Hey Everyone, 

I just wanted to provide some supporting images of my beetle project that didn't make it to the final Artstation post. They were also used for marketing material for the CGMA website to show the tutorial and class. I am looking forward to teaching everyone in class! 
https://www.cgma.video/

These are mostly shots of the high poly model before I made the nanite mesh, textured, rigged and animated it. 

Enjoy! 

Ben 

It has been a while since I did an update on this project. I picked it up again after a good break away. In that time, I have worked on an Artstation competition, a collab project and another personal project, so I don't feel too much art guilt. 

I won't lie. It's a challenging project, but I am determined to finish this monster. 

This is where we left off...

Since that, I have worked on foliage, grasses and bushes. I posted this as a separate project on Artstation and wrote a few articles detailing my learnings and process. 

After the foliage, I tried to establish different times of day for the scene with a wider 21x9 shot. I knew I wanted to have four different setups. The primary rainy sunset mood from the concept, Sunrise/set golden hour, hot midday sun and either night/overcast style shot. Four shots together seemed to make sense to me for presentation purposes. 

When I returned to it, I started looking at the destruction, trying to imagine what I could do to try and show a more abandoned setting. I wanted to get a damaged roof where it had partially collapsed, breaking down the top into modular pieces and creating a slight tilt to the roof itself. 

From here, I left the project alone and had a break to work on the other projects I mentioned above. I dipped in and out of the project for a while. Often I would have 2 or 3 projects on the go at once, so progress was slow during this period.

When I finally wrapped everything up and returned full-time without distractions, I knew I wanted to rework my gas station style. I wasn't happy with how square everything had become. In my art bible and style guide, I wanted all the props to feel rounded and bevelled, similar to some of the sci-fi designs you see in games like Wolfenstein or Fallout. Those games have always been a visual inspiration for me. I created a fallout-style project in the past. I looked at doing a pass to bevel and round out the shapes similar to those games. Fallout has an excellent gas station called the 'Red rocket' station. 

I also thought it would be cool to implement the octopus into the gas station more. 

Below is the progress once I have fleshed things out a bit more.


At this stage, I also tried different arrangements for the octopus. I got some advice from friends about which designs were working best. I tried the octopus' tentacles forming the support pillars, wrapping around them, or isolated to the top. 

In this version, I had a connected roof which was a bit of a rip-off of the red rocket station; it felt too close to that design, so I decided to split it. The negative space worked better for my design, especially as the octopus on top is pretty heavy. 

I also redid the interior. The interior was initially blocked out as a service shop for the gas station, but I felt the aesthetic was crying out for an old 50's style diner. So here is where I left it previously. I wanted to have it boarded up and overrun by infection. So the robot is inside exploring. 

The theme is still the same. Overrun with infection (although this isn't in the shot yet), except now it will be an old diner instead. Here is the shape of the new blockout for the building 

How the blockout was taking shape at this stage for the inside. I was also inspired by some of the forms inside Dex's diner from Attack of the Clones. 

That wraps up much of the blockout; if you made it this far, thanks for reading. In future posts, I will show some of the progress on the interior creation and outside of the building, which is much closer to completion now. 

The whole scene is much further along than these blockout shots, but I haven't been great at updating the blog. 

Peace out
Ben

Hey Guys,

I wrote an article to share my workflows with my recent collab project - Robot Beach Trash. Had a blast writing the article and figuring out what parts to include. I wanted to teach others about my workflows and experience working in collaboration with Justin. Hopefully, I will have some more info to share on the project soon as well :)

You can find them all here.

https://gamesartist.co.uk/robot-beach-trash/
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/6bgxww
https://twitter.com/GamesArtistUK/
https://www.facebook.com/GamesArtist/
https://www.instagram.com/gamesartistuk/

Thanks
Ben  

Ps. All the amazing artists I used for my reference board included in the article can be found here. There work was a great inspiration for the piece

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ZGolx1
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/EVYOxN
https://blog.tributegames.com/image/132495771134
https://twitter.com/studiopomidori
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/VglZEg
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/9mrN6N
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/YOk0Y

Oh Hello, 

Just wanted to let you know that I am now going to be offering one on one mentorships through Experience Points. You can check out my page here if you wanted to see more.

https://www.exp-points.com/environment-art-mentorship-ben-keeling

It will be great to be able to teach all aspects of environment art and very much looking forward to getting to interact with everyone. It's been an amazing journey for me teaching Substance workshops and classes through CGMA and I am really excited to be able to also delve into all aspects of environment art as well.

