Dawid Batog
A blog/portfolio documenting each unit of my work
Year 2 Final Major - Decay Of Faith.
Proposed Research Sources and Bibliography (Harvard Format)
What are the influences, starting points and contextual references and why are they relevant to your ideas? Indicate the subject areas you intend to research and the likely sources of information including any museums, specific locations, performances, etc. you plan to visit. You should explain the value of this research and then compile an accurate bibliography correctly acknowledging all references including texts, periodicals, websites and video/DVD’s etc.
1. Blomfield, C. (1839). Brompton Cemetery. London: West Brompton, London.
2. Dark Souls I. (2011). [Video Game], Japan: FromSoftware.
3. Dark Souls II. (2014). [Video Game], Japan: FromSoftware.
4. Dark Souls III. (2016). [Video Game], Japan: FromSoftware.
5. DOOM. (2016). [Video Game], Richardson, Texas, U.S.: id Software.
6. Fiechter, B. (2015). Spooky Playground. [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgUazC24rfE [Accessed 15 Mar. 2017].
7. Fiechter, B. (2015). Whispers in the Forest. [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgzrtrgQGZc [Accessed 15 Mar. 2017].
8. Friedrich, C. (1810). The Abbey in the Oakwood. [Oil on canvas] Berlin, Germany: Alte Nationalgalerie.
9. Friedrich, C. (1819). Two Men Contemplating the Moon. [Oil on canvas] Dresden, Germany: Galerie Neue Meister.
10. Geddes, A. (1974). London Dungeons. London, United Kingdom: Westminster Bridge Road, London.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. (2004). [DVD] United Kingdom: Alfonso Cuarón, Warner Bros. Pictures.
11. Hopper, E. (1940). Gas. [Oil on canvas] London, United Kingdom: Royal Academy.
12. Unreal Tournament. (1999). [Video Game], Cary, North Carolina, U.S.: Epic Games.
13. Ziegler, A. (2012). The Sealed Kingdom. [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR28G204z5k [Accessed 12 Mar. 2017].
14. The Urban Explorer. (2017). The Urban Explorer - Exploring Abandoned Buildings, Bunkers & Asylums. [online] Available at: https://www.theurbanexplorer.co.uk/ [Accessed 17 Mar. 2017].
Over the course of the year I’ve honed my skills that I’ve developed throughout the course of the last year. I believe that I’ve made substantial improvements to the speed and quality that I work at however I still strive to improve more. I’ve explored more software beyond standard 3D modelling such as Substance Painter and CrazyBump and I believe that they will help me create a much more refined project in the future. I believe that my greatest milestone was creating a video-game pitch that just may be good enough to become a real game.
I still enjoy crating environments just as I did a year ago but this time I would like to really go in-depth and showcase an environment which is both practical but good looking. Recently I’ve been creating work that is bright, colourful and cheery but to challenge myself I would like to create a more mysterious, gothic-style environment that focuses more on darker themes. I think that this idea will let me expand my boundaries and demonstrate my ability to work with different themes.
Section 1: Review (Approx 150 words)
Explain the journey you have gone through in this past academic year. What were the greatest milestones of your learning? How do you feel you have developed as an artist? Explain how you have decided on your specialism – was it a turning point in a specific project? Have you always identified as a specific type of artist? If so, how have you developed and furthered your skills to get to this point? Explain how your journey has ended up here, with this idea, for this final major project.
Section 2: Project Concept & Proposed Artist Statement (Approx 300 words)
This is where you explain your FMP project idea and concept. Be specific about what you intend to communicate and what you hope to achieve by producing this work. How will your work engage or affect your audience and what will they discover by interacting with or viewing your work? Describe the theme/concept of your work – is it based on fact or fiction? Are you creating or reacting to a mood, an emotion, a sense of atmosphere or sensation? What is the title of your Project? What will you work towards producing? What will be your final outcome?
For my final major I would like to model an environment based in a setting of a cathedral with a hidden dungeon inspired by games such as Dark Souls or DOOM. I’ve looked into different real life architecture I could visit for inspiration and sometime during the project I plan on visiting the ‘’Brompton Cemetery’’, designed by Stephen Geary, to have a basis for real life architecture with a more gothic-like style. The environment would explore a theme of corruption and cultism and would be modelled to the my best ability whilst making sure it is not too high on polygons therefore making it compatible with different real-time engines.
