Lighting Exercise III- Maverick!

 Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Fire!

Hey everyone!

I'm back with a new common art post! 

And what a week it has been. Soon, I'll have some animations and poses to share with you all, but for now, I'm still working on them. 

Right at this moment, however, I do have some exciting news! I've been hard at work on this week's lighting module and I'm super-stoked to share it with you all! 

I have a lot of images this week, so expect a good bit of writing regarding my process. Without further ado, let's get right into it!

So, if you have walked by my desk at all when I'm around, you might be able to guess that I'm a huge fan of Top Gun. Like, I love all things military aviation and 80s synth music, so the movie is a match made in heaven for me. So, it only felt appropriate to delve into the world of Top Gun for this lighting assignment.

I have a lot of wallpapers and reference images of F-14s taking off from aircraft carriers, and since that was primarily where they were flown in the Navy, it only made sense to include an aircraft carrier in this week's scene. Little did I know (or maybe I did know and I'm just crazy) that an aircraft carrier has so many different little parts. 

So, so many parts, in fact, that I took the better part of a half-day to assign all of the nodes and give all of my materials texture, metallic properties, and roughness. All in all, my scene contains 50+ materials, each with their own roughness and metallic properties.

Don't believe me? I have some close up shots and some blueprint screengrabs to prove it!

Like this.

And this.

And this.

Anddddddd this.

And. This.

And.

This.

And.

.

.

.

This!

Yep.

I have plenty more to share with you, and I'll pepper them into the paragraphs, like I do below. 

But you get the point. 

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, then I'm not sure what messing around with textures in Unreal grants me. But hey, I made some cool stuff out of it!

And that's what matters! 

I know the requirement was only to take a screenshot of one material blueprint, but I was experimenting with so many different effects I only found it appropriate to document a lot of them. 

For example, some of the textures, I added. Others, I multiplied. Some I multiply/added. Others, I used a Cheap Contrast. Others I used constants and 1-x. It really varied on what look I was going for. 

And I think it lent itself to some really cool effects. It just took a reaaaaaaally long time to get all of the textures. Finding open-source, non-watermarked textures is a lost art nowadays. All in all, I have 4 folders worth of metal, rust, roughness, and grunge textures to use on my next projects. 

Woohoo!!!

I was lucky enough to be able to add roughness to the F-14s, too. I used both gear up and gear down variants, so that the scene would have a more realistic look. I wanted to add people, but I had already spent a ton of time on this project, so I figured I would be good with the ghost town effect.

As for the lighting, my initial reference image for this project was one of my aforementioned wallpapers of an F-14 on an aircraft carrier. 

The picture does have a fire effect, but I will have to learn Niagara at some other time. I have a lot of other projects to work on at the moment, but that is definitely on my radar. If I add fire, you will be the first to know! 

As for the lighting, this week's workshop was ultra-informative for that part of the project! I had a much easier time, since I knew what the checkboxes and tabs did when I was messing with them. 

That also helped me to realize that I was my own worst enemy on my second lighting project. I created some kind of impossible depth of field, so I ended up corrupting my file. Hence why my lighting assignment that week looked so rushed. I did it in about an hour. It's my fault for trying to input an eleventh hour change! 

As for the depth of field and lighting on this assignment, I'm much happier with my results. Since last week's project, I've been saving a lot more HDRI images, so I had plenty to tab through while I was picking the lighting. I also messed with the Rayleigh and Miep effects, which gave the world a sunset look that it didn't have prior.

This assignment has shown me just how customizable Unreal is. You can really deviate from the normal lighting and create your own, manual lighting. You just can't be afraid of the software! 

For months, I have been afraid of the software, as I have never worked in 3D before. But, after experiencing a worst-case scenario on last week's project, I can safely say that I'm not afraid anymore.

Am I still going to make mistakes? Sure! 

Am I still going to get confused when I get error codes? You bet!

But am I happier with my creative process? Heck yeah!

I just gotta keep working on stuff and my mistakes will help me to learn! They're not mistakes, they're happy accidents! And soon, they'll really help me to solidify my process.

So, closing thoughts, closing thoughts.

I'm thankful we had this assignment, as I got more in-depth with Unreal. I want to use these techniques on my own projects in the future, hence why I'm attempting to document the heck out of this project.

Also, this assignment seemed like a crazy scope at first, with 50+ materials and a huge aircraft carrier, but as I got into the workflow, it got much easier! Once I figured out what nodes did what, I could generate particular effects without much thought. All it takes is a little bit of elbow grease and some Unreal Engine crashes to get there.

Oh! Another thing! Save often! And don't just save your Level. Save the whole project. Made that mistake while doing some stuff in class yesterday. I lost everything I had worked 3 hours on. But, like the Beatles song says, Life Goes On! 

Another thing! I will keep trying with new nodes and materials. The tech artist in me really loves playing around with blueprints. They are so much fun. Even when I don't know what I'm doing, there is always such good documentation on them and for that, I'm eternally grateful! 

So yep! That is my post! I hope you enjoyed Fightertown, USA! 

Thanks for stopping by!

Lighting Exercise II - Electric Boogaloo

 Hey everyone!

Wow has it been a rough week! But I'm still kickin' and bringing down the house with these Lighting Exercises! Keep 'em coming! 

This assignment was kind of a doozy, because my original file corrupted! I couldn't figure out how to get the depth of field working and I was anxious to try to add it. After following UE5 documentation, I thought I had my answer... Then, I clicked a slider and my project crashed!

I restarted the project and to my horror, everything in my scene was gone. Not only that, I couldn't save my project, as an asset had corrupted during the crash. Needless to say, I was not too happy to be recreating the scene again in the eleventh hour.

So, to preface, I didn't figure out the depth of field. I just wanted to upload this on time, so here I am. I really wanted to learn how to do it, as I think it creates a cool effect. But, I really couldn't figure it out and could not risk not turning this in with only an hour left to go. 

But, yep. This assignment was certainly an assignment for me. This was actually a struggle to complete because of the technological pitfalls, yes, but also my own confusion surrounding UE5 in general. I don't understand anything that has to do with the camera actor. And despite being a photographer, I really struggled to get the effects I wanted in this project.

Nonetheless, I just wanted to turn something in, regardless of my own pitfalls with my work. I am happy with the HDRI I chose and I like the moody lighting and volumetric fog I added. I had fun playing with bokeh, but didn't think it was worth including in the assignment, as it confused my lighting and made the metallic pattern on the sphere quite chaotic. 

But, it was fun clicking through all the menus and checkboxes and seeing what everything did. Am I a lighting expert yet? By no means! But did I learn something? Yes! 

I will continue to keep you all updated about my artistic journey! I'm just tired and need to hit the hay, so this was a relatively short post.

Thanks again for checking out my stuff! 

Zzzzzz!

Also, before I go-- check out my setup! 

Pretty cool right? Now it's officially, for really reals, time to catch some Zs. 

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!