So we have finally started the off the map competition and I am really excited! We need to win! The brief is to create a game/environment surrounding Alice's adventures underground. The topics are Oxford, Underground and The Gardens.
It was a rocky start at the beginning but we have done a lot in a week. There has been a few issues with evenness in our group; lets just say we have no concepters or engine people but we do have 3 environment artists and 3 character artists. So as you have realised I'm not best pleased that I have been given the job of engine person; I love engine work but I am just not very confident in being able to produce all the amazing ideas our team has come up with. Luckily my team is willing to help me and there is lots of other peers willing to lend a hand. So I will still be able to do alot of modelling and texturing (that being my speciality). In this first week we all have been concepting and brainstorming to try and come up with some decent ideas for our game; and we have decided on a book/paper feel side scroller. Here are a couple concepts to explain what I mean.
These are just a few quick photo-bashes to show what each of us see in our heads. We are still in the process of deciding what way we are going to go, for example are we doing it all book like but having it get colourful towards the end? or are we having the foreground realistic and the background paper cut-outs? We are still having some issues with this but we should hopefully clear this up next week.
In my eyes this concept is perfect and is beautiful but I need to see what the rest of the team think.
I have also been working on the mechanics of the level here is a couple sketches I did to explain the pick up system we were going to have.
Unfortunately after trying these out in engine I had a few issues with picking up a second object; after you had grown or shrunk you couldn't pick up another item. This caused lots of confusion which meant I had to find another way to get the mechanic to work. Luckily a couple peers helped me out with some new blueprinting which means that when ever you press 1,2 or 3 you will either get small, big or normal sized. I still need to hook this up to when you pick up an Eat me cake or a Drink me potion but it should be a lot easier now. I have also been testing out pop up elements, such as animated trees; when you walk with in a certain radius they will start to pop up in the background. This will add an element of fun into the game.
This week has gone incredibly quickly yet not quick enough, I am happy to see the back of this project even though I love our out come. The week has been a mass of emotions and stress, plus with VFX we missed an entire day of work; over all I am physically an emotionally exhausted (this might be due to not having a day off in this entire project). Never the less lets get onto the cool shit that we managed to create in 4 weeks.
Here is all of the assets that I made that got used in the final level:
Over all I am very happy with my modelling in this project and I have learnt a lot about modularity. My favorite two assets I made have to be my hatch and my second floor; they look visually appealing and really fit the style of the level.
Modular hatch asset
Modular floor asset
The presentation today didn't go too badly, we didn't get negative feedback or positive feedback so we are still unsure whether the tutors like it or not. They just think we were all stoned for the entirety of the project...
But to be fair we do look like this whenever the word space is mentioned...
Overall I am over the moon with our outcome and I would have never have been able to make anything like this without my awesome group; and I am happy that we decided to not restart on this project because we have learnt so much and encountered lots of problems which we now know how to fix; we also know how to plan and go about doing a project like this again.
Without further ado here is some beauty shots of our level;
Living quarters
Habitation area
Habitation area
Over grown corridor
Over grown corridor
Over grown corridor
The bridge
The storage room
Air lock corridor
Here a quick list of everything that I have done in this project:
Assets:
Wall1
Wall2
Wall3
Wall_Room
Ceiling1
Ceiling1_Frame
Ceiling1_Tile
Ceiling2
Floor1_FrameAndPanel
Floor1_Frame
Floor1_Panel
Floor_2
Hatch_Open
Hatch_Closed
Airlock
DoorFrame1
Door
OpenShutter
ClosedShutter
DoorBroken
Leaves 8 clumps
Collaboration with Lucy
Wall PC
Collaboration with James
Amber_Poster
Amber_Boot
Amber_Banana
Lucy_Polaroids
Beth_Poster
Stickers x14
Unwraps
& Lightmaps
Wall1
Wall2
Wall3
Wall_Room
Ceiling1
Ceiling1_Frame
Ceiling1_Tile
Ceiling2
Floor1_FrameAndPanel
Floor1_Frame
Floor1_Panel
Floor_2
Hatch_Open
Hatch_Closed
Airlock
DoorFrame1
Door
OpenShutter
ClosedShutter
DoorBroken
Amber_Poster
Amber_Boot
Amber_Banana
Lucy_Polaroids
Beth_Poster
Stickers x14
Wall PC
Collaboration with Lucy
Stasis Chamber Collaboration
with Beth