I want to develop my knowledge of diffuse mapping and a software I’ve found during independent research called Substance Painter to create realistic looking textures. Before I begin the modelling process I aim to plan out the route that the camera would take in order to make sure I can maximise on the quality of work showcased within the environment; To make a successful flight path I will look into media that has also taken that approach allowing me to see what would and wouldn’t work with my environment. I want to develop my current knowledge of lighting to an industry level to use the concept of 3-point-lighting in order to create a believable scene that does not suffer from any offset lighting. For research into different lighting I will look into both modern media, such as the current Hollywood movies like ‘’Harry Potter’’ and historical media such as the paintings of ‘’ Caspar David Friedrich’’ in which the artist puts a lot of emphasis on dark environments with strong lighting.
I plan to showcase the environment using panning fly-by shots but I will also render out some high quality renders from different angles to better represent the environment. Due to the fact that this unit is longer than previously, I plan to make additions to the environment, such as a graveyard or a shrine, if time allows it, I would like to try importing my environment to a real-time engine such as Unity or Unreal to showcase my work from another approach.
I plan on using Maya for the majority of this project for both modelling and rendering within the new rendering engine named ‘’Arnold’’. For the majority of my texturing I would like to use ‘’CrazyBump’’ for larger models such as grass and Substance Painter for more intricate models such as a skull or a candle. I plan on using Photoshop in order to create some of my own bump maps using image manipulation tools such as ‘’saturation’’ and ‘’curves’’. I would also like to experiment with a real-time renderer such as Unity or Unreal if time allows it.
Section 3: Methods (Approx 150 words)
Refer to any techniques and processes you intend to use. Describe the range of media and materials relevant to your project and how you may use them to explore and develop your ideas. Include aspects of studio practice, workshop procedures or the use of particular equipment and software etc. In the timetable, provide an indicative timescale for your project and indicate the manner in which you intend to divide your time in order to investigate, develop, produce and evaluate your project appropriately. This should be a meaningful plan to you and should be personalised to your project.
Section 4: Evaluation (Approx 150 words)
How will you critically review and analyse your work and determine if it is successful? How will you identify directions for ongoing development? Do you have a method to record the critical response to your ideas? How do you propose to assess the success of your Final Major Project and what will be your methods of evaluation?
I will record my process notes on my portfolio including a screenshot of each step. This will allow me to show my work to anyone who visits my portfolio. I will ask the reader for their opinion and how the current work could be improved and I will record the feedback in written form. I will then learn from the feedback and attempt to make my work better to achieve a higher quality.
Artist Research - Caspar David Friedrich
Caspar David Friedrich was a painter from the 19th century that focused on landscape paintings with more darker tones than the paintings of his time. I particularly enjoy his painting ''The abbey in the oakwoods.'', (1810), as it explores themes similar to my current project and uses lighting to portray most of the emotions within the painting.
Another piece that I enjoy is ''Two Men Contemplating the Moon.'', (1819), as it presents a really dark theme with a deeper hidden meaning. By using only one light source, the moon, Friedrich is able to capture a sad but yet eerie feeling to the painting and that is something that I wish to explore within my project.
Research into gothic architecture
The style of Gothic architecture is something that I wish to achieve when modelling my cathedral and the graveyard due to how dark and mysterious the specific style can look.
Gothic architecture originated from Romanesque architecture and so it features intricate designs, arcs and tall towers but it builds up on the style by introducing more jagged and extruded designs featuring darker colours such as gray and black as opposed to the flat walls and washed out marble colours of Romanesque Architecture.
The videogame "DARK SOULS", (2011), features heavy usage of Gothic architecture especially in environments based on cathedrals and cemeteries
Week 1 - Modelling cathedral wall
I have began to experiment creating 'god-rays' using spotlights in order to simulate light shining through the stained windows. This was a difficult task to do as it required me to learn how to create and properlyconfigure the properties of volumetric lighting, it also required me to get acquainted with light samples, exposure and different settings like the penumbra angle of the spotlight. Overall I believe that the god-ray came out average and could use some improvement as at the moment it does not convey the stained glass feel I aimed for it to achieve.
