Week 11: Stylised tree

This week was the final week of the tree project as well as the last week of university before Christmas!

 

I'm quite pleased with the outcomes of both my trees. Considering they were so easy to make and I had one finished in the first week I had plenty of time to re-texture/improve both.

I think I probably could have experimented more with various approaches to my trees though considering the amount of time I had- the green-leaved tree looks okay from the front but from the side/below the planes aren't very well placed in order to give it a dense look from all angles. 

 

I managed to get one of my trees into engine (the other had some lighting issues that I don't know how to solve). I really like the colours of the leaves in comparison to the greens in the scene and I'm really pleased with how it all turned out!

Week 10: Stylised tree

This week we were set the next part of our village project, the stylised tree. Because it was such an easy project it was recommended that we didn't spend long on concepting and instead modelled an already existing tree/based our model off one at least. As well as this we had to create two trees.

To begin with I opened up some of the photos I took of Bradgate and did a few simplified silhouettes of the shapes I liked.

This helped me to establish what trees would work better in a more simplified form without getting caught up on any fancy little details. I then attempted to do more silhouettes from these to push the styling further but I quickly realised that it wasn't really helping as there wasn't much else I could do to the original ones I had taken.

I instead did a few drawings and quite liked the turnout of all of them even with the basic shapes. The middle one on the top row I had considered making more of a 'fantasy' tree but thought that it might be taking it too far, especially as the tree isn't going to be a center piece or anything like that.

Since I liked all of the designs I decided to do tonal paintings of each and test various tree colours on them all because like the design, I didn't feel like they really called for anything particularly fancy.

Part of me feels like I haven't really done enough concepting in comparison to others, but then when I consider what we were actually told I'm quite content that I didn't use any more time than I needed on this stage.

 

I was able to complete my first tree in under a day and I'm relatively happy with the outcome. Although considering the amount of time I still have left I think I will probably re-visit and polish it to a better standard after I've modelled the second tree!

Week 9: The Farmhouse

Finally after a lot of stress and tedious stuff I've completed my Farmhouse! As I mentioned before, its been a real struggle with my time management and not accommodating for things going wrong but its all done now.

Overall I'm not very happy with my final model.

3D model with wireframe

I found it quite frustrating as I felt I had a strong design that I really liked but modelling was much harder than I expected. As well as this my textures aren't as good as I wished they were- I spent a long time trying to make a tillable texture work and in doing so had to settle for something mediocre. I was really determined to make my building as good as the example ones so I had a really strong piece to go into the levels but I ended up painting too much in my own style and with the wrong kind of brushes (and probably too lazy as well when it came to details).

Model in unreal- the roof really lets it down.

I decided to do a thatched roof early on in my concepts and I still think it was the right kind of roof for a farmhouse but the way I had to unwrap it seriously hinders my model and makes it look very 'rookie' amongst the others which is exactly what I didn't want.

Fortunately we have two more projects to go into the same level so I can use what I have learned to my advantage and hopefully make them much better. If we get the chance to go back to it I know exactly what I need to change!