Week 14 – Final Post!

Heya,

So with this week’s blog update, this will be my final update since I will be working on my final hand-in requirements such as my report, presentation and renders. Any updates past this on my project will be small post-production and polish, so I probably won’t focus on trying to get enough content for a blog post unless I find myself with a large change, which hopefully won’t happen now.

There’s not been many changes this week either, but I’ve mostly been trying to focus on getting some attention to the bookcases and the items on there. I’ve also been playing with some decals to break up some of the larger meshes.

With the updates for this week, I tried to focus on adding some smaller details on the bookcases to have some pops of colour so they have a big more attention drawn to them. To do this, I created two different gems to sit on the shelves, some potions, a crow skull and some colour variations to the cloth to place on the bookcases under some objects. I believe these colours added some nice interest to the bookcases and one of the gems have a spinning animation to attract attention too.

Another bit of polish I added was some decals that I created from a decal sheet, using some alphas and grunges from Painter to enhance some areas of the environment. These are just to enhance some smaller areas and are meant to be subtle.

I’ve also added some light flickering to the wall candles (which isn’t shown on the static renders of course), and I will hopefully be able to show these off within a video fly through I hope to produce for my hand-in.

Not a lot of content for this week, but I’ve been hesitant to make any larger changes with the due date soon. I may continue to add and place decals around and some minor post-production adjustments, but overall this will be the final piece. I’m now focusing on getting some nice renders of individual assets, materials and getting a nice fly through and renders of the in-engine environment. Hopefully I will have my project on Artstation in the coming weeks, and any changes will be on my social media, mostly twitter.

This has been a great project with a roller coaster of feelings attached to it, but definitely a project to remember. Hope you all enjoyed reading my updates!

-M

Week 13 – Progress!

So after the past couple weeks of not much progress, I got some encouragement and got some decent amount of work to show this week. Special thanks to Jamie Read who reached out with some much needed advice that gave me the kick I needed! His advice helped with a majority, if not all, of the changes I made this week and the environment looks a lot better for it.

So to cover overall what I changed this week, I managed to fiddle with the lighting with some advice to push the brightness of the candles on the walls and to lower the overall skylight. I’ve had this advice before and not been able to get it to how I want but it seems to have worked this time around. I’ve also finally changed the vfx around the banner to look more magic based instead of a thick line going around the banner. This new one is a similar pattern with a noisier trail along the meshes. I adjusted a handful of meshes to give new details and texture and tried to add some depth where I didn’t before.

So to go into detail with some smaller changes:

The VFX around the banner was in a blockout stage for a long time and I was starting to not think about it, but after some playing around, I adjusted the main meshes the panner material was on and changes the texture to a noisy brush I had in photoshop and manually made one. This new one feels a lot more magical and elegant to me and is a lot more realistic to what would be there, without being the exact same as in-game. A closer look at the VFX in action via gif form can be seen here

The light coming from the tower has also been changed. I have removed what was the original tower ceiling which had 3 cut out sections in it to give the light coming down 3 sections to it too. Advice was given to turn it into one large beam of light and it has made a world of difference. I wouldn’t have thought to change it but I’m definitely glad I have.

To add more depth to the flooring, I have scattered a few of the base meshes of the two different shapes in the tile pattern as a mesh to bring some definition to the floor. While I may need a couple more colour adjusts to the individual tiles to make them match better, I think this makes the floor look a lot more real and makes it look a lot less flat. I’ve also adjusted the textures on the floor which gave it a subtle dirty look and also lightened all the edges, including the bricks to make them stand out more.

I have also tried making the fencing rails a bit thicker. While it’s not a lot thicker, I think it stands out a bit more. I also replaced what was a plane with an opacity mask that had the detailing baked on with the actual mesh since I realised that it wasn’t actually as high poly as I thought and it looked a lot better as a physical mesh since I wouldn’t have the weird colouring in where I was colouring the bake.

The pillars and archways have gone through some smaller adjustments in terms of their sculpts, as I have gone over them with the Orb rock noise to give them some texture due to them looking flat again with the new lighting. The rock noise has given them a lot more texture, especially where the light hits them that I think improves them a lot. The pillars also had a bit of work on the swirl pattern just to make it a lot smoother.