In the meantime I've modelled a simple model for a candle-holder as currently the wall looked really bland having only the cross to fill the empty spacing.
I started out by modelling the pillars that would hold up the wall of the cathedral. I was inspired by the interior the ''Cathedral of Pisa'' and used an image, seen in the progress images, of one of the walls as reference for the wall I was currently modelling. To create a wall connecting all of the pillars I had to create several extra vertices and move them in-between the negative space the arcs created in order to make sure there were no open spaces between the arcs but at the same time the wall didn't bleed trough to the arcs themselves.
Next I modelled the upstairs area that would be used by visitors when downstairs is full, I modelled a simple rail and connected it between two pillars. Above the first floor I've created a smaller version of the arcs from earlier similarly to how the ''Cathedral of Pisa'' has small arcs above the big arcs.
To finalize the wall I created several window frames and put in a texture of a stained glass painting as the diffuse. I plan to have every window have different picture that I will create in photoshop using its' filter gallery.
Progress Images:
Royal Academy - America after the fall
During a college trip I've visited the Royal Academy in order to view the ''America after the Fall' exhibition being held there from the 25th of February to the 4th of June 2017.
Overall the trip was a success and I was able to gather some inspirations from the works of art present at the exhibition however after the exhibition I was able to take pictures of different Gothic architecture around central London and I hope that later down the lane it will aid me with my work.
Whilst at the exhibition I was particularly inspired by two different pieces of art by Edward Hopper.
One of the paintings I was inspired by was "Gas", (1940)for its use of a dark environment lit with a light strong enough to light up the whole gas station but not the trees further away from it.
This gives the painting a feeling of depth and a level of detail that I wish to achieve within my environment. Having the objects closest to the camera be in full detail but having objects far away in the distance be less detailed in order to simulate a camera focusing on a particular object but to also save on rendering times allowing me for a longer video as the outcome.
The other piece of art that inspired me was "New York Movie", (1939), for its use of a dark, small enclosed space that is lit using small lamps.
I believe that this piece strongly resonates with how I wish to present the insides of the cathedral that I plan on modelling as it features all the elements that I've already began adding to my model such as the pillar, the small sources of light and the enclosed spaces that would also be present within a cathedral.
I plan on using this painting in order to influence how I will handle the lighting portion of this project as it is one of the key aspects of the painting and it would be a shame to waste the oppurtunity.
Independent Research - West Thames College
Whilst walking around college I've noticed that a lot of the architecture present at the campsite is heavily inspired by the Gothic architecture of the 16th century.
I've decided to take some reference pictures as I believe they will aid me in the modelling and texturing stages of my project.
I especially like the gates present at the campsite and I plan on modelling a similar gate surrounding the graveyard using these images as reference.
Independent Research - Central London
I've mentioned before that during the Royal Academy Exhibition trip I've managed to take some pictures of what I believe to be Gothic architecture, or buildings of similar nature to said architecture, around Central London.
I was fortunate enough to take several pictures of the intricate gates and fences around the area but I also managed to take a picture of a church more reminiscent of Romanesque architecture that might give me an insight into mixing certain elements from one style and matching it t elements of another style withing the environment that I am modelling.
Week 2 - Displacement mapping and proxy modelling
This week I decided to look more into the different ways I could texture my environment in order to make sure that the rendering time of the scenes is good enough to be rendered out as a fly-by sequence instead of still images.
One of the techniques I've discovered was displacement mapping. With this method I am able to create intricate details within my textures by simply creating a copy of the texture which is de-saturated and has its curves exaggerated to the extent seen above, middle image.
From a simple plane with a texture I am able to create a render that looks more realistic due to the fact that displacement mapping creates extra polygons that add detail to the texture that would be un-achievable using only bump mapping but would be too intricate to model.
The final result of this is a plane that looks like realistic dirt whilst having a very short render time leading me to believe that I will be using this technique extensively during my texturing phase in order to save rendering time but create quality models.
