Final major project beginning.
First, let's establish the idea I would like to be working for 15 weeks. Throughout the end of the first term, I had many ideas for FMP, although all of them were too ambitious and would take much more time than I actually have. The only thing I knew for sure was that I wanted to make an abandoned place. I genuinely believe that abandoned buildings are quite mesmerizing and are perfect for a game environment because they bring old memories back to the player. I would like to create a frozen-in-time mansion which will show the ageing of different antique assets from that period.
During long research, I found this video about an abandoned french manor in the countryside. Straight away, I fall in love with the atmosphere and the interior design that I would like to emulate in my environment.
After finding more references from different abandoned places, I've approximately got a vision of what the mansion should look like. It will be a European mansion/ manor built in the late 19th century but left abandoned in the 20th century. I think It would be more interesting to explore the house with different age assets rather. The main idea is to create a shabby-looking ancient home that once was occupied by a lovely family but something sudden happened and the house was left behind. I plan to create assets that describe this family's history and lifestyle. I genuinely think that personal items are the most important part of the remaining because they tell the story behind this all.
So:
Environment: An abandoned European mansion
Time period: 19-20 century
Game genre - adventure, exploration game that relies on visual storytelling
The residence will be made of two floors. A hall and a dining/living room are on the first floor. The bedroom and a hallway with a first-level outlook are on the second floor.
My technical goals:
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Optimized models
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Plausible materials
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Efficient Texel density
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Usage of decals
Stretch goals:
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Usage of foliage
I've drawn floor plans to my comprehension of how the building is set up, although I believe that the object's position may change during the process. Below are the floor plans:
I gathered references from different urban exploration videos. Watching these types of videos are very helpful in creating an idea of how people lived in specific time periods. Having pictures is definitely a good idea but looking into a place from different angles is even more helpful. Therefore, most of my references are taken from videos of .
Talking about the history of this house, it was a long journey until the final idea appeared. At first, I thought about creating a crime scene, which is so trivial for an environmental scene. I thought about making a serial killer's house, which would include gorry stuff and usually serial killers have basic houses besides the equipment they use. I thought about making just a normal house for a poor peasant family but this would be too dull a story for this project. I had so many thoughts and I read so many stories but unfortunately, they all would be difficult or uninteresting to implement.
After weeks of thinking and being anxious about the time I spent on a concept, I remembered the movie Constantine(2005), which is about an exorcist named Constantine, who has the ability to see half-angels and half-demons true forms. I genuinely enjoyed the universe's diversity and the main character's story as well. I've deepened into the concept of the paranormal world and remembered another movie called Van Hellsing (2004). This movie shows a famous monster slayer Gabriel Van Helsing arrives in Transylvania to help defeat Dracula. I was mixing up these two movies in my head and trying to create an interesting background story about the person that lived there.
Eventually, I've come up with a concept of a family- a husband priest, his wife housekeeper, and their little son. After one night everything changed in the father's life. One evening, while he was serving in church, his entire family was slaughtered. The police informed the father it was a robbery with homicide, but he suspected that it was more complicated. He noticed unusual bite marks on the necks and hands of his family members. He couldn't stop thinking about what had happened, so he began seeking clues in old Christian-forbidden texts. When the church learned of his interest in the paranormal world, he was dismissed from the church. But he did not bother because he now found out about another side of the world and his eyes were finally wide open. This painful loss of the whole family has given him a new purpose in life. He was now firmly determined to expel all evil spirits he sees on his way. As a consequence, he decided to become a vampire hunter and an exorcist.
I will create different types of assets that would indicate that a priest-exorcist-vampire hunter lived there. For instance: a vampire hunter kit, hanging garlic, holy water, signs and white salt from evil spirits on the floor, Bible and exorcism books etc.
Blocking out
Now as the mansion's plan is established, it's time to turn it into a 3d blockout. I've started with simple shapes like boxes and cylinders as it's just for my understanding of how many assets and where they will be placed. For now, my walls are different size rectangles although, I intend to create walls as modular assets so in game it would be more efficient and take less performance.
