OTM Aaron Cunliffe Week 10

I spent the first half of this week adding assets to the level as well as creating my personal level and sorting out my hand in folders so that I wouldn't have to rush with that stuff closer to the deadline.

Once this was done I spent some time optimizing my textures to their respective in game resolutions as they were all at 2 k resolution and we had to make them as efficient as possible.

Once the foundations were laid out I went back to my personal level to fix any issues with presentation and to have a general look back at it to see if I have make any mistakes or if something could have been presented more clearly.

After my personal hand in was practically complete I decided fill in the report for and project and give an overview of my experience during the otm project.

All that remained was populating the level and making sure the level itself was fit for hand in.

Putting assets in the level went by relatively smoothly and it wasn't until we were adding the finishing touches to the level that we began to run into problems.

We had issues with lighting that either refused to bake or would take more than a few hours to bake and with it being the end of the project we couldn't afford to wait around for things to get done.

The latter half of the week consisted mainly of trouble shooting and solving minor issues individually whether it be with someone submitting to the level correctly using perforce or optimizing the level and creating our camera real to showcase the level in its complete state.

By Thursday evening it looked as if we weren't going to be able to submit a final version of the level but thankfully a member of the group took the level home to add the finishing touched that the computers at uni prevented us from doing and we managed to complete all of the final steps with minutes to spare.

Finally we had a working exe file that tutors could play and a show reel of the level for anyone to see which really demonstrated the work and quality that had gone into our level.

screenshots of asset zoo:

Overview of asset zoo

Plain wood material made in substance designer 6

Window 01 in UE4

Window 02 in UE4

Window 03 in UE4

Dining chair in UE4

Sofa in UE4

Arm chair in UE4

Cane in UE4

Gramophone in UE4

Water tank in UE4

Wall designs in UE4

Doors in UE4

Assets in level:

Door in level

Wall trim in use on 2nd floor of hallway

Composition featuring my arm chair 

Another view of upstairs featuring wall decorations 

Window 01 in Level

Sofa as feature of blocking off area

Corridor featuring dining chairs and window 01 

End of corridor with furniture composition featuring arm chair

Close up of dining chair in dining room

Gramophone on dining room table

Over view of dining room featuring chairs in composition

Study area table featuring cane and arm chair

Close up of cane

Sofa in study surrounded by clutter

Water tank in study in lighted area

Overview:

At the beginning of the project I knew I wanted to concentrate on creating props.

Multiple members of the group had already expressed their keenness in working on the levels layout, lighting and particle effects and I felt prioritising prop creation would allow other members of the group to work on their strengths and preferences without having to spread themselves too thin.

I specifically volunteered to create some of the more mundane props such as chairs, window frames and doors as I hadn’t modelled props like this in some time and felt it would make a refreshing change from creating characters and sentry guns; also because I knew group members would always prefer working on the cooler props.

I also considered that some of these props would be the basic building blocks of the level I didn’t want them to be allocated last resulting in lots of smaller props existing in an empty room.

The process of creating these props has been turbulent with lots of triumphs as well as some head scratching but in hindsight I feel the pain has been paid off in the quality of my final work.

I am satisfied with my final work and although there are lots of things I know I could have approached from a different angle with lots of mistakes and setbacks along the way, I feel my assets make a solid collection.

The groups communication could have been better and our ideas went through a little too many iterations resulting in the level itself being changed a few times but this group experience hasn’t been negative in anyway, all of my group members have been punctual and have delivered within an acceptable margin with some excelling; I feel I belong in the middle of the spectrum and admit I could have contributed more to building the level and producing assets more quickly.

Towards the latter half of the project I contributed more to the level and aside from producing props I helped place assets and generally populate parts of the level that needed the extra TLC.

Overall the project has been pleasant and has managed to avoid some of the more frustrating aspects of working as a group and I have learned more in this project than any other in my time on the course. I feel much more prepared for the final year and beyond and the lessons learned in this project will be applied in any further work I produce.

Link to final video of level:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz6fvUhJ1qg&feature=youtu.be