Hi everyone !
Last year have been a quite huge one for me, and in the end, for the project. I wanted to leave it somewhere in the (already big) unfinished project stack, because I was feeling overwhelmed. And there comes a guy from the EcksToo youtube channel willing to promote the project on their youtube channel...
Honnestly, you can thank him/them, because this gives us a huge shot of motivation. After this video, a lot of users wanted to know if the project had been stopped/shut down, and they were so sad this project was about being abandonned that we decided to focus back on it with Thomas Chaumel (known as Akeyblack), Alexandre Cheremetiev and recently Thibaut Hunckler
Since then, we decided to make another video to explain at which state of development the project was, and, of course, to bring answers to most asked questions about the project
I definitely want to salute the outstanding work of mount & editing, and voicing (Your enthusiasm & energy is still really motivating us @Charlie McShane !) that has been done over these videos. If you have some time, don't hesitate to visit EcksToo's channel : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoZgb1Z-TB24berQsHvbQJA
Then, I wanted to explain a bit more things about animating these characters, since we use Akeytsu for the project since 2016, I think it was time to show of some serious stuff. For this reason, I try to regularly make livestream session where I animate a cycle with this brilliant software, and I more than encourage you to take a deep look at it
Here is also some level art on Unreal Engine. I rarely start with blockout (I don't really love this way to build stuff when I already have finished blocks & colors to play with)
Also, here is a reshot of the demo published in february (2020), with better FPS. I found that OBS can't record properly if it's running on a screen which has different fps than the screen you want to record...curious stuff, always =)
For those who still wonder what I am doing on it, here are my roles :
- Concept art ; basically drawing to imagine shapes of everything before diving into 3D/texture/tadvanced technical stuff
- Character design ; modeling modeling modeling ! And sculpting from time to time =) Also involves UVs, Bake...etc
- Environment art ; same as for character, with slightly more technical stuff involved to manage tiles, decalmeshes, assembling once in UE4
- VFX ; cause it's cool to relax with magic sparks and burn everything in your scene when you feel mad =D
- TechArt ; making shaders, R&D on technical problems (and solving them of course, else project stays forever still)
- Level design ; making these blocs forming an interesting path, hiding secret rooms, make danger zones...etc. This part stays quite OldSchool (I like to think about Rayman 2 & 3 when making levels paths)
- Level art ; adding nice assets over previous cubes, so you don't see cubes =) Also adding easter eggs anywhere I can ^^
- Texturing ; Ohooo...Tiling textures, characters, props...StarDestroyers, Clones and Lightsabers ♥ A cool part =) This involves a lot of time on 3DCoat to paint each texture by hand. I like smartmaterials, but only as long as they stay just a starting point. Brushing takes look to the next level, as one of my teachers said : never let the computer do art for yourself. You're the artist, not the computer. Or something like that.
- Shading ; make materials in Toolbag, UE4, assign textures to the good slots. It's fairly simple, once I've defined what my materials actually does (I love making VFX ones =))
- Art direction ; Decide how to do "art" in Star Wars Redemption. It's partly clone-warsy, partly overwatchy, a cool mix of both looks with my own touch over it. This takes care also on the animation part, how Mevenn has to move and how she shouldn't.
- Rigging ; Adding joints, making hierarchies for characters/props to be used then in animation. Not to mention this is fully done in akeytsu
- Skinning ; Once joints are laid out, adding weight to them on the mesh so you can control and animate it using joints. Also done in akeytsu
- Animation ; Creating poses, then animation. I didn't use to really work on this part a few years ago but the more it goes, the more I take time to add takes to the project. It's awesome to animate something, it's like giving life to objects, super exciting ! Done in akeytsu too
- Integration ; import and make sure everything looks good in UE4/MarmosetToolbag. This is crucial to ensure assets will behave well with others (like sahders, skeletons, blueprints...etc)
- Lighting ; put lights on characters, make some parts popping more than others to get the player's/viewer's attention...etc
- Rendering ; make heavy shots of assets so you can make wallpapers with it or later print an artbook =)
- Cinematic setup : mostly on UE4 and regularly on Marmoset Toolbag 4, assemble cinematic animation, VFX, animate lighting and make a good use of the Sequencer =)
- Compositing ; quite rare since I rather doing this in realtime, this part consists mostly of adding missing post effects and finetuning the overal look of content.
Pfew. That's...quite some stuff I guess, but it seems fine as long as I enjoy each part of this big cake ^^"
I've recently done phase II clone troopers with some well known skins (501st & Shock Troopers). At the moment there's no ARC trooper or armor variants since I can go where I want with only these guys, but I admit that I'd love to mess with ARC troopers too so, maybe they'll come one day ;)
After some small steps, I've brought them to (still) life with some posings using Akeytsu & Marmoset Toolbag 4 :
Then I brought them to the core of the project (UE4), so they can look like a fantastic team !
Also, as we've been busy, something gentle is about to come. Stay tunned