After receiving feedback and going through different ideas, I came up with another floor plan. I decided to add a corridor next to the bedroom. It gives you more space to walk and It is more realistic to have a hallway between rooms.
BEDROOM
LIVING ROOM/DINING ROOM
HALL
BROKEN STAIRS
CORRIDOR
Here is a visualization of the floor plan. As you can see there is also a difference in the main hall. I changed my mind regarding the two stairs. First of all that straight staircases are quite boring and when it comes to gameplay, you have to think of the object affordances. It has to give you an idea of how you can use it and why is it here. I think having two staircases in such a primitive shape hall like a box is too dull. Therefore I will be doing an L-shape staircase.
Modelling assets
I started modelling assets for the house. There are quite a lot of assets that I need to produce in order to populate my room. All of the assets are compared with real-size objects and references of similar items. A great feature that also helped to check on the models sizes was just simply comparing them with a real human size model taken from Unreal.
In addition, I would like to share one of my lists for this project from Notion. It's a pretty simple but very beneficial way to organize my work and this way I can know exactly what assets I need to model/sculpt/unwrap/texture.
I've revisited my old group project from the second year to grab some models, however after a time I could actually see some issues with the mesh and therefore I decided to create book models from scratch. Turns out I could actually create the identical model with fewer polygons .
I changed baluster for the railings. Firstly, because the first version was supposed to be made out of concrete. After some thoughts, I decided that wood baluster will likely fit into the mansion's design where are wood parquet, wood walls, and most of the furniture made out of wood. Secondly the first variant was too simple overall.
Ive changed a bit the shape of the bedside table and added some details like handles for the drawers and pattern at the bottom.
Although, these small details add to the number of polygons, I believe these makes this prop more unique and interesting.
I also needed to create a bed for the bedroom. I started with a shape of the frame that I cut out of a plane using a reference image and then imported it into Zbrush, so I could use Zmodeler and other brushes for modification. After I was done with the base mesh, I started extruding polyloops for the frame. Then I was creating a pattern. The way I usually create patterns is pretty simple. I draw patterns in Photoshop, import them to Zbrush and then use the top Alpha panel ---> Alpha to mesh feature. This feature allows me to instantly create a mesh out of any alpha. It recognized shades and works as a Height channel. After that, I just need to enhance the mesh with Standart and DamStandart brushes, creating nice curves and height variations. On top of it after use Clay Polish feature and polish by features slider, which helps me to smooth the result and make it more consistent.
At first sight, I couldn't notice what was wrong with the pattern on the frame. I put so much effort and passion into that but it didn't seem plausible, After receiving feedback, I finally could see the difference between my mesh and real-life references. In real life they don't do that excessive size of patterns and usually keep it pretty simple and in a way minimalistic .
I've created an ornament to place on top of the frame. I used Alpha---> Alpha To mesh function and then bended it with deformer modifier in the Cog menu.
Additionally, I've created a bedcover in Marvelous designer. I've exported the bed's mattress from Zbrush to Marvelous. Then I created one rectangular shape for the pattern and tried to create some creases and wrinkles by hand.
My first step was to establish the foundation and create the legs. I didn't like the shape of the legs. They were too curvy and didn't' look stable. After a few attempts I finaly got the right shape. Then I started payint more attention to details and creating some diamont pattern for the back.
After a few attempts, I finally got the right shape. Then I started paying more attention to details:
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created a diamond shape pattern
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added ornaments for the frame
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adjusted the overall shape
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added folds and wrinkles to the pillows
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added a seam lines fo the pillows
In addition, I've created an armchair using an already-existing sculpt of the sofa. I've shrinkened the frame and copyied the side pillows from the sofa. To be honest, it made the process much easier as I've used existing base and could easiy transofrm it with Scales or Deformer modifer.
