Final Year Project - Week Eight: (20th March - 26th March)
- Ryan Harlee Jones
- Mar 27, 2017
- 8 min read
Final Year Project - Week Eight: (20th March - 26th March)
Monday:
This week's Monday session was fairly straight forward, general feedback was given to me about progression, I was advised to finish unwrapping the scene I currently had so that I could do some lighting tests, as multiple people mentioned that they felt as though it was very important for atmosphere, and could make or break the scene.
I also uploaded and wrote out the blog like any other week, making sure to keep to schedule.
Throughout the day I worked through unwrapping multiple assets. Although, while working through the assets to unwrap them, I remembered that some assets had geometry issues that needed fixing or resizing to fit correctly with the other pieces. This ended up with me working through each asset methodically from the floor up to the top of the scene making sure that each asset before being unwrapped was correctly modelled, optimised and had smoothing groups applied manually.
When working through one or two of the assets, I remembered that with the UV space, if sections of the assets were exactly the same, such as the multiple bricks in the Connector asset panels, I could save UV space by stacking the the UV's on top of each other. This allows me to save space, and improve the texal rate of the asset, making textures read better on assets.
Although, the main reason I found this to be a useful trick, was that I had been thinking about how long the texturing phase was going to take me, especially if I planned to hand paint whatever textures I could. Doing this meant that I could texture one brick, but output it as the others too, saving a lot of valuable time. The only issue with this approach is that I may have to tweak with the light maps in the Unreal Engine to make sure things read correctly, and that recurring textures may be quite obvious. Although I personally feel that with the amount of different things I want to accomplish in my project, that the time saved from doing this will benefit me greatly if I use the time efficiently.
During the Monday I managed to unwrap the rest of the floor section. This included the "Floor staircase asset", and the "Floor centre panel asset" which involved three separate pieces to unwrap, although I didn't then place them all in the same UV space on the Monday, as there was a lot of vertices tweaking and optimisation involved with the centre panel.
Fig 01. Floor Staircase Asset UV (Jones, 2017)
Tuesday:
The Tuesday involved more of the same, I finished off the UV for the floor centre panel asset, and then decided to bring them all into engine so that I could replace the current scene's outdated floor pieces. Thanks to making sure the pivot points were placed usefully as guidelines, I was able to make the floor sections clip together neatly.
Fig 02. Floor Centre Panel Asset UV (Jones, 2017)
After the Unreal Engine scene had been updated, I moved straight onto the next layer of assets in my scene, which was the first set of walls that surrounded the lower layer of the room. I began with the "Entrance wall panel asset", this asset took some time to get finished because of the fact that a lot of the wall panels hadn't been modelled with the intent of clipping together 100%.
What is meant by that is that they all met together well, although either overshot where they connected and overlapped each other, or the main issue, the extruded border on the bottom of the walls had not been lined up correctly when connected with the asset beside them.
This took some time to fix, as I had to go round and make sure all three of the wall types fit together, as editing one meant that the next one over needed the same treatment.
Eventually I did manage to finish the "Lower entrance wall panel asset" and get started on the "Lower side wall panel asset".
The UV map looks very messy, although this is because I planned to test having two sections laid over the top of each other. The asset in question is two wall panels, although one is the mirrored version of the other, so using Material ID's to my advantage in the Unreal Engine, I could label one wall with one material ID, and the other with another. This would then allow the two layers of UV's to work separately as one material ID would only take and make use of one layer on the UV. Therefore, I wanted to test this to see if it would be efficient and work, because I would save processing and memory space by not having to duplicate the wall and mirroring it in engine, therefore using another asset and another copy of the texture map, but instead having one that is essentially two. I wanted to test this, so that I could have another optimisation tool available to me in future if it works. If not, I'll switch this UV to how I would originally do things.
Fig 03. Lower Entrance Wall Panel Asset UV (Jones, 2017)
Wednesday:
The next day continued with more unwrapping as expected, progress was feeling slow because of all the tweaks that were having to be made to each asset before unwrapping them.
The first asset I began work on was the "Lower normal wall panel asset", and because of the day before this was accomplished quickly, I still had to manually apply smoothing groups and unwrap the asset, but all of the tweaking had been done that day before.
Fig 04. Lower Normal Wall Panel Asset UV (Jones, 2017)
The case was the same for the "Lower side wall panel asset" which still needed attention but not as much as it would have done because of the work accomplished the workday before.
