Recording of Senior Thesis project; Balance in Haven - remaining Act 2 images colored

I apologize for the rough camera movement as I'm using a touch pad instead of a mouse.

Concept art, which are drawings that depict a concept for a game or film, is usually in straightforward format, either as finished single images or a small gallery of those single images. My project is to present these concept art in 5 forms, 4 'in progress' and a 'finished', in a virtual gallery made in a game engine with the use of a 1st person controller. While in the gallery, the player can move around and view the "in progress" images in motion with the ability to pause the motion with the use of the left mouse button. 

My project was made through the use of Photoshop (for the images), Maya (for the objects) and Unity (for the execution). 

http://lillianchenartworksportfolio.weebly.com/


* edit/ 
Video needs to be re-recorded and re-uploaded.
 Uploaded video

I might have more images to upload later tonight depending on how quickly I can get the remaining parts of my history research paper draft done. 

Senior Thesis project - post user testing

A majority of the changes I had to make after user testing involved the stairs and the Progress cubes' (Rings Above City and City Chase) spacing. 
For some reason Unity wasn't updating the changes I made in the gallery whenever I hit Play, so no matter what I was doing in Editor, the Progress Cube for Rings Above City concept kept running (rotating) into the stair steps, literally. So to save myself some time and trouble, I went into Maya and made the spacing changes there. Until I realized, the reason for this is because of the animation; the spacing for the animation is what it's defaulting to (most liikely). This meant I had to go back into Maya and redo the animation. (Ugh.) But to save time even more, I decided to only redo the animation (after moving the Progress Cubes) of the cubes that were giving spacing issues in Unity. Everything, for the most part, stayed in Unity when I brought over the updated Maya file but I had to re-add the text on all the images. Minor thing so it wasn't too bad.

In relation to the steps, I had to reorder the railings as some of them actually did the opposite of keeping people from falling off the stairs in either the left side had no prevention or the right side made it harder to get up the steps because of the rails.

To solve both the issue of climbing (jumping) the stairs and getting through those 2 progress cubes, I had to play around with the settings fro the character controller. It was a lot of guessing and checking since I had to make sure the things I changed would allow *both* getting up the stairs *and* through 2 cubes that have been getting people stuck. In the end, I made the character controller thinner (in terms of radius and depth) and increase the jump height. Both issues were fixed!

Senior thesis - scripting is done!!

It's almost 4am here. I should be trying to fall asleep. 
While I'm doing that, I remembered I didn't make a post about my senior thesis project in terms of scripting. A classmate of mine greatly helped me with getting the script to work and researched info applied. So glad the scripting is out of the way now.
Now I can afford to shift some attention to other projects for other classes.

Aaaghhhh I don't know scripting

Sorry, little bit TOO big of a wall of text. But...


After trying out the idea of flipping the planes (Panels) to fix the disappearing issue, and also "muting" the colors of the environment textures, Maya froze and crashed on me. I freaked out when after two attempts to reopen the file, only to be greeted with a white screen and the busy cursor. I shouldn't have been too surprised at the long loading time, since right before Maya crashed, I had all the textures still turned on... 
I was so afraid that everything in my project disappeared when it failed on the 3rd try. However I noticed that Maya said all the objects were still there, even though all I could see was white . So I decided to save the current file under a different name and tried opening that file. Everything finally loaded!! 

I imported the file into Unity but still had the issue of certain panels "disappearing". I don't know if they're the same panels or not, since I didn't take note of which ones were missing but from what I could tell briefly, some of the panels were fixed. 
Unfortunately, I'm having trouble figuring out which exact panels needs to be flipped. I absentmindedly flipped all the panels, rather than the ones that were disappearing in Unity. Then again, there were panels that were disappearing every other frame so that didn't help me when it came to figuring out which panel had to be flipped. 
I was about to try a suggestion of the Normals but realized in a way it's a similar situation of if I do something to all the panels instead of the ones causing issues, it might not fix the issue. So I had to figure out how to note which objects needed their normals reversed and which didn't. 