Proxy Modelling is a simple technique where the artist maps out the different models they plan on creating by using only cubes and spheres to represent them.
I've decided to Proxy Model my whole environment as that would allow me to better set my targets for each different model and allow me to see my progress as an overall image instead of having individual models within separate files.
The first problem I've ran into whilst creating my proxy model was that there were too many gravestones and the whole area looked very bland and uninteresting. In order to fill up the empty space I've decided that I will model a building connected to the cathedral in some way.
I've also decided to model a giant tree next to the cathedral and I plan to model it in such a way so that it looks old and withered in order to create a better atmosphere for the area and give the player some insight into how old the area is.
Week 3,4&5 - Continuing to model a cathedral, direction change.
I've also began modelling the tower that would become the altar seen at the front of every cathedral/church and it would be a mistake to not model it within my environment. I also began to experiment using the mirror function as my church has finally entered the stage where it is ready to be mirrored and closed off.
I created the front of the church using many pieces that I've already modelled earlier such as the windows, doors and the pillars as I felt like there was no real need to add anything new
During the time span of three weeks I've managed to model one half of the cathedral and I plan on mirroring the half in order to make a perfectly symmetrical church on both sides. I've decided that the building I am modelling is not large enough to be called a cathedral and so from now on I will refer to it as a church with cathedral-like elements. I've modelled the outside walls of the church similarly to how I modelled the insides On the outside of the church I've used some previously modelled windows and pillars to fill up the wall space, I've also created a model of a door as many churches feature several entrances instead of just one at the back.
Progress Images:
Having thought about the current progress that I've made I've come to the realization that in order to gain the amount of detail that I wish to achieve within the church I will not be able to have time to create an additional building, a tree and a graveyard and so I began looking into other ways I could present my work.
Whilst looking for inspiration I've found a video from a game called ''Battlefield 4'' which featured a broken down building with a shining god ray centered around a plant growing out of the ground. This concept inspired me as I do not believe it has been explored within a church-like environment and so I've decided that instead of telling a story of corruption within the church I will tell a story of an abandoned church with new life beginning from a single god ray shining down onto a patch of grass present within the, now abandoned, church.
With such a heavy emphasis on lighting I will need to look into how lighting is used in different media and how said lighting interacts with an environment such as a cathedral. This will be especially difficult to do as it takes a lot of time to render lighting of a quality good enough that a god ray would be the main focus.
I believe that because of the amount of rendering I will have to do my project might turn into several different angle shots of the environment but I believe that, if detailed enough, these shots will be well worth the effort and help me achieve the grade I am aiming for.
Independent Research - Tom Clancy's "The Division", Cathedral Hideout
Whilst deciding on the direction of my project I stumbled onto an environment within a game known as ''Tom Clancy's, The Division'' that features a modern cathedral and I felt inclined to take screenshots to use as reference for my project.
Whilst not exactly the architecture that I'm aiming to capture this church/cathedral still features heavy usage of pillars and has a slight worn out look which might help when referencing the new abandoned approach I am to take within my project.
The lighting featured within the screenshots is also something worthy of taking note of, especially the chandelier as that is a part of the church that I have not really explored and I will look into it in the future.
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Research into media
Whilst looking into ways of optimizing my god rays I stumbled upon this video in which the game ''Fallout 4'' is presented with two different graphical settings where one of them has the god rays setting turned to minimum and the other has it set to max.
Whilst watching this video I've realised that there isn't much difference between the highest and lowest setting and that made me think about ways of minimizing render times and possibly allowing me to create more than stills for my final outcome.
Nevertheless the game is set in its own engine and unless I get access to the engine itself I will not be able to 100% reproduce the ''God Rays Low'' setting from within the video.
Whilst searching for different environments where god rays were used I've come across a video that demonstrates how to create god rays in any image using Photoshop. This made me think about how I was going to approach presenting the scenes that I was planning to render out in maya. I could edit them in post and therefore improve on some details that they might be missing such as seam visible within a texture but I could also add completely new things and skip out the long process of rendering out a volumetric god ray and instead render the image without one and add one in photoshop.
