Intro to Unity
After installing Unity and downloading free assets which can be found in Unity's 'Asset store' online, under Mr. Lee Montgomery's guidance, I have grasped the basics of the program.
Unity is very similar to Maya. After you get a little bit familiar with it, it's very simple to use.
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Scene Organisation
Poly Count and Poly Display
Poly Count and Smoothing
Soft selection Modelling
Sculpting Tools
Sculpting Displacement
Alpha channel textures - Leaves
Lighting
Realtime Lighting in Unity
Materials setup | Procedural Environments
Substance Painter
Assignment 1
For my first assignment, I have chosen to display my knowledge of Environment layout and scene organisation, Environment modelling texturing, Realtime and Pre-rendered Lighting and Material Mapping.
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In the first image I have modelled a plane object in order to give it appearance of a mountain. I have done so by clicking on sculpture and choosing the plane that I wanted to model. I have then added as material to the plane, ‘fractal’, to which I have changed the colour and added fractal again to the planes’ Bump mapping in order to give it a more realistic look.
I have added another plane to which I have applied an ‘Ocean Shader’ as its material in order to make a look of a river.
Finally, after pressing on Generate > Get Brush… > Trees, I have added two trees to the final image.
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In the second image, I have created a scene of a dark forest using Material Mapping, importing assets I have gained from our course. After importing all of the assets in the scene and using the Hypershader to add the Materials to the .fbx components from the scene, I have started duplicating and grouping the assets and positioning them in the best positions I could have thought off.
After I finished duplicating, grouping and positioning all of my assets, I had my final scene to which I have added one Arnold Area Light for the render. The second and third images are the results
Assignment 2
For my second assignment I have chosen to display my knowledge of Model detailing, Materials and Shaders by customizing a Substance 3D model.
Firstly, I had to bake the mesh map as I need mesh map data for the model’s ‘curvature’ to work with the procedural material Generator further down the road.
I went to the ‘TEXTURE SET SETTINGS’ tab and clicked on ‘Bake Mesh Maps’ Button. I then set the Output Size to 2048 (2k) and clicked on ‘Bake default/Mat Mesh Maps.’
I then went to the SHELF window at the bottom of Substance Painter and typed in IRON RAW. I have chosen Iron Raw Damaged material and put it over my object.
I have then added a fill layer to which I have changed the colour to a dark red and then right clicked on the new fill layer and clicked on ‘Add White mask’. After that, I have right clicked on the mask and chose ‘Add Generator’. I chose the ‘Metal Edge Wear’ generator and right clicked on the mask and chose invert mask.
After all of this I have added new layers and alphas and have added details to the object.
The final step was to get the right pictures
Assignment 3
For my third and final assignment I have chosen to focus on Lighting and Arnold Rendering, by using the scene I have created for my first assignment.
I have used this asset to show the use case of fog and Ai Volume Scattering.
For the first image I created a fog effect by going to Arnold Settings > Arnold Renderer > Environment > Atmosphere > Create aiFog. When using this effect, it can be a lot of fun, but also frustrating until you hit the right Distance, Hight and Ground Normal and Ground Points to create the exact scene you want.
In the second and third images I have used Volume Scattering to create a mysterious scene.
I first added a Spotlight that I have placed above the environment.
Second, I have added some directional lights so the forest will be more visible.
After, I have gone to the Arnold Settings > Arnold Renderer > Environment > Atmosphere > Create aiAtmosphereVolume. In the Attribute Editor I have played with the Density and Anisotropy and managed to create the last two images.
I prefer this effect over the aiFog as I personally find it easier to use. Both effects are fun and useful.