After searching around on Google about Normals and how to figure out which objects needed their Normals fixed, I found a useful post. If two-sided lighting is turned off and objects appear solid black, then they need their normals reversed. 

This solved the issue! I'm so glad I don't need to stress about this anymore (I've got enough stress as is.) Unfortunately, I have absolutely no scripting or coding knowledge so I don't know what I'm doing. 

I found forum posts of similar things I'm trying to code but I don't know for sure what's accurate and what coding language I need to use. I'm at a loss of what to do and how to write the info I've found. 
While I do have a script for the 2D pop up text, Unity apparently is giving me an error. (See Scripting Card in Work in Progress List for screenshots.) Unless I need to create an object for Unity to not give me an error message about the "string"..?

Maya just hates me at the moment it seems

Laptop screen as maya is not responding while trying to open my senior thesis project portion in maya.

I had to make edits in effort to get the animation as well as objects showing correctly in Unity ( from Maya).
I was suggested to reverse the objects as some of them weren't appearing within unity. Another mentioned normals. It'll be another one of those weeks of me fixing things and getting that done so I can move onto this week's planned task: scripting.
Along with this I need to make the (hopefully) final version of the graphic identity for the gallery/show of student projects scheduled for April 26th. It looks like, unless more comments were given, that I need to just add a small separation between two parts of the image and then upload hi res images of the sections.
Sigh, but once these are out of the way, hopefully I can de-stress!!

Working on Senior Thesis - import to Unity

Getting sick just before Spring Break started was annoying since most of the time I *could* be working, was spent resting...
I think I'm a bit better now so I got a chance to work on this project among other assignments. As of right now, all the objects from Maya have been placed into Unity. However there are two problems I've run into now. I'm hoping both are minor things and are fixable but the animation won't loop continuously in Unity, even though in Maya it was set to loop, and the textures (concept art images) are all 90 degrees off. 
I'm currently searching the forums in Unity for ways to fix both issues, though I'm focusing more on the image textures issue more so than the animation issue. 

According to the Unity forums, Maya uses Z-up axis but Unity uses Y-up axis so this could be why the images got rotated.I'll be playing with the export settings to see if I can fix things this way. If anything I will just have to rotate all the images counter clockwise 90 degrees in Photoshop and reapply them in Unity. Or select "rotate counter clockwise" on the images in the Assets folder. (I didn't know that was there! That makes editing these MUCH easier!)
Looping issue is fixed, I found out I never set it to loop in the Inspector but I realize there's an issue with visibility in terms of the panels "disappearing" at certain angles, even though the panels ARE there. 

Senior Thesis project update - Textured!

2:11 pm EST
Finished texturing objects in Maya. I plan on importing them into Unity for the next step of my project.

Lady Ribbon and Chief Chase concept art - making correction

3:01 pm EST

Back to drawing once again, after sleep, breakfast, Saturday morning cartoons (DC Nation) and lunch.
According to my parents, I have bags under my eyes now... This isn't good but it makes sense since I've been waking up randomly before my alarms are suppose to wake me up so I'm not exactly the full 8-9 hours of sleep I usually try to give myself.
Anyways, I digress. Switching up the artworks, I gave myself the goal of correcting little things in the concept art I finished for my senior thesis project. At the very moment I'm typing this post, I'm also trying to figure out why Photoshop won't let me save a JPEG.
"Could not complete your request because of of a program error." I even reinstalled Photoshop using the wizard to repair. I suppose a restart of my computer is needed. Or there could be other reasons such as me uninstalling the Adobe Updater. Or my Photoshop CS2 needs the 9.0.2 update.
I think I may have to just reinstall Photoshop all together. It'll be a bit annoying reloading all the brushes and swatches but it'll just have to do, hopefully. 

3:50 pm EST

After reinstalling, restarting computer and then testing with a different PSD file, I found out it's actually the PSD file and not Photoshop. At least I hope.

