Off The Map Report
Off The Map Report
Harry Taylor
The off the map project is a group based assignment in which students are tasked to create an interactive UE4 level of a renowned Shakespearian environment. The environments can be reimagined to which ever style guide they see fit as long as it stays relevant to the core themes, with groups able to pick from: the shipwreck in “The Tempest”, the forest from “Mid-Summer Nights Dream” or the castle from “Macbeth”. Each group must take it upon themselves to assign job roles which each group member undertaking and provide for the team, for example a member will be set a role such as: concept artist, texturing and unwrapping, 3d modelling, rigging, character design, and architecture modelling. It is up to the group to establish their own meeting dates and organisation structures to ensure that the project runs successfully, the groups will also give regular presentations to lecturers and students to show the progression of how their project is going. Groups will compete against each other to achieve an aesthetically pleasing and functional environment, with the winners UE4 project being archived into the British Library.
My group was established as Team Battlestar, and wasted no time in immediately beginning to plan out what we wanted, and the dynamics of the project. As a group we decided on recreating the castle from “Macbeth” because we all had had a passion for medieval themes and architecture, feeling we could include some interesting themes with this piece of literature. We began by collecting images and references for mood boards and started building on a solid style-guide and starting point for what aesthetic to go for. “Macbeth” is set in Scotland, so we wanted to have a strong, cold and imposing castle with Viking/Nordic theming, which I feel reflects the tragedy and loneliness that Macbeth felt in the writing. In order to counter the blandness that may come from these strong un-ornamental structures, we decided to attach the stylised art direction from games such as the “Fable” franchises. Floating islands were incorporated within our project, inspired by the verticality of “Bioshock Infinite”, we also incorporated more darker and regal themes from “Dragon Age Inquisition”. After we had established what our art direction would be using, we used a variety of mood boards and gathered round to work on the layout of our castle, firstly with a rough sketch. We focused our efforts on trying to create a route in which juggles between displaying the power and vastness of a castle whilst trying to maintain a manageable workload to create within the allotted time. The route originally endeavoured to have five areas of interest, these being: the main gate, a corridor, the courtyard, a banquet hall and a throne room. Using this rough sketch our concept artist Ellie Apperly was able to create some more refined layouts to help the asset creators have a place to start with what to create. From here we used these layouts to design a whitebox of the entire level using UE4, to begin getting a 3D representation of how our project was going to look. As its Macbeth, we thought that adding the witches to our level would be interesting, so mood boards were created to get a feel what designs we were going for. We took the inspiration for this from a Pans Labyrinth perspective, and after this our character artist was able to create some concept for the witches.
My role in this team was Asset Creator, and I was assigned assets to create to fill the concepted layouts Ellie created. I would be responsible for the entirety of each of the assets assigned to me, so I would conceptualise, model, unwrap and texture, then hand it over to our technical artist Mugisha to then place it within the UE4 level. I aspire to eventually become a game designer within the industry, which means I will have to work my way up the development ladder and will need to start as a junior artist at a company. My ethos is to be a jack of all trades which hopefully help me move my way up to designer so to have the opportunity to be able to practice all processes within the entry level placements, applying to career aspiration. As I would be working in all fields of the development pipeline I would be flexible and free to assist other members of the team, whether it would be with my textures, models or help unwrapping. I was also confident to give advice for our character artist as I believe I performed exceptionally well on my character project, and felt the skills I had acquired in Zbrush were of a high standard- something I could help Dan with if required.
Using the skills which I have learnt this year I was able to confidently tackle each asset that was assigned to me by the group. The first assets I was assigned was the bookcase and chandelier. Using our group’s stockpile of reference and moodboards I began to create a rough concept for how I wanted the bookcase to look. I created a concept for this asset as I feel it was the only one that needed an individual look, bar the village houses which I mistakenly didn’t create due to lack of time. Using the these rough concepts I was able to make a quick start into my asset, and by taking full advantage of the symmetry modifier, something I’ve only recently been fully optimising. I was able to create both the high and low poly models in sufficient timing. After showing the finished model to my group the suggested that I add ornamental wood carvings into the side, I first tried this in 3ds max but I found the program to be too rigid for what I was going for so I opted to create the designs into Zbrush which allowed me to paint the carvings in more fluidly. From there I back them onto my low poly model as normal maps. After the normal and AO bakes were done using Xnormal, I then used substance designer to create the wood texture, and used my previous characters leather boot texture as the book covers and altered the hues in Photoshop to add a bit of diversity. A little subtle effect that I was proud of was the normal maps in the paper to make the pages pop out, on reflection I would have liked to add was some planes sticking out of the book to make the pages pop out just that little more.
