Battle Arena

Battle Arena

Our first project for 3D Art Production is to create a battle arena. We were asked to create a mood board to show what we would like our arenas to look like. 

I grew up playing fighting games so I took inspiration from my favourite ones. The above images are from various Tekken games, Soul Caliber 4, Super Smash Bros and Playstation Allstars: Battle Royale. I like the way that Tekken and Soul Caliber arenas are usually an enclosed 3D space in the shape of a circle that the players can move all around. Sometimes players can be pushed off the edge, like in the third image down on the left (PA: BA) and the bottom right image (SSB), which is something I wanted to keep in mind for my own arena. I want it to be quite stylised as opposed to realistic, with bright saturated colours and I also want the arena to be outside. One of my favourite things about stages in fighting games is that there are usually some animation sequences going on in the background that make everything more interesting and life-like; I would like to incorporate that into my arena somehow.

I made some thumbnail sketches for a floating island concept. I liked the first one on the left but decided it would be more interesting to add another level to the arena like on the right. Phil told us to make a list of all the things we would need to model. It is going to look something like a garden so there are basic environment things like trees and rocks but I thought it would add something extra to it to put some sheep in. I want to try and add a simple animation to them, maybe walking around or just moving their heads up and down. I will try and do this if I have the time and can figure it out. I really want to include a small pool of water and a waterfall, as well as having the island above clouds.

Here were some of my first attempts at the island:

I really didn't like the look of these islands. Although, I realised that they were impractical after placing a 3D character controller in the scene in Unity. I tried something else.

Equally as bad. Maybe for a different type of level these would be okay, if done better, but for a battle arena I thought it didn't work.

At the same time I played around with some trees and bushes.

I was going for that low poly effect that can be seen in a lot of indie games lately, so I still like these models, but they didn't feel right to me. I kept on and eventually came up with these.

The scene has been lit with ambient light just so that I could work with the models whilst thinking of cartoon-like styles. I like these models much better and I am really pleased with them. Each tree and bush is a variation on the last to save me some time. I altered them enough so that they don't look identical but look like the same type of tree or brush. I added some spheres and other shapes that I made myself onto the bushes to look like flowers for some extra variation.

I went on to model some other props for the arena.

The gate was added to reinforce the garden/countryside theme.

I started making some swords. My idea was that this was the kind of battle field that is quite peaceful but is littered with remains of past battles. I wanted to do more, like shields, axes and arrows, but I did not leave myself enough time. I had a lot of fun making these, even though they are variations of each other. It was my first time experimenting with making objects other than plants, so I was quite excited with the results.

Here is my final arena and all the props, one with ambient lighting, because I really loved this look, and one without, which better fits the brief. I placed the props in Maya before exporting to Unity.

I added in some rocks too. Keeping in line with my work pattern so far, I made three variations, with two different colours for more depth to the scene. I am really pleased with this. However, the topology for the island is terrible. I made it this way because I struggled visualising the island, but once I had gotten it to look the way I wanted, I could not figure out how to fix the topology without disturbing the shape.

I learnt so much about 3D and about myself whilst making this arena. I have not been very good at 3D, being a really slow learner to it. A lot of this is to do with attendance. Once I discovered low poly models, though, I really started to enjoy it and ended up making something I'm very proud of, even with its mistakes. I'd like to get better at it over the summer, particularly topology issues. I am still unsure how to fix problems when they arise.

Character Statue

For my statue, I wanted to create a godess of war. Here is my moodboard:

I wanted to combine different types of goddess imagery and thought about multiple limbs. However I decided very quickly that it would be best to stick to a normal human female body for my first time modelling one. 

Here's a quick concept image that I put together. 

After this I got to work on the model. I wanted the whole project to look cartoon-like, so I decided to draw my own front and side references for the body. This, I later found out, was a bit of a mistake. I spent a long time on this and in the end my drawings did not translate well into 3D, at least at my current level. So I scrapped it and make another model based on photos of a real woman. 

Here is the better model that I ended up with.

Here is the final version.

I had used nCloth on the skirt originally but unfortunately it kept messing up, so in the end I when back to the more simple version.

You can see in my files that I added some textures to the statue. I got a stone texture online and painted over it so that it didn't look too realistic. I wasn't able to add textures to the rest of the scene because I was confused as to how to add them into the scene when I first did the statue. In the end, I figured it out, but I have no textures for the rest of it now. This is my fault, if I had gone in more I either would have known or could have asked.

Overall I am pleased with the result but if I had managed my time better I would have done a lot more.