UCL_BoyangZhang_video game and architecture

Cinematic and Videogame Architecture

This portfolio is visually focused, showing the skills of scene design, character design, animation and game engine

In the pipeline, I be using Maya, Blender, ZBrush, Substance Painter, Unity and Unreal Game Engine

Boyang Zhang (Brian) BA(Honors) Animation: Game art

of the Arts London London communication college

Boyang Zhang (Brian) | b.zhang0420202@arts.ac.uk / bzhang0706@163.com

SCENE DESIGN

Portal 01

For the design of the portal, I drew on the concept of space stations and interstellar teleportation from a number of science fction flms. like in many movies, at the centre of the portal is a partic amounts of energy. At the periphery of the portal is a ring of thrusters to help keep the portal above the city.

Modeling Process

After I fgured out the concept of the portal structure, I started to block out the portal in Maya. I was very happy with the result of the block out, it clearly refected the concept in the silhouette. In the process of refning the surface of the portal, I thought it would look like a spaceship from a sci-f movie, with a complex structure, pipes and cables all over the surface of the spaceship. This concept was inspired by the Star Wars Death Star. In Zbrush, I created a mechanical-style texture on the surface of the low poly model by using the Bump map. I think it really stands out the advanced technological level.

Radial distortion post process

Silhouette

BA(Honors) Animation: Game art

Render shot from Unreal engine

The fastest way to shuttle to the universe. Humans established colonies in the universe through portals

Wireframe

Textured

BA(Honors) Animation: Game art

Baked texture in retopology mesh

Lighting and atmospheric fog in the scene

Topology Mesh makes real-time rendering more smoothly. In textureing, the baking of the two layers of materials retains the details of the opening of the portal.

Light and environmental fog creates the Tyndall effect, adding a layer of mystery to the environment

The spaceship is about to cross the porvtal

The Abandoned city on earth Lost and Forgoten

Boyang Zhang (Brian) | b.zhang0420202@arts.ac.uk / bzhang0706@163.com

Environment 02

This is a concept study to help me to defne the feeling forgotten and abandoned of the scene. In the value drawing, I am trying to put lots of fog in the scene. It works really well as it showing the silence of the city.

Scene Construction

In order to start building the city, I planned a map of the city. In the map I planned the locations of cities, felds and portals. Drawing the map allowed me to better combine the background story with the location of the scene, and it also speeded up the progress of my city building.

BA(Honors) Animation: Game art

360 Video 03

In order to improve the sense of presence of the environment, I tried 360-degree rendering, so that the player's vision is surrounded by the entire scene. 360 rendering uses the camera plug-in in Unreal. The principle is to make the camera render images in six directions and stitch them together to form a panoramic photo. In the panoramic 360-degree video test, I realized that the biggest difference between 360-degree VR video and traditional video is that I will not be able to control the player's perspective. This has to require minimizing the objects in the scene to make it easier for players to fnd the visual focus. For this test, I set up simple movement of the spaceship to try and guide the player's line of sight.

Boyang Zhang (Brian) | b.zhang0420202@arts.ac.uk / bzhang0706@163.com

BA(Honors) Animation: Game art

Watch the video for portal scene

Boyang Zhang (Brian) | b.zhang0420202@arts.ac.uk / bzhang0706@163.com

Character Design Dragon character 01

In this project, I made a design of a character based on the League of Legends universe. During the design process for this character, I explored the history of the League of Legends universe. In the end I decided I was going to make a dragon character that lives in Ixtal. I collected some references for League of Legends characters and animal characters. Based on these I created some silhouettes.

Initial Design

BA(Honors) Animation: Game art

For the clothing, I referred to the clothing of the Ixtal residents in League of Legends. There are some luminous patterns composed of circles and geometric shapes on their clothing and body. This may be due to the magic they use or a tribal style. I also applied this element to the character's clothing to make the character more in line with the characteristics of the inhabitants of Ixtal.