This approach would allow me to save much time but I fear that the results of this would not be as good as rendering out a god ray directly within maya and so I plan on sticking with my current method of creating a god ray.
These videos are both video game recordings of two different games, "Battlefield 4" and "Dying Light". The video on the left is a recording of gameplay using the highest possible graphical settings within the game allowing me to see what the lighting of abandoned scenery might look like within a highly detailed environment. The video on the right features a dark but well lit cave with a strong atmosphere that I aim to use as a reference for my abandoned church.
This is a video I've found of a still shot rendered in real-time using the unreal engine. The shot features a god ray and passive fog moving around the scene which creates a unique still but at the same time animated image that I might try to implement within my work to create a more atmospheric outcome.
Research into ''Urban Explorer''
Whilst looking for imagery of abandoned environments I've stumbled upon this website which collects photographs taken by different people whilst visiting several different abandoned locations. Using this website I was able to get a feeling of how an abandoned church may look like and the state of destruction that it might be in.
Research into abandoned churches
I quickly realised that ''ruined'' is not the correct keyword I should be using when trying to collect references for my church and instead I should look for ''abandoned'' as a keyword as that yields much better results overall. Below is a moodboard of the look and emotion I wish to capture within the final outcome of my work.
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Unhappy with the lack of church imagery present on urbanexplorer.co.uk I've decided to do some of my own research into ruined churches and collect the references as a moodboard within this section allowing me to easily reference different pieces from the different images.
Research into lights
These are three different examples of how a god ray might be presented within an environment. The leftmost image shows the most 'cluttered' god ray as it is blocked by several other objects. The middle image is a god ray shining through a hole in the ceiling illuminating the area around it. And finally, the third image is a god ray illuminating the whole environment with no areas outside of its reach. Personally I think that the middle image will suit the project the most as I want the project to convey a message of sorts and having that god ray will allow me to create a natural 'spotlight' on the object I want to highlight.
Research into media pt3
I've looked into three different examples where a movie was set in, had a scene in, a church or a cathedral to have a better understanding of how such an environment might be used outside of the media of videogames. All of the scenes feature a serious tone and I believe to make my scene more believable I will also have to take this approach and create a scene that is impactful and serious in nature.
Progress Images:
Week 6 - Focusing on modelling internals.
I've also began rendering out some scenes in order to start looking for good angles and shots that might be used within the final outcome of this project. I've used 3 way lighting to simulate a more realistic look and I plan on using this setup in all my renders as I believe it makes them look much better. I've also made sure to set the colour management options to ''Raw'' as through experimentation I've found out that its the most effective one
Following the decision to focus only on the internals of the church I've taken to modelling the inside details such as the praying benches present in every church. I also created a human to use as reference for height as having a proper sense of scale is important when trying to create a realistic environment.
As I am planning to make my environment abandoned I will need to make realistic looking rock and rubble formations. In order to do so I've found an online tutorial that teaches how to use MASH instancing in order to simulate rocks forming around a pre existing mesh. The other tutorial demonstrates how to quickly create pieces of rubble by using the scatter tool present on maya. I plan on combining the two tutorials together
Progress Images:
Week 7 - Setting up scenes and starting to desroy church.
To begin destroying the church I've created I first needed to set up different scenes in order to determine the level of detail that I need to put into each different object. Below are the first renders of said scenes using three way lighting.
Week 7 - Lighting setup
I felt like the god ray felt slightly out of place being the only visible light source so I tried to create some other god rays within the scene but that created major issues with my three way lighting setup.
I also began working on the spotlight god ray that I will be using as the main focus of the scene. After many different attempts I've arrived at a preference configuration I was happy with and so I rendered out an image of the god ray.
Progress Images:
After configuring the exposure, penumbra angle, volumetric density and shadows, dropoff and light intensity I've arrived at a setup where I'm happy with how the main god ray is presented along with the smaller god rays within the background. This was the first render I've done using the highest possible settings and it took 1 hour and 26 minutes to render which is a respectable time for a maximum settings 1080p render.
