Final Year Project - Week Twelve: (17th April - 23rd April)
- Ryan Harlee Jones
- May 6, 2017
- 6 min read
Final Year Project - Week Twelve: (17th April - 23rd April)
Monday:
I had multiple other things that I had to deal with on the Monday, so no progress was made on this day.
Tuesday:
On the Tuesday, I came back to the normal map for the brick walls that I was going to be using.
I spent some time recreating the wall with different sized bricks and also placing the bricks at different depths in a hope that it would come through subtly on the normal map. I found that the result of this worked much better, and helped with envisioning the direction that I wanted to take things in.
Fig 01. Brick Wall Normal Map (Jones, 2017)
I then went ahead and applied this to all the necessary assets so that I could discern if the normal map placement was going to be too overwhelming for viewers or what I had in mind.
In the end I found that the normal maps instantly helped bring the scene together a lot more with it implemented. This made me start to debate what kind of materials would need to be used to possibly contrast with the stone brick work that I was planning to paint, and helped me feel like I was starting to make actual visual progress again.
Wednesday:
On the Wednesday I applied a simple single colour top all of the assets in the unreal scene, along with the normal mapped brick walls that I had created the day before. I started testing painting darker and lighter areas in crevices and corners unless they were going to have a direct source of light such as a candle. Once again I was experimenting with what kind of results I could get by faking in lighting, and also giving the assets a gradient depending on how the scene was going to be built up.
Thursday:
The Thursday I decided that I wasn't getting too far by attempting to add gradients and lighting detail without having an actual texture to differentiate textures. I was having trouble getting started thus far, and needed to create something that would serve as suitable source of inspiration in my skills or as a base so that I could create my other textures in the same manner.
I recalled prior hand painting tutorials I had watched a few days before and went back to it and studied the video at a slower play speed, I watched and tried to understand what the artist was doing to get the kind of results that I wanted. I spent most of the day going through trial and error although by the end of the day I had something that was even better than the previous attempts I had. I planned to finish off the texture the next day and the apply it to all the normal mapped brick areas in the scene.
Friday:
The Friday was used to finish off the hand painted texture that I was working on for the bricks. I had been using the normal map as a guide to paint over, and what I did to make sure that I could save valuable time, was that when creating the brick wall to create a normal map out of, I had created the top two or three lines brick by brick, only then to duplicate and mirror or flip the brick lines when placing them lower down. This allowed me to do the same with the texture that was being painted, there fore allowing me to focus on the quality of the bricks on the first few layers only to duplicate them later.
In the end the result worked better than I had expected in the environment, and was by far the best hand painted texture that I had produced. This gave me a boost of confidence for what I could accomplish over the time that I had left, even though it had taken me some time and a couple of attempts to get correct in the first place.
Fig 02. Brick Wall Diffuse (Jones, 2017)
After this texture had been created and applied I started to debate what kind of other texture I could make use of to help contrast the symbols from the stone work.
This is something that I had thought about before hand, I had tried to think about applying a gemstone, or gold to the symbols, but I found that the colours would look too out of place in the environment when used too much, and the amount of symbols used in the environment would have made the rooms atmosphere change.
After debate between different kinds of rock, gold, gemstones and other materials, I eventually settled on taking a risk, with black marble. I decided upon this because the sleek and shiny material would be a lovely contrast to the dull matte rocks which were going to be used almost everywhere else apart from the slightly shined brick walls. I also felt as though the jet black with white cracks worked in the environment with it's colour scheme, atmosphere and materials already in use.
I spent the rest of the day applying myself to creating another hand painted texture, to see if I could do the same as I did with the brick wall's texture. After a few attempts with backtracking, I managed to accomplish a texture which I felt was detailed enough for my environment, yet not so detailed that it still kept in style with the other texture.
Fig 03. Black Marble Diffuse (Jones, 2017)
The texture had to be duplicated and then mirrored so that I could get a larger version of it without spending an overwhelming amount of extra time on it, I also did this in case I found the texture didn't work out the way I wanted it too, therefore saving possible time if I changed my direction. I also made the texture mirror this way because the majority of the assets I was going to apply the texture too were much smaller than the walls and surround assets. When applying the marble texture to most of these assets it wasn't noticeable that the material had been mirrored.
Saturday:
The Saturday I was travelling back to university, this meant that I once again couldn't accomplish any work throughout the day.
Sunday:
The Sunday I headed back to the labs to make use of the working atmosphere the university had. I decided that the rest of the wall sections in the environment were going to be made out of rock similar to the brick walls although a slightly rougher variation so that a difference could be told between the two materials. I also planned to given each of these rock sections different metallic and roughness values to help further tell them apart.
Fig 04. Rough Rock Diffuse (Jones, 2017)
The texture ended up being quite simple to create, although I found that the subtlety of this texture worked well against some of the stronger detailed textures like the other two which I had. I attempted multiple layers in which I ended up lowering the opacity to further add to the subtle colour mix used in the texture. This was also duplicated and mirrored, for the same reason of being able to add more detail to the object I applied it too by having the detail smaller, therefore fitting more on the asset.
Looking around the scene I started to debate whether more textures than what I originally planned were needed, something about the environment still seemed dead. After looking at the lighting and remembering some of the things I had picked up from videos and how it looked against the work I currently had, I decided to remove the lighting and just place a single bright bulb in the middle so that i could see what I was doing.
I made sure to apply all the new materials I had to the correct places, I decided to finish off for the night that I wanted to view the environment with the new textures I had created applied. This was so I could get a better feel for the environment, and therefore debate what it was missing.
Summary:
This week was much better than the prior week in which I had been heading back and forth with attempting different methods. Although not the greatest set of textures in the world, I found that these self created textures were a good start, and actually helped the environment to come to life a little bit. Any of the textures that I create are still good practise and will only help me improve. Progress is being made, and even though there isn't much more time left on the project, I'm certain that I can produce something worth the time if I keep up this pace.
-Ryan Harlee Jones
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