Introduction
I am participating in the Search For a Star competition. I will be solely developing a game ready environment within the next 9 weeks. I'm planning to work every day and document my daily progress in this blog. This will allow people to see my entire day to day development for this project.The deadline is on 26th of January 2020.
As I'm writing the introduction it is the 23rd of November 2019. Ideally by the end of this week I would have wanted to establish a clear idea of what I'll be making.
The final idea will need to incorporate the following...
Supporting of the project brief
Have good art direction
Have good art reference
Be a convincing game environment
I'm currently making an art bible of all the ideas with a few pros and cons for each. I will hopefully finish it by the end of today and make it as part of my first daily post. The hardest part is finding an environment that incorporates all 4 main points. Tomorrow I will have to decide on one and this Monday (25th November) will be the first development day up till the deadline.
Schedule
Every day, any complete work must be put into the engine. Last two days of each week will be dedicated to any backup or re-doing time.
Week 1 - Mood board, Art bible, detailed rundown & info, concept artwork, photo-bash.
Week 2 - Set up Trello, set up Unreal project, make blockout, first pass textures, set up all placeholder content, make first lighting pass.
Week 3 - High & low-poly 3D modelling in Maya (priority assets).
Week 4 - High & low-poly 3D modelling in Maya (secondary assets).
Week 5 - Uv's, trim sheets.
Week 6 - Texturing in Substance Painter, materials in Substance Designer (priority assets).
Week 7 - Texturing in Substance Painter, materials in Substance Designer (secondary assets).
Week 8 - Finalizing Unreal project, vertex painting, set dressing, decals, final lighting pass, exporting & level builds.
Week 9 - Extra backup time, final screenshots, make presentation, retrospective, make sure all work is ready and submit all final files.
23/11/19
I made the idea art board and thought about what I could do. A few new ideas sprawled up like the bell tower and the piano room. I might also add the Victorian bakery idea to the list as well and shall hopefully decide on one by the end of tomorrow. All seem good in some way so it won't be easy to decide.
24/11/19
I decided to go for the Bell tower environment. In general I feel like it has a very clear and concrete motive behind it. There is a lot to play around with and I have the clearest vision for how I can make this environment work. All the direction has already been set up through the high quality reference imagery I found online. It isn't as complex and overpopulated with props like the sweet shop idea, nor is it too plain and simple like the piano room idea. I'll play to small done well. The environment can be broken down into a few main assets so I have plenty of time to refine them to a good standard over the course of 9 to 8 weeks. If I finish too early then there are many stretch goals and ways I can advance my project further which I will go over in my art bible & brief.
Things to consider from the reference:
The environment is quite small
All of it is hard surface
There isn't any decoration
Things to consider from the reference:
The environment is quite small
All of it is hard surface
There isn't any decoration
North Guilford Congregational Church 360 view
Bell hung in action
A video that gave me an insight of how the bell works. I may also animate it if I have time.
A video that gave me an insight of how the bell works. I may also animate it if I have time.
Modular Wood-Shack Kit : Insurgency Sandstorm
This modular kit inspired me, I'm planning to make something similar for the structure of the room.
25/11/19
Today is Monday and I've made my first 2 slides for my art bible in Adobe Photoshop. It goes over the narrative and setting I chose to support this environment.
I chose early 19th century because an old time period goes very well with an environment like this and really sets the tone. It was more religious back then and a church environment can support that. After searching bell room interiors, most of these wooden Revere bell rooms are set in north east USA, particularly the main reference 360 view image is set in the town of Guilford Connecticut.
26/11/19
On Tuesday I made 3 art boards, the first one was to establish the area and the other two go over the environment itself, I think I used the right images to give an accurate depiction of what kind of environment I'm going for.
27/11/19
Today I made 4 more slides to give a more insight into my project. The slides are pretty explanatory.
02/12/19
Today I finished the concept and made a floor plan to show my environment in more detail. The concept goes over the colour palette and lighting a bit more, as well as the tone and feel of it. The floor plan shows a strategical layout of how this environment will function as a level in this fictional game. I decided to make the room slightly bigger than the original reference just to give more room for movement and to see the bell hung from further away as it is a large asset, much bigger than I thought as shown in this photo.
The path from start to finish goes all around the room, leading the player around the bell to the corner where we see some props that signify that someone lives here and the diary they left that gives some insight to the story. The player then pulls the lever to activate the bell, now in reality these bells would be manually pulled by the rope at the bottom of the church, but since I'm making this one room I thought of just using a lever to activate it, a classic game mechanic. I really I wanted to try and see if I could make the bell mechanic as I feel it'd be a nice feature to complete my environment, just to give a bit of interactivity to it as if its an actual game.
04/12/19
Due to Uni work I've been behind my schedule this week. I was supposed to finish my documentation last week but I'm still writing up my plan. I have till the end of this week to complete my...
Art Bible
Brief
Schedule
Trello workplace
Blockout with first passes for all files.
I may have to just crack on with the blockout if time becomes a bigger issue.
Today I updated my material list to be more precise with what I'll be making. I made a page on the focal bell asset. The whole lever and activating bell function is secondary priority as it is more of a stretch goal. The artistic features of the environment are more important to me but it would be cool to have a functioning bell.