Silhouette Ixtal Clothing from League of Legends

Creatures Reference

Final Design

However, I was still not satisfed with the current character costume design. I wanted to make the character that looks more like a tribe living in the forest and wearing light armour and hand-held melee weapons. Thus, he looks more like a warrior rather than a Magic Mage. So I redesigned the costumes for the characters. To make him look less of a melee character, I reduced his body protection and removed the weapons above, as he uses magic to help himself through the jungle.

BA(Honors) Animation: Game art

Watch the rendered character walking cycle

Maya rigging process

Game project (Group work) 3D asset & Environment 01

Asset scene

Shot from Unity, shows the asset scene. Including varieties of plants and their different states, props, buildings and terrain.

As a 3D and technical artist in the team, I created over 60 modes and animations, including buildings, plants, and terrains, and polished them ready for the Unity game engine.

Get inspiration from the real experience of Chinese desert land governance. The plants that players can grow are grass, shrubs, and trees. In the demo version, each category contains three plants, totaling nine plants. Each plant contains 3 states, respectively, Health, Dry and Death.

Start scene for Operation Oasis

In the game, players can also upgrade technology, build reservoirs, and tarmac to increase the amount of water and plant more plants. The ultimate goal of the player is to reduce the desertifcation index to 0

Boyang Zhang (Brian) | b.zhang0420202@arts.ac.uk / bzhang0706@163.com

BA(Honors) Animation: Game art

Gameplay screenshot

Artifcial rainfall using helicopters

Gameplay screenshot

Disaster system, heat waves make plants dry state

Boyang Zhang (Brian) | b.zhang0420202@arts.ac.uk / bzhang0706@163.com

Animator & event 02

Shot from Unity, shows the animation state and parameters in Animator

Animation state and parameters

Through the state of the Animator Parameters, the Animation Clip will loop through the four states. To achieve the opening and closing of weather effects

Shot from Unity, shows the animation time line

Through Animation I can record the status of the Game Object and set the keyframes. For example, turn on the particle effects, adjust the parameters of post-processing, and play the sound. By recording these keyframes. I made the effects of different weather

BA(Honors) Animation: Game art

Animation time editor

-Rainning

Snowing-

-Sandstorm

Heat wave-

Tencent Youth Game Designer

Challenge 2021 Environmental Protection Track Excellence Award

Award Second prize in NTU Global Digital Art competition

Boyang Zhang (Brian) | b.zhang0420202@arts.ac.uk / bzhang0706@163.com

VR Project (Group work) Animation work 01

Shot from Maya, shows the clips used in Time Editor

Shot from Maya Time Editor, Shows the multi layer animation created using clips

In this project, I am responsible for the animation of Jana and other characters in the scene. During the production process, I learned how to stitch and adjust the existing animation materials. Make multi-layer animations and bake them together with Maya Time Editor

Character models and animations from MixAmo. Through Time Editor I fuse animation clips together and create adjustment layers to adjust them to meet the requirements of the script. After the adjustment is complete, I bake the animation together and export to Unity. Set the animator and playback conditions for it.

BA(Honors) Animation: Game art

Shot from hospital scene

Jana asks doctor about her condition

Shot from hullucination scene

Jana found after surgery that she often loses her memory.

Watch VR perspective recording

Boyang Zhang (Brian) | b.zhang0420202@arts.ac.uk / bzhang0706@163.com

Animator & Interaction 02

I’m also responsible for stitching together animations and resources in the scene. Scene jump, interactive point trigger, animation playback, matching sound track, etc.

For interaction points, I use Box Collider as Tigger to detect the player’s collision. When a collision occurs, the script will set the boolean parameters in the animator to ‘true’, so that the animator meets the conditions for jumping the next segment.

Shot from Unity, shows the animation state and parameters in Animator

Shot from Unity, shows the Box collider and the detector script for it

BA(Honors) Animation: Game art

Interaction point in the scene

THANKS FOR WATCHING

b.zhang0420202@arts.ac.uk

bzhang0706@163.com

VERO INCTORE RE DITIUNT OMMOLUPIT QUIA SINIHICIA PROVIDEBIS QUI INT ADI

Boyang Zhang (Brian)