Post Mortem - Vehicle Project

Truck Post-mortem

For the past 7 weeks I have been tasked with producing a Toyota Pickup truck which later on in the project I would also be tasked to create a zombie apocalypse modification to the model. For the model, I were given a set of orthographs to model from with a budget of 6000 triangles for the basic Toyota Pickup and up to 10,000 Tris for the final model. Textures must have a photo realistic quality to them meaning most of my textures where sourced from photos rather than hand painting them fully.

Five things that worked well

Textures of the Zombie version - After experimenting and somewhat failing with my first unwrapp and iteration of my textures I decided to re-unwrap my Toyota especially the top and front bonnet of my truck. This allowed me more texture space for asymmetric details but also resolved my older problem of the so-called Rorschach look that I managed to get last time I textured my truck. In addition, the rust and distress texture of the car is less noisy as compared to my first version. Possibly due to the fact that I managed to do some research on how car rust actually forms.

Concepts- I'm very happy with my concepts although they took me a lot of time to actually think about and I didn't get that many. On the other hand, I am happy at how unconventional they are to the zombie apocalypse genre. Normally the references I had found all hand a sense of grim and dread to them in the sense of strapping spikes and guns to the vehicle. I decided to direct my designs towards the more DIY look of a zombie apocalypse and connote a tacky vehicle rather than a well maintained domestic death machine. In addition, my final concept seems to have a strong silhouette to it.

Modelling of zombie props- The topology of my props, particularly the topology of my unicorn seems quite clean. In addition, it took me about an hour to actually model said horse's head. It seems that I may be growing to be an efficient modeller both in the appearance of my models and the time taken to model them.

Learnt About perspective - In my spare time between the project I started to study more about linear perspective which aided me in the photobashing stage as well as helping me to draw vehicles and actually draw in general better. I feel like I have seen a great improvement to my skill in recording information visually since I started looking into perspective more. That said learning about perspective has also given me an insight as to what is good perspective in an image and what is bad and has allowed me to understand many of the mistakes in my photobashes. These mistakes have not been rectified fully however due to my lack of technical skill with Photoshop's perspective tool.

Time Management- During the course of this project there has rarely been a time in which I have felt overwhelmed with the work given to me. This is possibly because I started to plan my time around the holidays and executed my plan accordingly. Finishing a first draft of my essay before even arriving back for these last two weeks.

Five things that didn't go so well

Textures of the first car- My first attempt at texturing my car looking back reflects a sort of post project fatigue. I had just finished such a large and intense project such as the character one and to be introduced to another large-scale project I felt took a lot of will to work with. Therefore, I feel that the many mistakes and horrid aesthetic of my first car texture rather reflected my state of mind at the time. However, after taking a break and coming back to it, I did manage to make amends in the final zombification version.

Topology of the car - The topology of my car compared to the tutor's example is quite poor and once again reflects the state of mind I was exhibiting when starting this project. This poor topology in addition caused some problems with the texturing of my vehicle, which I will go into further detail.

Stretching at the front - Due to my recklessness of the topology this caused some stretching in the front bonnet of the car, which looks, very unpleasant. To get around this I lessened the amount of detail in areas in which stretching would occur to make it less obvious however this has cost me valuable space in which I could have added some more details which could have really sold my model.

Seams obvious- There are areas in which seams are obvious. Some work to great effect as they can convey a sense of distress in the texture and tackiness however some have just cause visual problems which can be solved however the time take to solve them would not be put to good use as I would be using this time to refine my Extended reflection for the year.

UVS can be packed better- This is particularly more directed towards the later Uv's for the re-unwrap of my model, the chassis and the zombie props. Packing Uv's hasn't always been my strongest point and it is something that usually takes me long to do as I would normally be a perfectionist and fear failing, wasting precious time procrastinating. However, with this project I decided to throw myself right in the deep end and pack it to the best of my ability. Looking back though, these Uvs can be packed better there is a lot of space I could use which would allow me more texture space and better resolution for certain areas such as the rat eyes. They are too low res as compared to the unicorn eyes. Speaking of which I should think more in how much space I would need to text in terms of the models relative size. I seemed to have given the unicorn head more texture space than the rat head, which is larger than the unicorn head. This resulting in such a large area of my model looking low res in terms of texture.

What project changes happened?

Not many Project changes happened with this project as compared to the last other than the fact that although I was in a fatigue state I did push myself to model an interior of the truck which was in fact a stretch goal for the project.

What would you do different

Firstly, If I had more time I would like to produce more iterations. Although I am happy with the final concept result, I am sure there is a stronger design in me somewhere, which really could've conveyed my idea to viewers. In addition, I would've liked to experimented with a process called PBR or Physical based rendering. Admittedly I have done little research on it but I believe it's a process that results in photorealistic/natural-looking textures and details which I should've taken advantage of for this type of project

Finally I would like to re-unwrapp, pack my UV's tighter for more texture space, and clean the topology of my model to prevent the texture stretching.

Conclusion

Overall, I have learnt quite a bit during the course of this project in terms of perspective but more importantly, I believe I have learnt that working when burnt out can often lead to poor quality in work especially in a visual course such as this one, which requires full attention to notice and correct mistakes.