Introduction
Hello! I’m Granger Martin, I’m attending Ringling College of Art and Design as a graduating senior with a BFA in Game Art, in which Ringling awarded me Trustee Scholar last fall. This summer, I’ll be working with Activision's Toys for Bob studio as an Environment Art Intern.
介绍
你好！我是格兰杰·马丁（Granger Martin），我作为一名即将毕业的大四学生就读于林林艺术学院（Ringling College of Art and Design），获得了游戏艺术学士学位，去年秋天，林林授予我受托人学者。今年夏天，我将与Activision的Toys for Bob工作室合作，担任环境艺术实习生。



The Scrape-Goat Project
Scrape-Goat is a senior thesis I developed in Unreal Engine 4 alongside my brilliant partner, Carson Cuneo. Overall, they gave us 16 weeks to develop the game. You play as a robot goat rancher, Bill E. McGrazer, and use your goat to fight off alien thieves when they steal your most powerful goat – The Bleating Edge.

My section of the map is the alien thieves' fortress. They installed the structure on the sides of the canyon using a system of gears and tall rusted beams with ridges. The primary intent was to have a sharper, faster, and overall more intimidating area to contrast with Carson’s calm landscape. My previous Ringling project was a spotless retro bar, so I’d wanted to break off of that and do something with an opposite tone.
刮山羊项目
Scrape-Goat是我在虚幻引擎4中与我的优秀合作伙伴Carson Cuneo一起开发的一篇毕业论文。总的来说，他们给了我们16周的时间来开发游戏。你扮演一个机器人山羊牧场主，比尔·E·麦格拉泽，并用你的山羊来对抗外星小偷，当他们偷走你最强大的山羊 - Bleating Edge。

我的地图部分是外星盗贼的堡垒。他们使用齿轮系统和带有山脊的高大生锈横梁将结构安装在峡谷的侧面。主要目的是有一个更清晰，更快，整体上更令人生畏的区域，以与卡森的平静景观形成鲜明对比。我之前的Ringling项目是一个一尘不染的复古酒吧，所以我想打破它，用相反的语气做一些事情。



When we were brainstorming for thesis ideas, the first piece we were inspired by was this concept art by Jordi Van Hees. From then on, playing with verticality was something we were excited about.

I started with a basic level design blockout to see what would flow gameplay-wise, then took that layout and did functionality passes. What’s fun to play doesn’t always make sense and vice versa, so balancing those two was challenging, especially with small interior spaces. In the end, I found that people enjoyed having the “Robo-Goat” run along long walkways and ram into the enemies’ shins. With this, I modeled conveyors throughout for the robot goats to run along, with vents you can shoot open. This gave both the characters in the game something interesting to do and also helped me flesh out the area.
当我们为论文创意集思广益时，我们受到启发的第一件作品是Jordi Van Hees的这幅概念艺术。从那时起，玩垂直度就是我们感到兴奋的事情。

我从一个基本的关卡设计块开始，看看游戏玩法方面会有什么流程，然后采用该布局并执行功能传递。玩得开心并不总是有意义的，反之亦然，因此平衡这两者具有挑战性，尤其是在内部空间很小的情况下。最后，我发现人们喜欢让“机器人山羊”沿着长长的人行道奔跑，撞到敌人的小腿上。有了这个，我在整个过程中模拟了输送机，让机器山羊一起奔跑，通风口你可以打开。这给了游戏中的两个角色一些有趣的事情，也帮助我充实了这个领域。

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Because the concept was specific, I researched and combined a lot of references trying to get a style to construct the architecture. For real-life reference, pictures of large rusty mining structures became my main inspiration. I had a hard time finding game references that were close to what I wanted to create, so intricately painted Warhammer miniatures became big help with designing textures and modkits.

Carson and I had a lot of back and forth discussing the alien world, and it really helped inform design decisions in both of our areas. For example, since the area beneath the fortress is a forest and Carson’s trees have unique white bark, when the aliens build their architecture, white planks should be one of the materials.
因为这个概念是具体的，所以我研究并结合了很多参考资料，试图获得一种构建架构的风格。为了在现实生活中参考，大型生锈采矿结构的图片成为我的主要灵感来源。我很难找到接近我想要创建的游戏参考，因此精心绘制的战锤微缩模型在设计纹理和modkit方面有很大的帮助。

卡森和我来来回回地讨论外星世界，这确实有助于我们两个领域的设计决策。例如，由于堡垒下方的区域是森林，而卡森的树木具有独特的白色树皮，因此当外星人建造他们的建筑时，白色木板应该是材料之一。

