Off The Map-(Part 13)

Week 33 

Off The Map- Evaluation 

This week post will be the final one about Off the map project and I will evaluate my work and summarise the process and outcomes, I will also talk about what I have learn during this project and how I have improved overall as an artist.

Off the map project was a competition sponsored by the British Library and GameCity it is based of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and the point of this was to create a playable level based on the themes that were given (Oxford, The Underground and The Gardens). The project started in February and the deadline for my submission was the 8th of April however the final deadline for the competition is the 22nd of July.

What worked well ?

I have approached the project on the same level as the other groups, I have tried to maintain the same work load to possibly learn other stuff that yet I haven't had the chance to explore and this project was the best opportunity so far to not only  improve as an artist but also my UE4 skills are much better and I feel more confident using this software.

I also think that the second idea for my project worked really well I felt more organised and more clear as to what I need to produce. I also found the modelling process really enjoyable and I really liked the fact that I can be free with what I can produce and how far I can develop this scene.

As to more technical side I think the wind in the foliage worked really well, it really gave more life to this static scene as well as the lighting, improved and made the wonderland look magical.

What didn't work well ?

On the other hand there was a lot of misunderstanding during the process and I found that I lost a lot of time finding out what I needed to do mainly because I didn't have a clear brief to relate to, I don't know what it was expected of me at the end. So when I approached the project for the first time I have combined a very ambitious idea but unfortunately it was unapproachable in the time given.

Also some assets from my previous idea for my project couldn't be reused like the fountain and other objects that I made just because they did not fit in that world, which was very inefficient and time consuming to produce a new bunch.


Any changes ?


During the process of making I decided to make couple of changes. The first one was that I didn't follow the concepts I have designed for the environment due to the change of my project.

I have also changed the grass because the first one didn't work well with the environment and the wind effect that was then applied didn't look too effective so I decided to model simple planes and alpha the grass.

What would I do differently ?

If I was aware of what I needed to produce I would have came up with a better environment that was small but worked well with the theme. I would also spend more time on re-designing the rabbit house so that the idea was more unique. I would produce better assets that fit the theme and make the scene look more like a wonderland from the book.

Overall I am very happy with what I have produced and this project was the only opportunity that I had throughout this year to fully explore and be introduced to working in Unreal Engine 4. I also think there is a lot of things that needs to be improved about the scene however I think that this was a good learning curve for me, and I enjoyed the time creating this level.

Off The Map- (Part 12)

Week 32

Off The Map

This week task was to populate the area with assets and do final touches to the scene. I imported all the assets, I had to make sure everything is named correctly and it's all assigned to the right folders.

To distribute the grass randomly onto the environment I have used the UE4 foliage tool. The tool was very helpful, it saved me a lot of time, where this time was then used to work and further to improve the lighting in my scene.

The most significant part was making sure that the scene looks vibrant and spectacular and the only thing that was missing was the atmosphere. I have changed the sky colour to purple and orange to give more magical (sunset) feel to the environment I have also added some point lights and spot lights to lit the important areas in the scene like the rabbit house and the way towards it, so that area it's not too dark. I have also made the mushrooms texture emissive so it can cast some light to those dark areas, I tried to avoid any black shadows in my scene so I used spot lights under the mushrooms to lit the spot with different colour that the mushroom would cast. I have also used directional light which really changed the look of my environment, I was able to achieve this incredible light that shines through the trees when you look up which really gave a nice character to the level.  

Also to give a bit of depth to the forest I have used post process volume which is one of the options that can be found in UE4 as well as I have allocated blocking volume so that the player cannot escape the scene blocking off edges of the forest.