If you want to know any more details or have any questions just let us know in the comments section below.

Thanks
Ben

Hey Guys,

I recently did a podcast discussing the artstation competition with Experience Points. Had a lot of fun chatting with the guys :) 

Hi Everyone, 

Had a blast chatting with Alex on the GDD podcast. Check it out if you can :)

Listen on Spotify ⯈ https://open.spotify.com/show/7spDMpMZJ9dr3Ziu8bRwCA
Listen on SoundCloud ⯈ https://soundcloud.com/gamedevdiscussion
Listen on iTunes ⯈ https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/game-dev-discussion/id1459400002
Listen on YouTube ⯈ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w42pSBbFLv0

Thank you :)
  

Add Ons 

Add ons are where the real power of Blender comes in. Similar to scripts or plugins in other software, in Blender an add on is a zip file that contains new tools. They are commonly accessed through menus, pie selections and shortcuts. A community of people contribute to a wide range of different tools for Blender and in most cases these make the program more expansive and powerful. As they are just a zip file they are always a simple one click install.  

Below is a list of add ons that I use regularly. I have dropped a quick description for each one below and a link. Worth checking on different stores as the prices vary and often there are sales on certain add ons. This information is valid at the time of posting and work with the latest version of Blender.

Also worth noting that I actually didn't touch add ons until I was comfortable with the base tools. I think it's worth doing that so you are comfortable with the Blenders toolset first.Currently I find that a lot of add ons I pick up to solve gaps in where Blender is missing certain features, a lot of this comes from experience and personal preferences in modelling. However, as time goes on I require less add ons to solve these problems and my list of commonly used plugins gets shorter. This is what is great about Blender. It is ever growing and evolving and if a feature is missing the community requests it and it often finds it's way into the software. 

Modelling add ons 

HardOps and Boxcutter - Paid

Probably the biggest game changer for me. Hard ops is bunch of tools activated by pressing Q. It is a workflow change to make using Blender easier. Boxcutter is a boolean tool where you can draw cutters in the view port and on the models to perform quick boolean operations. It's so extensive it has it's own documentation and YouTube channel where Masterxeon1001 details the workflow. 

EdgeFlow - Free 

Edge flow was a small plugin I found that allows you to do a 'flow connect' operation. This was something I missed from 3DS Max and allows you to connect while taking into account the smoothing of an object. Perfect for increasing the amount of divisions on cylinders and ensuring it stays smooth. 

MaxVis_Tools - Free

This tool has a bunch of useful shortcuts and features. The main reason I got it was for 'super smart create' which is a script I was used to using in Max. It binds lots of useful actions to one key; such as connect, bridge and weld verts. I missed that functionality in Blender and MaxVis was a good way to get it back. 

MeshMachine - Paid

Mesh machine is an amazing tool that can be used to perform a variety of operations. I mainly found it useful for things like unbevelling edges. It comes with a library of plugs which can be snapped to the surface of your model and meshed perfectly together while fixing smoothing. Decal Machine is also another plugin made by the same team. I didn't use it much because I often want to model the geometry into the surface for baking. 

QBlocker - Free

In 3DS Max there is a setting called 'autogrid' this allows you to draw primitives out from the surface normal of an object. This was a small plugin that adds primitives to the shift + A menu and allows you to draw shapes on the surface normal of other objects. I believe in the new version of Blender there is a new primitive that solves this issue.Perhaps in the future this add on might becomes less useful, but for now it solves the problem until Blender releases a new version. 

Asset Management - Paid

A handy little tool that allows you to build up an asset library which you can organise. What I really liked about this tool was you can create an asset and it will create a nice render of it when you add it to your library. For quickly building a kitbash library of pistons, canisters and high poly bits it's perfect. It also comes with a free set of bolts. 

Pivot Transform - Paid

This is another essential tool for working in Blender. The pivot transform tool means I can easily align the pivot to faces, snap it to the bottom of objects. Easily transform it wherever it needs to go. A really useful little pie menu for easily snapping the pivot where you need it. Now I am used to using it I wouldn't be without it. 