Here is a full assembly of the models that I've done so far:
Models optimization
Another crucial thing in creating game-ready assets is to make sure that they're properly optimized. I checked for the existing assets in my scene and noticed that some of the objects are unnecessarily dense. For instance, handles for the drawers and some extracted patterns. When I was retoping I was very generous and tried to create the most accurate shape, although now it's the time to get rid of all the useless loops.
Most of the objects can be optimized to a great amount. If it is a small object it does not need a lot of polys. the silhouette of the shape is already perceived, therefore you don't need extra loops
Some of the objects have to be optimized only after you baked them. The triangulation of the mesh may cause artefacts on your normal map which is something that you definitely want to avoid. That is why I was using a different mesh for baking. The Uv's remain the same but the mesh doesn't have triangles and has only continuous loops. In the engine, I will of course use the model with triangulation, although, as I noticed, sometimes even the engine sees this kind of edge connection as a problem and gives it weird normals.
Unwrapping workflow
After unwrapping so many objects I finally developed a workflow that works for every single object and shape.
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I select the whole object. Then I press Quick Planar Map (--->Edit UV's panel) in order to clean all the default seams that 3ds max created when I was modelling.
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I select all the necessary seams for the object and then press Covert Edge Selection To Seams (-->Peel panel)
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Once again I select the whole object and click Quick Peel. This creates new unwraps,
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Although, it's not perfect yet, because the unwraps are rotated and this is not what I need. Now as I unwrapped the whole mesh I can easily select a single UV island and press Quick Planar Map. This way the unwraps are going to be straight and not tilted.
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The last step is not mandatory but I do that in order to have a clean canvas. I press Rescale Element and Pack Normalize (-->Arrange elements panel ). Now the unwraps are packed together and have the same texel density.
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When it comes to the roundish object the workflow a bit changes. I create one continuous vertical seam which breaks up when I do not need then. For example, let's look at this candlestick. I usually create a vertical seam on one side which reduces the angles from which the player could see the seam. However I usually create textures with Tri planar tilling, I prefer to make sure that I reduced the number of seams as much as I could. For the unwraps with the vertical seam I press Straighten Selection (---> Reshape Elements). This button transforms the unwrap into an even box which will reduce empty space when packing unwraps together. Sometimes this feature will distort the unwraps, thus I will use other buttons on the same panel - Relax Until Flat and Relax Custom. I like these features as they can really come in handy when the unwraps are too distorted. After that, I again press Straighten Selection but now the unwraps has less distortion and the checkered pattern looks much better.
Creating tillable textures
This is the time to make textures. I've decided to start off with the biggest and tileable textures. The parquet material will be used on the whole second floor.
Recently I've found out about a very functional and easy-to-learn software called Substance Sampler. It's a program where you can create easily textures and in my case a foundation for my parquet material. I've looked for a couple of tutorials by Adobe Substance 3D and one of them was exactly related to my material creation. It turns out you can easily create a base of your tillable material and turn the material into a graph in the substance designer. Personally, I feel like it is a much easier way for me to start rather than creating material from scratch.
This is how the material looked in Substance Sampler after using a bunch of different layers :
After that, I started experimenting with nodes in Substance designer.
Initially, I liked the base colour, although after picturing the environment and I could say that this material is too bright. In fact, when I looked at some old images of 19th-century interiors, I found out that they mostly used dark oak material and less the bright ones.
I've made the wood darker but because of the harsh wood grain transition I wasn't satisfied with the result.
After a few combinations I've considered 4x4 the best variant.
After the first attempt, I made many changes. The most important is that I decreased wood normals as it is a parquet and it has to be quite smooth on top. Although, you still can notice little wood grain I believe it gives the material a plausible look. In addition, I've added a few more colours as this material should be pretty dirty and old. However, I didn't want to create a lot of dirt layers because of two reasons. Firstly, I intend to create another dirt material which I will combine into a blend material. Secondly, If I added too many vibrant colours when tiling it would be very visible and would worsen the game immersion .
