Digital Worlds Production Journal Assessment 2 For this ...

Digital Worlds Production Journal – Assessment 2

Brendan Hutchins

Production Planning

For this stage I looked at reference images for the layout of the stable and sketched out ideas for all of the modular pieces of the scene. The main reference images I took inspiration from are shown below. I liked the wall and truss placement of the Elk Ranch, but I liked the stable door placement more from the second, so I sought to create a hybrid of both.

This began the sketching phase, where I attempted to solidify a layout for the stables as well as finalize the modular pieces, shown in the two handwritten pages. The top most page showed my initial sketch, as well as where I wanted the truck to be placed in the scene (in a stable).

The bottom page is a painstakingly drawn out reference list of all the modular assets to be created. To create this, I blocked out the scene in Unreal, measured every side with the ruler function, wrote down every measurement, then recreated the blockout pieces in Maya. As I got further into the process, I eliminated any redundant modular pieces.

I am not sure if this was the right approach in terms of time and energy. I could have just imported the whole scene into Maya after blocking it out in Unreal, but I did not know how to accomplish that, so instead I modeled every modular piece from scratch using my recorded measurements.

Blockout

For blocking out the scene in Unreal I used mannequins to provide a realistic model of a person to the scene. One thing I would do differently the next time I am working on a project is to not block-out the entire scene if it is large and repetitive. This was since it took a long time to delete all the box brushes whenever I replaced them with static meshes.

I also made the objects much thicker than I wanted in the end, so that resulted in me making calculations after the fact to lessen the thickness of the trusses and walls.

Modeling

The process I took when modeling the modular assets was to group similar ones into separate layers to better keep track of what I was modeling and done with. I always had low, mid, and high poly versions of the models, which made importing into Substance Painter easy. I would often model several assets, then export them immediately into Substance. I would then create textures for those models and import them into Unreal to build my scene overtime instead of importing the assets all at once. I believe that was the most effective way to go about this project safely without the risk of having nothing to show on the project deadline.

For example, it took me a long time to model my organic model, but I still had all of my modular pieces and lighting started so that all I had to do was just place the rope I modeled into the scene easily. However, this also resulted in me having less models than I wanted since I was constantly switching between three programs in one day, so I would only get two assets a day completed and into Unreal.

In terms of technical issues, the greatest one I faced was making the curved stem for this lamp. I did not know how to draw custom curves, so instead I created a torus, reshaped it to fit the lamp’s curve, then delete the faces. Then, I created a cylinder that came out of the lamp base to meet the torus and linked the two together. While this method did work, it took a long time to figure it out when I could have learned how to use the CV curve tool like I used in my organic model of a rope.

Texturing

For texturing, I would often recognize when objects would have similar textures and create a smart material out of one object. For example, on this stable gate, I created a smart material called “woodenTexture” that was used on many other objects in my scene. While it probably would have been better to create a material in photoshop to apply to a material in Unreal, I did not know how to accomplish that, so instead I went with my own approach. Next time, I would use procedural materials applied in Unreal.

The greatest challenge in texturing for me was learning how to create a brick texture. Eventually, I learned how to control the brick generator, but I still wanted the bricks to have more variation and edge damage. However, I was unable to learn how to apply that since the bricks were not modeled, they were all just created by the generator in Substance Painter. Next time I do bricks, I will model each individually but in a smaller sized chunk to later group together in Unreal to create a large wall.

Unreal Engine

The first task I wanted to accomplish in Unreal Engine was to place all my static mesh assets into the scene and delete any remaining block-out objects. I also setup every material as soon as the mesh was imported into Unreal to better keep track of my progress.

The next objective for me to tackle was the scene lighting. The above image depicts a very early lighting test I setup before post processing and adding exponential height fog. First, I focused on solidifying my directional light before moving on to post processing. I was unsure if I wanted my scene lighting to have a normal daylight appearance, or one of sunset, so I experimented with both, saved screenshots, and compared the two.

Daylight Directional Light

Sunset Directional Light

I decided to go with sunset, as it added more drama to the mysteriously abandoned stables. However, the sunlight was not lighting the whole scene as much as I hoped, so I attempted to set up point lights to further brighten the scene, but I still wanted the light to have the appearance of flooding inside the stables instead of just casting it all into shadow. To remedy this, I added a post-processing volume to increase the overall exposure.

Before increasing exposure

After increasing exposure

After I completed the post processing and setting up exponential fog how I wanted, the last issue I had was that my lightmaps on my floor tiles were messed up, causing each mesh to have a seam between each other. I consulted the week 12 slideshow to fix my lightmap UVs, which did a great deal of improving the flow of the scene. With that, I was done with my environment.

Before fixing lightmaps After fixing lightmaps

Final Reflections

This project fully tested my ability to brainstorm, research, model, texture, and light a

scene in Unreal Engine. I came into this class knowing only the backend work of Unreal, such as

blueprints and coding in C++ without having much knowledge on asset creation workflow. Now,

I feel confident in creating good looking assets for Unreal Engine. While I still think I prefer the

side of game mechanic design and coding functionality, this class taught me a lot about the

other side of the game design process I otherwise probably would not have known about.

While I did not complete as much assets as I hoped, I did want to create a large modular set

that can both tell a story and can be built upon with game mechanics and new assets, which I

feel I created in the end.