Production Week 8
Week ending 10th May
Our deadline approaches. We have one of our last most detailed feedback sessions to date. The team has a lot to do but we have come such a long way! Well done team!
Viktor - Art Director
Only 2 weeks left until our hand in date so everyone is working to their best. Some of us puts a lot of extra hours in currently which really shows. Glad I can be part of such a hard working team.
I've had a lot of PC issues this week, as I've spent the whole weekend fixing crashes and then spent the whole Tuesday fixing drivers. Very unfortunate timing, but I still managed to pull some late nights and get work done.
I've finished the last bits of the architecture for the 2nd floor. Everything is in place now and It's really pleasing to call that part finished.
Then started fixing issues of stuff already in the scene. Lightmaps weren't a problem so far as we had to revert to only dynamic lighting after the covid-19 lockdown, but now we're able to bake again, so lightmaps showed they need fixing.
First it was the plinth under our hero statue. Fixed geometry, redone UVs and added a second UV for lightmaps. I've spent some time reading and learning about the best practices of lightmap creation. Very valuable!
Once the plinth was done, I got feedback from our lighting artist, Willow, that the arches are not baking right at all. Being constructed from individual bricks, the UVs were not usable for lightmaps and fixing the mesh would've been way too much time, so only one way to go... Brand new mesh from scratch! To optimise mesh creation I've had to learn how to use ArrayMesh function in Zbrush, which have sped up the workflow immensely. Less than a day spent from start to finished mesh in game, not too bad.
After these major issues were solved, it was time to fix smaller things. I've resized one of the pillars to avoid clipping through other assets then I've tried to cleverly reuse some meshes that we already have to hide seams and add more interest.
This week I also added POM to the floor to help it not look flat. I also hid the gaps that were in the roof so you could not see through it.
This week feedback sessions was good, tutors gave us loads of small minor tweaks to so help push the realism of the scene. Overall the scene is looking great and I'm proud of the team.
Adrian - Prop & Environment Artist
This week I finished off the door handle and created a new stand for the marble statues to sit on, as the tutors did not like the previous one.
The handle, I enjoyed making this prop as it has a very unique look and style, the handle reminds of a motorbike break pedal. For the purposes of readability I changed the colour of the black plate from gloss black to a more of a metal grey (unfortunately getting the right value of black in unreal can be difficult) and also made the surface detail more readable from the reference picture. I had a hard time trying to work out what the pattern/finish of the back plate, but thankfully the eagle eyes of my team mates helped me to sort it (thank you).
The new stand, I tried to keep to the reference as mush as possible in terms of proportions as the previous stand the tutors felt was a little on unreal side and too thick.
Josef - Prop & Environment Artist
I've spent this week finishing a photogrammetry relief sculpt and beginning to finish the final pass of the storage cupboard. Feedback was great as its now certain tweaks and quick improvements to the final scene, from the feedback the scene is beautiful and great to walk around and explore. I had to adjust the positioning of the pillars so a certain pesky seam wasn't visible. That was down to the texture space coordinate option in substance painter but due to the minimal issue it could be rotated and made out of sight. the relief had a bit too much heavy AO so i took off the harsher ambient occlusion in the textures and re-imported them.
Urim - Prop & Cinematic Artist
With only 1 full production week left, we have managed to come a long way with this project, and I'm very pleased with how it's turned out.
This week I worked on getting the gate resized and making it fit the curved archway a lot better. I came up with quite a few irritations and asked the team and tutors what they preferred. Initially, it was the full gate that covers the entire archway but after receiving feedback it was best just to cut off the curve at the top as it sits more natural like that.
I then worked on making fake images behind the windows so it looks like there's an interior. I did this by using bump offsets so that there's some parallax on the image as well as adding a dirt mask on the material making it look more believable. I also had to model the window for it as well as a simple ledge.
Another piece I worked on was the architecture of the second floor. This was quite a quick asset as it didn't need much attention to detail since it'll be hard to see from the ground floor. I simply sculpted the low poly in Zbrush and used a tiling texture within the scene.
Finally, I had to make some color adjustments on the bench as well as fixing some wood grains after receiving feedback.
Hannah - Foliage Artist
For me this week was a lot of tweaks and odd jobs. I started off by making my Clematis centre more saturated in colour as per feedback in the previous week. This little change makes a huge difference!
I spent a little time adjusting the roughness of the orange tree as well. This is still going to need some texture work but the roughness values do look better.