Also, I've found another tutorial which I utilized in some way. I've picked up a nice way of creating a high-quality wood normal map and scratches around the material.
I've noticed that when I try to create my own material and not just copy the whole graph, my node's library is building up and then it's easier to think of what nodes should I add in order to create such a result. And also, after creating lots of materials in Designer, I can quickly come to the graphs and check how I've done a particular thing or even copy and paste it into the material I'm making right now.
Next what I was working on was Tiling viktorian wall. I've gathered a bunch of references and decided with the pattern. Now I wanted to create the material using Modeling - Baking on a place workflow. I'm not very profound in Substance designer and therefore in order to create a trim sheet there would take much longer than if I just modeled what I need like now.
After modelling the trim sheet I exported the mesh into Zbrush and started making adjustments. Although, before start, I creased the hard edges on the borders so that when I subdivided the mesh it maintained its borders. In addition, I've extruded loops on the back of the mesh so it doesn't create weird smooth effect on borders for sure.
I also smoothed all hard edges manually along with create some damage effect with OrbFlatten Edge brush and TrimSmoothBorder
I am planning to create another blend of texture with more damage, so I could vertex paint in the engine and control repetetativeness.
To make sure I get the best result of the baking and don't have shadows on borders, I've duplicated the mesh and placed them on the right and left so it makes an extension of the wall. In addition, after I baked the plane I reimported the mesh but now with 3 planes in a row. This way I could see if the texture actually going to be repetitive or not. During this process, I actually notice that there is a little seam on the borders with the two planes. I believe it happened because of the diagonal edge which creates this weird effect. I was struggling to find the solution until I decided to experiment and remove the diagonal edge and instead create a square.
Here is how the texture turned out:
The second texture that I've done was another wall material for the hall. On the left, you can see the plane which will be used for texturing later. These polygon divisions will help me to easily select separate polygons and texture them without touching other parts. This way I could prevent other parts from being affected.
I've decided to stick to the same colour gamma in order to have a steady transition between rooms. I will also use this trim in different variations that you will see later when I will be assembling modular kit.
Here are the references that I used for this material.
The third texture that I've done was the texture for the bedroom. The same as for previous textures, I've created a plane 2048x2048x and created trims and the frame where I needed it.
Then I export the subdivided version to ZBrush. I smooth the borders and create mild damage to the edges.
Then I created the floral pattern. I used an image that I found on Pinterest, and then I cut out the floral patterns and put them on the beige background. It wasn't easy to do because the image colours had bad quality and whenever I wanted to select only the background it would select parts from the flowers as well, therefore I had to manually clean up the selection. Though, the way I tile it was pretty smooth. I knew this trick from the first year and I decided to try it here. In photoshop, go to Filter ---> Other---->Offset and make it equally divided. I made it 256x256. This way it divides the canvas into 4 equal pieces which will show me where it breaks the tiling.
Here are two textures that I made for the middle part of the material. The black and white texture will be used as a height mask.
At first, I thought the wood material will be dark as the other textures, although then I thought of making it bright wood. It would create a great contrast and will break up the monotony pallet. Also as you can see in the picture above, I've darkened the texture a bit so the
Unfortunately, I found only a few references for this material that I really liked. Although the second image I found the most useful and I like the walls the most.
Another material I've finished is the wood ceiling. I've checked a few references that I found previously and I've noticed that this kind of ceiling was very popular in the Victorian/Edwardian era. I've decided again to use the method from model to texture. Firstly, I divided the plane into four divisions and then split the result into another four sections. This is how I got the base of the shape. After that I extruded squares inwards and tried to emulate to my reference images.
While texturing, I imported 4 more planes to the scene. I placed each plane on every side of the main one so that I can see where the tiling breaks down and could fix repetitive parts.
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This images I used to create a plausible look of the wooden ceiling:
I thought having at least two different ceiling textures will be more interesting and plausible for my scene. That is why I created another tiling texture for the ceiling :
I sculpted it in ZBrush, using Brush tiling settings(Brush-> curve-->WrapMode set to 1 ) that prevent creating seams afterwards. Also, I watched a video on creating a tileable texture in ZBrush by Flipped Normals. This really helped me to set up all the necessary settings so the sculpt is tiling.
The last material that I created was a dirt/dust material for blendingg with the parquet material. From previous experience, I know that to blend two materials together much better than to have just one. In engine, I will use Vertex Painting on the floor meshes.
I used a few grunge textures and blended them together, which produced a pretty acceptable result. After finishing, I exported it into Unreal and assembled the blend material. I tried to paint it on my floor mesh and checked the result. Initially, the normals turned out too intense and the colour was too bright. I made the base colour darker and fixed the normal map.
Modular assets creation
I've been working on my modular kit At first, I was creating the materials that you can see in the above post and then I applied them to the planes. I've decided that all the planes will be 385x385cm so it's an even square which will help me with snapping. I left the floor planes as it is without extruding anything because the normal map will do its job and fake the depth. In addition, I've created a plane with a hole in the middle which will be used twice(as a floor and as a ceiling) for the interior overlook. I have considered breaking it down into small pieces and using only one small square for the whole piece but all the variants I tried turned out not very nice. The texture would look very repetitive and I would still be left with a gap between the last two pieces in the row. Perhaps I will figure out it later but for now, I will leave it as one piece. Also, I am going to use long beams with the floor texture for the places where there is a hole between two planes.
For the walls, I extruded the geometry in order to push the texture further.
For the front door at first I've created an accurate shaped hole, although then I've reconsidered this idea as it wont be opened and therefore I can just keep it simple.This will also reduce amount of polygons.
Door + windows+ lamp+ key
Texturing unique assets
While baking my first pack of assets, I of course faced some issues in baking the stairs. I had this weird lighting problem on the bake. Apparently, it was the problem connected to the geometry. Initially, I connected edges with a diagonal line, however, it cause problems in baking. Also, because of some UV islands overlap each other, It would create some artifacts.
I've asked my coursemates for some advice and they suggested that I connect vertices horizontally. I've rebaked mesh and luckily it worked out, now there were no issues.
While baking some of the items, I found a very useful trick that I want to share. I had some baking errors and I wanted to solve them very quickly, so I tried different settings to bake my models. And apparently, some settings worked out for some objects but didn't work for others. Therefore, I've decided to keep two baked results (AO, and normal map) and merge them together by overlaying on the layer with multiply mode. Then I fixed some artefacts that were hard to avoid.
Match: By Mesh Names Match: Always The result:
This way I have a nice baking result. There is a nice ambient occlusion in between the objects and clear shadows without artefacts.
There is another trick that I consider quite useful for creating a high poly for baking. I've done a similar procedure during the creation of tiling materials. My low polys are optimized and they are not very suitable for sculpting. Due to this fact, I use Polygroup by Normals and crease PG. This locks the shape and keeps it the way it was. Then I Zremesh the models and subdivide them. When I Zremeshed the models, it creates rather even topology without triangles and therefore when subdividing it gives me a better resolution for sculpting. Sometimes the Zremesher doesn't work as I would like it to work and then I manually prepare the topology of my models in 3ds max.
When the Zremesher doesn't function the way I would like it to, I manually prepare my models' topology in 3ds Max. I tessellate my models using quick loop and connect tools. Even though the distribution of the polygons need not be even, I still make an effort to do so.
This texture pack is complete. I produced a smart material that I applied to most of the objects to speed up the texturing process. Even though I still needed to modify it it was still quite helpful for the beginning. Also, I was changing the colour and added more grunge maps to ensure the uniqueness of each model.
Another pack for a 2048x2048 resolution map. I used the same smart material to start off the doors and windows textures.
Common furniture
Furniture pack
Bed + armchair+ sofa+ chair
Lights
Vampire slayer kit + garlic+ bottles + photoframes + notes + telephone + vases + dishes
In order to portray the family who lived in my mansion, I found black and white photos of families. I looked up images of people who appeared to be alike. Since most men had moustaches in the Victorian era, it wasn't hard to find men who looked similar. For women, it wasn't the case. What was fortunate for me was that I also got a picture of a young priest that would sell the history of an ex-priest. Once the searches were complete, I had to use Photoshop to make the adjustments to the images in order to at least somewhat match the faces.
Books
As a consequence, I developed a few smart materials that were helpful when I was starting a new texture sheet. The most frequently used materials were leather, gold, steel, glass, concrete, and wood. Although to make a difference between objects, I still had to play around with the settings and add extra layers.
After setting up all the materials along with the assets in the engine, I got the idea to create more decorative elements like a rug and more paintings. I've decided to use the frame that I've got from the Kit pack, so I don't need to have the unwraps of the frames on this texture sheet. This will give me more UV space for other objects.
The way I created a tablecloth was by using Marvelous Designer and my table model on which I placed the pattern. The pattern is just a rectangle. The gravity simulation makes the most of the job, although I still had to manually move some parts to enhance the creases. Then I imported it into Zbrush, Zremeshed it, and added a little bit of thickness with Zmodeler. At last, I revisited all the folds and creases that can cause an issue with the baking.
At some point, I got the idea that I can reuse the same texture sheet for creating another texture variation where only the base colour changes. I duplicated my Substance Painter file and started changing it. When creating the first texture I already got so many images of paintings and rugs patterns. I only needed to change them in Photoshop as I usually do. Then I found a cute pattern for the tablecloth and made it tileable in Photoshop as well.
The material setup in the engine is very quick. The only thing I did was convert the Base map to a parameter, so I could replace it with a second version map in the material instance.
I created a texture sheet for decals. It includes some damage, dirt, mould, scratches and a salt circle for defence against demons. The only thing that take a lot of time was the opacity map creation because I had to manually draw it. Overall it turned out pretty good and It will create a nice breakdown to some areas in my scene.
Initially, I had a plane for baking this decal texture. I cut out pieces of separate decals. Also, I made one loop for the salt circle in order to imitate height.
Collision
I've noticed that Unreal creates a wrong and bad simple collision for complex objects that have straight angles. For instance, my modular side piece for the wall or the railing. In order for a player to get through it I have to recreate the collision. Here is an example of how I managed collision for some assets.
Also, there is a button called Convex Decomposition for creating collision, although sometimes it doesn't work properly, so the manual way is always the best way. Here is an example of how it worked on the bed model.
Setting up the lighting
Initially, I set up my scene with the lighting without thinking about its complexity. However, after turning on the Light complexity view I was slightly shocked. I knew that the white purple colours are the worst-case scenario for the scene. I started tweaking the lights but they would not change the complexity anyhow. I started googling tutorials on the related topic and found out that it mostly depends on the lights' mobility in the settings. Therefore, I started from scratch. I hid all the lights except the directional light, which only gives a little illumination and some colour to the backdrop. Now I can start adjusting the lights one by one. Nevertheless, I had to also make cleaning and remove completely some of the lights because they would take performance and won't give any significant impact on the scene.
Another important thing that I realized is that the static lights do not give anything to the complexity because it is baked lighting. The stationary lighting uses cached dynamic shadows and is a little bit more expensive than the static lights in terms of performance. And the movable is basically real-time lighting.
Nevertheless, I had to also make cleaning and remove completely some of the lights because they would take performance and won't give any significant impact to the scene.
Here is how it looks after the adjustment:
Another cool feature that helped me a lot during the setup was the feature in the settings. It's called Indirect lighting intesity ( any light settings tab). Apparently this feature creates surround lighting so your dont need to add more lights around.
I feel like there are still lots of features that I am missing on, although I wathced a bunch of tutorials on that topic. Some of them were quite useful an informative.
Meanwhile, I was tweaking the lights, I revisited the tutorial about lighting setup in Unreal. For that, I watched these videos: UE4 Interior Lighting Series, UE4 - Interior Lighting (Basics) and Lighting Interiors in UE4 by Ryan Manning
The second crucial thing I had to check was Lighting Density. Apparently, by default all of my objects' lightmap resolutions are set to 64, which is not correct. I had to open all of my assets and set the lightmap resolution manually while checking the colour of it in the viewport. As you can see in the picture below, small objects have red/orange colours which indicated very high density. On the other hand big objects like this cupboard has blue colour, which is a very low density. Generally speaking, i had change everything to approximately the same colour. I've made a research about lighting density in Unreal and I found a pretty straightforward explanation:
I've made a research about lighting density in Unreal and I found a pretty straightforward explanation:
I figured out that the colour I need is green, thus I started changing the objects in accordance to that information.
Here is how the lighting looks with Detailed lighting view mode:
I placed a few spotlights pointing towards the windows that would represent a nice moonlighting effect. I didn't use just the directional light because it was creating reflection only in some areas but not where I wanted and the overall lighting was messy. Although, it created some issues. For some reason, unreal doesn't see these walls as an obstruction to creating light.
It is always helpful to have references ready if you are working on lighting setups. Recently I rewatched the well-known movie The Conjuring (2013) and I noticed some compelling colour gammas that were used to create the scenes. I was very amazed by how they achieved this chilly look, which was also an excellent addition to the narrative.
Here are some screenshots that I took while watching:
VFX and engine work
Book colour randomizer material
As I finally got the texture for books, I wanted to experiment with colour variation in the engine. I have heard of World position textures and materials that are changing depending on an object's position. I could not really find an exact explanation of how to do it anywhere, although thanks to some great people I was walked through the process and basically shown how to set up this material. This is a very fascinating feature that I can use for lots of objects and make them less repetitive. It will come in handy due to the fact that I intend to create book stacks all around my scene. The left corner colours are the tints that are going to be mixed with my base colour together. Without the connection with my base colour, the books are too bright. The first colour of it is simply white because I wanted to use my own base colour texture only. Also, I plugged a black and white mask into the Lerp Alpha in order to have this colour change only on the book covers but not the pages.
In addition, I put stacks of books into a blueprint and created different variations of that, so I can easily drag already assembled book piles. It really facilitates the whole process of decorating the scene.
Here is a quick video of how it works:
Double door openning/closing blueprint
I've watched this video by Matt Aspland and by following the tutorial I managed to create my first blueprint for opening and closing doors. I can reuse this blueprint for other doors, in my case I have a bigger door on which I will apply this blueprint. I just need to change the static meshes in the blueprint and it works.
The result:
Candle flame particle system
I created a particle system with a blueprint for candle flames. I used this tutorial to follow up on the structure of the particles. At first, I created a flame texture by just simply taking an image of a flame from a suitable and free-of-copyright Youtube video, converting it to black and white and adjusting the shape with Liquify tool. Then I created a material. And at last, I put into a Cascade particle system where I changed a few settings.
This is how the material is constructed. The left side creates a simple movement for the flame.
A quick video of the result:
The result:
Dust particle system
I've decided to create a particle system to enhance the atmosphere of the abandoned house. Whenever I feel like doing something in Unreal that requires extra knowledge I go to Youtube and find some tutorials, so I can get an understanding if that's what I intend to do possible at all or not. Luckily, In the past, I've already created a few particle systems for other projects. I found this relatively quick and concise video on how to make dust particles.
This is how the material for the particle system looks :
Here is a quick video of a result:
You can see how these little dust particles gradually fade away. This is because I added that DepthFade node in the material. As well as I set up the timeline of the particle system that way so it grows and then again gradually disappears.
