King of the Dead Group Project

Third year has begun, and we have finally been blessed with Unreal Engine 4. Physically Based Rendering is beautiful, and it truly is exciting seeing the tools we have at our disposal advance along with the industry. What was technically our first assignment involved creation of materials in UE4, however we did no actual designing or modelling for it. It’s nice to be back to asset creation (though saying that implies I haven’t been practicing over summer!) So this was our first proper project, a group assignment to create a small scene involving a throne, a character, and a backdrop. A scene that would have to fit the title- “King of the Dead”.

We had two weeks for the whole project, which turned out to not be too restrictive in the end. Of course in the early days of the project I was constantly thinking we needed to speed up. The initial brainstorm didn’t take long… But gathering reference material sure did though. We used a Pinterest board to gather mood board images so we’d have something visual to base the idea around, but the problem was that we would of course stumble upon images that were inspiring, but would take us in a completely different direction. Expanding ideas is great, but not on the third or fourth day when we really need stick with something and start concepting!

I started sketching ideas fairly early on, which did help reign things back in in the end. It was an odd experience though, as at first I felt I was just killing time by jotting down rough ideas. They were all based on this concept one of the other group members had thought up involving a king frozen in a cryogenic chamber, though some involved incorporation of another idea of a parasitic entity. This rough sketching went on for a fair while and I was starting to feel really demoralised because I felt no feeling of direction, but I was surprised when we finally got together to share our ideas and everyone decided we should develop our design based on several of my ideas. It’s really easy to forget that concept art really isn’t about the quality of the drawings.

After this I made a few quick whiteboxes and everyone had a shot at doing paintovers. When things seemed to be coming together we began modelling. Since the design was constructed of various different shapes it could be broken down easily and people could choose to make whichever parts they wanted. I chose to start on the spider leg-like structures that adorned the throne, and since the other team member working on the throne was also doing most of the engine work I ended up making the entire throne apart from the central cryo pod itself.

I was a little unsure of whether my textures were interesting and convincing enough but I was reassured by the rest of the team that they were perfectly adequate. However this was only a little over half way through the second week, so I still had a couple of days to spare. Because of this I decided I would make a rock, one that could be subtly duplicated so that it could be used in various places around the scene to break up all the solid lines and make things a little more interesting. It was nice to be able to do some sculpting, since the rest of my work had been made in Max only. It was a bit of a reminder of my lack of knowledge though- My teammates pointed out several things in ZBrush that would’ve made things much faster for me… Unfortunately each time it was too late to execute them. I have noted them down for the future.

And now, the assets have been assembled in engine and the end result has come out really quite successfully. I think maybe the final scene could’ve done with a bit more There were a few hiccups, such as everyone forgetting to make light maps, forgetting to scale down textures, lack of collision (it wasn’t in the brief?)… But for the first proper project of the third year it went really quite well. Especially considering it was a group project, if it went as badly as my first group project experience I don’t know what I would’ve done!

…And I’ve just now noticed that some details I added to the model aren’t in the final render… see I knew things couldn’t possibly have gone that well. Group work eh.