Materials, Techniques and Processes

Photoshop

In Photoshop, there are many different tools to use. There is a sidebar including a lot of the more common ones, shown here:

Here, we have the common ones I will not speak of, including the select tool, paint bucket (behind the gradient tool), text tool and the zoom tool. 

Paint bucket example.

Gradient tool example.

This is the same grad-

ient but with the selection tool used. Using this, you can take part of the shape and move it.

These are common yet effective tools which can be very helpful for the more basic of images. If, for example, you want a two-tone background, you use the gradient tool. If you want one tone, paint bucket. The selection, text and zoom tools do exactly what their name implies, and the selection tool has different shapes of selecting, including rectangle, elliptical and marquee. 

Other tools here include the magic wand tool, one I use a lot, which selects wherever you click plus depending on the 'strength' it is set to, other areas with the same colour as what you selected. We also have the blur, sharpen and sponge tools (all in the same place, hold right click to select any) which, again, do what they should based on their names. They are very helpful when going for a big picture which was scanned in from a sketchbook or meant to be a background as they have quite sketch-like qualities about them, and by this I mean that they look as if they could be drawn by pen or pencil in a sketchbook, and not digitally. Sometimes it looks better when they are hand-drawn, and these tools can be used during such times.

This is an example of a picture changed by the blur tool. As you could have guessed, it blurred it.

Original picture is the left, blurred is right. The difference is very clear, unlike the altered image.

Cinema 4D

Cinema 4D is an advanced modelling program. As such, it has many different tools and techniques to help with modelling, changing, reshaping and messing around with shapes and objects. 

Cinema 4d's create tools

 Polygon mode, allows

 you to select individual polygons (in this case a cube with 1 polygon per side)

The Bevel and Extrude tools are tools I used quite a lot in my 3d modelling and 3d animation units. Both tools can only be used when you are on Polygon mode (see above) as what they do can only be done to separate polygons. Bevel and Extrude are fairly similar. Extrude pulls the polygon out and leaves it as it is, whereas Bevel pulls it out and scales it down.

Extrude used

 Bevel used

These are each used to manipulate shapes and create other shapes using the basic preset shapes.
Those include cubes, spheres, cylinders and platonic shapes.

These are the basic shapes freely given.

These are the NURBS tools, my favourite 

being the HyperNURBS tool. It is used to smooth shapes based on the amount of polygons. Low polygons would be square and sharp, but high-polygon models would become smooth, below is a model I created using quite a lot of HyperNURBS.

The bend tool is another one I used.

I used it to create the head of the Alien you will see below - it was simply a stretched cube, given a HyperNURB, then bent using the Bend tool to become the shape below. 

Using almost exclusively those tools, I 

created this Alien model.

Unity 3D

Unity 3D (or known as simply Unity) is a game engine and game creator program. I used it during my Final Major Project, and for the Games Engine unit.
It has plenty of helpful tools.

This is Unity 3D's main interface.

Unity 3D and Cinema 4D have some things in similar places, for example, the grab/move/rotate/scale buttons (top left) are in the same place for each, and both have a menu at the top to create new shapes and objects.

Create Terrain tool.

This was one of the first tools I used. When you use this tool, you get a window where the Inspector was (this will be shown below). Within this window, there are plenty of tools inside the Create Terrain tool. So many tools! The first tool within the tool is one which raises and lowers the terrain height. After creating the terrain by simply clicking 'Create Terrain' first, this lets you lower and raise it, creating what looks like a terrain.

Looks like mountains when the terrain is raised.

The next tool is one which sets the terrain's height. This limits the raised or lowered terrain by whatever you set it to. For example, if you set the limit to 10 on the Y axis, the terrain that is above 10 on the Y axis can be smoothed out to be a flat surface on 10. This seems complicated but it isn't, see the image below.

               Before setting height limit

After setting it - notice the plateaus

Another tool within the Create Terrain tool is a nice little tool that creates trees.

I used this in one example in my Game Engine unit, and it was a very quick way to add some detail to the world I'd created. It comes with free stock trees you can place anywhere, but I found that these trees can take up quite a bit of processing power if they are swaying (animating).

The same image again, with trees

The tools are not limited to terrain creation, not at all. Some of the most important tools for me were found underneath the Physics scrolldown menu. See this below.

Physics menu

I used this menu a lot during my game creations. The Colliders and Rigidbodies are the two I found to be most helpful, so I shall focus on these. 

The Rigidbody tool adds a Rigidbody to the object you are currently on. This is effectively a way of creating physics for the object. For example, you can set gravity, forces (pushing, mainly) and drag. 

With the gravity, you can have your objects be affected by gravity in whichever way you want. You can have lower gravity like in space, or normal, or make things seem heavier than normal. 

Using the push, you can have a character interact with objects. Your character can push blocks into holes, as one simple example. A very helpful and easy to use tool.

Drag affects how an object falls through the air, similar to gravity. As in real life, things like wind resistance can apply, so this could be used for something which has this in mind.

Colliders are useful components which will make objects solid and impassable. Using Colliders, you can have any object with one added become realistic in the game. You can, for example, use a Box Collider on a shape and make it a platform or a building that you cannot walk through. Colliders are some of the most important aspects of a game as without them, you fall through the floor, physics don't work properly, and more. Mesh Colliders are the only Colliders which aren't just simply adding and resizing the collider. For a Mesh Collider, you must have a mesh as your base for the shape which will become a collider. For example, for a triangle object, you'd need a triangle mesh collider.