Introduction
Out of the five races I could have chosen, I decided to make the dwarven environment simply because it seems manageable with the amount of time I have for the project and, the environment doesn’t feel generic enough to the point where it’s boring.
In this blog post, I will be conducting primary and secondary research. My primary research will be through questionnaires and active primary research. I will be showing the results of this questionnaire and analyzing the quantitative and qualitative data and my active primary research will consist of me using Zbrush and learning how to use the software for the first time.
Secondary research will consist of me surfing through the internet for reference images and tutorials. I require reference images of architecture styles since I will be making a fictional environment. I will also be looking at art styles from other artists for inspiration. I can imagine that the more detailed assets will require different techniques to model and texture. I can see myself looking at tutorials for Zbrush or Mudbox and potentially other software that could help during production. I will also be reading books on dwarven mythology for inspiration.
Secondary research – Book
This is the book I read when looking up dwarven mythology. The following quotes are taken directly from the book and I will be using the information to create assets that make sense or is inspired by the mythology.
Sullivan, K. (2004). Viking myths & legends. London: Brockhampton, pp.104 – 107.
“the first dwarfs were bred from the corpse of Ymir.”
The dwarfs in my project could have artwork or statues depicting this or maybe books inspired by this story.
“they were such ugly creatures that it was decreed that they should not be allowed to show their faces above ground”
My dwarfs would have fully adapted to living underground and they would have made an advanced city underground with zero traces of the outside world.
“Dwarfs were fine craftsmen, and although they lacked the size and power of the gods, they were certainly more intelligent than any other form of life in the nine worlds”
“dwarfs became great friends of the gods, helping them out by producing the peerless ship Skidbladnir, the golden locks of Sif, the hammer of Miolnir, the golden-skinned pig Gulinbursti, the ring Draupnir, the spear Gungnir, and Freya’s exquisite necklace, Brisingamen.”
Prop assets could be made that references these artifacts. Perhaps located in a dwarven forge.
“no man was capable of running a household without the helpful dwarfs, and no weapons as wondrous or as invincible as those formed by the dwarfs was ever produced again.”
Assets that show the skill of the dwarfs such as magic weapons needed.
Sullivan, K. (2004). Viking myths & legends. London: Brockhampton, pp. 19
“Ymir’s skull became the sky and at each cardinal point of the compass was placed a dwarf whose supreme job it was to support it. These dwarfs were Nodri, Sudri, Austri, and Westri and it was from these brave and sturdy dwarfs that the terms North, South, East, and West were born.”
Perhaps statues could be made to reference these characters or compasses could be located all around the environment.
Primary research – Survey quantitative data
I created this survey to give me an idea of what the masses would want in my project. This survey is not specific to my dwarven project but it helps me figure out the personalities of my audience.
The results for ” What is your favorite game genre?” shows that RPG is the most popular genre. Since I will be making an environment for a game and not the game itself, I can use this fact to make an environment suited for RPG games. What I mean by this is for example, for games like Skyrim, you’d typically find shops, blacksmiths and taverns in cities. This is because the main reason players visit cities in RPG games are either for missions or for buying and selling in-game items and since I will not be having many intractable aspects in the game due to time I will just be making the areas where players may find these RPG elements.
Although I knew for a fact that I was making a fantasy inspired game, I wanted to see if there are any other themes that my audience were interested in. In, the preferred game theme question, Fantasy got the highest vote which was reassuring, but, the second highest vote was sci-fi which is interesting because fantasy and sci-fi are normally seen as one and the same and because of this, these two themes synergies very well. The best part about my project is that, because dwarfs are seen as fine craftsmen, I could easily implement a bit of sci-fi through the use of pipelines, mechanisms and many other possibilities.
Of the sixteen that answered the survey, 60% chose realistic as their preferred visual style. This was what I was aiming for from the beginning but I wanted to see what the audience wanted to see. I think realistic became the number one choice because of the popularity of ‘AAA’ games. This was mainly for reassurance to see if I needed to change visual styles before I start production.
Since my primary objective is to upload this is in an art sharing site to update my portfolio I asked my audience if they knew any of the following:
- Artstation
- Sketchfab
- Tumblr
- Deviant Art
The top three were Artstation, Sketchfab, and Instagram. Since they are the most well known I don’t think I will be wasting time uploading on the other three options and also it’ll be much easier to manage my portfolio if just stick to three.
Primary research – Survey qualitative data
In my questionnaire, I asked why people play games. Their opinions varied from storytelling, stress relief, fun, and escapism.
I want to focus on escapism since not only was it a popular choice but I believe it is the fuel for why most people feel stress relief or have fun playing games, to begin with. It is with this idea in mind that I want to create something outside of reality. Since I am already making a fantasy game, my project should look otherworldly by the end of it. If I want to achieve that feeling of escapism I will try and be imaginative with the architecture by using unrealistic means and architecture styles not common in the real world.
Surveymonkey.co.uk. (2019). Project. [online] Available at: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/X27VMVD [Accessed 27 Feb. 2019].
Secondary research – reference image
When looking for reference images for dwarven architecture I found various images online and made a moodboard out them.
