2D asset - Tamarisk [WEEK 12]

 

Tamarisk -

The first 2D asset i made was this tamarisk plant based off of one of the concept sketches i made. I was unsure on how to make something like this so generally everything i did was very much trial and error, since i wasn't able to find many tutorials on how to do this in maya, it resulted in a lot of mistakes. My first step was to gather some reference material from some games i have played and make notes on how they tackled ground foliage, I specifically selected 3 games that i knew had a specific technique to making these types of models, those being Webfishing (Lamedeveloper 2024), Minecraft (Mojang 2011), and The Sims 4 (Maxis 2014).

I guessed that these types of models are probably made using planes that intersect, so my next approach was to create the 2D image that will go onto my plane, generally i kept it very symmetrical, as this is my first test model i wanted to see how it would look on something fairly simple before i went ahead and made something more complex. I made my drawing in Firealpaca, saving it as a transparent PNG. Despite having issues with transparent PNGs previously, i was determined to find a solution to this problem.

Here is the final 2D asset, from here i opened up Maya and consulted you tube to look for a tutorial that would help me figure out how to tackle the transparency issue, of which i found this excellent tutorial. The only issue I had with this was that since my Arnold does not work, i was unable to follow the end part of the tutorial, which i supposed wouldn't matter anyways because i wasn't going to be using Maya for the final result. How i made my textures transparent was by selecting the Blinn material, assigning the colour output to my texture, then turning down the shininess of the shader, this gave me complete transparency, however the back side of my model did remain black.

I thought about from here following another tutorial that allows me to put plants in a background scene, this looks incredibly helpful for us in the future however, just as i was starting to follow the instructions i found it relies on Arnold to work so this was something else i wasn't able to do, so putting this idea aside for now i returned to my main task. below is as far as i got with that tutorial, nothing more than placing the ground plane, nurb circles and plane that was supposed to hold my plant asset. I think when i return to confetti i might have another go at this.

To fix the black side of the plant plane i merely mirrored the main plane and aligned it close  the current plane and moved it back a little so the black side was no longer showing, from here i then copied the two planes and rotated them, but this gave me a strange clipping issue every time i moved the camera, i had this issue previously when trying out the leaf technique on the Savannah Viper tree. I spent around 2 hours searching for solutions to this online, all of which directed me to changing a setting in my materials tab under settings and preferences, however, upon checking this folder, there was no materials tab. This completely stumped me, and so i figured reaching out to some professionals for help would be my next best bet. I joined the Maya help discord which is full of industry and freelance professionals and presented my issue in hopes they might point me in the right direction on what to do, I was actually informed i had likely done nothing wrong and this was just a weird visual thing Maya does, that can be toggled off but only in the menu that i was lacking. Because i plan to bring this into unreal, this should not be a problem i will have once i bring it into that software.

I am not able to completely confirm that this is true, however Marry is an industry professional environment artist and so i believe they probably know from experience that this isn't something to be worried about. When i have access back to the software i will certainly fact check that my model does work in unreal but for now i will just have to hope that this is true.

I am very grateful for these people's insight on my model as i felt completely lost, and with this in mind now i might go back to a previous model, the Savannah Viper and see if i can't get the transparency to work with this new acquired technique. While I can't give my complete final opinions on my model for now as I can't verify if it works in unreal or not, I am feeling quite confident that it will work and i am just hoping for the best. If this does work, i feel these simpler assets will be great in populating our scene effectively and making it more visually interesting to move around.

Gantt Chart -

I have now started working on the 2D plant sprites that will be used to populate the scene in greater detail, although i had a lot of trial and error working on this, the drawing part of this process only took me around an hour to do [though i didn't have to change much with the tamarisk design as i was already very happy with it] so giving a little time for changes to my plant sketches, i think i could probably get maybe 3-4 done per day maybe more. If the Maya technique does work in unreal too, i think i could maybe get this done quite quickly and return back to working on 3D models. I do still have to make and finish 2 more plant sketches for the journal which i have been neglecting to do for a few weeks now so that is on my radar for something quick to get finished and out the way when i have time.

Bibliography -

Games -

Lamedeveloper, 2024. Webfishing[Online], PC. Steam. Available at:https://store.steampowered.com/app/3146520/WEBFISHING/  [accessed 16th December 2024]  

Mojang Studios, 2011. Minecraft[Online], PC. Minecraft. Available at:https://www.minecraft.net/en-us  [accessed 16th December 2024]  

Maxis, 2014. Sims 4[Online], PC. Steam. Available at:https://store.steampowered.com/app/1222670/The_Sims_4/[accessed 16th December 2024]  

Videos -

Autodesk Maya 2019: Creating Textures with Transparency, 2019. [Youtube] Henrik Host-Madsen, 9 August. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er3Hkn_Hwow [Accessed 16 December 2024].

Creating 2D Background Planes with Aim Control - Maya Tutorial, 2022. [Youtube] Kat Nowak Art, 18 December. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL9bD2JsShg [Accessed 16 December 2024].