This project was the first one to be
undertaken by the entire yeargroup, although we were split into sub-teams to
work on different levels. We were tasked with creating a side-scrolling platformer in Unreal Engine 4 with four levels and various characters, and we had six weeks to complete it in.
• What I Worked
On
I worked as an environment artist for the “scary”
level, alongside two other environment artists and a concept artist.
I ended up making two statues, three pieces
of foliage, spiky crystals, doors for the end of the level, some chains with
lamps, cave paintings, and a waterfall. I also made a piece of collapsed wall,
but I did not include this in personal asset screenshots since the tileable textures
were made by another group member.
The statues I made were sculpted in Zbrush,
retopologised in 3D Coat and baked down in 3DS Max, whereas for the door I made
the base mesh first, sculpted, and baked it back down. I found for the rest of
the assets I made I didn't need to sculpt anything, though I did bake down the
grass planes from an initial model I made in Max. All assets used Albedo,
Roughness and/or Normal maps where needed to work with Unreal Engine 4’s
Physically Based Rendering, often with extra Alphas to mask out glow as a dark
atmosphere was an important aspect of our level.
• What Worked Well
For the most part people had their specific
areas of design to work on- One member working on rocks and architecture, one primarily
focusing on the important hero assets and one (me) working on smaller hero
assets and miscellaneous objects to populate the scene. This ensured a
consistent look between similar kinds of asset.
• What Didn't Work Well
For our level there was definitely a lack
of communication between the engine artists and the rest of us. On our side I
don’t think most of us were that great at either getting assets to them soon
enough or not telling them they were done and on drive. Obviously I can’t say
much about the engine artists’ experience but they made some questionable
design decisions (such as colouring some of the waterfalls bright blue) and ignored my very
small list of tweaks to be made. This is understandable since I made said notes
only a day before hand in but most of the issues I brought up could easily be
fixed in seconds.
What we should’ve done is borrow the engine
off the engine artists occasionally to make tweaks ourselves. One of us tried
to do this once but didn't give notice and so some work had to be scrapped, as
the engine artist had still been working on the most recent version. Again
solely a communication problem.
• Problems I
Faced, and How I Overcame Them
It was very difficult in the earlier stages
of the project before the modelling stage. I didn't feel very confident with my
concepting skills especially next to the dedicated concept artist. Even during
the whiteboxing stage I felt quite useless as I intended to sculpt my most
important assets from scratch and so spending a lot of time on whiteboxes wasn't
an efficient use of time for me.
I pushed ahead with modelling what I could
as early as possible to make myself useful as early as possible. I also tried
to focus on the more complicated assets first to get them out of the way so I
would be able to focus on smaller assets to populate the scene near the end.
This worked out very well for me as I was able to ask the rest of my group what
needed doing and take on extra assets to push things towards completion.
• What would I
do differently if given a second shot?
If I were to undertake a project similar to
this one I would ensure that there was a concrete system for communication
between the environment and engine artists, with specific pieces of information
that must be passed between people so assets could be imported correctly and as
soon as possible. I would also either push for the level to have more man-made
architecture or experiment with vertex painting in-engine, as the way it is now
the level is 90% generic rocks.
• Conclusion
I’m happy to have been a part of this project,
not because of the end result but because I gained a lot of experience as well
as some work for my portfolio. Most levels turned out very well but I admit the
one I was a part of feels lacking. A lot of this blog entry probably comes off
as complaining about other people’s work but I really do think everyone in the
project did the best they could, and considering how pessimistic people were
about the project around the midway mark I know things could’ve gone much
worse. This has all been a very important learning experience and great
practice for working in a multifaceted development team.