The bookcases got a revamp with their meshes. These versions have metal sections to hold the bookcase together and a swirly pattern down the middle to closely follow the in-game counterpart. The metal parts, I feel, break up the bookcases a bit more and the carving gives the bookcase a bit more detail where it previously lacked anything.

The master material now has subsurface colour on it. It’s currently only on the banner, pillars, archways and the floor, and I’m not entirely sure if it’s made any difference. But it’s been changed all the same!

I fixed an issue with the wall candles being a weird different colour when the lights hit them occasionally. Turns out I just had the wrong texture on them within the blueprint that held the candle, lights and particles in it. Because of course it would be something small and silly.

—–

That documents most of the major changes within the environment this week. A lot more has been adjusted this week in comparison to the past couple weeks but I’m very happy with where it is currently. I went through a large list of small changes I wanted to make and now only have less than a handful of things off the top of my head that need fixing before I need to find something else to mess with in the environment! Soon I’ll be working on all my submission work for the assignment so hopefully I can get all my final adjustments done next week!

-M

Week 12 – Asset Renders

So with this week, I struggled to get any work done. Bit of a cross with burnout and not entirely knowing where to go with the project. There’s also a few smaller things within the environment that I want to change but still not entirely sure how to fix. This has lead to a week of not a lot of improvements or changes in general, but I decided to mostly show the asset renders of some smaller parts of the environment I have so far.

The only changes of this week was the inclusion of adding a small collection of books and paper that will slowly spin in the air like a small whirlwind of books. Currently, they bob up and down with use of a matinee and originally spun around too within the blueprint, but I currently haven’t been able to make both work or have both be used within either blueprint or matinee. I have a small particle effect around the books too including sparkles and runes to suggest they’re flying due to magical influence.

However, that’s basically the top and tail of what I created this week unfortunately. I have however finished the first pass of my individual asset renders I may use within the final presentation. I am creating these renders within Marmoset Toolbag and using them as a focus for the smaller groups of assets that you wouldn’t necessarily see up close within the entire environment. I may create one more group asset render by the end (as well as the typical material and individual asset render breakdown)

I definitely have some adjustments I may do to the renders and maybe some slight editing to bring out the details, but I’m happy having some of the smaller details as a close up.

I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to be doing this week but I hope to continue polish where I can and push the art style further. My hand in is in a couple weeks so I dont have much longer left to get this environment to where it could be. The more weeks go by, the more I think that it really doesn’t bring the warcraft artstyle I wanted, but with it being this close to hand in, I’m just trying to push it as much as I can without breaking it.

Any feedback, especially now with the hand in looming over me soon, is greatly appreciated as always!

 

Week 11 – Animation and Portals

So this week hasn’t brought too many changes, just small fixes and adjustments along two major changes. Been struggling with concentrating on the environment again and having a hard time figuring out where to go with it now I’m in a polish phase. I mostly fixed animations so that they can play once the environment is in simulate mode, and made the portal closer to how I imagine it to be, instead of the temporary panner material I’ve had on it so far.

So while nothing major has changed, I have created a matinee to allow for the banner, books and candles to float in the air slightly to actually suggest a magical influence over them. Due to not being able to upload videos here, check out this link for the vimeo video of the animations in action. While subtle, I thought it really added to the scene. For next week, I plan on having groups of books and paper floating around in the tower and near the bookcases, similar to the in-game version. With advice from my tutor too, I may try to change up the pace and pattern of some of the animations to make them all different from each other and seem a bit more natural.

My other change is my portal, which I revamped. While it isn’t completely finished, it has all the basic parts in for me to polish and is a lot clearer of an idea to what I wanted.

The portal now uses an image from the in-game city Dalaran, which is the city the environment is based in, and would be where you portal in from in-game. While hard to show in the screenshot, there is a hazy purple swirl layer infront of the image that rotates around. The particles need a little more polish to fit the shape of the portal, but there are currently basic circles and runes that all move around in a circle shape, and a few of those particles fly into the center, which makes it feel like the portal can be stepped into. There is also now a glow that comes off from the portal onto the flooring in front of it.

As an extra addition to the environment, I also textured the artefact book infront of the banner to make it look like it has text inside along with a diagram. While I may go back and adjust it, it now looks like there’s something inside instead of a blank floating book.