I made a simple blockout over the last few days to come up with a good scale for my assets. I tried to find the right balance between it being generally the right scale of the North Guilford church but also slightly bigger to allow more room for the player to walk around. The bell looks very big but that is because it is in real life.
5/12/19
06/12/19
Primary (must have)
Secondary (should have)
Tertiary (could have)
The primary work will conclude the look of the room as it is in the main reference.
Trello project (work management)
08/12/19
After looking at the main reference I realized the frames of the windows are painted planks and not stone like I originally thought.
First pass room models in progress.
Unreal project started.
13/12/19
Continued work on priority assets in Maya.
17/12/19
Bell hero asset finished low poly modelling.
I have uv'd all priority models and added them in Unreal, added first pass Unreal materials and did some simple lighting.
24/12/19
Today I redid and refined all the uv's for the planks, I had to re-do the mesh for the stairs and cellar entirely due to uv errors.
25/12/19
Today I worked on the wooden planks material in Designer, I worked from the reference however despite making it look like the reference image, in Unreal the material didn't look very good so my next intentions are to make artistic changes to the material that would make it look more aesthetically pleasing in engine. I'm currently trying different methods of making the material to see what works. I may have to find a different reference to work from or work solely from a tutorial.
<-- Reference
26/12/19
Substance Designer Wooden Planks tutorial
I developed my other idea of taking a screenshot of the room reference and using Photoshop to turn the planks into a trim to apply to mesh uv's. This will save time and ensure that the textures are exactly the same as the reference, I did this in some of my other projects and it worked very well. However if theres no high quality image then this method drops out, I tested it out with the planks above and it didn't look good.
28/12/19
30/12/19
Since Saturday I have developed and changed a lot. I now have two completed materials, the plank material made in Photoshop using the planks from the original reference. The second material is a wood material I made in Designer from scratch following the tutorial I've previously. I redid and fixed the lighting errors although the quality is still made so I'll try to get a few more good passes going. The ambient occlusion post process really adds a style and sharpens the scene. I removed the stair because it looked bad due to sharp edges and flatness. I since made a ladder which looks much better in the scene. I substance painted the first trim sheet but decided to leave the second one with tiling materials on.
01/01/20
I textured the focal bell object, its a bit flat at the moment and will make further versions of it, for it at least replaces the metal material. I had some issues with Painter not baking by mesh name so I spent a lot of time trying to resolve the issue with no avail, I made a simple bake by exploding the mesh but further work is ideally needed. Also I noticed the lighting completely changes whenever I rebuild the lighting.
13/01/20
Over the last 2 weeks I've been modelling props. I made the sack and the bed with Maya's Ncloth tool. The props are uv'd (except for the cloths). Tomorrow I will also make the clothes line and retopo the cloth meshes into low poly's. The cloth meshes in the screenshots are the raw high poly models at the moment. Ideally the uv's would all be combined onto one trim sheet, if not 2 in total by tomorrow. For personal reasons I've fallen really behind on this project but could still make a come back if I work more on it to make up the time.
As of 13th Monday, I still need to do the following...
Make cloth line model
Retopolagize cloth meshes and uv them
Texture all props in Painter
Import props to scene
Do lantern lighting and redo overall lighting
Make dirt decals for floor and walls. (possibly vertex paint)
(stretch goals)
Animate bell in Maya
make bell mechanic
add sound
make improved wood material passes
make improved bell texture pass
18/01/20
About a week until the deadline, I have now textured and imported all props to the project. I've set dressed the scene. I spent the entire day trying to fix lighting and there were a lot of light errors. I found that the bed was missing its lightmap uv so I had to re-import it. The clotheline had lightmap issues as well. Those were fixed but there are still black glitchy patches all across the room and I'm not sure whats causing them.
20/01/20
Today I gave it my best at making the bell mechanic. I successfully animated the bell and set the animations up in Unreal. I've managed to make the lever switch intractable by setting a keyboard binding blueprint to activate when near it. I'm currently trying to figure out how to have it activate the bell blueprint animation as well and also show a text message telling the player to press E to activate switch.
Tutorial I watched to make lever mechanic
24/01/20
I completed the bell and lever mechanic, the lever now shows a text telling the player that it can be activated, if the player is standing near it. Here's the full blueprint for the lever.
I was advised to start the project from scratch and re-import all assets to solve lighting problems. I was also advised to populate the other part of the room which was empty and didn't have anything there.
I rebuilt level with new lighting, and added some decals to populate the scene.
26/01/20
Today is the deadline and I have pretty much got everything to the standard I wanted it to. I didn't have time to vertex paint and add sound so its something I could expand on in my own time some other time. To replace adding sound to the project I instead made a cinematic trailer using the project sequencer and I added sound to that instead. It was alright but came out a little quite.
Overall this is the last update for this project, the files are all packed and uploaded and I feel like I done everything I could have to make the best for this project. I originally planned to make daily blog updates but doing it weekly is still the best I've done, usually I'd start the blog at the start of the project and finish it at the end so this time I stayed somewhat consistent with the blog.
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