Post-Mortem : Off the Map

This project is another strange one. Throughout this project we as a group have been constantly teased about how our group is probably producing one of the best projects.

I personally was constantly uneasy about this as I could see the manic nature in which we were dealing with tasks, especially towards the end.

I personally right from the start of the project was quick to try and separate myself from the rest of the group. I did this by asking for full responsibility over a whole area. This was going to be the canal area. I also was always going to be responsible for the Puzzle room.

I did this so that I could work solely right from concepting to the finished in engine world that I could put straight into a portfolio. Also working like this puts more pressure on myself to be good at all parts of the process, and also to always work consistently to a high standard. This area was always going to be photorealistic. Basically I wanted complete control over an area within which I would not have to compromise on quality.

This area was going to be first person so that all aspects of it in all dimensions would have to look good. Very early on I suggested that I would be willing to make this area a side scroller, as a compromise so that I could sooner finish and help in other areas.

This at the time was deemed unnecessary at this point. I also throughout the project expressed that I would be willing to drop this entire area, I never wanted my decisions to be detrimental to our level. There would always be plenty of areas, props and general assets for me to get my teeth into, even without the canal area.

 I personally really enjoyed working on this area especially when I was starting to get some really nice screen shots of the grass. I then started to get efficient at the foliage workflow, and was past the beginning, slow learning faze. A lot of the foliage was created relatively fast.

At points during this project I felt like I wasn’t working fast enough and was stalling. But this was due to learning new things about complex materials/ shaders. I now have a decent working knowledge of creating complex materials including Tessellation, complex grass wind, macro variation, Decals, multiplying normal, using multiples of all the maps tiled and not tiled, foliage shaders etc.

I also spent a week learning how to create game ready rock assets. So I learnt How to create the high poly in Z-Brush and how to artistically approach rock creation, which brushes to use, decimation, Dyna Mesh, unwrapping in Z-Brush and applying surface detail in Z-Brush.

I also during this project really pushed high to low poly backing, nearly every part of every asset has been detached and had a high poly made, which has then been backed down onto the low poly to create an AO map and a normal. This has been extremely successful especially in simply smoothing out the edges of relatively low poly assets.

I have also used many other processes during this project although I didn’t learn them in this project I have used them. For example a projection mapping pass is often a part of my asset creating, as is poly painting in Z-Brush and using spotlight. 

As with our projects as a group I feel like there was three core issues

Skill set differences

Our group of 6 had 4 character artist, we had no concept artist, and at the start I don’t think anyone actually wanted to really push engine work. So we had an imbalance.  We gave out the character art roles to these people. But this brings me to the next point.

We had a major skill level difference across the group. Half the group were past the learning faze for many processes so could produce work much faster than others. Where some people felt that they needed to spend only 4 weeks on a character or major asset, for others 13 was more appropriate. This basically took some people out of the project completely, instead of being part of the group and producing assets, they would be responsible for one asset. This would then leave our group 2 or 3 people short for the vast majority of the project. Obviously we as a group could have made compromises here. We could have dropped a character, this would free up one person. Or a stronger member of the group could have been given multiple characters, thus leaving some budding character artists character less. I understand that doing this would have been extremely selfish, although this would have resulted in a better project, this would have stunted the personal development of certain members of our group. If you want to be a character artist you are going to want to develop skills in this area regardless on weather this will actually be detrimental to your grade.

Art style differences

Some members of our group would have felt allot more comfortable working much more stylised. The majority of our group wanted to work realistic so this is what we did. This placed some members outside of their comfort zone, and thus may have stunted there enthusiasm and willingness to really push the project.

Bottle neck with engine

For the vast majority of the project two members of the group were working on two separate engine files for different areas. I feel now that we merged these files much too early. This lead to a bottle neck right at the end of the project when we were importing the finale assets. The singular person now responsible for all the world building and re-importing had a near impossible work load. This lead too many assets being forgotten, having the wrong textures applied or no texture applied and generally poor quality world building “propulasion”. The problems here can be fixed extremely easily and I know that it can be done extremely well given time, but for the DMU deadline the above was the case.