Blender for Unreal - Free/Donate 

This add on is a great add on for exporting collections or static meshes. Setting up collision and exporting animations for use in Unreal. It has a great checker to make sure your meshes work and don't have any issues 

UV Add ons 

Texel density checker - Free 

Simple texel density checker. Found it useful for setting texel density on assets that I wanted to export into Unreal. You can also do this in tex tools and other uv plug ins as well. 

Textools - Free 

Tex tools is a classic. Used in 3DS Max for a long time and it has a bunch of useful UV shortcuts. In Max I mainly used the texel density options, different uv grids and flatten uvs by smoothing groups options. 

UVToolkit - Free

UV toolkit is another great add on with a bunch of handy shortcuts for doing common uv operations. You can use it to align uv shells and also enable uv sync, which means you can work in the 3d view on your object and in the uvs at the same time. This does work in Blender as default but this makes it more streamline. 

UVpackmaster - Paid

Another paid plugin but worth the money if you don't want to do any UV packing. It runs the algorithm until it finds the best solution with smallest percentage of wasted space. Very much like Ipackthat but built directly into Blender.

Included in Blender

These are add ons that ship with Blender but are not enabled by default. You can just hop into the preferences add on menu to enable these without downloading anything. 

Tools

Loop, bool, mesh, edge, curve tools are all add ons that you can enable to give you extended functionality within their respective sections. Just search 'Tools' under the add on menu. Though it's worth saying I don't use these all that much and a lot of plugins such as Hard ops/Maxvis have their own shortcuts for these functions. 

Extra Objects

There are a few different add ons which opens up extra objects in the shift + A menu. Just search 'extra objects' in the preferences under add ons. This gives you more primitives to work from in Blender. Assets such as gears and pipe joints, or extra curves. This makes the menu more cluttered but I personally prefer to have more primitives to work with. 

F2

Another standard tool that should probably just be on in Blender by default. It turns the f key into a handy tool for filling polygons and doing handy functions. 

Modifier tools 

Again similar to the F2 function I think this should just be enabled by default. It allows more control over the modifier stack. You can expand and collapse all the modifiers and apply them all at once. Just super handy for keeping on top of all your modifiers.

Copy Attributes 

Copy attributes allows you a more expansive copy menu. It allows you copy different things between 2 or more objects. This can be options such as the objects location, scale or rotation. You can even copy modifiers using this as well. 

Edit Linked Objects 

Recently I discovered that linking and appending files in Blender allows you to reference Blender files into existing files. You can do this with all aspects of the files too like collections and materials. If you enable this add on it means you can edit the linked file and in one click jump into the linked file to edit it. Then you can click the same button to go back to the original file and everything auto saves as you go.

All images are copyright to the original authors.

Some of you may know that recently I have invested some time into learning the wonders of Blender. I wanted to write a couple of informative blog posts about tutorials that helped me in my journey to learning the software. It is useful to know that before this I was predominantly a 3DS Max user and had used a little bit of Maya as well. 

A shout out to Ivan Nestorov for his help as I bothered him lots with my questions and he was a great help. 

Free resources 

Artstation Learning 

I confess that I only watched part of this as I was already fairly comfortable with Blender when it was released. It is a good place to start as a complete newbie to the software. 

Blender Guru 

Andrew Price aka Blender Guru has lots of great Blender tutorials on his YouTube channel and is generally just an interesting person to learn from. I found a lot of his tutorials were great to just chill out and watch when you had some spare time. Especially for topics I might not normally look at such as rendering. He has good beginner series for 2.8 as well. 

He also has a bunch of great general 3d tutorials not related to Blender such as lighting, composition and colour. 

HeavyPoly

Heavypoly YouTube has a bunch of beginner YouTube videos which you can watch for free and he has some paid content so he features in both sections. The Braun desk fan prop was one of the first Blender videos I found. Heavypoly has a great style to his tutorials, they are entertaining and the humor is compelling to watch. I bought a bunch of the his paid tutorials as well as I enjoyed his style. 

Transitioning from other modelling packages

Along the way I found a couple of videos to make the process of learning Blender from the perspective of another modelling package.

I found this video by flipped normals to be helpful and informative. Flipped normals has an impressive collection of videos with a lot of great topics. This video is a good place to start if you already know how to model in other 3d packages. 