Week 8 - Creating dirty mound
Using the sculpting tool I've also created several different rock shapes and textured them using 5 different textures before duplicating them and placing them in spots where it would make it look like the dirt mound is breaking through the ground of the church. Below I've presented two different renders showing my current progress from two different angles
To begin I first made a simple shape of a dirt mound using the sculpting tools provided within maya, I then began to proxy model where I would want to place the grass and a flower which I plan on making the main focus of the shot.
Progress Images:
Week 8 - MASH-ive disappointment
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I've decided to try out using MASH instancing to more realistically simulate my rock placement. Following the video I linked to when explaining my approach to rubble I've come across a massive problem. The problem being that MASH instancing would not make the rubble pieces stick to the mesh no matter what settings I tried. In the end I had to move on from MASH instancing as it was taking up too much of my time with disappointing results.
Week 9 - Real-time still scene.
I've come across these two videos, the first being the main menu screen from the video game ''The Last of Us" and the latter being a time lapse video of an artist creating a "live wallpaper" which is a scene that does not change camera position but has slight movement in it to simulate a realistic environment. Inspired by these two examples I've decided to try replicating the technique using a real-time engine and see whether it would look good.
Using unity was a bigger challenge than I have envisioned, I first had difficulties importing my model as each texture was now missing and I had to re-create all of my materials. I then had issues with the lighting in the scene having to go as far as downloading a plugin for unity just to be able to try creating a volumetric spotlight. After doing so I still wasn't happy with how the scene was turning out and I was ready to abandon the idea of creating a "live wallpaper".
I then got the advice of trying to emulate a "live wallpaper" by using maya and rendering a lengthy sequence, I knew that this was going to be an even bigger challenge as making a scene that renders in good quality but has an optimal rendering time is no easy feat but I've decided to go along with the idea as I'm not one to back down from such a challenge.
Week 10 - Overgrown Ruins
I've set up the camera in a way that makes the flower the main focus of the scene but still keep some detail on the background models. I created a flower and grass using the paint tool but I've quickly noticed that the grass does not look as good as I would want it to look. I decided to use xGen to simulate the grass as I believe it would make it much more realistic. I also began to create vines wrapping around the pillars and walls. To achieve the wrapping effect I've had to create a deformer lattice and manipulate its vertices to wrap it around the pillars. I continued adding more and more detail into the scene until I felt happy with how the scene looks. I have also looked real life flowers that looked similar to the one I've created in the scene in order to get a better reference for my scene.
I wanted to really push the idea of having the church overgrown with flora, to have a better idea of how grass would interact with a concrete floor I've gone out to look for some examples in real life and take pictures of them to use as reference.
Progress Images:
Week 11 + 12 - After Effects
To be able to create the moving scene I have had to sequence render my scene as batch rendering would leave left an ''Arnold'' watermark on all of my images. When finished, I imported the rendered images as a sequence to after effects and began adding different effects to the sequence such as tweaking the exposure of the video and adding a depth of field using the camera lens blur. To properly learn how to apply the depth of field I've decided to look up a tutorial on youtube and follow it. After achieving the look that I wanted I felt like the scene's lighting was not vibrant enough and so I created my own volumetric light within after effects using ''CC light rays''. I also animated the rays to make the scene feel more alive to add to the "live wallpaper" feeling.
I created a background fog using a fractal noise layer to make my scene more thematic. I have decided to make my "live wallpaper" feel more like the starting menu of a video game similar to the main menu of "The Last Of Us". I have added an overlaying text saying "Press any key to start" simulating the text an actual game would show to entice the viewer to begin playing. I have also found a soundtrack to use in my video by searching for ambient dark sounds. The video to the right was my first test rendered in order to see how the final product would look and feel.
Later on I have decided to add a segment to the video simulating the player pressing a key. First, I found a sound effect that sounded like the game registered a key press. I then made the video fade out and transition into a gif of a ''loading circle'' to simulate the 'game' loading something. I've structured the video in a way that when the loading circle itself fades out it makes it look like it loads the main menu once again when looped.