Personally during this project I did spend allot of time developing two complex assets that eventually were not used for the DMU hand in. These were the Bridge and the Boat Shed. This means that these assets were actually a waste of time. This obviously would have been detrimental to our level. The effects of this could have been reduced had we dropped the canal area sooner. Sadly we didn’t, it was dropped just before the last week. This occurred because the canal area potentially wasn’t our worst looking area up to this point it’s simply that this wasn’t one of the core game play areas. We had to drop an area in order to finish on time, so the canal the smallest part of the game had to go.

Basically to summarize this project I am going to use this single screen shot from our level.

This is our menu and start screen, yes this is a good image. But I know that it could be allot better. As this is a singular image the grass here could have been denser to hide the planes. The trees going off into the distance should be denser. I created many many different plants during this project and only a small amount of them are in this image. Their is potential here to actually use the boat shed and or the bridge. Also the Gunneras and the Gunnera flowers I created mid project aren't actually in out finale level anywhere. The models that are being used in the current level are unfinished, but they were never replaced in time for the deadline. My finale Gunneras could have been used here at least as they are only present currently in my personal engine file. Sadly none of the above is present in the above image. Although I say these things this is not a personal gripe at any member of out team, we simply ran out of time, given the circumstances we pt our selves in we did the best we could. But that doesn't make the finale screen shots any less frustrating to look through.  

Hope fully all the issues I have listed can be easily resolved for the Off the Map official hand in. 

Stalagmites : Off the Map

I made this in Z-Brush using Z-Spheres to create the basic forms, I then worked in to this to create the high poly. Here I have included the Stalagmites and the Stalactites in the same mesh.

Super Last Minute Texturing

At this point I was just grabbing any assets that were yet to be textured.

Even though these were extremely rushed textures, I tried very hard not to compromise too much. After high to low poly baking nearly all my assets up to this point and seeing the effect of baking a simple chamfer on to a 90% edge it was important to me not to miss this step.

This is the very last asset I textured, right on the last day. I would have liked to have included more material variation, but I was seriously limited by time at this point. Also I did this on my home computer so I had limited axes to Normal map creation software. I only managed to borrow a flat mates computer for about 5 minutes, during this time I created the normal map and AO map for a tillable Hammered steal texture I created.

This was really quite enjoyable, hammered steal made for a nice material study. Also its always fun to see just how far you can push normal maps. 

Oh and I also did the label and cork for this bottles. After I put so much work into all the other textures, I actually felt guilty not high/low poly baking the cork of this bottle, But I was simply out of time. 

Last Push Before DMU Hand In

Although I have done tones of work towards the Canal section of our game. In this late stage with the deadline looming over us we have decided to drop this section for now. This means that the Bridge and Shed won’t actually be used. But these will be used for the off the map dead line.

Nearly all the other assets though are being used throughout the forest level.

 So I have gone straight back into finishing the Puzzle Room. Here I have grabbed the roof which I already made, a large sculpture wall thing, the hall way door and wall that Jake made. Now I can get a feel for the room again. Firstly I re-made the wall sculpture thing, I made it reminiscent of Christchurch ceilings.

 To do what I wanted with Jakes door turned out to be nearly impossible, so I modeled my own.

I taught Hannah how to projection map. As a result she created these complex designs, which I used in my own work. I’m really happy with what she created here these were extremely successful.

Here I have added in the floor. One of the pieces of feedback we received was to make the floor pattern draw focus to the Glass table. So that’s what I have done here. Originally this floor pattern had circular rings converging on the centre but after I started texturing the floor I decided this was going to take too much time. This was due to the floor texture being a single large texture, it isn’t a tillable. I was individually selecting tiles and filling them in in Photoshop, the rings had far too many tiles in them for this to be a feasible design.

 I did a planet

This is the finished Puzzle Room. I am really pleased with this.

Mud/ Glass Table/ Gunnera: Off the Map

I was really happy with this day, all my texturing development and new engine knowledge all came to fruition.

Within not much time I created this cracked/ dried out mud texture. 

Here I have two tiles, one which is the correct tile for the Albedo and another which is much larger. This creates large inconsistencies across the surface of the texture and greater tonal contrast due to large area in shadow. This breaks up the texture and offsets the tillable nature of it.

