Painting the dogs heads

This week was jam packed addressing tasks ranging in size from the smallest and tedious to large and time consuming which I had be putting off for some time namely the dogs heads.

Due to their shape and how much detail I wanted to hand paint onto the surface to mimic a realistic skull but still with a stylized look I decide to paint them in substance painter. Due to the fact I used the same skull, jaw and tongue for all three heads but changed the pose of each one to give each individual dog more of a personality, I was able to just paint the one dog head in substance painter and the other heads would share the same texture sheet. I understand that this could lead to them all looking mirror images of each other however I feel the poses are differing enough coupled with the ideology that this is Cerberus the three headed dog which shares the same genetic body anyway, allows for me utilise one sheet for all. Below is the base colour of the skull demonstrating the level of detail I wanted to hand paint onto the skulls to give them more believability than just a plain colour.

While previewing the dog’s heads I received some feedback which built upon Craig’s feedback from last week. As the heads still look like they are floating even with the added taxidermy wall mount, it was suggested to me that I quickly model some dog collars that can encompass the back of the dogs heads and essentially hide the awkward mount to the wall they currently have. To add to the overall fun comic like feel of my level it was suggested to add little dog bone tags to the collar which I felt would be a great and novel improvement. Taking it one step further I decided to give each dog a Roman numeral number indicating which of the three heads he was. Multi headed mythological beasts have often been portrayed with different personality traits a great example being the hydra from the animated movie Hercules. In the image below is a screen grab from the movie in which the hydra heads are conversing with each other as if deciding what to do. Using this as reference I tried to create expressions for the dog’s heads that closely recreated this differing personality.

While on my texturing rampage this week Im very pleased that I finished a few sheets covering smaller assets in my level such as the burlap sacks, lamp post, billboard and small produce crate but most importantly the pathways which are throughout the level and are such a vital part for the level to look authentic to Victorian era. I wanted to recreate heavy stone slabs with thick grout seems in-between thick with dirt and grim that fell into the crevasses over the years. These thick dark seam will also help me hide any overlapping issues if the fit is not quite perfect. Also I found that a mix of long slabs and half size slabs help break up the repetition of the pathway.

The final major task I was able to undertake this week was to change the lighting in the level to be closer to the final piece and that way I can adjust the light maps of the surrounding assets accordingly as currently everything is brightly lit by sunshine and I may need to increase the roughness on some assets I want to stand out in certain lighting the anvil next to Alastor’s armoury being one the most obvious ones. I am fairly happy with the feel and ambience in the level mimicking that dark gloomy part of London that few people go. I will be adjusting/ adding more lights to highlight particular areas of interest as I progress but for now I think this accurately demonstrates the way I am proceeding with my level.

Unfortunately I did encounter a rather large problem just at the end of the week whereby the lighting on the dogs heads looks broken as it follows the seams of the unwrap for the model and renders really awkward shadows creating a stripy hatch pattern on each head. This is a problem and I suspect it has something to do with the meshes individual light map properties which I hope to investigate and resolve next week.