Level Up! - Second year has begun!

Starting the second year! Exciting? Yes! but maybe slightly stressful.

So this week was the beginning of my second year studying game art. This meant some new tutors, new ways of creating textures and group work!

To start the week of we were introduced to PBR which is Physically Based Rendering. Which basically means using Albedo maps instead of Diffuse and adding a roughness and metalness map. But how is that different? Well it means using realistic lighting/ shading models to make a more accurate representation of real world materials.
In short, lighting is super realistic and looks awesome in game engine.

The introduction to this however was slightly confusing and very stressful. Having no clue how to use PBR in any sense, it required some research into the topic and lots of playing around in 3ds max and Photoshop, but I understand it now after using it in the first project of the year which I will talk about next.

So, the first project of the year. It was a group project, it required using completely new concepts (PBR) and new software!

This project was called the Asset Swap, which means we had a certain amount of assets to make and each of us would work on each one, all doing different things on each asset.
For example I concepted a shield, modelled a barrel and textured a bench then put each asset into engine. After understanding and slightly mastering PBR this project was lots of fun and gave me the opportunity to work with people I hadn't before. 

 

I also realised that with group work communication is key, so we all made sure we could contact each other easily, by doing this and working together quite closely we were able to get the project done quickly and effectively. Overall I enjoyed the project, as a person who is generally more likely to work alone than in a group, I think that's pretty important.

This week also meant going back to life drawing! I had definitely missed it and I'm enjoying the class a lot, especially as there are less people in one class it makes it more enjoyable. For the first lesson we used a technique we had used the previous year. This involves covering A2 paper with charcoal and erasing gently to make the figure appear out the paper. Not one of my favourite ways of working, but hey practice is practice! 

We also have the next project started. This is called the Film Room project and it's another group project. I'm pretty happy with my group and we already have the film that we're going to work on. So I'm currently feeling pretty confident about this project at the moment and hopefully that will carry on. We'll see how next week goes!