I have also used Macro variation which also helps in the exact same way as above. Also here I have used a higher tile than the Albedo to improve textures quality when under closer scrutiny.

Rabbit Hole Texture

I then also created a more gravelly/dusty mud texture. This is for the rabbit hole, embankments and basically anywhere where there would be mud, but where it wouldn’t or couldn’t bake flat.

Again I was happy with this texture.

The Glass Table

I made the glass table to look like a draping fabric. I thought It would be nice as the rest of this Puzzle Room will be extremely angular.

I did spend ages trying to make a good glass texture, but this is seemingly impossible. At some point the texture would make sense, but often if you looked at other table legs through a table leg, this is when it would start to look off. So if this was simply a plain, or simply a less complex shape, I think it would be possible to do a good glass texture.

So instead I went for the current iteration of the design. Here I have tried to capture frosted glass.

Gunnera

Here I have modelled and textured a Large Gunnera plant and its flowers. These are amazing plants so I thought they would make a nice point of interest for this start environment.

Also In the forest part of our game I thought they would make a nice/dynamic change in environment. At this point in the level Alice will be 3 inches tall. This means when putting her in a traditional forest, she is dwarfed and the landscape is extremely restricted, as you can’t get too close to a tree because it will dominate so much of the environment.  So if part of the forest were actually within a Gunnera forest, this will be closer in scale to normal scale people in a traditional forest.  This means that she could be walking in and amongst the trunks of these plants. Also the shapes and lighting caused by the Gunnera flowers and also always being under these large translucent leaves could be very interesting.

I used a scatter function in 3DS-Max to scatter the thorns across the surface of the trunks. 

Physical Bricks: Off the Map

I've started experimenting with making and adding physical bricks to the mesh. I’m using this as a replacement for Tessellation. The Tri count was simply far too high to justify. 

First I started adding the bricks in 3DS-Max. And then started using Unreal instead so that I could see the result immediately. 

I really liked the result of this. In allot less tries I’ve managed to give some textual variation to this wall, and more believability. I’m simply trying to hide the fact that this is a flat plane. Tessellation was good but expensive, this is a more efficient alternative.

I’m also going to use these bricks on the Boat Shed. Here I’m going to use them to try and hide the way the tilling runs round a corner. I got this method by looking at Textures in “Blood Born”, all their walls and floors, when they are not tessellated are crammed with geometry.

 I made these bricks using the same methods I have already been using to make all my rock assets.

Decals: Off the Map

I then created some moss decals for this bridge in order to break up the texture and give it some age. But I quickly found that Decals aren’t currently working in Unreal. So I’m not really shore what I’m going to do here. The texture I’m currently using without Decals is far to clean, I can’t add dirt to this tillable because I want the dirt to Fade as it gets further from the ground.  Also for the level I’m currently working towards I need a large amount of variation.

The off white smudge in the centre of this white wall is my Decal, I’ve changed the wall to white to make it visible.

 I quickly experimented with Adding the decal texture to the brick texture this was just a punt, I was pretty shore that it wasn’t going to work.

Here I’ve used Lerps to mask off the layers from each other before multiplying and or adding them together.

Due to the tilling’s of these textures although they were different I could actually make them line up. But the tilling was instantly noticeable.

Although this wasn’t the desired effect, it’s nice to see that I’m starting to get a hand of Engine. I wanted to merge these two textures together and I quickly managed it.

This is this texture with the correct Brick diffuse. As you can see they do line up perfectly. However the colour of the moss is being affected by the bricks texture. I don’t know why this is happening it should be masked off from it, but this isn’t the method I’m going to be using, so it’s alright.

I am going to have to get decals working, hopefully an update will clear this, otherwise I don’t really know how I’m going to get this done right now.

Bridge: Off the Map

Tesselated Bridge 

Not Tessellated Bridge

Comparing these two I can see that the tessellated texture is slightly better. There is more definition in the shadows and they continue all across the bridge. The untessilated bridge is noticeably flat in comparison. But here there is a huge jump in geometry, about 800 tries to about 40,000, this cannot be ignored.

This beginning part is actually going to be quite demanding on the engine, this means that saving tries here is going to be important. So is tessellating this going to be worth it.

 Here I have Z brushed the brick work using the methods I learnt earlier whilst making the rock tests.

