BA2B - Creativity - Week 5

This weeks main priority is to get everything I've previously been working on done. That includes all textures, the stairs and all assets. I have managed to jump ahead of myself already by texturing the statue, UV and texturing the candelabra alongside sending the table variation sheet to the asset creator to UV because time consumption at this moment in time is crunched. This meaning everything I do must be a main priority in comparison to making smaller assets. Something that I prefer to work by due to the small amount of work I've had in the previous week.

The statue is what I'll show first as I've got it finished and game ready (also in engine). The statue is based off what a simple marble statue would look like with added grime. The UV layout allowed for me to be able to use generators correctly (edge wear) and add in dirt to the necessary parts of the clothing where the dirt would normally sit. The marble was the texture I created in designer shown below.

Aside from that, here it is attached to the statue alongside a concrete dirt generator (concrete material) and the metal material I made in designer used for the edge wear whilst having a lighter tone to it to make it look like the inside of the marble. Although this doesn't necessarily make sense to have the inside of marble this way, it looks like it's been damaged and rubbed upon thus making this outcome feasible.

Aside from this, the texturing is going well. The candelabra is completed and in-game ready. Shown below is the final product of it in substance alongside the textures used on it in 512x512 due to it not being a main asset.

During this period of texturing I managed to get a few other bits textured from our asset artist and had the time spare (due to being in uni without my maya file) to texture these assets quickly in a 1024k resolution size. The reason the model changed was to make it look more realistic as well as save some geometry as there's going to be a lot of them.

All of these items aside from the stand are sharing the same textures the stand only has a simple edge wear on it of a darker grained wood due to it being more worn than the bookshelves (They only collect dust whereas the stand would be used to hold and store books being used more frequently.

The chest on the other hand has my pre-made material from designer (Metal_Scratched) and then the same woods from these to make it seem as if the wood these are made from are from the same tree.

Wood material:

Metal material:

Updated material:

This updated material is used for another part of the level, the cushion on the floor for the prayer stands. As you can tell it was the re-used texture from the cloth patterns.

Then comes the final piece, the material for the roof. This was a mosaic piece that is to be used either on a tillable pattern or by itself. Images below show the workings and the texture.

BA2B - Asset Creation/Texturing - Week 4

So during this week aside from textures and particle effects I wanted to attempt to create some assets seeing as they're being slowly produced and to help out the team. I've started on a candelabra for the first object, I'm going to attempt to recreate a simple candelabra with at around 8k tri-count to ensure that it wont be expensive but have enough detail to make it look realistic. Images shown below of the first Low-Poly creation, the grid layout is set to the UE4 scale we have used. This meaning that I can make the exact size for the UE4 environment as well as making sure my texture sets fit exactly to the art scheme.



This model is only 8.2k Tris for now, I will attempt to bring this down by using a high to low poly workflow meaning this will be the high-poly in hopes and then create a low-poly off of this model and using the bake option in substance to add on the curvature and detail. I will be doing the same for every single object/prop I make due to the amount of detail that can be baked on and wanting to create a realistic looking game. Hence the high level textures and realistic look on most textures.

During this creation, I was given some assets to texture finally. I started off with a simple bookcase, something that would be easy to texture and allow for me to showcase what I've learnt and the textures I've created. Below is the model naked in substance. My first thought was to create a light wood texture (one I've already made) and put it from designer into painter, add a black mask and dirt generator to give off the feel of old and dusty/used. Below the first image is this.





After this I wanted to create a wood for the bookcase but instead choosing to save time and use the material already in substance painter called 'Wood walnut' and then change the color of it to allow for better workflow as well as time consumption.



The only issue doing it this way was that the UV layout wasn't exact to what was needed. To fix this I created a separate layer above the original layer and adding a black mask/changing the UV rotation in the program and then drawing that on top to create the exact UV layout I wanted. Shown below.





The changes made are minimal but make all the difference on immersion and player feedback. This basic texture was easy to complete and didn't test me much so it only took minimal amounts of time to complete. Either way it was one step closer to being a texture artist so I will take it as a win in my books.





This is the texture used with the dirt generator to create the beaten up feel/used feel. Allowing for levels of realism, even though some parts will be covered up with book objs etc. it's nice to have the feel all over rather than in certain places as it doesn't use any more video memory in comparison. I will leave it up to the environmental artist to decide what resolution he wants, this was done in 2k and can be exported in any other lower level resolution. 4k is not a option on this piece.