Another discussion that influenced my designs was the alien thieves themselves, who had lizard scales underneath their armor. Lizards are exothermic and don’t regulate the temperature inside their bodies like mammals would. That’s why there are heaters, fans, and other temperature regulatory equipment common throughout the fortress.
另一个影响我设计的讨论是外星盗贼本身，他们的盔甲下面有蜥蜴鳞片。蜥蜴是放热的，不会像哺乳动物那样调节体内的温度。这就是为什么整个堡垒都有加热器，风扇和其他温度调节设备的原因。

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Modeling & Texturing
I do all of my hard surface modeling in Maya. I initially imported the Unreal blockout into Maya as a scale reference. For this project specifically, my workflow started with modeling one asset to a third pass, then modeling the rest to match. In a few days, I modeled a walkway as the first large asset and used its design to help inform the other architecture to keep everything consistent.

Next, I needed to break the different pieces of the larger fortress into sections. Dividing what I could reuse and what would have to be custom-made helped me manage the workload. The main structure is shaped octagonally from the top down, so the easiest way to cleanly break it up was to model the corners and leave an open balcony for them to survey the surroundings.
建模和纹理
我所有的硬曲面建模都是在 Maya 中完成的。我最初将虚幻块导入Maya作为比例参考。特别是对于这个项目，我的工作流程从将一个资产建模到第三个通道开始，然后对其余资产进行建模以匹配。几天后，我将人行道建模为第一个大型资产，并利用其设计来帮助通知其他建筑，以保持一致性。

接下来，我需要将较大堡垒的不同部分分成几部分。划分我可以重用的内容和必须定制的内容帮助我管理工作负载。主体结构从上到下呈八角形，因此清洁地分解它的最简单方法是对角落进行建模，并留下一个开放的阳台供他们调查周围环境。

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Getting into smaller modeling, I modeled and UV'd 3 wood planks, then placed them sporadically to make sure the reuse wasn’t obvious. Sometimes, it’d help to preserve UVs, then dent the wood by adding and pushing edge loops.

On the material side, I did a majority of my texturing in Substance 3D Painter since it handles different metals very well and it allows me to add detail layers like paint and grunge quickly. The most involved texture was the trim sheet. I modeled out a sci-fi panel in Maya and baked it down to get the normals. I used it for tiling floor sections like the bridge since it’s too long to custom paint reasonably. Having a trim sheet also helps to fill out smaller thin areas that need a texture, like the base of the windmill.

The biggest challenge was definitely the size of the space and the constant iteration. Ringling helped a lot by teaching us how to work efficiently, and I feel grateful for the faculty’s continued feedback and support for the project.
进入较小的建模领域，我对3块木板进行了建模和UV化，然后偶尔放置它们，以确保重复使用不明显。有时，它有助于保存UV，然后通过添加和推动边缘环来凹陷木材。

在材料方面，我在Substance 3D Painter中完成了大部分纹理，因为它可以很好地处理不同的金属，并且它允许我快速添加油漆和垃圾浆等细节层。最涉及的纹理是装饰片。我在Maya中模拟了一个科幻面板，并将其烘烤以获得法线。我用它来平铺桥梁等地板部分，因为它太长了，无法合理地定制油漆。拥有装饰片还有助于填充需要纹理的较小薄区域，例如风车的底部。

最大的挑战肯定是空间的大小和不断迭代。Ringling通过教我们如何有效地工作提供了很大的帮助，我对教师们对该项目的持续反馈和支持表示感谢。

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Lighting & Rendering
Our goal with lighting from the outset was to get a cinematic feel. When the game and story progressed, we wanted the lighting and mood to shift too. Originally, another person was responsible for the skybox and lighting, but they left the project, so I took it on and created it to match our Star Wars inspiration.

With the canyon and the fortress being a red color scheme, I thought the sky should be soft complimentary green. I photobashed cloud textures to create the virga clouds. They’re placed on planes rather than baked into the skybox, so we had more agency to move them around to fit compositions. I added the planets in the sky in the last few weeks of the project to make the planet feel more alien. They have rim lighting from using a material fresnel function, with a translucent panning noise layer above it to simulate the planet’s atmosphere. I used this same noise layer on the skybox to add a subtle moving cloud effect.
光照与渲染
我们从一开始就以照明为目标，以获得电影般的感觉。随着游戏和故事的推进，我们希望照明和情绪也发生了变化。最初，另一个人负责天空盒和照明，但他们离开了这个项目，所以我接受了它并创造了它，以配合我们的星球大战灵感。