4:31 pm EST
Still struggling with the old PSD file, I was at least able to copy merge the image and paste it into a new file and save that as a JPEG. However this isn't the end of my worries since the old PSD file still won't let me save as JPEG and I have 5 more of those old PSD files I need to convert...
Actually, maybe it'll be less stressful if I just copy the image and paste it in a new file and say that  image as a JPEG. Hopefully this error only came up because these PSD files were from when I used Elements and won't happen for CS2 files.



The edits were minor, such as recoloring of the lips for Lady Ribbon and color balancing both images.

Maya - Virtual Gallery

8:25 pm EST

Deviating a bit from my usual 2D works and went to Phase 2 of my senior thesis project, making the pieces for a virtual gallery before I place the textures and move them into Unity.

front view of Gallery

side view (from behind staircase)

City Chase - part 7 (finished)

5:14 pm EST

Spent around an hour and a half finishing up with defining certain parts of the piece after I painted the streets. After that, I went in and detailed certain things like the two people, the lights and the vehicles. To finish it off, I painted in the glow parts of the piece, such as the lights and the control panel of the vehicle in the back.


defined parts of piece, detailed drivers, vehicles and lights , painted glow
total completion time : 4-6+ hours?

City Chase - part 6 (more details)

11:39 pm EST


most of finer details put in
( I meant to post this earlier but a League of Legends game got in the way ^^: )

I still need to fine tune the details for the window, the two people and their respective vehicles.

City Chase - part 4 (more shading, some details)

10:31 pm EST

Spent around 1.5 -2  hours painting in another layer of shading and some details.

City Chase - part 3 (base, some shading)

6:33 pm EST

The base layer image I included in this post is at Normal 100% but the way I have it set in the PSD file is Soft Light 100%. If I showed anyone the base layer with soft light mode, the colors wouldn't be very visible, so for showing sake, I've saved an image of the layer in  Normal mode.


base colors, for sake of viewing - this is on Normal mode, but should be in Soft Light mode for the work.

Reason I have the layer on soft light mode is for the shading layer. With the base colors on soft light, the shading layer looks a bit darker rather than just another layer of normals.

shading layer #1
Normal 100%

Lady Ribbon - part 5 (finished)

painted over the line work and fixed up the mouth.

6:59 pm EST

Took about an hour to paint over the line work and to paint the mouth (which took longer than expected as I was trying to get the colors right and not too overly bright.)

Lady Ribbon - part 4 (shading)

shading - Normal layer 100%

5:56 pm EST

About an hour and 45 mins spent to shade in everything.

Lady Ribbon - part 3 (base colors)

base colors with color palette

3:46 pm EST

Though I'm not sure if I want to keep that hair color, these are the colors I'll be using for this character concept art!

Lady Ribbon's Sword - part 8 (finished)

highlights added on - Linear Dodge (Add) layer at 70%, brush at 30%

12:44 am EST

Lady Ribbon's Sword - part 7 (colors part 3)

fix ups, thinning outlines, painting over line work

11:48 pm EST

[Partially] painting over the line work the line work takes more time than I always expect, then again, I was zoomed in more rather than working on it zoomed out.

Before the painting over line work layer, I had to go back and make a fix up layer to fill in any spots I didn't cover during the base or shading layers.

Both fix up and painting over layers were in Normal Mode 100% but I played around with 50% and 70% opacity for the Airbrush Opacity Flow (default brush) and obviously changed brush sizes.

I should make a new group one day for that brush for different sizes that way I don't have to manually change it every time and can just quick select  or use the key shortcuts.

Lady Ribbon's Sword - part 6 (more colors)

1st layer of shading, done!

9:42 pm EST

Finished first layer of shading - I don't know when I started exactly, for the second part of shading, but at most an hour considering when I came back from dinner.

Lady Ribbon's Sword - part 5 (colors part1)

some of the shading done. Currently set as a normal layer (100%)

6:38 pm EST

Some progress so far as I fixed up the values (somewhat minor so I'm not reuploading the new values layer). I did have to change the background color so I could tell what was already shaded in terms of values (gray background + gray values = not such a great idea).

The right sword is more complete if anything; I'm still finishing up the left sword.