D_Rogue Game Art Project

S creenshot of  the F/V   Scully's  pot launcher UV unwrapped .  This   was a fairly straightforward unwrap, with the geometry faces mostly  being  planes or cylindrical. Jason Bartlett © Next up, the sorting table and tote! Thanks for reading :)

 A nother s creenshot of my progress UV unwrapping assets onboard the F/V   Scully. This   time round, the rope coiler, unwrapped and ready for texturing! Jason Bartlett © I'm slowly making my way through unwrapping the assets for the main deck that I've worked on so far this year. I knew this would be a slightly time-consuming stage but I'm a lot quicker at it now than when I first began the project in 2019. Over time, I've found a steady balance in my workflow; where I alternate between  paths  to create the best possible UV maps. I use, both the main automatic UV projection tools available, or go in to the UV editor and manually unfold and correct where needed. When I reach the next major challenge of the project, working on the interior of the boat, I'll have even more experience and a greater idea in the whole unwrap workflow. Next up, the pot launcher! Thanks for reading :)

S creenshot of my progress UV unwrapping the F/V Scully hydraulic picking crane ready for texturing! Jason Bartlett © On one hand, this is one of the few large-scale assets to unwrap, so was quite time consuming. On the other hand, I've found a good workflow process and continue to use the best practises (as mentioned in my last post) to further unwrap all the other mechanical models and beyond! Thanks for reading :)

S ince leaving University, I've truly learnt how optimising and refining the  geometry of my models is a key part of the production process in Maya. Figuring out what surface  components  are necessary and removing unnecessary ones can make a huge difference on performance in a video game. Even more so, the more assets there are, such as in triple A games. This model of a coiling block  I created,  is a great example of this. In the second and third screenshots, I have enabled wireframe on shaded mode to show the tidied  vertices, edges and faces. While this is a fairly detailed model, I have still applied the best practices of  cleaning up any unessential  elements . After enough repetition and iteration, optimising geometry becomes second nature.  Jason Bartlett © Above is the complete  coiling block in Maya. This piece of equipment is powered by hydraulics and helps raise heavy pots out of the water by coiling line along a spinning sp...

U nderneath are a few   screenshots in Maya of t he next  significant asset I created for onboard the F/V Scully, a sorting table . A sorting table is quite self-explanatory but is where the catch from a crab pot is sorted by the crew to check the crabs are the right size and not under the legal limit to be caught. Any that are too small or the wrong species, are thrown back to sea.  This model was a fairly quick build. The part that took slightly longer was the bolt latches  (highlighted in the second image)  for the gate. I had to keep the geometry for the saddle, latch and bolt as low poly as possible. To achieve this, I tried working backwards by adding in all the parts and edge loops first, and then stripped the components back to be as low poly as possible with only the necessary features. In the last  screenshot , I've included a little bonus model, a tote tub. This is used for moving lots of crabs (once sorted from the table), either to a holding ta...

H ere are screenshots of the next key mechanical model I've created for the F/V Scully , the pot launcher. This is a major component of any crab fishing vessel.  The hydraulic launcher is a powerful  piece of equipment  that raises and launches crab pots.  There are various types of launchers that can both raise up to toss the pot overboard, as well as, tilt forward and shake crabs from a pot to a sorting table. I struggled for some time working out what equipment crab fishing vessels had back in the 70's and whether a pot launcher made the Scully look slightly too modern-day in terms of technicality . Sometime between the  commercial crab fishing industries beginning in  Alaska  (back in the 50's) to its heyday (around 1980), pot launchers were introduced to fishing vessels to help speed up loading and offloading crab pots (empty pots alone can weigh roughly 800 pounds). I did some research and eventually decided to make a basic single actuating launc...

B elow are screenshots of my next mechanical model,  a rope coiler,  I'm working on for the deck of the F/V Scully. This an  automatic rope coiling device that draws in a line of rope to a crab pot being hauled in. Similar to other models I've created before, I only had photographic references to go by making this coiler from scratch.  When it comes down to working from a handful of images, it  requires me to get creative. This is because c ertain areas are not as well documented. A big part of the job is filling in the gaps to make it as believable as a real-world object.  However, this isn't always straightforward! In this build, it proved quite tricky with many parts pivoting on one arm and the other being fixed inside to the top of the coil can. Eventually, with enough trial and error, I found a balance and soon had the low poly model complete. Jason Bartlett ©   Jason Bartlett © Jason Bartlett © Thanks for reading :)

O ne of the largest features on the deck of the F/V Scully is the hydraulic crane. The  hydraulic  crane is a key feature on-board any crab boat. Its main purpose is to help move empty crab pots from a stack on the deck, to the pot launcher and back (lifting large pots weighing up to 800 pounds). As like many other assets for D_ROGUE, I am purely following photographic reference. This requires plenty of patience;  studying all the components multiple times to construct it in a 3D space . Furthermore, not only does this model need to look accurate (I have to fill in the blanks  where they haven't been recorded ) , but it has to be mechanical, with many moving parts! Fortunately, the cranes on the fishing vessels seen in the  television show Deadliest Catch are well documented on camera. Once I had a basic form with all the pivot points aligned, I rigged the crane using joints and an iK Handle to simulate and re-position it when needed. Below are screenshots of my...

H appy  New Year! In my first blog post of 2021, I thought I would recap like last year and give a quick summary of the year now gone, what I'm currently doing and where I'm going with  D_ROGUE  ( as of writing)! Last year was quite productive for me, creating 3D assets for the project. I learnt new software (Substance Painter), gained new modelling skills and succeeded in tackling lots of new technical challenges. This year, I'm currently working on building the setting of the game. Onboard the F/V Scully. If last year was about building up my confidence in the 3D workflow on small assets, this year is about constructing the bigger picture. 107ft to be exact! See below for an update in screenshots. For the long-term plan, I still intend to create a working scene of  D_ROGUE. I hope to have at the least a greybox build of the main deck by the end of the year. Whether that is something that will happen by the end of 2021 we shall see! As the saying goes, 'the best way...

T owards  my 2020 showreel, I aimed at creating an outro animation, showcasing my CAT09 PC model; with the monitor displaying the D_ROGUE title. See here  for my 2020 showreel. At first, I had no idea how I would display the video on the monitor screen without using a shader for the mesh in Unity (my game engine of choice). While watching tutorials for the software Marmoset Toolbag 3, I discovered there was a free plugin made by an artist which creates a sprite texture sheet of all the frames of a chosen video; playing them in sequence similar to a GIF. The process is quite straightforward and once complete, the custom shader is simply added to the selected material texture slot. Jason Bartlett © Above is the complete CAT09 model animation in Marmoset Toolbag 3. Below the 3D viewport is the keyframe and timeline editors. These editors enable you to select numerous elements of a scene and create an animation. In the outro, I wanted to utilise a slow push pull effect to evoke a ...