Final Year Project - Week Six: (6th March - 12th March)
- Ryan Harlee Jones
- Mar 13, 2017
- 10 min read
Final Year Project - Week Six: (6th March - 12th March)
Monday:
The week set off to a quick and promising start, I had my Progress Review presentation in my morning session, and I was ready to present to the two tutors who were marking us. This was done just so the tutors could see our progress so far, and so that we could get overall feedback on not just our project, but on our planning, progress, where we planned to go etc.
The actual presentation in my opinion went smoothly, when asked questions I answered them easily without little hesitation, and I was also proud of the slides I had produced for the deadline.
The feedback for the presentation was also useful, both tutors had seen my work prior weeks also, so they understood where I was and what I was currently making progress on.
I was advised to remember that this was my project, and to even though it can be stressful, just to try and enjoy the experience. I was also advised that with the texturing programs I was looking into, not to rely on them too much, as the art style that I am planning to use is visually hand painted, and using programs like Substance Painter could mean that I start creating the wrong kind of textures.
I continued the day by doing my usual blog update, making sure that I added in what was necessary for followers of the project.
Fig 01. Window Panel Asset (Jones, 2017)
The next step was to finish the creation of my first new piece for the scene I was building, over the weekend I had set out a new scene with a stronger plan of how to go about building the area. The window panel asset was the first asset to be created in my list of new sections. Throughout the day I toyed with a few design changes, but mainly piecing together the section without causing too many geometry issues.
Tuesday:
On the Tuesday my focus was at an all time high, and I managed to accomplish a decent amount in the time I had available. The window panel that I was creating the day before was finished in under an hour, the result was a good start as it looked intricate, although sturdy enough to withstand some weathering over time.
Fig 02. Boss Wall Panel Asset (Jones, 2017)
After this I decided that I should look into making use of some of my prior assets, there were some pieces which I still believed has some chance of being used, although I needed to correctly redesign them by finding out what sections broke the overall scene coherence.
After a short scan between everything I had, I started work on the wall panel which I originally planned to use at the boss door section of the level, I felt the pieces design functioned correctly, although just didn't look right with the surrounding other geometry sections. I made some small changes to this asset like height modifications, and making some sections thicker than others, especially the pillar like parts that stuck out and separated the wall into segments. The biggest change that I made, which helped the asset feel better as a design overall, was making the choice to remove the sections above the door frame, so the doorway didn't meet at a point, but came straight up to create a rectangle. I also went ahead and changed the stretched diamond decal along the sides by making them longer, and then doubling them up to help differentiate it from the other wall section slightly.
Fig 03. Doorway Wall Panel Asset (Jones, 2017)
I did the same with the other wall panel I had available, changing the scale slightly and making small modifications, one of the changes that made the biggest difference was removing the diamond decals which I originally implemented, and instead making one diamond from the top which stretched down to the bottom, I found that this looked much more readable, and also matched up better to some other prior designs I had, including the boss wall asset that I had changed just before hand.
I continued by adding extension wall panels to the doorway wall panel assets, these were needed to make sure that the length of the asset was enough to connect each wall together, and to add more detail into each portion of the zone. This asset took some time to design, although using valuable architecture reference from the Elder Scrolls Online art book I owned, I managed to create an interesting piece that made the current sections seem a little more varied. This section consisted of the simple wall layout, but also a pillar asset that could be placed inside the indented wall.
Wednesday:
On Wednesday I came to work with fresh eyes after getting some sleep, on overview I decided that the pillar sections I had originally made didn't look very eye pleasing, neither did it fit in with current aesthetic that I was building in my scene. So using some imagery from my Middlesbrough outing, I designed a much more pleasing asset design for the pillars, which did a stronger job of keeping with the overall theme.
Fig 04. Wall Pillar Design (Jones, 2017)
I decided for the blank sections of my assets, to create an initial brick wall layout so that I could use it in conjunction with my assets, this way I could get a visual indication of what things would look like together. Considering the poly count of the bricks that I created because of scale and amount were so high, I planned to create a normal map out of the bricks for later use on the wall panels.
Fig 05. Brick Panel Layout(Jones, 2017)
I also created a very quick design for the pillars that will go into the corners of the room and work as structural supports. These will more than likely be redesigned, and will work as placeholders for the moment. I also created a set of connector walls which will work as pieces that will break up the lower wall from the upper wall, and make the environment seem more sensibly pieced together. These are three of these pieces needed, since the entrance, side walls and door walls all need varied lengths of the same asset. This asset is simple to create as it's just large stone slabs stacked together, with a set of flat decal symbols placed on top of them for aesthetic and story telling.
Fig 06. Connector Panel Assets(Jones, 2017)
Thursday:
At the start of the Thursday, I had finished off a lot of the lower sections of the environment, and wanted to create one of the upper wall panels so that I could make use of the window panels I had created before hand, especially so I could make sure the panels worked in the environment when in use. This panel took quite a few attempts to decide how to design the section, especially with deciding whether or not to keep the window the shape that it was. I switched the shape to a more archway / circular top section where the point was, and also a rectangle shape afterwards, but I found the original shape worked best with all of the other asset designs I had available. After a few back and forth design changes, involving the prior mentioned window shape, what was extruded and other things, the design came together better when I added some of the previous design pillar indentation panels into the asset. This helped the consistency of the piece with the rest of the environment and made it sit better in my scene.
Fig 07. Window Upper Wall(Jones, 2017)
After this was done I then moved onto fixing up the corner sections which were missing a segment of wall to connect them all together. I originally planned to just make this a very simple indented panel with bricks, although I thought that by this point, and with what I planned to create, there would be too much of that. So I decided to make use of the pillar indent panels that I had created, although change the pillar to slightly differ from the other ones that were used. In the end this worked out much better than expected, as I originally thought it was going to stand out too much.
