Name: Andrew Simpson
P Number: P13202810
Email: Andrew_Simpson@hotmail.co.uk / P13202810@myemail.dmu.ac.uk
Project Title: World of Warcraft – Goblin Radio Tower
Overview: This is a Stylised Diorama Piece set in the style of World of Warcraft that would base itself in the environment of the Goblin race. It is a Radio Tower Station that would be used as a centre piece for a quest in the game.
Research and Design: I began by taking as many image sources from world of Warcraft to create a big visual library of the World of Warcraft and it’s art style. I also took screen captures of some interesting environments. I started with the idea of a human skiing lodge but finally settled on what I feel a more interesting design of a Goblin Radio Tower. I did this as I feel in previous Blizzard art contests the Goblin Environment has not been explored.
I also downloaded a programme called Wow Model viewer in order to export and import the assets from the game itself and research how Blizzard both modelled and textured their assets. I feel that this is important in order to fully understand their Art Style and Pipe line workflow.
Unwrap: I unwrapped these textures using 3Ds max with the Textools Plugin however I did not use Ipackthat as I would have better control over the texture unwrap.
Textures: The textures were then Hand painted on photo shop, the budget was 4x1024 for a Diffuse Texture with possible use of Normal Maps, however I did not utilise them as I have not found any use of normal maps in the models I have researched from the wow model viewer.
Final Renders: Rendered In Marmoset Toolbag2
Conclusion: I feel that this has been a somewhat successful project as I have achieved something quite consistent with the art style of World of Warcraft and I can see it being a viable asset used in a Goblin Setting. I found that the hand painting of textures to be very time consuming and a great change to Quixel. I enjoyed the challenge of learning a particular way of texturing that I have not attempted before and I felt that with more practice in this method of Texturing I would feel more confident in my ability to create stylised textures.
There are obvious points to improve such as adding more unique assets and to better utilise my texture space as I feel that it is an area I need to work on. I feel that I could work on this further and I wish to do so in my spare time by expanding the environment further and adding more foliage to the environment. A greater attention to iconography I feel would also push this scene further by reinforcing the Radio Tower idea and the Goblin owned motif.