Fig 05. Lower Side Wall Panel Asset UV (Jones, 2017)
These assets were then implemented into the Unreal Engine scene again, so that they could replace the older versions of the asset. This was done so that I could make sure there were no issues with the mesh and that they did fit together how I wanted them too.
I decided to spend the rest of the work day updating my CV that was a year out of date. We had a lecture at the start of the day around 11am, which was from Ubisoft employees. They mentioned useful information, along with some graduate jobs they had available for us to apply too, so I decided to spend a little time getting ready for when I apply.
Fig 06. CV Mid-Progress Image (Jones, 2017)
Thursday:
Thursday as anyone could have guessed, was also unwrapping, like the prior days.
I had some connector assets which needed unwrapping, as they were the next layer up in my methodical approach.
On this day I managed to go over the "Lower medium connector asset", along with finishing the unwrap, although the same issue arose with this set of assets as the prior. I needed to do a lot of manual tweaking to make sure the assets connected with one another correctly.
I used a chunk of time making sure that the Connector pieces all lined up with the assets surrounding them, and each other, although in the end it was worth it and needed to make sure they sat best with the wall panels.
I also began to work into the "Lower large connector asset" although after smoothing and tweaking, left the unwrapping till the next day.
Fig 07. Lower Medium Connector Asset UV (Jones, 2017)
Friday:
The Friday I kept advancing with the unwrapping phase of things.
I continued on from the day before and finished unwrapping the Connector assets, the "Lower large connector asset" and "Lower small connector asset" had a full check and were then unwrapped.
Fig 08. Lower Large Connector Asset UV (Jones, 2017)
Fig 09. Lower Small Connector Asset UV (Jones, 2017)
I moved onto the next layer of assets above, which were the next set of wall panels that included the window and mural pieces. Considering how the previous layers had gone, from the start I anticipated the assets to need some tweaking to connect correctly. I went along the three wall panels on that level to make sure that they all worked with one another again, and lined up correctly in anticipation for the upper connectors on the next layer.
The "Upper mural wall panel asset" was also partially unfinished, which I remember creating roughly so that I could get things set up in engine. Finishing the asset didn't take very long as the geometry was clean, and the way I had laid out the pieces meant I could connect them together quite easily.
Fig 10. Upper Mural Wall Panel Asset (Jones, 2017)
After going along each of the assets and making sure they clipped together correctly, I exported each of the new connectors and the reworked upper panels into the Unreal Engine scene. These were placed in scene in anticipation for the next work day, so that I could place the new connectors in place, but also so before unwrapping the upper wall panels I could see if they worked with the other assets and clipped correctly.
Saturday:
Saturday I took off, so that I could relax and have some personal time to myself. Even though I really didn't want to take a day off during the week, I knew that time off for the mind is advised, as that kind of consistent pressure can build up subtly on a person. So in the morning when I woke up feeling hung over and sorry for myself, I decided to stay indoors for the day, and work on the Sunday when I was more spritely.
Sunday:
The Sunday started with what I had planned for on the Friday, I opened up the Unreal Engine scene and started to place the connector assets and upper wall panels in place. The new assets seemed to fit the way I wanted them too, which made me comfortable to continue with what I was doing.
I did a sweep of the "Upper mural wall asset panel", "Upper side wall asset panel" and "Upper window wall asset panel", making sure they were optimised and correctly smoothed. The unwrapping phase took a long time with the Mural and Window panels, since they included a lot of separate pieces which had to be unwrapped and smoothed, to then be brought together and placed in the same UV space.
Fig 11. Upper Mural Wall Panel Asset UV (Jones, 2017)
Fig 12. Upper Side Wall Asset Panel UV (Jones, 2017)
Fig 13. Upper Window Wall Asset Panel UV (Jones, 2017)
These were then implemented yet again into the Unreal Engine scene, so that I knew they were updated and ready to be used when I came to building the lighting. I made sure to tweak the pivots very specifically on these assets so that I could clip them more efficiently to the scene as a whole, this helped a lot, and may even need to be done with some of the prior assets depending on how the end scene looks.
Summary:
This week felt very laborious, and almost like I haven't gotten much accomplished in the week. Although I am aware that the reason it feels this way is because of all the tweaking, and manual smoothing group application that I have been doing alongside the unwrapping. I feel as though it's me wasting time a little bit, but at the back of my mind I know that the quality will be much better for the time I am taking in correcting these issues. I just have to remind myself that I can't get obsessive over these things too much when there is so much more to be getting on with. This week's progress was good, but I expect myself to move onto another phase early this week so that I can keep on track of everything I want to accomplish.
-Ryan Harlee Jones
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