Off the map- (Part 11)

Week 31

Off The Map

This week’s priority was to unwrapping all the assets also making sure that everything is textured on time and the scene looks up to a good standard.

Before I started unwrapping I had to ensure that all the assets are ready to be imported into the scene, so I had few assets still to model and most of them were assets that would be re-used to populate the scene such as trees, walls and foliage.

In the previous weeks I have modelled grass that was then allocated in the scene, however after it was placed the final appearance wasn't very impressive and the grass looked chunky and too big, I tried to make some changes however I couldn't get it to look the way I wanted so I decided to use planes instead of modelling the grass one by one which resulted in a better appearance and increased efficiency.  

My last task was to organise the texture sheets, I decided to use four 1024, three 2048, one 512 and two 256. The most visible object to the player I have allocated in 2048 textures but also I have make sure that I use the texture fully and I placed other assets to make use of the space.

Unwrapping and Texturing

Week 30 

Unwrapping and Texturing

This is the last stage to fully completing this project. I must say that texturing isn't my strength however I do enjoy unwrapping but I still need more experience to do it efficiently and correctly.

In my first attempt I just used base colours in the albedo map with out any material definition and this was one of the major improvements I had to make. This time I tried to use material textures of different fabrics to have some definition I have also tried to alpha so stuff however some of then didn't work as I have planned and one of them are the fluffy pom poms. I think they look to flat and I cannot see the fur definition which was very disappointing, however I have tried to improve this by working with the normal map and re-create the fur at bit more. 

1024x1024

512x512

Overall I think the textures don't look too bad however I am not fully satisfied with how it came out I think they need more work to them then just giving some fabric, I think they need re-designing which means going back to the concepts and re drawing some and adding more details in terms of cloths  

Rigging

Week 30 

Rigging


This week I took another break from the Alice in Wonderland project and I have concentrated on the character

This week I have attempted rigging my character. This was not necessary, however I thought this will be a good way to gain more marks as this was a stretch goal and learn something I only did once in my first year. In the beginning I have struggles a lot with attaching weights and overall rigging the character however after two attempts that accidentally have been deleted I finally got around it and it only took me three hours to get it fully working where normally I would spend like the entire two days to work it out. I was happily surprised as to how fast I have picked up this new skill and at the end I have really enjoyed this

Off The Map- (Part 10 )

Week 29

Off The Map- (Part 10)

This week is another small update as to how far I got with my Alice in wonderland scene.

This week I have attempted  to make my scene more busy so I have modeled more small assets that I can re-use. 

Screenshots of my scene 

I have also implemented effects such as wind, I thought this would give a nice finish to the environment. However I have noticed that the effect is not as impressive and effective as if I had planes with alphas as my grass. But I have decided to keep this in my scene as I will also have tree's that will have planes on them and I think this will look much better giving the scene this extra touch.

As well as I have managed to make the gate open as the player walks towards it, this was another technical difficulty that I have attempted. In the beginning I thought that the best way to do this will be by creating a blueprint however I was told that there is a easier and quicker way to have this fully working and this can be done in the matinee editor.

Topology

Week 28 

Topology

This week was a really busy week for me, a load of work and lots of improvements to make. I took a slight break from off the map project and I’m back to making improvements in my previous project the dichotomy character. After a review from my tutors about my whole year worth of work I was advised to improve certain parts and re-submit my work. 

Before and After

The first problem was the topology on the face, it wasn't correct and it didn't have a nice flow through out the model. I have spent a tremendous time on correcting the topology using the previous model. However it was just impossible to change it as I would have to completely change the whole face and this would have taken more time than re-doing the entire face from the scratch. Now looking back the the previous model I can see how I have improved this time and the model looks more neat and efficient in terms of budget.

Example of a correct face topology,  I have based my model of this example   

The second problem was that some of the parts of the body such as ears were not attached to the face as they have been created separately. Also it was pointed out to me that they were too detailed for such as small part of the model and I was told to spread the tris equally depending on how visible is this certain element to a player. So when I was finished modelling the face I have extruded and modeled the ears from the head so that the character looks more natural. 

Off The Map- (Part 9)

Week 27

Off The Map- (Part 9)

During this week I have been working on modelling the rabbit house I have based my concept off a hobbit hole

Rabbit house , Orthographic View - 3d model 

I had loads of fun modelling this asset and my next task will be to model more foliage to cover the house and make it more natural and more organic, like it belong to a forest.

I have attempted to model the grass as soon as I have finished the rabbit house and I was stuck for a bit as I didn't know how to approach it, so I have attempted to do some research I have looked through online tutorials and how other artist have attempted it. I was mainly looking how to create a realistic looking grass as possible I thought this would give a great look and atmosphere to the entire scene as most of the assets in my scene are plants and trees.

There are different ways of  modelling grass, it can be easily done using planes as this is most commonly used technique however I have decided to model grass as thin long leaves in a batch.

To help me set the grass in UE4 I have used a paint foliage tool which I found very useful, I could easily change the size of my brush and the scale of the grass which gave more randomness to my scene.

Off The Map- ( Part 8 )

Week 26

Off The Map- ( Part 8 )

Under normal circumstances this week would be for detailed planning and whiteboxing, however given that time is now running short and I had a very strong image in my mind of what the rabbit house scene will look like, I moved straight on to recreating the landscape. After sculpting the landscape I imported all the assets, as well as making brand new ones such as a  bridge and a garden gate, detailed with the suits in a pack of playing cards.

My next task was something completely new to me, making water in Unreal. With the help of various online sources I made a decorative body of water at the front of the house as a nice little water feature and to challenge myself with learning even more about UE4.