Stasis Chamber Door Collaboration
with Beth
Toolbox Collaboration with Beth
Spanner Collaboration with Beth
Screwdriver Collaboration with
Beth
Paper x3 Collaboration with
Beth
Books x3 Collaboration with
Beth
Magazine x3 Collaboration with
Beth
Cup Collaboration with Beth
Knife & Fork Collaboration
with Beth
Barrel Collaboration with Beth
Food Tray Collaboration with
Beth
Cassette Tape Collaboration
with Beth
Torch Collaboration with Beth
Textures:
Ceiling1_Mat-
Albedo, Metalness, Roughness & Normal
Floor1_Mat-
Albedo, Metalness, Roughness & Normal
Wall1_Mat-
Albedo, Metalness, Roughness & Normal
Tile_Metal_1-
Albedo, Roughness & Normal +6 Instances
Tile_PaintedMetal_1-
Albedo, Roughness & Normal +4 Instances
Tile_Plastic_1-
Albedo, Roughness & Normal +7 Instances
Sticker_Mat-
Albdeo, Metalness, Roughness & Normal
Unique_Space_Mat-Albedo, Roughness, Emissive & Normal
Amber_Mat-
Albedo
Beth_Mat-
Albedo
Lucy_Mat-
Albedo
Dirt_Mats-
Albedo x3
Moss_Mats-
Albedo x4
Rust_Mats-
Albdeo x3
Landscape_Mats:
Mud- Albedo,
Roughness & Normal
Moss1- Albedo,
Roughness & Normal
Moss2- Albedo,
Roughness & Normal
Engine:
Concertina
Door- Animation & Blueprints
Stasis Chamber
Door- Blueprints
Decals
Collaboration with Lucy
So i think you could say I'm a team player, considering that two of our team mates had work over the weekend it meant that we had to work that little bit harder to make up for lost time.
Here is the final play through featuring my beautiful concertina door that turns purple because blueprints are evil! Enjoy.
Now lets get down to the Q&A:
Q: What went well? A: For me all of my modelling and texturing went well, I hardly had any issues at all with this project, but we did encounter a lot as a team.
Q: What didn't go well? A: Overall the planning was awful on our behalf, this was due to us not knowing how to go about making the level; none of us have made anything like this before. The lighting was atrocious and we should have done that in the first week but ended up doing it properly in the last week. Light maps overall were breaking, some of our team mates had sizing issues and the post processing and height fog were tedious to get right. Personally my main issues were with my blueprints and making the animation for the door work, lets just say it took 3 days.
Q: What did you learn? A: I have learnt a hell of technical skills such as working with blueprints, lighting and a ton in engine; however I have also learnt a lot about myself. I have realised that I should push myself out of my comfort zone more, like I did on this project because I have created something completely different from what I normally do. I have learnt to be more confident with my skills mainly when it comes to concepting and texturing, and also to stick by what I believe and take what the tutors say into consideration but always stay with what I feel would be best. I have also realised that I tend to be quite hot headed and find it hard to work with people with the same temperament; this is definitely something I am trying to work on.
What my face looks like whenever anyone messes something up.
Q: How would you approach it next time? A: It is obvious to me that we needed to do more planning and idea generation, so I would 100% spend at least 2 or 3 days working on this before diving into concepting and modelling. I would also do a mesh block out rather than a bsp because that set us back a few days. Another thing I would do is set up all the interactivity and lighting with the block mesh before even starting to think about modelling the final assets and texturing.
Q: What can you take from this project and apply to others? A: Basically everything I have learnt and more; all the things to do with planning and how we should have started this project. For the next project I am planning on only working from 9am-5pm and then having time to do personal work at home and relax; because I have burnt myself out this project and it has been a stressful roller coaster.
How exhausted I feel right now...
Any who I have over the moon with our outcome and I hope that you liked it...
This week has been long and stressful but there is no time to waste so I'm keeping it short this week.
Another week has gone and we are almost at hand in and there is still a lot to do; the wipe board has come out and we are quickly churning through the tasks left. I have finished all of the modular assets and I am now working on texturing unique assets and populating the level. We should hopefully be working on a detail pass on Tuesday, I am feeling the pressure due to us not having a lot of time left, we are all also going to vfx in London on Wednesday which means we are short one day.
Despite the lack of time I have managed to set up my LinkedIn and online portfolio, I even ordered some business cards which I hope will come before vfx. Anyway I will leave you with some screen shots of the level so far and will update you after our presentation on Monday wish us luck!
Cherrio for now.