These are the main changes I’ve made this week. Next week I do have a couple things I’d like to complete, but I’m solidly in polish phase now and I’m trying to avoid adding anything completely new to my scene unless necessary.

Things I’m hoping to sort this week:
– Floating books and pages around the tower
– Fix up the portal particles
– Improve the swirl around the banner – I said I would do this last week I believe, but I haven’t found a good solution just yet!

Until next time!
– M

Week 10 – Materials!

Heya,

So this week I’ve been able to make some decent progress on a lot of things I’ve needed to sort for a long time, included the long awaited materials that I’ve put off for way too long!

—– Materials —–

So for ages I’ve had two materials that I’ve needed to complete: a wall tile and floor brick pattern. For the floor brick tile, it’s been a hard shape for me to sort out due to a unique shape.

While I understood the shape, it was hard to create a tilable material that I could put everywhere due to the interlocking patterns. While it isn’t the best way of doing it, I ended up physically modelling the shapes based on the in-game screenshots I took and placing them on the floor asset so I could bake it down as a high poly variant. This was very time consuming, but I couldn’t see any way of making it tile without using up just as much time and I had been putting it off for too long.

The second material I needed was a wall tile, which was a pretty simple shape that I had a temporary material for already. However, this temporary material was really bad, and I ended up modelling a tilable material and turning it into a tilable material I could use wherever. 

—– Assets and Texturing —–

I’ve also done some texturing and HP sculpts for some of my assets, including my ceiling, floors, stone center piece, banner updates, floating table and the cloth, broom and scroll barrels. I’m working my way through my final assets for a texturing pass to get them in, and I’m almost finished with all of them now. I plan on going through a second time with some of the major assets to push the art style further in the next couple weeks for a final polish pass.

With the creation of the broom, I’ve also been playing around with timeline blueprints to make the broom sweep and move around. It’s currently able to sweep basically on the spot with a basic dust VFX attached, but I want to make it move around and look a little more realistic in how it’s moving. I also want to be able to take that timeline idea and take it to other objects in the scene such as the floating table, books, banner and candles and make them slightly bob in the air to suggest they’re floating. I’m hoping to get this done within the next week.

So, overall, I’ve finished up a lot of important things I needed to do this week, and have a few bug fixes and adjustments I need to sort out during this week, along with some minor tasks. I’ve been playing around with some render setups for my final asset breakdowns too which I’m hoping to have finished next week so I can show them off and be ready for the final hand-in.

Tasks for next week:
– Various small bug fixes/important adjusts
– Animations for floating assets
– Finish all asset render setups
– Create a more finalised portal VFX, due to my current temporary shader being very out of date and in desperate need of an update.

Until next time!

Week 9 – Pushing Through

So it’s week 9, and I’m getting to a decent place with my project that I feel I’m more into an improvement phase, and don’t have many major pieces left to create. I have smaller assets I want to create and many different techniques I want to incorporate into the environment. However, with all the stuff going on in the world, this project has definitely suffered this week. I’ve now moved back home for the forseeable future until everything blows over, and I’m hoping to get back into a routine and find other ways of getting consistent feedback.

But onto updates! There’s been more smaller fixes this week, but a few of them. After the master material fix last week, I was able to adjust the lighting and colours to fit the theme like it should. I’ve added a few point lights around the environment to warm up some details, and some lights around glowing books to make them stand out a lot more.

One of the major differences is that the archways are now finally sculpted! I’ve tried to make them match with the concept a little bit with the patterns and to make sure they match the pillars. I’ve also fixed the baking errors on the floor where some pieces overlapped in the bake. The balcony’s floor has also been modelled to have more details in it, and include a similar pattern to the main floor. This bake has a couple errors for the time being and I plan to return back to fix that once I can figure out the issue.

I have some smaller assets still to create which are part of the main environment (so not extra clutter assets), and I want to try and animate a couple smaller assets. I’m also still needing to work on a few of the tilable materials I’m needing: the brick floor and the tiled wall. Both materials are unfortunately more complex shapes and patterns that I’ve been struggling with creating. I’m planning on focusing on these in the coming week and hopefully will have more to show next week!

Hope you’re all staying safe too!
– M

Week 8 – Major Bug Fixes!