Our tutor was suggesting we push for some second floor accessibility. I changed the collisions of the stairs so that you could in theory walk up them to see what it felt like. Seeing that your head didn't clip through anything I did some set dressing to the upstairs just in case we decided to open up this space. I was aiming for a messy student sculptor vibe, where lots of things have been left laying around and bits and pieces are still being moved around after someone has moved in. I also adjusted the size of things such as pots up here so that you could see them from the ground floor. After this weeks feedback session it's decided we still won't access the second floor, but the set dressing is helpful for the cinematic at least.
We still had a sculpting stand that had not moved beyond first past texturing. I took on this asset and tweaked the UVs a little to make sure wood grain flowed the right way and made 3 variations of textures for this as its scattered a lot throughout the scene. A cleaner version, a dirty one and then a much older grungy version.
I also switched out all the splines to meshes to help the game experience run smooth. Once this was done I started working on a falling leaf VFX. This was very subtle using pre-existing meshes and scattered periodically throughout the scene with a delay so that the leaves appear to fall more randomly. Feedback has suggested that the leaves need a little more spin on them, hopefully this is a small fix which will really help push the beauty of the scene!
My feedback this week revolves around a lot of minor fixes mainly around light maps, which should be simple enough to achieve! Fingers cross speedtree doesn't crash on me again!
Willow - Lighting Artist
Two weeks left to the final deadline. As a team we are hoping to get everything in by Monday the 11th so it's been a very busy week for all. Personally responsibilities have still been a priority in regards to lighting and this has come a long way and it's starting to feel complete. Intensity of highlights have remained a important factor to get right and I have been asking for plenty of feedback on all of this. I have also been putting time into fixing small issues such as some highlights feeling to strong on ceilings and archways. This was resolved with light blockers softly adjusted to let light in how I desired.
We also received lots of feedback from the tutors this week. Meaning as producer, with assistance from the art director I was able to re focus the team on certain tasks so we could resolve the small issues that remained in the current environment. I have also begun a second pass on the lamp in scene and adjusted the dust that was made by a team member very early on in the projects timeline.
Our deadline approaches. We have one of our last most detailed feedback sessions to date. The team has a lot to do but we have come such a long way! Well done team!
Viktor - Art Director
Only 2 weeks left until our hand in date so everyone is working to their best. Some of us puts a lot of extra hours in currently which really shows. Glad I can be part of such a hard working team.
I've had a lot of PC issues this week, as I've spent the whole weekend fixing crashes and then spent the whole Tuesday fixing drivers. Very unfortunate timing, but I still managed to pull some late nights and get work done.
I've finished the last bits of the architecture for the 2nd floor. Everything is in place now and It's really pleasing to call that part finished.
Then started fixing issues of stuff already in the scene. Lightmaps weren't a problem so far as we had to revert to only dynamic lighting after the covid-19 lockdown, but now we're able to bake again, so lightmaps showed they need fixing.
First it was the plinth under our hero statue. Fixed geometry, redone UVs and added a second UV for lightmaps. I've spent some time reading and learning about the best practices of lightmap creation. Very valuable!
Once the plinth was done, I got feedback from our lighting artist, Willow, that the arches are not baking right at all. Being constructed from individual bricks, the UVs were not usable for lightmaps and fixing the mesh would've been way too much time, so only one way to go... Brand new mesh from scratch! To optimise mesh creation I've had to learn how to use ArrayMesh function in Zbrush, which have sped up the workflow immensely. Less than a day spent from start to finished mesh in game, not too bad.
After these major issues were solved, it was time to fix smaller things. I've resized one of the pillars to avoid clipping through other assets then I've tried to cleverly reuse some meshes that we already have to hide seams and add more interest.
Shay - Material Artist
I spend most of this week sculpting different pieces of stone pieces to create a pile next to the statues. It was nice jumping back into Zbrush again and doing some sculpting. The feedback I got on it from the tutors said it felt very out of place in the scene and it still felt like it was first pass. I think cause we only have one week left I might pass this asset on as it would take me too long to re sculpt in Zbrush.
This week I also added POM to the floor to help it not look flat. I also hid the gaps that were in the roof so you could not see through it.
This week feedback sessions was good, tutors gave us loads of small minor tweaks to so help push the realism of the scene. Overall the scene is looking great and I'm proud of the team.
Adrian - Prop & Environment Artist
This week I finished off the door handle and created a new stand for the marble statues to sit on, as the tutors did not like the previous one.
