Week 4 - Mirror debacle - Zero

So like we wanted to have a mirror maze and I was working on getting reflective surfaces to work dynamically not only with the scene but with other reflective surfaces (as per the expected effects of a mirror maze) however the methods I tried had some very negative affects on performance and as such have been dropped. This however has freed up some work from other areas as if we're not getting reflections we don't -need- a player model. So the work from the character design is being used still for the portraits/statues but we have a lot more energy behind the environmental details which are more important.

Sad.

Week 4 - Engine scene update

A lot of overall improvements to the level layout and basic architectural props have been made, better floors, walls and ceilings etc as that's the bulk. Making some changes to scale and height in certain rooms as necessary, most of the rooms are twice as big as the original week 2 versions (which were just awful looking back) but the ideas were there so it's fine.

I'm still working on getting all the architectural shapes correct and inserted before next weeks presentation but it's wednesday right now so there's time. There's a lot of polish on things like lighting and such but scale and layout is pretty much correct now, we just all need to fill it in

Progress: 

Week 3 - Whitebox V2 screenshots

So since last week we've shifted the shape of the level around a -lot- the room layout is a lot better now with some tweaks to make as new assets come in to give everything the correct amount of space. Most of my task has been creating the whitebox props for where things are going, experimenting with the capabilities of the engine for things like the mirrors and such.

Here's a bunch of progress screenshots with some very badly unwrapped textures for 'context' and a couple of assets by Jake

character concept sheets - Callum

Week 3 - Joshua Dolman

Week 3 - Rose

Low poly Objects unwrapped.

high poly for bake.

OTM Aaron Week 3: modeling

To begin this week I met up with the rest of my Off the Map group and we discussed our current progress as well what we had planned to complete this week.
In our usual Monday lecture we received advice and feedback from our tutors on how to progress as well as what to be careful of in our intended course of action; one thing that was brought up was how we had a lot of rooms to fill which could be a problem considering our time limit and having to actually complete the project. As Well as this we also managed to organise an asset list and assign a few assets to each member of the group. This was long awaited for me as up until now the project lacked focus and I found it difficult to concentrate my efforts and tailor my research to assets and elements of the level that I knew I would be producing so that I wouldn't be wasting time on assets that went assigned to me.

During our meeting I chose a selection of assets that would be essential prices of our level and intend to work from primary assets down to tertiary assets as the project progresses. Once the meeting was over I got to work creating a set of chairs that would be used for different areas of the house. I began by modelling a sort of master arm chair that would be situated in the living room and sat on by someone with some status; I used concepts I had made as well as sources from the internet as reference to give the chair more authenticity and to get the typical motifs of the time correct.

High and low poly models in 3DS Max

Low poly arm chair model

High poly arm chair model

Low poly wall decorations

High poly wall decorations

Low poly window models

High poly window models

Low poly gramophone

High poly gramophone

I must admit I've been struggling with a few things this week in regards to getting assets completed.
For the project we were never set guidelines on how dense we could make the geometry for our models and what detail would be textured or otherwise.
I have had cases where I modeled a chair and wasn't sure whether it was too detailed or not enough as there arnt really rules for this.
I have spent too much time this week adjusting and deleting geometry from assets that were too detailed which has cost me time but as of now I have a much better understanding of the level of detail required for this project in general.
As well as that I have had technical issues with software and have had to spend a lot of time looking at tutorials to figure out rather simple sounding functions; which has used up more time than I would have liked; overall I feel like my workflow this week hasn't been very efficient but I hope this is just because i'm warming up.

So far this week I have managed to create base meshes for the more vital assets that will populate the world such as arm chairs, sofas and wall panels and hope to have both high and low poly versions complete by the end of the week; at least for the assets that I have already started.
Next week I hope to begin texturing the models I have now and have them completed ready to be imported to Unreal Engine 4 so I can finally move onto other assets and hopefully be able to complete them more efficiently than the assets I have been working on over the past week but I optimistic now that I have ironed out most of the creases and have picked up momentum.

Week 3 - Jake