This is what I initially tried to do with this part of the bridge. I quickly worked out that Joining up these brick textures over a seam would be extremely difficult. 

So I repeated the process I used for the Brick areas I had already done. This turned out really well.

A have also finished texturing the inside of the bridge.

Tree: Off the Map

Making trees is horrible. With most assets you can call yourself happy when your asset looks accurately like what it’s going to be. With trees you can’t model every single leaf and every branch, instead you’re trying to create a random shape that will read as a tree. Obviously you try and keep to reference as close as possible and nail the basic skeleton. This in its self is quite difficult, trees are huge complex forms, and are extremely difficult to get good ref for, especially from multiple angles.

Here I have the Skeleton of my tree. I thing I have managed to achieve quite an interesting silhouette. I’ve also made all the branches from different shaped N-Gons, none of them are uniformly round. The base its self is actually really quite a complex shape as it will be possible to get close to it.

The complexity of the branches changes drastically with the distance they will be from the character. On the main trunk there are several steps at which I cut many tries out, the top of the tree is extremely low poly.

As you can see I have achieved a high texture quality. This is mostly due to a better understanding in Unreal than the actual Texture Maps themselves. With this tree I wanted to multiply two Albedos as I’ve seen some great result by doing this.

The Two Albedos I was going to use were going to be one main large albedo that uses the unwrap for the tree. On this Texture all the surface area will be unique, for example patches of moss and cracks will be textured onto certain parts of the tree. On such a large asset like a tree only having this texture sheet could result in a relatively low texture density for the asset. So to counter this a second tiled texture would be Multiplied to this first texture. If the tree only had the tiled texture it could be bland as it would have the exact same surface quality throughout. Using the method I have used the surface of the tree is varied and also maintains a high res when viewed close up. I have also included all the corresponding maps for both textures. When it comes to multiplying Normals you strangely have to first multiply one of you normal maps by yellow and then you “add” it to the other.  I have also used macro variation on this texture.

When I first tested this texturing set up, I used an extremely poor Z-Brush poly paint, a tiling texture that barely tiled and included large shadows. Even though the maps themselves were poor the texture still looked really good, my poly paint even included large areas that were untextured but the tile just filled these in. The poor tiling was fixed due to there being features from both textures on the finale surface, the Macro variation would also have helped. I’ve found that using these methods poor texture sheets can now still make a good finale texture.

Obviously I then re-did all of these maps. Re-poly painted and re made the tillable map to a much higher standard.

Two finished trees

The tree on the right is to be used when you can actually get close to it. Here I have also added Clematis Vines to hide a large joint between two branches, it also adds to the visual complexity of the tree.

The tree on the left is the same model but I haven’t included the Clematis. Also the branches have been moved around. This is so that when you’re looking at many of these trees you don’t see the repetition as there are two different trees.

Strangely although creating two trees for a forest doesn’t actual seem like allot, I have come to find out that this is actually more than is often currently being used. With a group of mates we have been playing through Blood Born it’s a PS4 exclusive, what we call a “next Gen” Title. Blood Born is truly an amazing looking game, all the textures are amazing, and at some points every surface that you can look at is tessellated. When a surface isn’t tessellated they are crowded with physical geometry. Yet in this game when you’re in a court yard with a dozen trees in it they are all the same exact tree. Not only are the trees the same but this tree has an extremely recognise able feature (an area of peeling bark) which I personally immediately noticed.  This is either a slip up by the artist that made this game or I am one of only a few that would notice this. I personally believe that this isn’t a mistake, your average gamer would not have noticed, I only noticed because of the course I’m doing.

So back to our project, I think at some points we are to judgemental of our work. We are viewing our own work as game artists. The audience for our game are members of the public who will likely not notice faults that we would make a big deal out of. Sadly though this is also a project that we will be graded on soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, yea we do actually have to make extremely high-quality work and decisions. 

Although I have been given the OK from my group with these trees I personally am not happy with them. I’m still not happy with the arrangement of the alphas and altering them is a tedious and time consuming task riddled with trial and error. Also I would like to make another tree a Maple of some sort. But for now it’s going to be nice to go back to some more traditional modelling and texturing. my text two assets are a Boat Shed and a Bridge.