The chandelier was the next asset I tackled, I created a cylinder primitive hollowed it out, then duplicated it and scaled it down, meaning the basic shape of my model was quickly done, going for a rustic bare medieval design. To create the chain links I decided to use low poly models for each link which I felt would have a nice effect with PBR instead of using alpha maps. Upon reflection I feel this wasn’t perhaps the best move, as it was too time and poly consuming. I used normal maps as bolts to save on polys, and created the metal texture using substance designer, and again to save on time, I used my characters floatation jackets texture as a base to be slightly alter as the candle wax texture.
Next I was assigned to create a chest of drawers that shares the same design as my bookcase. I used this to my advantage and actually used the bookshelf model, scaled it down and filled the shelfs with drawers instead, this was a fairly quick process which produced a whole new asset that had already been unwrapped. I used normal maps to create the gaps between the draws and added a little detailing into each handle, using the already created wood and metal textures.
I was also asked to create a bench which was fairly simple to create and didn’t require too much time, as most elements to the model were easily replicated and the angular shapes of each part made it easy in the unwrap process. In order to drawback some of the poly count which had arisen from my bookshelf and chandelier I had made the indents on the bench as normal maps, which is a bit of a risky move to have on such a large surface but the bench itself is to low down for the player to see whether or not the detail is actually part of the topology.
Lastly I was assigned to create the village, it seemed like more of a daunting job as I actually had to consider the structure and functionality of the architecture, and would be working with a lot more elements then the previous assets. I created three houses in total, to give the village a little variation. I tried to create different shapes whilst preserving the same overall design, and did this through using the same elements for all three houses, such as the wooden boarding, roofs, shutters, basic structure, and just changing the scales to make it appear different. The textures were all created in substance design, with emissive maps on the windows to help the buildings stand out in the dark background, I also added tiles and brick models sticking out of the asset to give it a bit more of a 3D look.
Our team was able to maintain a consistent level of organisation and communication within the group. Weekly we would meet up on a Wednesday at 2pm and discuss how the project is progressing and where to rectify any mistakes and to assign tasks. Our main source of communication outside of these meeting was our Facebook group page, which we would frequently share our progress and ask for criticism and feedback on our work through the sharing of screenshots or our models posted on sketchfab. This meant we had a constant stream of helpful communication which kept everyone in the loop, and to discuss points which had been missed on the meeting days. We also had a group blog in which we would post our weekly progression on the project so everyone knew where everyone is. I attended every meeting that was planned and kept a constant and consistent level of communication to my group letting them know how I was doing, and feel that I for the majority of the project I acted as a responsible team member on this front.
On reflection of this project I feel that I dedicated everything I was physically able to, and grew passionate and genuinely attached to the project, providing some of the best assets that I had ever created. I feel I was helpful and contributed as much as I could, such as handing over textures for other members work at their request, and maintained a positive and happy relationship with my team. Nearer the end of the project I experienced some negative personal matters that interfered the work I was creating, resulting in myself not creating an asset I was assigned in time and maybe becoming a little less easy to contact within the group. My group understood the situation, and handled it acceptingly. I also worked from home a lot, perhaps in future I would stay in the studios a little more so I can work alongside my group, as there was quite a bit of progression to the UE4 level which I felt I may have be a little too absent from due to this; however, my group didn’t see this as a problem, as long as I was doing the work. Coming to a conclusive ending, I feel our final product was done to the best of our ability, and was a rewarding and successful project for us all. We all worked well together, and I do not feel there I anything we could have drastically improved on as a group.