由于峡谷和堡垒是红色的配色方案，我认为天空应该是柔和的绿色。我拍摄了云纹理以创建处女座云。它们被放置在平面上，而不是被烘焙到天空盒中，所以我们有更多的代理来移动它们以适应构图。我在项目的最后几周添加了天空中的行星，以使行星感觉更加陌生。它们具有使用材料菲涅耳函数的边缘照明，其上方有一个半透明的平移噪声层，以模拟行星的大气层。我在天空盒上使用了相同的噪声层来添加微妙的移动云效果。

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This piece by Concept Artist Joshua Viers was a big inspiration for creating the skybox. Carson and I had amassed a big Pinterest board of lighting references, and this was the one we liked most.

Since the fortress was mechanical and at high elevation, I wanted to make sure there were a lot of moving elements, or else the atmosphere wouldn’t feel right. The metal windmills are a combination of looping timeline rotations in Unreal with painted physics weights on the cloth flaps. Carson gave me a sped-up version of his dust VFX I used in the exterior areas to add visible wind, and I created decals of sand building up in crevices.
概念艺术家Joshua Viers的这件作品是创造天空盒的一大灵感。卡森和我积累了一个很大的Pinterest照明参考板，这是我们最喜欢的一个。

由于堡垒是机械的，而且在高海拔，我想确保有很多移动的元素，否则气氛会感觉不对劲。金属风车是虚幻引擎中循环时间轴旋转与布瓣上绘制的物理权重的组合。卡森给了我一个加速版的灰尘视觉特效，我在外部区域使用来增加可见的风，我创造了在缝隙中堆积的沙子贴花。

UE4 has a helpful actor simply named “wind”, which adds an even force across all physics actors. This was incredibly helpful in keeping our environmental effects consistent. I also animated elements in the interior fortress; the electric chamber arms had to be keyframed in Maya with IK handles. In the post-process volume, I used the skybox texture as an ambient cube map to get more interesting and cheap reflections on the metallics in dim lighting, especially the goat on his back. If it’s set too high, this can blow the scene out easily, so balancing it and keeping it on the low end was important.
UE4有一个有用的Actor，简单地命名为“风”，它为所有物理Actor增加了均匀的力。这对保持我们的环境影响一致非常有帮助。我还在内部堡垒中制作了动画元素;电室臂必须用IK手柄在Maya中进行关键帧。在后期处理体积中，我使用天空盒纹理作为环境立方体贴图，以便在昏暗的光线下，特别是在他背上的山羊身上，在金属上获得更有趣和廉价的反射。如果它设置得太高，这很容易将场景吹出来，因此平衡它并保持在低端是很重要的。

The Ringling College Influence
For our thesis courses, we had three main critiques with all the faculty attending to vote on the project and its progress. The entire process taught me a lot about when to stand by creative decisions and when to iterate. It could get intimidating to explain the project to industry veterans, but it really helped me improve my workflow. It motivated me to create things with intent since I knew I would probably have to explain them at the critique in a limited amount of time. You never want to get in a situation where someone asks why you created something and you don’t have an answer. We also conduct playtests within our major and that’s a really helpful way of getting other people’s perspectives on what’s working and what isn’t.
林林学院的影响
对于我们的论文课程，我们有三个主要的批评，所有教师都参加了对项目及其进度的投票。整个过程教会了我很多关于何时坚持创造性决策以及何时迭代的知识。向行业资深人士解释这个项目可能会令人生畏，但它确实帮助我改进了我的工作流程。它激励我有意识地创造东西，因为我知道我可能不得不在有限的时间内在批评中解释它们。你永远不想陷入这样一种境地：有人问你为什么创造一些东西，而你没有答案。我们还在我们的专业范围内进行游戏测试，这是一种非常有用的方式，可以让其他人了解哪些有效，哪些无效。

The Future Plans
I'm planning to continue making architecture and environments for different game worlds and styles. Seeing other artists’ projects online, I’m learning innovative tricks about modeling assets procedurally, it’s an area I’m excited to learn more about. Moving into a creative role is something I’d like to do in the future when I get more experience. Working with Carson to create this game world was very fun and fulfilling.
未来计划
我计划继续为不同的游戏世界和风格制作架构和环境。在网上看到其他艺术家的项目，我正在学习有关程序化资源建模的创新技巧，这是一个我很高兴能了解更多的领域。进入创造性角色是我想在未来获得更多经验时做的事情。与卡森一起创造这个游戏世界非常有趣和充实。