Switching to Blender - Flipped Normals 

Another video I watched focused on transitioning from 3DS Max to Blender specifically. Although a lot of videos will tell you to keep the default Blender control scheme I actually changed my controls such as move and rotate to match 3DS Max. It eased the transition and helped to make me feel comfortable in Blender right away.

My advice would be to try and keep as many native Blender controls as you can. This makes watching tutorials a little easier while you learn the controls and shortcuts and you can always customize it to your needs once you are comfortable. The only time I changed controls was when I felt I was really battling against my natural modelling instincts. 

Blender 101 - Learning Blender as a 3ds Max User 

Paid Resources

Aidy Burrows and Gleb Alexandrov (Creative Shrimp)

These guys have YouTube channels with some excellent free content but they are mainly known for their hard surface modelling tutorial in Blender. I found this was a great intro to a lot of the tools and techniques for hard surface modelling. The commentary is great for learning Blender but also just generally good practice 3d modelling techniques. With some great cheesy jokes! They also did a free 2.8 update on their you tube channel. 

 Heavypoly

As mentioned in the free section Heavypoly has a great YouTube channel of free tutorials. He also has a Gumroad with paid tutorials, I found the crab bot and cargo spaceship were pretty in depth useful videos to pick up more skills in Blender. Plus the end result is pretty cool and that interested me enough to make me want to watch the videos. 

Number one takeaway 

Pick an asset and try and do the whole pipeline.

• High poly
• Low poly
• Uvs
• Texturing 
• Get it into an engine

Having learnt different 3d software in the past, I have found this was the best way to learn. I did a small CCTV screen as my first proper asset. This way I would run into problems. As I already know how to model, I would have an approach or technique in mind from 3DS Max. However I wasn't sure how to approach it in Blender. For example - how do I do target weld?

It would force me to jump on to google and learn how to do that technique. I would struggle and sometimes I would have to look up solutions more than once. However eventually it started to stick. This way of learning and struggling meant the information is committed to memory. 

All images are copyright to the original authors.

Hi Guys,

Recently I wrote two articles. One for 80lv and the other for Experience points. I was very happy to collaborate with both of these websites to create different pieces featuring my recent foliage project.

You can find the articles here. I hope that they show some of the progress and give people an insight into how I created the work. If you have any questions you can always reach out and I try and get back to you to answer the questions.

https://80.lv/articles/human-emotions-creating-vegetation-with-alpha-cards/ 

https://www.exp-points.com/ben-keeling-environments-foliage-and-materials
  

Deciding to change project ideas was not an easy decision. On the run up to the Christmas break I took a month off to work on art, so changing paths was that much harder. I had many conversations with different artists, friends and my partner, but ultimately decided that somewhere during the process I had lost the spirit of type of art I wanted to create. The stylized art of my Tokyo street was fun but not hitting those main objectives I had set out to tackle from the beginning. 

Although I felt demoralized, I decided the correct route forward was to try to plan out what the series might look like as an overview. I began by thinking about scenes I wanted to create and how I could link the story of the robot.  Below is a ref board to detail the sort of themes I thought could be interesting settings for future projects. 

The gas station theme stuck out to me as hitting all the correct objectives, it felt cinematic and I always wanted to revisit a more abandoned setting. I settled on this concept which encompassed everything I was striving for, I chose it because it does a great job of establishing a mood but is still open to interpretation.

 Alexandra Roslik - Gas Station

Since deciding to stop working on the Tokyo scene I have been working on a new blockout. As with the other scene, it establishes a framework of assets, materials and processes that will ensure the creation of final art is as straightforward as possible. (including borrowed assets from ue4 resources which I will replace later) 

I still wanted to keep some of spirit of the other scene with some crazty and nod to Simon Stålenhag with a giant Octopus on the top! 

Side composition inspired by Ed Freeman 

As well as the abandoned gas station I wanted to tell a story about the world of human emotions. An alien virus is feeding from the fuel sources. Which gives more of an unsettling feeling to the closer shots. The story and the actual final assets for these are still very much to be determined, but currently I have a fleshy growing theme for these. 

This is a relatively shorter blog to update on the progress for the blockout before I start asset production. I will do more of a breakdown for some of the process involved in this. Including the blueprints and other relevant information.