The handle, I enjoyed making this prop as it has a very unique look and style, the handle reminds of a motorbike break pedal. For the purposes of readability I changed the colour of the black plate from gloss black to a more of a metal grey (unfortunately getting the right value of black in unreal can be difficult) and also made the surface detail more readable from the reference picture. I had a hard time trying to work out what the pattern/finish of the back plate, but thankfully the eagle eyes of my team mates helped me to sort it (thank you).
The new stand, I tried to keep to the reference as mush as possible in terms of proportions as the previous stand the tutors felt was a little on unreal side and too thick.
Josef - Prop & Environment Artist
I've spent this week finishing a photogrammetry relief sculpt and beginning to finish the final pass of the storage cupboard. Feedback was great as its now certain tweaks and quick improvements to the final scene, from the feedback the scene is beautiful and great to walk around and explore. I had to adjust the positioning of the pillars so a certain pesky seam wasn't visible. That was down to the texture space coordinate option in substance painter but due to the minimal issue it could be rotated and made out of sight. the relief had a bit too much heavy AO so i took off the harsher ambient occlusion in the textures and re-imported them.
Urim - Prop & Cinematic Artist
With only 1 full production week left, we have managed to come a long way with this project, and I'm very pleased with how it's turned out.
This week I worked on getting the gate resized and making it fit the curved archway a lot better. I came up with quite a few irritations and asked the team and tutors what they preferred. Initially, it was the full gate that covers the entire archway but after receiving feedback it was best just to cut off the curve at the top as it sits more natural like that.
I then worked on making fake images behind the windows so it looks like there's an interior. I did this by using bump offsets so that there's some parallax on the image as well as adding a dirt mask on the material making it look more believable. I also had to model the window for it as well as a simple ledge.
Another piece I worked on was the architecture of the second floor. This was quite a quick asset as it didn't need much attention to detail since it'll be hard to see from the ground floor. I simply sculpted the low poly in Zbrush and used a tiling texture within the scene.
Finally, I had to make some color adjustments on the bench as well as fixing some wood grains after receiving feedback.
Hannah - Foliage Artist
For me this week was a lot of tweaks and odd jobs. I started off by making my Clematis centre more saturated in colour as per feedback in the previous week. This little change makes a huge difference!
I spent a little time adjusting the roughness of the orange tree as well. This is still going to need some texture work but the roughness values do look better.
Our tutor was suggesting we push for some second floor accessibility. I changed the collisions of the stairs so that you could in theory walk up them to see what it felt like. Seeing that your head didn't clip through anything I did some set dressing to the upstairs just in case we decided to open up this space. I was aiming for a messy student sculptor vibe, where lots of things have been left laying around and bits and pieces are still being moved around after someone has moved in. I also adjusted the size of things such as pots up here so that you could see them from the ground floor. After this weeks feedback session it's decided we still won't access the second floor, but the set dressing is helpful for the cinematic at least.
We still had a sculpting stand that had not moved beyond first past texturing. I took on this asset and tweaked the UVs a little to make sure wood grain flowed the right way and made 3 variations of textures for this as its scattered a lot throughout the scene. A cleaner version, a dirty one and then a much older grungy version.
I also switched out all the splines to meshes to help the game experience run smooth. Once this was done I started working on a falling leaf VFX. This was very subtle using pre-existing meshes and scattered periodically throughout the scene with a delay so that the leaves appear to fall more randomly. Feedback has suggested that the leaves need a little more spin on them, hopefully this is a small fix which will really help push the beauty of the scene!
My feedback this week revolves around a lot of minor fixes mainly around light maps, which should be simple enough to achieve! Fingers cross speedtree doesn't crash on me again!
Willow - Lighting Artist
Two weeks left to the final deadline. As a team we are hoping to get everything in by Monday the 11th so it's been a very busy week for all. Personally responsibilities have still been a priority in regards to lighting and this has come a long way and it's starting to feel complete. Intensity of highlights have remained a important factor to get right and I have been asking for plenty of feedback on all of this. I have also been putting time into fixing small issues such as some highlights feeling to strong on ceilings and archways. This was resolved with light blockers softly adjusted to let light in how I desired.
We also received lots of feedback from the tutors this week. Meaning as producer, with assistance from the art director I was able to re focus the team on certain tasks so we could resolve the small issues that remained in the current environment. I have also begun a second pass on the lamp in scene and adjusted the dust that was made by a team member very early on in the projects timeline.
