New Job and update on my week

Hi all,

Welcome back, I know its been a week since my last post and to explain this really its down to my new job at Playground Games. I have spent this week trying to get to grips with everything I need to know about my job. There is so much to learn and little time before I reach production on the game they are making. I realise its been a while since I have posted anything on my tiger tank as well and I will be getting round to that soon. Unfortunately I can't do any personal work over lunch times any more at this company due to the policies they have in place. I can do just general training exercises but nothing that can then be attributed to a portfolio piece. A little bit of a disappointment but it just means I will have to do my modelling now over a weekend. This will mean that my tiger tank production will slow down but rest assured I persist with it.

This week on the games side of things I have been playing a little more Mech Warrior Online as the New Warhammer Mech has been released into the game. I am still playing around with the set ups but I have to admit I am struggling to get this Mech to work with my play style so far. I will keep you updated on what set ups I eventually get to work for me.

On another note, I picked up Naval Action as well over the last few days so I have been having ago at that. I am still learning the ropes with it but I am getting there slowly. I've found it fun so far and the battle system is really pushing towards realism so once I have made up an opinion of the game I will tell you what I think here.

Getting this new job has shaked things up a bit in my life so my blog has taken a bit of a back step so far until I can get a groundings on when I can get time to write about my own modelling and gaming experiences so bare with me. I have a hour and a half commute each way to work so its taken a massive chunk out of my own personal time each night  so I guess you will understand why I have been a bit quite over the last few weeks.

Also as a requirement of my new job I have to mention as a disclaimer that this blog represents my thoughts and not playground games views as a company. With that official stuff out of the way I hope you have had a great weekend so far and it turns out to be awesome for what is remaining.


I hope to be getting up and running with my blog like normal soon, so till the next time.

Happy New Year Everyone

Hi Everyone,

I just wanted to say happy new year as im sure you are aware its been a while since I posted last. I thought after everything this year I wanted to have a nice break with my family and friends over the Christmas period. 2015 turned out to be very stressful indeed towards the end, but my hard work paid off after accepting a environment roll at playground games.

I have been busy learning Z Brush and some of its pipeline, as well as looking at DDO. I have predominately used Substance painter and have dismissed using DDO until now. I don't know what is in store for me when I join Playgrounds so I thought I would at least look at the basics of the plugin in case I have to take it up as my main tool.

I set myself a challenge to model a tiling texture in Zbrush and Texture it in DDO. Using a simular pipeline to how I created my rocks previously in my art tests I modelled 6 rectangular blocks in Zbrush as seperate tools. then using the tilda key on a square document made a tiling set of blocks.

I then baked out the Normal map from Z Brush and ID Map ready to be used in the Quixel Suite. Using the ID Map I defined masking areas for mud and rocks materials then played around with some layer effects to start picking out details in the rock. The process works very similar to Substance painter but is probably slower having to wait for it to recalculate every time I make a change. Below was the result from my experiment. I made quite a few mistakes in Zbrush but now I understand the pipeline better for next time if I am to use the 2.5D workflow.

I think for my next task I am going to start learning some of the hard surface tools in Z Brush. Till next time, happy new year!