Fig 08. Side Wall Panel Asset (Jones, 2017)
The last larger thing I did during the day, was to create the connectors that would be placed between the upper wall panels and the ceiling panels, these were fairly simple to create because of the fact that they were mainly there for the separation. I made sure to add a design which was consistent with the scene, and seemed to fit well.
Fig 09. Upper Connector Assets (Jones, 2017)
The rest of day was then spent on changing smaller details on the various assets that I had created, this included simple things such as vert manipulation to make sure measurements were exact, adding the brick layer to assets to get a better idea in the scene, piecing these assets together into the actual scene formation so I could look at the overall product etc.
Friday:
On the Friday I had the next panel to contend with, the entrance / exit upper wall panel, which had to be designed differently from the other upper wall assets for the sake of solidifying the two sides with being different from the other doorways. I knew that I wanted some sort of mural, or symbolic design on this wide open panel, but I was initially stumped as too what.
I started looking into the PDF art book of a game I had been playing during the week called Titan Souls. This game consisted of pixel art, although the architecture and style involved was good reference for my project if translated into 3D. These murals in the game told events, or explained lore points with only the image, and I wanted to do something similar with my mural.
Fig 10,11,12. Titan Souls Reference (Robinson, 2015)
I initially started designing the mural way too complicated which caused it to look wrong in my scene, and also made the geometry too complicated for what I was aiming for. In the end I opted for a much more simple design, which would sit better with the rest of environment. The current motifs involved in the environment would have been drowned out if I had used a complicated mural.
After elaborating on getting the balance between story telling and complication correct, I decided to go with a very simple logic, the image depicts the room layout, and states the artefact in the centre of the room with the most complex symbol. Then it shows the individual artefact pieces or elements which have been separated from the artefact cage in the centre of the room, and what directions they spread in relation to the artefact. The section below which is blank dictates the entrance to the building, and that no artefact piece travelled down that direction. When the artefact was separated and burst into segments a long time ago, the original civilisation that worshipped or drew power from this object built a temple of worship around it to in future protect the pieces when they returned, although as time went on, they carved what they knew into the temple walls when they were constructing it as a fail safe, so that future generations would not forget what they knew to rebuild it.
Fig 13. Mural Panel Asset (Jones, 2017)
The rest of the day was used to tweak the pillar asset which I had created before hand, I changed the design slightly to make sure it didn't stand out too much in the environment, but rather worked with the environment. After making these changes I took a screenshot to apply to my Expotees submission, just so that I could feel more comfortable about my submission.
Fig 14. Progress Screenshot (Jones, 2017)
Saturday:
The Saturday was a slower day than some of the prior days I had been working, I felt very unfocused for the majority of the day, and rather ill. Although I didn't manage to progress as much as the other days, I did set myself up a better plan for creating the ceiling tiles during this day. I started lining up all of the assets I had available to make sure that each panel was as flush as they needed to be with one another, this was worth while as some sections vertices were slightly offset or needed adjusting, the end result meant that the pieces comfortably fit together, even if only one asset was duplicated around the scene.
I also created a ceiling panel shape, and started designing a ceiling panel, I worked on one panel and just tweaked the design back and forth, debating whether it would work out or look right in the scene, I tried two variations in the scene before calling it for the night and making sure to go home so that I could recover from how I was feeling.
Sunday:
The Sunday was also quite a relaxed day for me, I did go into the labs and once again work on the ceiling panels, but in a very laid back manner.
I very quickly after looking at the ceiling panel design I created before hand realised what the issue was, there was not enough negative space involved in the ceiling, meaning the brick panel was way to prominent in the scene. I segmented the ceiling panel and allowed myself to add some clear rock sections to the panel, which in my opinion helped the design stand out too. I tested this asset and found that it worked out much better than the prior iterations, although in the end I did have to do some more vertices tweaking since the shape of the panel had shifted slightly from when I originally had it in the scene.
Fig 15. Ceiling Panel Asset (Jones, 2017)
I for the rest of the day tried to figure out what was wrong with the ceiling panel layout, as some of them were not clipping together correctly, although after some thought I found it was an angle issue with one of the upper ceiling connectors I had created, and after this was solved it made the issue go away.
I then deliberated over creating the ceiling panel for the entrance and opposite section, created the base form, although got no further than building a rough design over the top of the panel as a test.
Overview:
This week personally was probably the best week of work I feel I have had. This is probably because I have physical progress with my scene, which is always nice to see in front of a person. Although I do strongly believe now that without the research week I took to plan out my scene from the start again, that I would still be having a lot of trouble. The research phase was very well worth it, and I knew this from the start, but the panic of getting started and keeping up with others obviously made me overlook this stage. I feel as though my advancement is speeding up, and that I'm in a good place, not the best, but if I keep my progress up, i'm certain that it can be remedied.
The plan for this week coming is to get everything that isn't an extra prop or set dressing, so the architecture into Unreal at a finished stage. Make sure everything works together correctly, and then to unwrap the assets after doing a final chamfer, smoothing group, scale, etc, pass over them. Then one of the things i'm hesitant to do, but I know will help my project greatly, is to do a lighting pass, to see how the scene will work with these things in mind.
-Ryan Harlee Jones
References:
Robinson,D. (2015) Titan Souls: Map and Art Book [PDF]. Available at: http://docslide.us/documents/titan-souls-map-and-art-book.html (Accessed: 13/03/2017) Fig.10,11,12.
留言