2 weeks have gone and we have made good progress; however we still have a lot to do. Lets start off with getting to the good stuff; pretty pictures. Here is a couple concepts to help get the mood and feel of the spaceship; and for the first time ever I like a photo-bash that I have done!
Bridge concept
Storage room concepts
Airlock concept
Door concepts
Leading up to the presentation we sought advice from some tutors and were told that we should start texturing the walls and floors; so that has been my job for the majority of the week, slowly modelling the final modular pieces and texturing them; this was our next step due to it making the level look more complete and also making it easier to set up the final lighting. So surprisingly our presentation didn't go too bad! I mean it wasn't the best but it wasn't the case of start your whole project all over again; well that was the case for one tutor but lets pretend we never heard him say that. Basically every tutor we have spoken too has given us backing apart from one; But only one side can win...
We reckon he isn't a fan of the mushrooms because he's not a "Fun gi" (I'm not sorry). Anyway we have decided to try and make our project feel even more containery and have given it a "city" back story so that we might be able to get away with our project so far. The back-story we have given our crashed spaceship is that it was once part of a massive modular space city but during repairs part of the ship disconnected and crashed on an alien swamp planet. Hopefully this will be enough to win him over along with the retro 70's sci-fi.
New moodboard
Through out the week I have also been working on a corrugated metal tileable texture; I have looked into material instancing and managed to create 3 new textures from one parent material. This will help save texture space and makes the textures load faster in UE4.
Tile1 is the parent material to Tile2, Tile3 and Tile4
In the rest of the time I have had this week I have been messing around with morph targets to try and get a concertina door working in UE4; due to the animation I made before not being supported, I have had to find another way to make it work. Today has been spent sitting at a computer trying to get a door to squish, trust me it has not been easy. At the moment I am trying to get the blueprints to make it play through the morph target but it just isn't having it; so tomorrow will probably be spent doing the same thing but hopefully with some more help from a tutor we can get it working!
Me using morph targets and blueprints
To finish off here is a quick fairly up to date version of our level we will have a lot more assets and textured items soon. Enjoy!
Since Monday we have progressed a lot; not as much as we had hoped but we are back on track. After hitting a brick wall in the middle of the week we now know where we are heading and what we should be working on. We have iterated on our original level design and have blocked it out in UE4 with max meshes so that they can be replaced with updated models.
Original level design
Whilst I was lost at the beginning of the week I started to concept some walls and assets by modelling them, this was helpful but I realize now that it would have been better to do larger concept pieces to get a sense of atmosphere and to make it easier to model later on.
General style moodboard
Walls moodboard
Walls, floor, ceiling, door and extra assets
Here is some more concepts that we have done throughout the week;
Door Concepts
Bridge Paint-over
Base container concept
Fungi moodboard
Twisted hallway paint-over concepts
Earlier today after feeling unproductive me and my flat mate that are in the same group decided to make our own labs in his room by setting up our pc's together; and I must say it is keeping us both on track and helpful for quick crit.
"Home labs"
Soon after I started sketching what the habitation area might look like, by using different eras for a retro influence. I am now blocking them out in max to see how they look.
Retro moodboard
Habitation area sketches
Habitation area block-in
I have also quickly done an animation test to see if our idea of having concertina doors was realistic or not; and it seems like as long as we can get the animation to work in a blueprint in UE4 it should be fine.
To finish here is a quick fly though of our level;
when I update you again next week I hope to be close to texturing. Wish us luck!
So I'm back in freezing Leicester and our boiler is still broken but that hasn't gotten my spirits down yet, because as promised I am doing Sci - Fi! It feels good to be stepping out of my comfort zone and I am pumped for this term.
Earlier today we got given our new brief; a group project revolving around shipping containers. I know it sounds boring at first but we have to either make a dystopian or sci - Fi playable map with interactive elements. I quickly jumped into a group with new people I haven't worked with before and we have being vibing off each other extremely well. So far we have come up with an idea of a crashed space ship that's starts off clean and pristine but slowly gets more dirty and grown over as you get to an exit leading outside into natural light.
So far we have managed to do a bsp brush block out in UE4 and are in the midst of finalising the overall level. We have also made a pinterest board and our first mood board. Whilst pinning I found a very inspiring sci Fi wall and edited to get a quick rough idea of what sort of colours we wanted to go with; we now know we want to go with a sickly lime green, yellow and mint colour scheme. We have also planned out what we are doing in the next four weeks so that we are on track.
That's everything at the moment, will up date you at the end of the week when we are hopefully on the modelling stage,
Cherrio for now.