This week has been a rollercoaster of emotions, but definitely a week that I believe I made a decent amount of progress.

(Linked later, but here’s a link to a vid of my environment in real time so far!: https://vimeo.com/397829735)

—– Bug fixes! —–

For this week, my major change was finally fixing an issue that I’ve actually had during the entire project and haven’t known how to fix. I’m not sure whether I had mentioned this issue in my previous blog posts, but I had an issue where meshes/textures were discolouring in engine along the UV seams, and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I’ve been on and off researching and testing this problem the whole project, but I finally came across a polycount thread that gave me a fix. And of course, in usual game dev fashion, it was something super simple! Turns out that because I was using a basic white texture for my master material, my normal maps weren’t being tracked as a normal map through the texture sample node. One quick swap with actual textures and making sure the normal texture sample is set up correctly, and every mesh is now baking correctly. Which means I now have a slight lighting/colour change within the environment. But one big step forward and a couple steps back!

—– VFX —–

I’ve also messed around with some vfx this week, including a glowing spiral around the banner, dust and fire sprites! I even added some more decals for the open books around the environment. Since last week’s post, I also now have a lot more books scattered around the environment! This makes the environment look a lot more messy and chaotic like the original concept.

Link to video of my VFX/Dynamic environment in play!: https://vimeo.com/397829735

—– New Textures/Sculpts/Materials —–

For some final changes I’ve done this week, I’ve also sculpted and textured a lot of different books. For base meshes, I had around 8 different books of different sizes and shapes, along with an open book mesh and a mesh ready for animating for flapping around. I now have all the closed books sculpted and textured differently to make the bookcases look like they have many different types of books in there. This has made the books blend into the environment a lot better and now looks more natural. The open books still needs sculpting, along with the flapping book mesh.

I’ve also created a basic brick texture in Designer, and I will need to revisit it in the future, but I just wanted a brick texture to be put in the environments for the wall sections you can see in the main room. I like how it looks now, but it may need a colour adjust later on.

So overall, I’ve made more progress than I thought I had this week. I’m coming out of my burnout quite nicely and feeling hopeful with my new changes and progress. As always, feedback is always welcomed!

‘Till next time!
– M

Week 7 – Mid-Project Review

So week 7 has been a long one, and one filled with a lot of burnout, lack of motivation and imposter syndrome. With having the mid-project review with my tutor, I established that I felt comfortable with where I currently am with the environment. All important basic meshes are in the environment at a low poly quality at least. With a handful of assets completed with a high poly sculpt and textures. I have most colour references in there and a lighting setup I feel comfortable with.

Unfortunately, with experiencing burnout, I’ve been trying to power through with different aspects of the environment to bring back my motivation, and also keeping my own time to chill and not work so that I don’t make it worst. But I’m slowly working through it, but this is mostly why not much work has come from this week. But onto the improvements I’ve done this week:

—– Lighting/LUT table —–

So this week I got to a level that I genuinely feel comfortable with my lighting in the environment, and a lot of that has to do with a new LUT that a friend of mine helped me out with. This has warmed up the environment considerably and now the environment doesn’t seem to bright, and is definitely an improvement from the previous LUT I was using. In this variation of the environment, I’ve also brightened up the god rays coming from the tower, and added two more to the further sides of each pillar near the tower.

—– Texturing and Sculpting —–

In this week, I’ve textured a few different props, including the banner, ladder, candles and floating table. I’ve also improved the bookcase archway meshes and the orb lights ready for the next stage. While these textures don’t seem to blend into the environment too well, which will require adjusting some colour levels, they are finally textured and in the environment. Most meshes are now ready and waiting for a sculpting and texturing pass which are my priority for the next couple weeks.

Overall, not much has taken place other than minor adjustments. Hopefully this week I can continue with some sculpting and texturing so that all meshes can be on their final pass and only require some colour adjustments to blend into the environment better. VFX are also still being looked into for the environment, but I hope to really focus on them in the next week too, as I didn’t get round to it this week. Hopefully I continue staying on track and making nice progress every week, and I can battle through the burnout and see some major improvements.

Until next week!
– M

Week 6 – Thinking with portals!

So it’s week 6, and I’m officially half way through my project. I’ll have my mid-project review this coming week with my tutor, and this is the time for some major reflections on this project.