After completing this I decided to carry on with the 3D modelling that I was originally meant to complete. I decided on this one I was going to do two to three different variations on the matter seeing as the tables were something that were going to be used across the whole cathedral. My idea here was to do another asset sheet like the metallic one made before but instead for a wooden table type sheet. Filled with the same textures and texel density (TD) so that it saves again the texture amount and video memory. I will try to achieve at least 3 tables in this sheet, one rounded, one long table and one drawer set table. Shown below is all 3 tables all kept under 3k tri count for memory reasons as well as they don't need much to look like tables, the textures will do the work for them.



After this I was given the task of creating a stair set, due to the assets being less important than environmental pieces this took priority. I was firstly given a basic stair mesh used in the greyboxing to be able to use as reference for scale shown below.



I then went over, created more marble-esk stairs and then decided to add a lip, some little additional details on top to create the steps. Removing the underneath allowing the player to walk under the model. Adding in more detail after this was necessary.



As an environmental piece I was allowed a lot of tri-count for this so I decided to go 'fancy' with the Bannister by creating a detailed print to go in between the rails.



Putting it altogether was a must so here is the final itteration of the beginning of the stairs, I will be adding detail and more items to 'fill' the staircase and make it look 'fancy'. Meaning this will be my big piece for the game, all textured, UV'd and game ready by next week.



Taking a step away from work load I am also continuing my role as the project manager in seeing where people are at, leaving feedback and leaving reminders. I haven't documented much of this due to normally vocally telling people but seeing as this weeks team meeting was cut short due to peoples personal lives getting in the way I left open reminders. Also through this giving feedback and opinions through Discord. Shown below.





These are normally what would be vocally said but instead this time it was recorded in-text channels. As for this, I will continue working on these assets/textures and fill in next weeks blog with the updates.

BA2B - After Easter - Week 4

So now that we have easter out of the way and that I can finally get back into the swing of working I decided to texture the asset sheet and then move onto other main assets such as tables, shelves and other little assets. Seeing as the asset creator needed a bit of help I decided to stand in due to not having any assets to texture and the environment being textured mostly.

The asset sheet was completed on the last week of Easter but I didn't get round to adding it into my Easter blog post. Here are a few screen shots of what I got up to during that period and how I managed to achieve the asset pack. 

The asset pack below is all the smaller assets (Props) I made for this pack in itself. It was originally meant to be 2k with 5.12 texile density but after looking at it in detail there wasn't much difference between 1k and 2k resolutions. All of these objects have their own high-poly, low-poly and cage.

Here is a picture of both the UV layout and the transformation details.

I then went into substance designer and created what I thought to be a 'base material' for the object itself, a small metallic texture that looked almost slightly damaged. You may have seen a previous variation of this before on my blog but this is just that taken and altered slightly. 

On doing this previously I had a different color scheme without rust which then changed due to people wanting more detail. Below is the picture of both variations and I let the team choose which one. 1 is the old variation and 2 is the one now used in game. The good thing about our game is you can't look at minor details on these things as it's a overhead/3rd person camera so you wont be able to look at the major amounts of detail on these so I decided to keep the resolution low as well as the detail amount. 

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I have asked for feedback as I do with all my work showcasing it to the team through Discord. This is a must for all of us as we need to get a understanding of what we all want and are looking for. 

Although this asset pack was created before I went onto the Easter break I had a referral to do as well as many other things during Easter so this was left till last. Aside from this the particle effects I wanted to leave till a later date now seeing as it isn't as necessary as the assets/props. As for textures I managed to create different variations of my work as well as new ones that I am ready to put into the game engine. This being said, I have been set some new tasks so for now I will only showcase the textures I made and some variations. 

Brick texture variation:

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Cloth pattern dark & Light:

Marble Texture:

Metal Scratched:

To explain some of these, the materials called cloth are going on the character, you may see that there is two. With this in mind the idea behind it is to be able to have the players outfit change dependent on whether or not they're in the light or the dark. This cool feature will be player feedback so implementing that through a simple material/texture is pretty fascinating to me. The other bits as you can imagine are where you would imagine them to go, the metal on the asset pack, the bricks in the church walls and the marble would be a nice idea for a floor but dependent on what the team think it may be missed out on this occasion. A nice concept that took no time luckily but I doubt will be used in game.

