was written by Andrea Palladio and goes by the name 'The Four Books of Architecture'.

 The Four Books of Architecture

 

Countries such as France, Germany and England used these books combined with their own building traditions to create their own versions of Classicism Architecture.

Renaissance Chatea, an example of France take on Renaissance Architecture.

References:
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/architecture/renaissance.htm
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1384942/Renaissance-architecture
http://architecture.about.com/od/periodsstyles/g/renaissance.htm