Evaluation:
My original concept is much different to the final outcome and this is because of the many obstacles that I've come across and overcame during my project. My original concept was to create a horror-like environment of a cemetery and cathedral based on games such as Dark Souls and inspired by the different artworks of Caspar David Friedrich such as ''Abbey in the Oakwood" and I believe I've still managed to keep that theme even if the final outcome is now a still video of a scene rather than a whole environment. To an extent I feel like I've met my intentions but if I had more time I would have definitely attempted to create more than just one scene.
I believe that the research I've conducted throughout this project has helped me tremendously and without it I would have not been able to continue with my project like I have now. My research into Gothic architecture and different buildings in London, including my college, is what really got me to create the church the way I did and without it I believe my church would not have as much character as it does, even when destroyed and covered in flora. I was also able to attend the exhibition named "America after the fall" within the Royal Academy of Arts. It allowed me to look at the work of Edward Hopper, especially his works ''New York Movie" and "Gas", and it inspired me to focus on the lighting much more than I would have initially. After deciding on a different approach to the environment my research on abandoned churches really helped me plan exactly what I wanted to model as even though I stated I wanted an abandoned church scene at the time I didn't fully realise what it would entail. I have also been researching different mediums that could help me with my scene, such as the research into movies, videogames and lighting within different environments and this research was the core of my project, without it the project would not even be there and this is why I've actively outlined the research I was conducting at different sections of the project.
As I've stated earlier, my original concept was much different to the final outcome. I've changed directions twice during the project going from environment of cathedral and cemetery to an environment of a church and finally to a ''Live-Wallpaper" of a single scene from the inside of an abandoned church. The journey was not easy and I've encountered many obstacles along the way. My first obstacle was time constraints, my concept was way too grand to realistically be made within the time frame that was given to me and if I were to constrain myself to that schedule the work would not be of a standard I was proud of. Along the way I decided to make rubble for my abandoned church. I researched many ways of simulating rubble and one of the ways was to simulate instances using MASH however after experimenting with the feature I've ran into many problems that would take far too long to sort out and would ruin my schedule so I decided on manually placing rubble around the scene instead of generating it. Later on within the project I decided to experiment with Unity, a real-time engine, in order to make generating the final outcome much easier but I've come across many problems with unity's lighting engine due to the fact that the engine itself did not support volumetric lighting and instead developers download countless plug-ins to work around the issue. On top of that in order to use Unity I would have to re-make all of my materials and assign them to the different models. This all-together made Unity not worth the time but had I started out with it I would have definitely used it over rendering my scene in Arnold as it allows for much more freedom when creating the environment.
My final outcome aims to be a 'moment' taken from a videogame, the exact timing of this moment would be when the game has just booted up and my outcome would ease the player in to the setting of the game. I was very inspired by ''The Last of Us'' and its implementation of said feature. Within my final outcome I present the "Start screen" and later on I also show what would happen if a player did actually press a button. I have the scene fade out whilst a 'Confirmation' sound effect plays out, I then have the scene bring out a ''Loading circle'' which is a common way of showing that a game is loading content. Overall I believe that this creates a believable setting and that if someone were to see my outcome they would believe that it could have been implemented within an actual videogame. Even though the original meaning behind "Decay of Faith" was intended to hint at corrupting a religion into a cult it instead now transformed into literal the literal meaning of decay, in this case the decay of the church.
During the course of the project I have created and followed a strict timetable that detailed how I was going to use every week of my time but there were times where I had to stretch out the activity I was focusing on such as the modelling process and sacrifice time spent on other activities such as the rendering stage. If I were to improve my project I would definitely look into creating more than one scene from the environment. I would also look into possibly importing the whole project into Unreal Engine 4 as it just received an update that added volumetric lighting. Whilst it is a shame I never got the chance to texture my models in Substance Painter I believe that because the main focus of my outcome is the flora and lighting Substance painted models would not stand out as much as they would if the project was more about the models themselves.
Above I have included the soundtrack that I've used for my video and the green screen dust falling effect that I later on composited into my render. I chose the soundtrack because I felt like it fit perfectly with my project however the video itself is somewhat ominous and creepy the longer you listen to it to a point where the sounds resemble reversed speech etc. regardless I still want to use the soundtrack in my video as the deep bass combined with what sound like church organs which is perfect for my environment.