From last week, I had re-adjusted my layout at the back of the room, and made it so there isn’t an open space to suggest a diorama. Instead, now the back of the room is walled up and I have now created a low poly doorway with a temporary portal material in there to suggest the idea that I want my final piece to be.

The material isn’t finalised, and I plan on creating a portal through the use of VFX and shaders. I’ve been looking into tutorials and ideas, and working on a final pathway to go with.

This week, I also created some smaller assets, such as two barrels for scrolls, a longer scroll, and adjustments to the fencing near the stairs. While smaller assets, they helped fill out some areas. I also textured some paper pages too so that the pages scattered on the floor look like different pages out of books. I may go back to these later, but for now they work for what they need to.

Finally, I had added a LUT. The LUT I added to the scene was taken from the Amplify LUT Pack, which is free on the UE4 Marketplace right now. It is a close LUT to the idea I’d like to have in the end, and I’m using this currently, with a possibility of creating my own to be a little more customised later down the line.

While overall, I don’t believe I have done much work, I believe progress is still consistently improving and continuing. Continued sculpting and texturing is a priority, along with a look into Marvellous Designer usage. This weekend I wasn’t able to get much work done since I went home and I took a couple days to get some serious R&R, and now I’m back feeling refreshed and ready to take on more work.

This week I hope to:
– Continue focus on sculpting/HP/texturing
– Look into stylised lighting
– Look into portal VFX
– Look into creating a banner in Marvellous Designer
– Continue filling out the bookcases and environment to give a chaotic messy feel

 

Week 5 – Lighting Revamp and Details

—– Overview —–
This week has still felt like not much of an improvement as I’m now hitting the mid section of this project. I feel like I’m on track for the project, however it is getting harder to truly look at the project and figure it out.

—– Wall adjusting and idea change —–
This week I’ve been focusing on some of the larger elements of the environment. The first major change involved closing off the large opening at the back of the room. With this change, the environment is now an enclosed environment instead of my original idea of a diorama. While I still love the idea of it being a diorama, I was struggling with balancing the lighting with having two large open windows of light, so the interior of the room was becoming darker and I couldn’t see the details very well. To fix that issue, I blocked off the room and I plan on designing a doorway to still make it look realistic, but keeping it either shut or finding a different creative way of creating a doorway, such as creating a portal doorway, similar to the portal into the Stormwind portal room within World of Warcraft (pictured below).

So the environment is branching off slightly from the in-game version of the environment, but I am trying to keep it similar enough to be believable that it’s still in the same world.

With this lighting change, the lighting coming from the tower seems to come through a lot nicer and flows a little more into the room still. To draw your attention to this area, which is the main vocal point of the environment, I made it a lot brighter there and also now updated the base model of the banner and fencing so the intricate detail of that area with drag your attention over. With the inclusion of the Kirin Tor logo and glowing effects around the banner, I hope this area will definitely be the vocal point.

—– Flooring —–

Another major change this week was my attempts on the flooring. This has been an on-and-off project for the past week which I have been struggling with a lot. I have done a few different tests to create the floor successfully, including making the floor into sections to have more UV space, or to bake various levels of detail onto a low poly (both sectioned and a full floor), but most have not seemed good yet. The current version is all the high poly details baked and the floor looks very flat and not too clear on the detail. However, having the detail on the floor makes the floor very high poly, and also makes the floor seem bumpy and wouldnt make sense for people to walk over.

I am still testing this as I go, but this baked version is my temporary solution so I can see how it would work. I also have the high poly in engine in-case I need to see how it could be seen with better quality detail.

—– Weekly Evaluation —–

Overall, I have made smaller changes, but they all change the environment for the better and have made major improvements to the project. I made all the changes and fixes I mentioned last week, and would like to continue improving the meshes and maybe even start adding some more VFX.

• Create idea for new doorway fix
• Figure out final plan for floor
• Come up with ideas for custom floor tiles
• Banner into marvellous designer

After seeing the progress I’ve made from last week to this week, and every week in general, I’ve been impressed with what I’ve created and hope I can keep up the pace and bring it to life. I have two more weeks before the mid-project meeting I believe, and feel confident to show my idea and my plans for the future.

Until next time!