But out of all these images one of them stuck out to me the most as being the most useful and that is the image produced by a Unreal Engine Marketplace Creator by the name of Wolven Digital.
He produced a 3D environment based on the dwarven theme. Here are other images he produced.
I like the use of volcanic rocks and Celtic knots. I think these are some of the things that make dwarven architecture so distinguishable especially when mixed in with fine metal work. I will use these images for inspiration, but, I will not be making the environment as grand since I wouldn’t have enough time.
Unreal Engine Forums. (2016). Dwarven Architecture – Unreal Engine Forums. [online] Available at: https://forums.unrealengine.com/community/work-in-progress/82784-dwarven-architecture [Accessed 23 Feb. 2019].
Secondary research – video tutorials
Since I already know how to use Autodesk Maya and Substance Painter, I needed to learn how to use sculpting software. I have a basic knowledge of Mudbox but I want to learn how to use Zbrush since it is used the most in the industry.
This is the tutorial I watched to learn the basics:
This tutorial was very helpful since it teaches you everything from the basics such as UI, hotkeys, sculpting techniques, etc. Watching this tutorial made me really confident in Zbrush and I can definitely see myself using this instead of Mudbox for my project.
YouTube. (2018). Getting Started with Sculpting – ZBrush for Beginners Tutorial. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yKGfcp2z3k [Accessed 1 Mar. 2019].
I also watched this video as I thought it could help me produce decorations in Zbrush.
YouTube. (2017). ZBrush – Sculpting Ornamental Designs. [online] Available at: https://youtu.be/RByXIvjcS7U %5BAccessed 1 Mar. 2019].
Primary research – Active primary research
Around November 2018, we were introduced to Substance Painter. We had workshops on Substance Painter that teaches us the user interface and techniques as well as how to make to textures from scratch.
The workshops we did that are relevant to this current project are the ‘Substance Painter Workshop – UI and Lantern‘ workshop and the ‘Substance Painter workshop – Making rock texture from scratch‘
WordPress.com. (2018). WordPress.com. [online] Available at: nickamalin.wordpress.com/2018/11/07/substance-painter-workshop/ [Accessed 8 Nov. 2018].
WordPress.com. (2019). WordPress.com. [online] Available at: https://nickamalin.wordpress.com/2019/02/20/substance-painter-making-a-rock-texture-from-scratch/ [Accessed 20 Feb. 2019].
I also decided to give Zbrush a try at home after watching Zbrush tutorials online.
Nicks Yt. (2019). Zbrush Practice. [Online Video]. 25 April 2019. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIpIcgBSVgY. [Accessed: 25 April 2019].
(This video was made March 4th, 2019 but was uploaded late).
In this video, I made a basic rock by starting off with a sphere. Using the ‘Move’ tool and dynamesh I was able to make the basic shape of the rock without stretching the topology. After that, I used the ‘Maletfast2’ tool to give the rock its edges and then finally by using the broken rock alpha I downloaded online, I simply needed to right-click and drag on the mesh to give it a brittle sharp rock look.
After trying it for the first time I realize that it isn’t the hardest to use, although, I have not actually done anything too complex as of yet. I’ve only tried a couple sculpting tools so far, painted in alphas and made simple meshes so I wouldn’t say I’m proficient yet. I love how dynamesh makes sculpting a lot easier but there are times when dynamesh causes holes to appear on the mesh and since I am new to this software, I can’t really explain why this occurs nor how to fix it. These problems are rare and only really happens on flat planes so I will try and avoid this in the future.
You’ll also see me lowering the resolution of the first rock I made and unwrapping it’s UV’s so that I may import this into substance and bake in the high-resolution model. I can’t see myself ever using this feature in Zbrush for this project since I have better control of the UV’s in Maya, but it’s useful to know that such a feature exists for Zbrush.
Time Schedule – Finish week 4
After finishing this research I ended up completing this beyond the plan as you can see by the schedule. I intended to finish by the third week but this research ended up taking two weeks off of my schedule as seen by the orange bar. Learning Zbrush took the longest to do out of everything in this section of the project since I wanted to gather enough information I can before committing to this software. To make up for the lost time I will spend three weeks doing concept artwork instead of the planned four weeks.
Conclusion
I found research about dwarfs very interesting. I’ve always liked learning about mythology since I’m a fantasy fan. I learned that dwarfs were very useful to Nordic gods since they are capable of producing powerful magic weapons. This is useful information for me since it gives me an idea of the type of prop assets I need to make. Also found learning how to use Zbrush and Substance Painter fun after realizing how easy it is.
This concludes my pre-production research. This does not mean that I will not be doing extended research during actual production. In fact, I can see myself looking at various YouTube tutorials for Zbrush, texturing and Unreal Engine since there are many things I would like to learn in these areas. An example of this would be particle effects or moving textures in Unreal Engine. Knowing more about aforementioned would be incredibly useful for a fictional themed environment. I will not be making a separate blog for production stage research, instead, I will Harvard reference my source and talk about what I’ve learned in my ‘Planning and Production’ post.
Nick Amalin 