3D Modelling for Terran Studios.

Name: Koivi Tasker  Student No. 110152

Host Organisation: Terran Studios

Start date : 07/28/2015_____ End date : 08/18/2015_________

Name of Workplace Supervisor Michael Breen ________________

Supervisors Ph: 0419489262__ Supervisors Email: m.breen@terranstudios.com

My Position Title during the Internship : Modeller

I was placed in the: Modelling Department

I've been doing an internship for Terran Studios for a couple of weeks. The company is a local company and was founded in 2012 with a group of three friends who decided to create innovative games.

The tasks they gave me haven't been too challenging. I've been assigned to model a couple of low poly creatures which makes it easy but my struggle is that I have a short attention span. Usually I’ll spend 4 to 5 hours modelling and then about the same amount of time unwrapping. I understand that sometimes its best not to rush a project so sometimes I would spend 2 days on a creature just to look over everything.

The Creatures are simple. They are low poly with not a lot of intricacy and so that makes it very easy to model but even though they are simple I made sure to consider the creature's shape and anatomy. While trying to get the shape and form correct I also had to consider the edge flow(topology) of the creature and observe and test how it would bend and deform when animated. That being said I learnt a couple of great ways to optimize poly count and making sure the wires had a good edge flow.

So far I have modeled 5 characters and I have another 5 to go with 2 weeks left. Thing is I'm also in another collaboration with other students and so my challenge is to manage my time between both these projects. My goal for this internship is to knock of the rest of the creatures so I can get this internship out of the way as soon as possible. I'm only one guy and I'm not very good at multi tasking or time management due to my short attention span. I just need to learn to work smart.

There was no studio for me to work in so I was just working from home. Working under these conditions I felt like I was doing freelance work but personally I wish I had more aural communication. Messaging the studio was fine for their requirements but with aural communication I get to hear a more honest message specially through the tone of the client's voice. File sizes for these creatures were small so it was easy to send files across and use the google drive for file organization between the group.

Here are the Creatures I've modeled for the company so far. The first 2 were started early before the contracts were signed and I did them slowly taking my time on them. the poly count limit for all these creatures were at 1500 tris.

Hive Queen.

An Alien Queen. This mesh was started prior to contract signing. but I just wanted to model all the creatures for em because I knew them as old colleagues so I trusted them to manage the paperwork. Model was simple. I started with its head and abdomen then extruded each edge seperately to join the mesh. First time I submitted it to them the legs weren’t joined attatched to the mesh but later they sent it back to me to attatch the legs. poly count was a total of 1482 tris.

Steel Blade

A snake like monster. I was later asked to add in edge extra loops around the snakes tail so the animators can bend and deform it in a snake like motion. Most challenging part of this mesh was maintaining a good edge flow behind the ears.

Uniclaetus

A Fat Unicorn. I was Halfway through modelling this character when the contracts were signed. After contracts were signed I submitted my previous 2 characters 'hive queen and steel blade' to the Terran Studios. Out of all the creatures Uniclaetus was the easiest for me due its simple shapes and little intricacy in its design.

Raiju

A Lightning Wolf. This one was pretty straightforward. Nothing really challenging about this just modelling form blueprints and converting the 2D blueprints into 3D. For the earrings I noticed how circles can increase poly count if your not careful So I just used two torus shapes each with eight segments. It was also ok for the creatures emblem not to be attatched attached to its body.

it was while I was modelling this creature that I was informed that the second intern who was modelling with me left the team so I was left to model the rest of the creatures. He modeled about 3 and I modeled 10 of the creatures. It didn't concern me he left because I just wanted to learn more about low poly modelling so modelling the extra creatures was more of a learning opportunity and I was glad of having extra work to train myself with.

WarHorse

A War Horse creature with a bit of Armour. This time round my concentration was a bit better but I still have a long way to go to fully conquer my short attention span. I spent half the day modelling and the other half unwrapping. For this model The armour pieces didn't need to be attatched to the model. Just the tail and ears. Seeing this model was most intricate It had a higher poly count at 2420 tris. I was later informed that I forget to add in the spikes on the creatures back but they fixed it themselves instead of sending it back to me.

Gojira

Another really simple model. The creature wasn’t so intricate in it design so there weren't many polys. For this creature I made sure I added in the least amount of polys as possible because I knew the more polys there were the more tweaking/work I'd have to do with vertices and edge flow. I just wanted to get this mesh over and done with quickly. Maybe I could've added in more polys for better deformation.

SkullRam

Skull Ram was above tri count. Mainly because of the teeth I modelled and being high poly. I probably should've asked the team what kind of shape they wanted. Overall proportion was fine for the model. I just gotta ration with properly my poly budget.

Gargon

Again really high poly on the teeth costing up to 500 tris. Maybe I was scared about the teeths shape but I keep on forgetting that this game was gonna be used on android and phone devices. edge flow was good for animation. I feel like I could’ve also reduced poly count on the wings.

The Reject

This model was challenging because it wasn't symmetrical and very organic with some intricate detail So it took me a couple of hours to do this one. Making sure its the edge flow on its back was good enough for the animators to deform and placing the holes in its mouth was all challenging. If I was constrained to quads in this mesh then things would've been very difficult.

Arachnus

The creatures arms were actually difficult to model for me. Maybe I was stressing about it too much and I lost my self confidence? I had modelers block(writers block) while modelling this. I Couldn't think of a good edge flow for this one so I just sent it of to Terran studios to fix. I was glad to at least do the base shape for them.

To be honest this internship was very straight forward for me. Normally I was telling them when I was online and that I'd have it modeled within the day and then unwrapped the second day. My communication I guess I have to practice going into detail about things. Just talking about whats important instead of just showing updates to the team. In the end what happened was a lot of my models were refined by the team. All in all I modeled 95% of what they wanted and they just added there last bits to it.. Some were sent back to me to make some changes. A lot of the time I was going over tri count. Low poly modelling is not my major and I had to learn how to spend my poly budget wisely.

Terran Studios were good to work with and I'd gladly work for the team again but only on simple projects. What motivated me to do this was the fact that I kinda knew these guys as x-colleagues from Qantm-SAE and they looked up to me as a good modeller so I didn't want to let either them or myself down. I believe I dedicated my time well between my internship tasks and uni assignments(studio 2) But my trouble is I still have a short attention span which is a something I'm willing to conquer.