Last Post

Just a quick little ending post about what I have done over the holiday before starting third year. I have decided to move over my blog to amberjamieson.wix.com/gameartblog for my final year so all posts I make from now on will be on this website.

Over the holiday I didn't have much time to do a lot of game art related things due to me getting my first job at the age of 20 (I know its appalling) at the retail store NEXT. It was an interesting experience and lets just say I have leant how to control my anger and stand up for myself at the right times; I will carry these soft skills over to other game art related things.

Over the holiday I did however make a portfilio website on amberjamieson.weebly.com but after moving my new blog over to Wix I fell in love with their customisation and have recently moved my portfolio over to this website too: amberjamieson.wix.com/portfolio. It was a bit of hassle but I feel that it looks more professional and now my blog and portfolio match. I also made my 2nd set of business cards over the holiday due to the older ones being out of date with website links; however now moving to Wix I'm doing to have to make new ones again. 

I did have sometime to do a photo study as shown below:

I have also being working on revamping a board game I made in year 9 called "Killing spree". 

This is still an on going project; I'm working with my partner and our friends to make it suited to us. I am in charge of all of the art in the game. Here's my character sheet at the moment until I find some time to work on this project a bit more;

After moving back to Leicester I got in touch with Unitemps and got interviewed to be a Brand ambassador, so now I get to work on open days and show potential students around the building and answer any questions they have about Game Art Design at DMU.

I also went to EGX over the holiday with the Games Development Society and got to play a lot of cool new games and talk to developers and industry professionals. I got a lot of feedback from Creative Assembly about my portfolio. However they wanted me to make it tailored more towards AAA work so I'm not 100% sure if i'm going to take their feedback on-board and change my portfolio as of yet.

That's everything for now, to see what I'm working on now check out my new blog (amberjamieson.wix.com/gameartblog).
Cherrio for now.

High poly baking

In between lazing around for 3 weeks and working on admin for OTM I have done things! I know shock horror, I will not have a repeat of last years summer where I did no work what so ever. This year I am aiming to do loads of projects in my spare time.

I have recently been working on a horror project inspired by P.T., with James (http://jmbroderick.blogspot.co.uk/), Zhané (http://wearethinkingcritically.blogspot.co.uk/) and Hazrat (http://thegamesartlootchest.blogspot.co.uk/). Unfortunately we haven't been able to work on this as a group much because people are having to work on OTM full time, but I have been working on making a phone for the game; you use this as a flash light in the game.

I decided to take this as an opportunity to learn how to high poly bake. Here's how I went about this process:

 Firstly I created a low and high poly model in 3DS Max (as shown above) this was then put into x-normal where I generated an occlusion and normal map. I soon realised that my modeled didn't match up in max and fixed this so that the normal's would be in the right place. I then re-baked it and tested the timings of generating a cage to see how this would differ the bake, honestly it didn't make much difference but i ended up using a 25s bake.

As you can see the bake left artifacts so I fixed this up in Photoshop. I also didn't like the way that some of the bakes looked so I generated a height map in x-normal and made a normal map in crazy bump. I combined the parts that I liked of both of these maps and created a hybrid normal map. I know this isn't the way that high poly baking is meant to work but it came out with the best solution so I don't mind.

Here is the final normal map on the low poly model. The next thing to do was texture so I set off on making an albedo, metallic and roughness map. Here are the finished maps:

Albedo

Normal

Roughness

Metallic

Occlusion

 and finally here is the finished textured phone in UE4:

Overall I'm very pleased with how this turned out, I have learnt a lot about how to bake models now and I will be using this for models from now on.

I have also been messing around with a website called sketchfab and I have recently just posted my Sloth chacter on there, as shown below:

Sloth by amberjamieson on Sketchfab

I have also spoken to a tutor and a third year about what they think we should do over summer and what people wished they had learnt over summer before starting third year here are a few things that were brought up in conversation:

• Learn zbrush, xnormal and UE4 (lighting and vertex painting).
• Get faster at modelling.
• Do dioramas and things for your portfolio.
• Write a CV and cover letter and make an online portfolio.
• Make sure you have made your FMP before (meaning make sure you know how to do it, if you are doing an environment make sure you have made one before).
• Look at professionals work and work towards their level.
• Find ways to be unusual and interesting.
• Do the professional practice breifs from the year before
• and finally GO PLACES AND SEE THINGS

The last thing was something that James and myself were going to do anyway and Chris suggested to look at: Swithland woods, The out woods, Bradgate park and Beacon hill. I am looking into going to all of these places to gather reference. Hopefully you will be seeing more work soon,

Cheerio for now.