Masters Project - Week 04 / 18th - 24th July.

Week Hour Breakdown:

Wednesday - July 18th - One Hour & Fifty Minutes - Scene layout editing / asset design drawings.

Thursday - July 19th - NA

Friday - July 20th - Six Hours - Solidifying right side scene wall layout via blockout / blocked out security door, touch screens, generator pieces etc.

Saturday - July 21st - Five Hours & Thirty Four Minutes - Blocking out upper floor / Eyeball, crystal panels, plinth.

Sunday - July 22nd - Six Hours - Camera unwrapping, edge loop adding, smoothing grouping, turbosmoothing.

Monday - July 23rd - NA

Tuesday - July 24th - Four Hours & Thirty Minutes - Camera final tweaks, bakes correctly, details in the right place, started texturing.

Total time spent this week - 23 Hours and 19 Minutes.

Overview:

This week consists of a lot of preparation for the upcoming viva presentation originally on the 26th of July, but pushed to the 30th of July. Considering I had restarted my project so many weeks in and put myself at a disadvantage with time, I wanted to make sure that I had as much to display as I could to maximise possible marks in the presentation. This meant that instead of just creating assets and working forward blindly I was working with the marking scheme in mind for the presentation. Some comments from tutors in context to preparing for the Viva, included one piece of advice which helped me focus on what I needed. The tutor stated that if they are viewing the piece, they will need to be able to piece together as much as they can on their own. Although I can speak and explain during the presentation, most of it should be able to stand on its own. For example, if the scene is meant to be a dock, the blockout should be detailed enough to be recognised as such. Other things from the past such as seeing an example of how I wanted to texture things, or images to show I have taken into account things such as lighting or camera angles are also important.

Wednesday / July 18th : I realised that for the presentation I had a lot of ideas on paper, but barely any in the actual scene due to being so focused on a single asset the week prior. I started to decide what would be the primary factors of the environment, and making sure to block those out so that I could make sure they were some of the more noticeable aspects of the scene. The only issue was, I understood what kind of thing I wanted, but to block it out in preparation to display I needed my block out pieces to be more than a simple shape. I spent some time looking at reference and scribbling a few rough designs out onto paper, this was needed at the time as I was going in circles trying to figure out what kind of details to be placing. I only did this for specific details, as the drawings were just a technique to help declutter my mind and figure out certain asset aspects. Afterwards I spent a little time placing some slightly edited cylinders to be used as containment tubes, and roughly shaped computer panels to fill in some space along the walls. This gave me a good start as I knew I wanted one side of the environment to be exclusive to displaying some contained crystals, and the computer panel to be reused with different textures on the screens.

Friday / July 20th : I understood what kind of display I wanted to have on the left hand side of the scene, and the crystal containing tubes would take up most of the space on that side. This was something I knew was going to be there from the start, but originally had a flat window split into four that would display the crystals. This caused that portion of the room to have no depth and read quite plainly, hence the change. The other side of the scene however needed some attention, I knew I wanted to have some containers near the top of the room in a row that would hold "Cursed" items and be locked down heavily, but the rest of the space I wasn't sure about. I proceeded to try and think about the narrative I had planned and what objects would make sense being here, at this point I settled on some sort of security door to access other portions of the lab, a heavily built generator to power the shields on the display cases, and a portion of pull out containers that could house more objects. I then created some simple chamfered squares to act as placeholders for small display screens to fill out some areas.

Saturday / July 21st :

Looking back at the checklist I had set myself on Hack'N'Plan, one of the tickboxes I had set myself was to think about the verticality of the scene rather than just focusing on the horizontal aspects. I spent the time of this day working out some aspects that could be above the scene to make the environment more dynamic. I went back to the narrative plan I had scribbled down to see if anything rather than just a simple ceiling could be applied. I had an idea for a giant mechanical Eyeball to be placed in the ceiling, and this would act as the AI that controlled the security systems of the facility. I thought to originally just add this to the scene in the ceiling, but it didn't change the verticality aspect that much. So throughout the day, I toyed with an idea for a second smaller floor, where the ceiling was only barely above the height of the UE4 character. This acted as a maintenance room for the AI, and also allowed me to reuse the security door asset on the same side of the room to subtly link the doors together. I was aware at the time that with my time constraints I was adding too much to be accomplished, but for the sake of displaying a planned piece for the viva, I thought that a more whole blockout to display would be beneficial. In the instance that the top floor was removed near the end, the way that I created the floor panel for the upper level was with a hole in the centre with railing, this allowed me to have the AI look down to the lower level and cast a spotlight down to the bottom floor. This meant, that if the upper level was not finished, I could hint at it's presence through the use of lighting in the scene. Before the end of the day, I placed rough boxes and forms around to create a rough switch and electrical panel to help fill out the top floor and add a little more narrative sense to the new zone.

I used the evening to create some panels and pieces to make the crystal in the centre of the scene stand out as the focus of the scene a bit better. I created a security door with a large open panel to see into the crystal cage, and added a wall piece that acted as a crystal stabiliser, and panels surrounding to to keep it in place. This extra detail cramped together helped to pull the eye as one of the busier spots in the scene.

Sunday / July 22nd : With most of the areas in the scene fleshed out much more efficiently, I understood that the Camera asset I had spent so much time on would be the asset I show as an example during the presentation. So I used the day to unwrap the relevant portions, and add edge loops to the high poly version. Turbo smoothing and smoothing group editing was also done to help the quality of the bake.

Tuesday / July 24th : Considering the test I had done a week or so back to make sure the bake worked, I knew what kind of result to expect. I made some last tweaks in an attempt to boost the quality of the bake, and once I had done all I could I moved onto texturing the asset. Most of the time spent was getting the Camera screen to have the right kind of pattern on the front, not yet displaying any eyeball or colours. Base colours were applied to things such as the vents, making sure the inner portions were black, and colours and values were applied to different pieces to work out a colour scheme before I did anything complicated. The first thing I checked before all of this however, was to make sure I could turn a floating panel completely translucent and apply a shield like effect around the edges. I didn't want to texture all of the asset only to find I needed to set up another material ID or something similar. I placed a metallic texture I had stored from Substance Share in an attempt to get a better feel for the kind of thing I wanted, and edited some values to see if anything stuck. This was important as the metal used on the camera would more than likely be reused across a lot of the other assets in the scene.

Week Conclusion:

The work accomplished on fleshing out the scene details has done wonders for my confidence. The scene I have created, even though not very detailed, is already much more interesting than the last in my opinion. Even though I wish I was further along, and I also know I should be further along, I feel like I'm making good progress towards the viva presentation. There's still time to create the presentation and the slides, but also make sure I have got a blocked out scene which has enough detail to display what assets are, while allowing me some time to mockup lighting and other things to cover all the bases required by the presentation. I can imagine this coming week will mainly be presentation slide creation, as I know when creating these slides I will need to gather images of work, render some things for display and bring together plans from Hack'N'Plan for display. The presentation will probably take longer than I expect.

-RyanHarleeJones