Jack Jones

Jack Jones is a Game Designer and environmental artist with a bachelor's degree and experience in 3D modelling and texturing. Jack has broad knowledge in the 3D modelling software Maya and has good extensive knowledge in Unreal Engine for animation. Unfortunately, I could not get either of these software running at home and could not follow along for a lot of the classes he demonstrated. However, I followed along where possible on campus, creating small bits here and there to catch up and even using the knowledge that he gave me in another software called Blender to create my own work at home.

Maya and Unreal Lessons

Maya is a software which is used by game designers, film animators and visual effects artists. It is used to create 3D assets and models made here can also be imported into Unreal Engine and Unity for those who wish to use them for games, films or more. Inside the software, Maya offers animation tools such as rigging, rendering and texturing. There is also modelling features which can be utilised by those who just wish to model and create characters in a more dynamic way.

In Maya, we began with the basics. The main controls, how to create a new object, how to manipulate the object in a way you want to create an object and grouping objects together to create more complex shapes.

In our first lesson, unfortunately the only lesson I had access to Maya, we created a Door. This was going to be a simple design and would consist of 3 simple shapes.

Blender and My own Work

As I did not have full access to Maya or Unreal Engine, I decided to try and figure out how to practice some of the skills I learnt in class in Blender instead. Blender is a free software which is comparatively very similar to Maya. A lot of the work that can be produced in Maya can be replicated and done in Blender. As Blender is a free tool, it does also mean that there is a lot more tools available online and tutorials.

Following the landscaping idea that Jack had taught us in Unreal Engine with the assets he created in Maya, I decided I wanted to create a landscape of my own. However, the processing power on my device was not up to scratch at the time. I had to sacrifice a certain level of quality in the final production of my render.

In my own work, I watched multiple online tutorials as to understand the basics of Blender and its controls. Below is a Shortcut tutorial provided by Blender that I used throughout my time creating my own piece:

To create my own scene, I needed to have a landscape. Luckily Blender comes with a pre-made landscape tool. This allows you to choose from multiple landscapes and add them in. You can also edit and morph them however you like once they have been added by going into the modelling tool and shaping it how you'd like. You can also add a variety of shapes and other meshes using this tool aswell. this is also how i created the giant sphere for the sun and the trees. They were simply made using the Ice Sphere Mesh, the Cone Mesh and the Cylinder Mesh.

Creating my own piece required me to lower the poly count of all of my assets that I wished to use. The trees could not be fully round cones layered on top of each other. To do this, I had to add a modifier to the shape and lower the ratio down. This lowered the number of faces on the object dramatically. I also did this for the landscape and the sun slightly. This allowed for a lot more trees to be placed and arranged on the landscape without sacrificing processing power.

Below is the Low Poly Tree:

Below is the Decimate menu and the Ratio option under the modifier options: