Okay so just before I rendered out my inital video I noticed a couple of problems and fixes I wanted to fix.
The first was adding in some sunlight blockers around the edge of my walls as light was just leaking through very slightly on the corners.
Secondly I upped the lightmap resolution on a number of assets to sort those shadows out and make them look better.
After I rendered out my videos I did notice some specular glitches on metallic/glass surfaces, this actually came down to my roughness being too low, I upped this to 0.2 (Instead of using the input maps) and it worked out the problems I had.
I just now need to re-render out my video, tidy up my level a little more then package it. I've also made a start on getting all my binaries together and writing up my development documentation.
As of writing this post I've basically stopped production on my environment and I plan to start work on gathering everything together and getting my videos rendered. I also have to say I lost another week of time due to an art test I had to complete for Traveller's Tales, this obviously impacted my schedule but in a slightly positive way outside of this project.
I first wanted to get my polish list out of the way, these we're just really small things that I'd been made aware of over time from various feedback sessions. These are:
- Various cracks on the wood to show how these would have been handled and put together
- A new dirt mask for the windows which now means the dirt gathers up at the edge of the window panes
- I adjusted the alpha map on the curtains so they looked a lot rougher
- The back of the paintings we're finished so they could be re-used around the environment
- Fixed some UV issues on the globe table
- I made the floor textures a lot more dirty and rough, also added in some old nails and bolts to the textures
- I added more polys to the window arches
- I got rid of a lot of the straight edges in the environment, only subtle movements in geometry
- Adjusted the lighting just slightly to make the corners not so dark
- Fixed some gloss issues on some assets
- A few minor mesh issues
- More dust and dirt to all assets
- Post-processing improvements such as colour tint and contrast
From here I had a few extra days left in the week so I went back to asset production to get a few things finished.
I really wanted some scraps of paper and letters to scatter around the environment. These were really easy to create, they were just simple planes inside 3DS Max (About 6 variations) which all used the same texture map.
These then we're made to look rougher and older through Photoshop with a custom font I found online. I then just blurred the writing slightly so it looked like the ink had spread into the page. I then used the alpha channel to rough up the edges and add in burn marks from wax drippings.
I feel these really impact the environment, they really help make it look un-tidy, an effect I don't think I fully managed to achieve.
One other asset I created was the carpet rolls you can see in the corner there, again another simple asset I created using a segmented box and a spiral spline. I feel it might be a little saturated and stick out too much but it's another nice asset to fill the environment with.
I also finally got round to finishing the fireplace. I was originally going to make it really quite nice but then I realised this side of the wall shows a lot of 'home improvement' so I went for a very rough handmade wooden fireplace that's blocked off by more wood. I also cut into the wall here to add depth to it as well. I really wanted a lot of the materials in this area to blend into each other in order for a few key assets to stick out more.
Hopefully one of the last renders I'll have to do. I'm really pleased with how this project turned out, I knew it was a HUGE task from the start and I knew how hard it was going to be to get it up the standard I like to achieve anyway as an artist.
I also just about used every tool and technique I've ever learnt over the past 5 or so years as well as balancing the learning curve of using PBR in an environment for the first time, I was more than impressed with my effort here.
I also learnt a lot more about doing my research as an artist, you don't just need to consider the asset itself and it's back story but also how assets interact and look sitting next to each other. You need everything in the environment to come together perfectly or you find yourself with little things popping out when they shouldn't be.
Overall I'd say I'm slightly disappointed that I didn't get to do everything I wanted but also that I'm extremely happy with the end product.
I've now just got to finalise my cameras and matinee, put it all together in a video, do some more renders and gather all my files together for the hand-in.
So last week I didn't get chance to update too much due to a really big interview I had but also Animex Festival, this did however mean I got some feedback from industry professionals. The sort of feedback I got was to make it a lot more dirty, add more chips and scratches into the wood as well as roughing up the curtains. I also got given a tip of adding in a dark purple light in one of my corners to stop the crushing shadows sucking out all the light.
The majority of this will be sorted in my polish week next week.
The first thing I had to do was sort out the ugly carpet, I think some people thought I was finished with it. However it was just a place holder that I never got round to sorting out.
I took a lot of reference from Unreal's example in their realistic example map. I overlayed two meshes, the top one was the carpet with some slight spots of transparency and the bottom was just raw cotton, therefore the spots of transparency would then be turned into rough patches where the carpet has been worn and repeatedly walked on.
I also wanted to really push that blue colour (to also hint at the environments ties to the sea) so I used fresnel inside the material editor and overly bumped up my normal map (3x as much as normal) and ended up with this really nice result.
Here is the material tree for the rug, I have the usual plugged in, albedo, roughness, AO and normal.
However I used a multiply and 2,2,1 to bump up the rug quite a lot. This is then plugged into the fresnel with a value of 500.
This week has been centered around creating lots of smaller assets to clutter the place up with.
Smaller things like that table help because it can be used in conjunction with other assets. To make it more grounded in the world I added dust on top of the table and used a mask where the bottles are and have been previously so there is no dust in those spots.
I've started to add a lot more clutter now as well, I would like to create some more smaller assets like trinkets to fill up some of the shelves though.
This area has so far become my favourite, I just really like how it's come along. I still need some more clutter to go on top of the table and on the left hand side though.
I also need to add in the chandelier and finally get round to texturing the fireplace, I've got a couple of polish items in this area as well so hopefully the final result turns out nice.
I also adjusted the lighting in this area a lot, I've started to make the globe and the wheel pop out as these are areas I want to draw the viewers attention to.
I also finally got rid of that horrible gaping hole in the wall. I was originally going to add in a little doorway room but it became clear that this wasn't going to happen because of the time I had left, but this is something I can do later on if I want.
I took reference for the door and frame from some other pieces of concept art, I really like the design and the wood fits in well with the environment.
For the glass I used the glass bottle material I've been modifying and added a lot of dirt so the player couldn't see outside.
I also added some little Assassin's Creed logos etched into the wood.
Current view as of 16/02/2015. I think the carpet is the biggest improvement here and the wheel and globe are really starting to pop out.
I want to initially draw the players view up to the window and then back round to the globe table, so far I've achieved this however a lot more polish is needed.
I really want to carry that blue more into the environment where the stage is and really start to dirty it up more.
The last week was slightly wasted but I couldn't help it with having an interview I had to prepare for and also Animex festival, so this week I'll be crunching a lot more trying to get my few remaining assets done so I don't have to spill over into my polish week.
The main view of the scene, I updated the carpet a lot more to get it to the finalised product.
I ended up overlaying two meshes in order to get that worn look. I also adjusted the colour palette so it didn't stick out too much. I finally then really bumped up the normal map to give it a slightly more rough material look. (I'll do a more in-depth post on this later)
I also updated the tress outside to not make the so saturated but also included some wind which you'll be able to see in the video at the end.
A view of the right hand side wall. As you can see the fireplace still need finishing but that's not too big of a task. I also just want to fill up this area even more with smaller assets, that's a much larger task but I'm confident that I have enough time for it.
I also created and finished the chalice, a much needed asset that can be used throughout the environment, I'd really like to finish the fireplace and then move onto the chandler next.
One of my favourite views from the environment, this is the main window view with the map table. I've now pretty much finished the outside part of the level with trees from SpeedTree and a couple assets from an example map (The only area to feature work that isn't mine)
You can also spot a couple of Assassin's Creed Easter Eggs here as well.
My favourite asset to date, the pirate ship wheel. This was created in half a day (a little longer than I planned but I really wanted to get all of that detail in there)
The one thing I do want to improve is the faceted edges on the outer ring of the wheel.
A couple of other nice assets I've created. The candle was the first time I've used Topogun for retopology and the other is my take on a naval ornament with a big Assassin's Creed twist.
I haven't wrote a post yet about my complete pipeline for one asset yet and as I'll be including that in my report I thought it was best to write one now while I still remember everything I've done. I was looking for an asset to either feature on the wall behind the camera or above the fireplace, typically someone would put something of significant sentimental value on top there, I figured a captains favourite ship wheel would probably suit best.
I found this original concept in the 'The Art of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag' and figured it would save me a little research time if I used this. I did however look into the sort of detail designs that would feature in the silver work, along with what general wear would occur on an item like this and how well it would have been looked after - In this case fairly well as it's got a lot of sentimental value.
In 3DS Max I created a plane with the original concept on (I found a complete version on Google) and then modeled over the top of that. I've actually made this asset quite high-poly, probably more than I usually would have however I'm still seeing some faceted edges so maybe it's worth adding a little more there.
I actually blocked out a little more high-poly detail,before I sculpted it, this is because these are slightly more hard-surface but also acts as a guideline in Mudox of where to add the smaller detail.
The high-poly sculpt was completed in Mudbox, I've learnt a little Z-Brush and will be learning more after this project but for now I'm more comfortable with Mudbox. I basically start out by blocking out the larger shapes of detail then just move up levels to add in the smaller detail. The pattern is a very basic swirl pattern but on a much smaller scale so from a distance it will look much more intricate.
The baking was actually done in Xnormal rather than Mudbox, I just prefer the results. I did end up with the slight issue with the pivots and of the high and low-poly pivots not being in the same position. This was quickly fixed in max and the bake came out really nice and a little better than I thought. This is actually why I prefer doing this sort of detail in Mudbox rather than NDO, I just think the results are a little sharper.
From top left to bottom right: Albedo, Normal, AO, Metalness, Roughness
I created a colour map inside Photoshop just to mask out the silver areas from the wood.
The textures we're as always done in DDO, I barely had to do any work here as the sculpt bake came out so nice. The wood texture is one of the ones I've already modified with some chips and a fair bit of dirt.
For the silver I actually didn't use the silver material as I find it's way too clean. I actually used 'Dull Steel' then changed this to add some more specular highlights and make it look like a more dirty version of silver. This turned out really nice.
This is the final result, I'm really liking it other than the slightly faceted edges. I was considering doing another version which is completely broken, maybe been in an accident and have that lying around somewhere. The image above was rendered in 3DO and because of the material set-up I have in UE4 it's a very accurate representation of what it actually looks like in-game.
Big mix of things happened today I managed to make a few changes, have a large set-back and work on my video fly-through.
I managed to sort out the sub-surface scattering on the wax candle today. I thought it would actually be a lot more complex than it actually it, turns out UE4 already has it all built in and it just needs a few settings changed.
I ended up adding in a new sub-surface colour and changing the opacity to 0.5. I also managed to find a really nice example in 'Content Examples' a really nice free level I'd recommend downloading if you want to see how certain materials work inside UE4.
I also managed to block-out the outside area a little more, I originally planned to import my old sea shader from UDK however after a failed attempt I realised this was no longer possible. I therefore looked for other options and found a good solution in the 'Sun Temple' UE4 example. I simply took the water and one rock asset from there and used it for my scene.
This isn't something I would normally do as I like everything in the scene to be completely made by me, however due to time constraints I really haven't got time to create the outside scenery but the player only ever sees it from the window and doesn't actually go outside so I've made the exception here.
Onto the huge problem I had today which set me back half a day. For some reason after I imported some materials from another scene, my scene went completely dark and essentially broke. This was obviously a huge problem and I looked to fix everything, my lighting settings hadn't changed but the room was dark and when I went to play in the view-port everything was a blur.
I obviously completely panicked but it made it worst when all my backups had the same problem, it turns out for some unknown reason Scalability Settings were at fault, they'd suddenly switch to 'low' instead of 'epic' So yeah if you ever come across this weird problem then that's the fix.
Finally I thought it was time to start playing around with matinee and getting a rough sequence in for my fly-through. I've never used matinee before, not even in UDK, so this was a completely new experience to say the least, luckily a few tutorials were easy to follow.
Currently as you can see it's stupidly rough but these are the few bits I've picked on to fix:
- Improve the camera going up the stairs
- Make the shot around the globe table a lot slower and not going through the curtain
- Render it out in frames rather than an AVI (Will take 100 times longer though)
Luckily I've factored in a week to get all my screenshots and videos done for the final hand-in.
I didn't expect to do another post this soon but I've been pretty busy and I don't fancy doing a huge post at the end of the week. I also made a few amendments to my schedule, for some reason I thought we had around 3 weeks left until the hand in, turns out we actually have 4 so my schedule is now as follows: Current week: 1st Feb - Assets to populate the environment Week 2: 8th Feb - Larger assets - Outside area Week 3: 15th Feb - Medium/Small assets Week 4: 22nd Feb - Week dedicated to polish Week 5: 1st March - Render videos/screenshots 6th March Hand-In Week 7: 8th March - Report and documentation
The curtain asset was created using the same file as the cloth. It was created using the cloth simulation modifier in 3DS Max, a modifier which I've surprisingly managed to master. It creates some really decent effects in a short space of time.
I decided against using a standard 2D plane for this and actually just retopologized the mesh itself as the topology was quite good to start with.
The material itself was created using the standard cotton material in dDo with the tiling turned up, I then added some holes in the alpha channel for the light to shine through.
Continuing on the theme of 2D planes I created a high-poly version of the netting and baked this onto a 2D plane.
Creating hi-poly rope just consists of creating 4 cylinders and using the twist modifier, then using the Path Deform modifier I can attach it to my splines. The end result actually turned out quite nice.
The material itself again is cotton but I found that if I turn the tiling in dDo to around -2/-3 it creates a rough looking material, that combined with a nice normal map creates a nice looking asset.
As you can see I've been populating the right hand wall a fair bit. Not only with the assets above but with shelves and a fireplace.
The shelves were simple enough and all use the same texture map along with similar pieces of geometry to keep everything nice and optimised. I then added a few extra edge loops to break up the straight edges and to make them look a little more hand-made.
The fireplace isn't completed yet but it's becoming a nice feature of the wall, I noticed in the concept there seemed to be wood planks on the walls so I came up with a reason as to why they would be there. With the fireplace and wood beams there the shelves needed something to attach to, hence the planks. But it also looks rough and hand-made.
You can see the other shelves here and the boat paddles. The paddles use the same rope technique as the netting but obviously they wrap around this time. I also added in the side panels to the walls to stop them from looking too bare.
The shelves aren't completely filled up yet as I'd like to create some really basic random assets to fill them up, I don't want to over-use the assets I already have as that will spoil the look of the environment.
For example with the boat paddles you can see one set there but I also have another set on the other side on the floor, but I was careful to place them in the dark area of the floor to avoid them sticking out too much and being obvious that they're instanced.
Current view as of 03/02/2015.
I think I've made a fair bit of progress over the past view days and it's slowly coming together. I've got a nice list things to polish up before the end as well.
Change list: - Added new assets - Moved some assets around - Moved the rope on the pillars down - Toned down the lighting at the far windows to reflect the new assets blocking out the light - Fixed some transparency issues on the cloth/curtains (0.96 on transparency in the material) - Moved the angle of the lighting slightly so the window shadows hit the carpet area better
Current priorities: - Fireplace - A couple of medium sized assets - The ugly ugly placeholder carpet!! - The entrance way and doors - A new ceiling texture