After realizing that most textures get vertex painted over I then thought to myself that using grunge maps would be the best way to utilize this process so I decided to make a few grunge maps to be able to be vertex painted over my textures. Below are the two examples. One was done during Easter and two was done during the weekend to be used and ready for Monday. 

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To my knowledge these have been used in the game engine to vertex paint the floor and some of the walls/columns created by Dervis the environmental artist. Aside from this I done my team leader roles asking people if they're happy and how they're getting on. The only issue I found this week was Maggie needed help texturing both a Chandelier she made as well as a wall torch. I went in and helped her created both textures as well as showed her some interesting ways of getting the results she wanted. I'm not sure if she made a different variation of the work but showing her how to texture the way she wanted made it a lot easier for her in the long run for other assets she was creating. 

I am now souly focusing on creating assets for Dervis as we need them ready for the end of this week. I am going to attempt to create a table, shelving and a candelabra by this time fully UV'd textured and ready for in-game as the textures I've previously done helped Dervis so for now I can go to asset texturing rather than environmental texturing. I will update in the next post. 

1000 word proposal

I'll keep this short seeing as the proposal will speak for itself, but I wanted to get across why I wanted to write about Flow and the state of mind people get into when playing games. I chose the theory of flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi because out of everything it's the one thing that speaks to me most seeing as I come from a background of having metal issues as well as basically everyone I know seeing as mainly 1/4 people suffer from one thing these days.

The way that flow is understood is the balance between feeling anxious and bored. Although anxiety is caused by boredom we can agree that when put in the middle of both you enter a 'zone' where everything feels great and mellow-some. The concept behind this intrigues me dearly and I want to get a better understanding of the human physicality when playing games vs the mental or better known as 'the unconscious' by those who also have the same interest. It's something that has been theorized but never proven, hence why I will attempt in this essay to write about it and how everything not just games relate to this theory. Getting help for this essay is a must seeing as it relies mainly on psychology so no, I will not be writing this without getting sufficient research not just from theorist but by asking people who suffer from things such as anxiety and depression (the ones who actually know what it feels like to have it on a daily basis) what they believe it to be and where they sit around this theory. Not only this but it's a personal thing for myself to help me grow as a person, in a sense of understanding myself and my body (Anxieties or not) better alongside the physical and mental understandings I want to know what my 'unconsciousness' is telling me.

This proposal/essay is going to open my eyes to the world as a whole and I can't wait to get writing. This was a short piece because the essay/proposal will speak for itself on this matter.

Easter Break

So during Easter break, aside from the referral I wanted to try and complete my asset pack for the game as well as have it all fully textured and game ready by that time alongside starting another one or even starting more particle effects/textures.

During the Easter break, aside from taking a minor BREAK seeing as that is what this time is for I managed to get a lot done. During this time I managed to get a great understanding of how Substance Designer works alongside the actual texture itself. This meaning that I can no create anything I wish in substance given enough time. The only thing being is most things take me a little while to get done but that will change overtime with experience. Some examples below of what I've been working on over the past weeks. The two images below are for a 12m x 12m squared floor tile in UE4 for our game, something that stands out not using height maps as it's too expensive for video memory but instead using colors to bring out the 3D image. This may look 3D looking down at it but it's actually a 2D flat square.



Aside from these two, I then went and created many variations of tiles that can be used in game for our floor pattern. It is basic so that we can vector paint over it. After doing that we can add detail in to the point that it looks realistic enough for a player to not have to pay attention to it.



After getting these done, I decided to try and create my own grunge maps to be able to be drawn in as detail. Using this method I added a gradient map for now just to see the sorts of colors I want to add in to give off the decayed effect. Maybe less brighter colors but you get the idea of what I'm going for. Moving on from this I now need to get my prop pack textured and game ready.



This means I'm going to have to spend most of my Easter creating this pack as well as a High-Low poly work flow with cages on all of them. The reasoning for this is because I want full detail on these props but also so the UV layout doesn't overlap each other during the baking stages. Shown below is half of the pack. This was done both during the first week of Easter alongside the referral and a little before. The next two weeks I'll spend cleaning it up and polishing off the textures ready to be put into engine.



Aside from this, I said to the team do what you can because we have a lot to do but remember to take some time off for themselves (I'm hoping they do). As team leader I've convinced Dervis and Regan to do the referral in the same week as me to manage time well. Other than this I will be taking most of Easter off due to needing the break as well as I'm going to be overworking when we return.