Conclusion - Reflections, learning outcomes and project analysis.
As my final major project is reaching a close I'm inclined to look back over the project as a whole and note my improvements, lessons and anything I would change if I had the chance.
The title of my FMP is 'Styles throughout genres: an exploration of character design', which was my fancy way of saying that I wanted to explore 3 very different videogame genres and character designs with my FMP, and I think from that perspective I suceeded.
I like to think that when looking at all three characters side by side you can almost see an art style spectrum between them. On the one end you have the Cyclops character, pushing towards the realism of games like God of War, and on the other end you have the very stylised and fully hand painted Kael'thas character. All of his textures have little to no roughness variation in comparison, and its interesting to have to make sure that the textures look like they've been hand painted.
In the middle of course lies the Overwatch character, as she is a combination of both in many ways. In terms of her proportions and the overall aesthetic she is very much stylised, just look at how impossibly thin her ankles are, but in terms of the actual texturing approach and the materials themselves they lean more towards realism as the hard surfaces have roughness variation and materials just like real plastic/metal.
I've learned a lot during this project, often learning on the job as other than the artistic side, game art is very much problem solving. From unwrapping, baking, rigging and working in the brain melter that can be engine sometimes, it's always a learning experience.
Some of the biggest things I've learned during my FMP would be:
1. Refining my knowledge of the texturing pipeline and efficiency
2. More thorough understanding of the programs I work in, and navigation around them such as Substance Painter, Marmoset, Unreal Engine.
3. UV smoothing group importance and efficiency in UV and multi-sub usage.
4. The sheer importance of texturing and how much it impacts the overall character, prior to this project texturing was just slapping paint on the character to me and the model was what it was all about. Now I feel very differently, texturing while in the latter half of a character project is a large majority of whether the character looks good or not in the end. This is invaluable!
However, as with all things, not everything is peachy in terms of how my FMP came out, and it's just as important to note the things I would change if I had the chance to go back and tweak them, as this is how I'll continue to learn and improve even outside of university.
1. The scheduling of my FMP wasn't optimal, as aforementioned, my understanding of how important texturing is, and moreover how much time it would need to be done well, was not good. Therefore it didn't leave me as much time as I wanted, so if I could go back I would tweak the characters' textures.
2. UV unwrapping is still not my strong suit in my opinion, having a character unwrapped in such a way that there aren't too many unecessary seams and yet it's still flat enough so that there is no warping or low resolution can still be tricky. The solution I think is to just put more time into it and if I had the chance I would definitely work more on the UV's to reduce the warping in some areas of my characters.
3. Baking in marmoset was something I learned on the job during this project, and while it was an absolute holy grail to me at the time (struggling with baking in substance can feel like hell), there are still many things that I need to learn about baking. So less so something I would change, this pointer is more a note to my future self to go back and practice baking some more to get more aclimated to the process.
This project has proven invaluable to me as I've learned so much during this time, and the ability to schedule my own FMP from the beginning allowed to me to see first hand how much time I need for each part of the project, and how important it is to keep myself on schedule throughout. To conclude, I'm pleased with how my FMP came out for both its pros and cons, as even the cons can be learned from.
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