Idea change

So during week 1 I said a lot of things which are now COMPLETELY changed. The wood textures, the tree asset creations and also the overall feel of the 3D environment. I decided to take the route for the trees down a completely different path, the more industry ready path. Although this is the best method it's also the one that is going to cost in the future. SpeedTree (A program made for vegetation assets) is something I'm beginning to learn as a quick process of making trees and bushes. Although it's not exactly how every industry company does it because obviously licensing etc. but for this project it'll be fine because I'm a student and also because it'll speed up my process 10 fold.

The way I'm going to be using the program is to get the trees exactly to how I researched them with references as well as perfectly made textures for the trees themselves. I will be vertex painting any additional information I see fit onto the trees to make sure that I get the exact concept that I wanted from the start. This is going to take time but it's all a big learning process and curve so this should teach me everything I need to know for the industry. The scope I've gone for should be considered as overstretching at this point due to having to learn everything but one burnout week should help sort out that issue, nothing I'm not used to so to me it's fine but if I was to tell someone else they'd probably worry.

So the plan for now is to get used to speed tree, get my materials done, learn the best way to make alphas and get it all into UE4. The way I'm going to layout the scene is all done in modularity in Maya so far so every other asset that isn't organic is completed and ready to be skinned or is still in the minor process of being UV mapped correctly. Shown below is the few assets that will be added through Maya, the rest will be done in either Speed Tree or ZBrush (ZBrush models will be ported to Maya to be retapologized).

Aside from my research report and the explanation of my Substance Designer graph there isn't much else to write about this week as it was mainly for research and learning new skills. I will be needing a burnout week to catch up because of this like previously said which will more than likely be next week seen as we have 2 other projects and a dissertation to do. This was a short piece but I'll add some images below to show you fragments of what I've done 3D wise as well as texture wise.



Advancement on the brick texture made from year 2 (adding in moss like colors to the insides). There wasn't much needed to be done for this as it will be mainly covered in vegetation and major detail changes will have to be done for the final build as this isn't good enough for me as of yet.



Tree texture from the previous post.



Aside from this it was mainly paperwork done this week, I will be trying to update the blog as much as possible but with the size of the project and the time scale it may falter meaning most of the weeks may be contained into one update.