Scene setup and rendering
The next step is to take beauty shots of my scene and figure out what can be improved. To achieve the greatest result, I baked with the highest quality lighting and began experimenting with the post-process volume and camera settings. There are many settings that I haven't utilised previously. I suppose this is the perfect opportunity to try something new. I made two cameras because I wanted the three rooms I have to have a different atmosphere. The first one is for the main hall, and the second is for two additional rooms. Due to the living room and bedroom has almost the same colour gamma—warm yellow/orange lights—I did not create three cameras for that purpose. However, for the hall, I wanted to use much colder temperatures to show the difference. To highlight the difference in the mood, I meant to use significantly colder temperatures in the hall.
I asked a few friends to give me feedback on my project. Because of the arrangement of the assets, there was a faint sense of a museum but not a game environment. Certainly, I grasp the concept. Although it wasn't my plan, it does seem like a museum with everything organised to demonstrate what I've done. I wanted to design a game setting where the player is able to observe themselves as opposed to being forced to.
I started making adjustments by relocating the objects into more plausible and natural places. Additionally, I made a more mess by adding the books, bottles, and torn paper all around the place. This alone gives the impression that the area has been abandoned or hasn't been maintained in a while. I was initially really afraid to reuse my images since I believed that they would become extremely repetitive and that this repetitiveness would be quite obvious while wandering. But scaling down and creating material instances works like magic, turning an old thing into an entirely new one.
In addition, I went through all of my assets and took apart some of the details, so I can use them separately. For instance, I made a three-row arch out of one arch that I had. Or I took a pillow that I placed on the sofa in order to create a look that this sofa used as a bed. Generally speaking, you can disassemble all of your assets and use them in multiple ways. I didn't realize it before I started accumulating this huge scene where I needed to fill the space.
Here are the capture of already altered place:
Final touches
The last moments until submitting the project. I took the final renders of my room and adjusted the in Photoshop for a better look. The renders from Unreal don't always turn out perfectly, thus I still would like to tweak it more. I played with the colour balance, saturation, and brightness and added a vignette. Also, a useful feature to try out on your screenshots is ColourLuts. I always try them and see which one fits the most. I never leave it on a full opacity but it still adds colours to the palette.
In addition, I migrated all my assets along with materials into a new project so that I can work on assets showcase zoo. I wanted to take screenshots of my assets all together.
Here is the modular kit breakdown:
I exported my models to Marmoset Toolbag to make a screenshot of my models with a wireframe. I didn't do it in Unreal because unreal as most of the engines convert polys into triangles, so the models are not very appealing in terms of topology.
Project post mortem
My final major project is eventually completed after a long period. In this post, I would want to cover both the project's advantages and its drawbacks—what worked well and what needs to be addressed
What I would change about the project is:
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I would spend more time establishing a solid concept of the environment
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I would like to earlier embrace the necessity of being willing to give up on ideas more easily when they don't pan out.
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I would leave more time for setting up the lighting and decorating the scene
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I would produce more blending materials and edge decals because they really breakdown the repetitiveness
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Because I used a cross so frequently, I would create more variations of it
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I would get more information about project optimization and lightmaps
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I would include rest time in my plan because working without a break is unhealthy
Things that worked out really well and gave the project a boost:
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Reusing assets in order to generate new ones
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Tesselating models before sculpting them in Zbrush
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Colour randomizer material is a very powerful tool
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Lighting is essential for setting the mood, and there are many different settings you can play around with.
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A quick and effective technique to make a texture is to use geometry, sculpt it, and bake it on a plane.
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Particles give things an amazing sense of depth and liveliness. If I had more time, I would produce even more effects.
To sum up, I can see how far I've come this year when I go back to my very first assignment. I can honestly say that I'm proud of myself and grateful to all the teachers and friends who provided me with constructive feedback that encouraged me to achieve my goals. To finally see the results of the 14 weeks of nonstop work is incredibly exciting. I'm inspired to do more projects this summer to expand my abilities even more.
