Brian Mikolajczyk FIEA Art Blog: February 2022

Monday, February 28, 2022

Common Art Project Contributions 02/28/2022

Contributions

- Lighting

- Post Processing Color Grading

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Submission for 02/16/2022

Contributions:

Assisted with VFX tasks

- bubbles

- lightning bolt

- laser

- buzz saw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epdYtCEt_nQ

Video for group ^^^^

10 Artists and PurRef Board

Patrick Benai - Hard Surface Weapons

Andres Rodriguez- Environment Artist @ Naughty Dog

Dave Miragliotta- Environment Artist @ Respawn Entertainment

Leah Augustine - Environment Artist @ Respawn Entertainment

Gary Do - Hard Surface Artist @ Respawn Entertainment

Roman Zhuravlyov - Hard Surface Concept Artist

Jonjo Hemmens - Environment Artist @ Rocksteady

Aaron Cruz - Environment Artist @ Bungie

Daniel Thiger -Texture Artist @ Bungie

So what was important to me for each of these images was finding great references for presentation material work, weapon design, environment design, and set dressing. It was important to find references that actually had artists that could apply their work well and consistently. Presentation and Render quality was also important to me so that I can get a good idea of what if expected and considered industry professionalism. For Materials I looked for materials that were designed with detail and could be apply to an environment and or weapon easily. Story telling also is something that I looked for. If the environment was interesting enough that it didn't tell a underling story then it wasn't included.

Thursday, February 10, 2022

My 1st Substance Designer Project

Nodes Used:

Shape: Generates several different kinds of primitive shapes and patterns

Bevel: This node is interesting. Contrary to what bevel does in Maya and ZBrush, in Substance Designer, bevel is a node that can 'blend' a black and a white value together. Very similar to a blur. However bevel seems to only blend at a constant rate. So the gradient that bevel makes is quite smooth.

Curve: The curve node is a bit of a confusing node, but if you look at it from the perspective of the graph image that it'll make sense. So what the curve node can do is sort of make waves of data by remapping input data from the previous node. In my case the bevel node.

Transformation 2D: Allows you to move shapes around or 2D images.

Blend Node. Blends foreground and background shapes together, also you can use masks in the opacity channel.

NOTE: You better know your blending modes for this node, otherwise you are going to struggle with it.

Histogram Range vs. Levels

Learning Substance Designer 02/10/2022

Disclaimer: This Post will just be a post to demonstrate what I have learned thus far in Substance Designer. To see the entire software package documentation follow the link here Substance Designer Doc

General Layout:

The General Layout of Substance Designer is divided up into 6 different sections. with some similarities to Substance Painter, Designer has a...

3D View: Where you can you view you material in 3D space

- in this view you can change the model that's rendering your material as well as import your own.

2D View: Where you can view your material in 2D space

- you can view any node in this view simply by double clicking on it in the graph editor

- hitting space bar in the 2D View will change the view to a tiling image.

Library: This is area where you can find all of your atomic nodes, environments, grunge maps, etc.

- by simply hitting space bar in the graph editor you can access a compressed version of the library and search and resource you want.

Properties: This display the editable information of the nodes.

- click on any node to edit them in the properties panel

Graph: This is where the action happens. In this space you will be placing your node networks here and developing your materials.

- Just above the graph is a list of tools called atomic nodes. These are more or less tools or functions that change your material across your node network. A kin to unreal engines multiply is Substance Designers Blend node. However, Designer is far more sophisticated.

Explorer: This is where you can view your Substance Package and your Substance graphs. Substance Designer makes use a parent and child relationship similar to most 3D softwares such Maya. You Substance Package is the parent and you Substance Graph is the child.

- you can view the substance graph in the graph editor

- it is possible to have many substance graphs in a single substance package.

- this is one of the many perks of substance designer because unlike painter; designer can ulitlize this parent and child relationship and blend many materials to create an entirely unique one.

- Substance Designer is also capable of exporting materials directly to Unreal Engine and Unity with the Substance plugin. This also you to directly make your substance materials as unreal materials.

- Substance Designer can also export materials straight to Substance Painter. Allowing artists to author their own materials.

- if a node has a sockets on the left side of it, that means that it will be used at the beginning of the node network

- if a node a has a socket on the right side of it, that means that it will be an output node, or the end of the network.

if there is a nod with a socket on both the right and left sides that means it a gonna be used as bridging nodes together.

the gray color sockets means that sockets with this color can only take in gray scale color data

the yellow nodes means the these sockets with this color can take color data

the nodes with both gray and yellow socket can take both gray scale and color data.

node networks are read left to right.

some color mode can be changed in the properties panel. Such as changing the Uniform Color atomic node from Color Data to Grayscale

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Substance Packages save as a .sbs file. This is the source document to your Substance Package, as .psd and a source document to Photoshop.

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Atomic Nodes:

Uniform Color: The Uniform Color node provides us with the ability to select any color we choose and output it to another node. We can also limit it to grayscale values only, constraining the selection to a value between black and white.

Blend: The Blend node allows us to mix together images. While simple in application, it is a very robust and useful node. We can change Blending modes, which will alter how pixels between our top and bottom image interact. We may alter the opacity of the blend, as well as play with cropping values for our top image.

Levels: The Levels node gives us the power to define the "limits" of the image that is used as input. We can manipulate the limits to remap the brightest, darkest and mid-values of our image.

Transformation 2D: The Transformation 2D node is about the closest we will come to working in a layer-based system. It allows us to manually adjust the input image (moving, rotating, scaling). It also provides tiling options in case we wish to have our image off any of the sides of the texture region.

Curve: The Curve node provides the same options as the Levels node, however it also allows for slightly more control over the values in between the "limits". By using a curve editor, we can create handles to adjust values at any point in our gradient.

Gradient Map: The Gradient Map node will allow us to convert grayscale data into colour data. It remaps the grayscale values to colour values along a gradient. This means that we can maintain colours even when we manipulate the original grayscale image.

Normal: The Normal node will convert any grayscale image into a colour image useable as a Normal map. It requires grayscale input to be used properly.

We can change the intensity, as well as Normal format (DirectX or OpenGL)

Text: The Text node allows us to create robust text within Substance Designer. While the use cases may be niche, trying to create text for use in a graph any other way will be significantly harder.

Monday, February 7, 2022

NERF GUN

For this assignment I was tasked with starting a Nerf Gun of choice. I chose to go bold with a more complicated and unique one. I felt very comfortable with the hard surface workflow from the knife project. I also still interested in being a weapons artist. So I figured; testing of my modeling abilities would be a a good judge of whether I like weapons or not. So far, I really enjoy it.

So far with the high res portion of this assignment I've taken great care into organizing my geo with detailed naming conventions and material setups to identify pieces that I will later bool in ZBrush. I feel fairly confident that finishing the high res portion should go well for next weeks turn in. The main body of the rifle may prove to be the most challenging.

Should scope and time prove fruitful, I would like to mod the Nerf Gun a bit. Perhaps adding a holographic sight, a suppressor, extending the barrel into a longer barrel. But only if time allows it.