Week 1 (Induction week): Researching the world of Warhammer 40K

The world of Warhammer 40K is a nightmare for anyone currently living in it, there is no hope and everything is awful. Humanity is struggling with the half dead yet half living emperor barely being able to protect them from the Chaos Gods, the only reason he lives is that the golden throne is keeping him alive and the sacrifice of thousand pshyker to keep him alive each day, weather to kill him and let him be reborn strong again or continuing to keep him in this undead state is the conundrum for the Ultramarines primarch Guillman at the moment, because if he dies humanity looses access to the web-way (super fast space teleportation travel thingy), until he grows up again and regains his strength leaving them vulnerable to annellation during his absence. Over half the primarchs have either turned traitor, gotten lost in the web-way or died, and humanity is probably the most hated race in the entire cosmos. The tyranids are always attacking and the fear of that horrible hive mind elderidge god thing they are trying ot escape is still an unknown. Heresy is abundant. The eldar and necrons are now less of a threat but are still on the scene so still pose a threat. There is a new race on the scene called the Tau, with awesome mech suits (in all honesty they're doing alright). The chaos gods are running rampant and the orks have no idea whats going on (in all honesty mainly cuz they could not care, its quite funny as they have two god Gork and Mork who could possibly be the two most powerful in the universe if they stopped WWE fighting each other all the time).

Researching the world of Warhammer 40K - Examining the legions 

Due to my own personal interest in the Warhammer 40 K lore, I already have a base understanding of the basic structure of the universe and major historical event, as well as some of the legions and races within the Franchise, this being said, the Warhammer 40K universe is mainly centered on the Imperium of Man, I intend to base my dungeon on a specific legion during the period of the Horus Heresy. To help me with paraphrasing the lore of warhammer 40k I will be using some youtube videos by a creator called lumeun09. The Horus Heresy is the major historical event, which led to the current. state of the 41st millennium. Essentially, the Emperor has 22 (One of the Primarchs is a twin) sons. His favourite being Horus. Horus the War master, begins exploring and believing in the heresy  Surrounding the Emperor's identity.  He begins to gather support between the other Primarchs that feel scorned or resentment against the Emperor for his behavior towards them, as he is their father, but is quite distant in this role and doesn't particularly act as such, some are bitter because of this. There are other reasons for certain Primarchs specific disdain towards their father, but their general gist is that some of the Primarchs are upset with their dad for various reasons, and they no longer want him in charge. The reasoning isn't really important, it's the impact and the events that happened that are. As a result, the the Primarchs split between the lead of Horus or the Emperor. The Emperor, being the current ruler of humanity, with knowledge from Age of technology that no longer exists as he lived through these times, being the most powerful psyker even produced, the uniter and savior of humanity during the age of strife, some believe he is the God of humanity, even though he himself does not believe this. Horus, believing that the emperor had lost his way and control over the empire, due to the willful ignorance towards the looting of worlds, and ignoring the pleas of his council chamber to do something about it. Despite the emperors prior accomplishments, Horus believed that the Empire needed someone new to lead it into the future, and that this person was him. The Primarchs split between these two leaders. Sadly in Horus efforts to secure allies for his cause, he ended up making an alliance with chaos, which he eventually succumbed to. The primarchs and legions under his command, also suffered this fate and eventually became severely corrupted into the Traitor legions Today that the Empire is still fighting. Each of these traitor legions are now servants to one of the four Chaos Gods. There is no longer any semblance to who they once were, and they are lost causes, that must be eradicated. By the end of the Civil War, the Emperor eventually prevailed and defeated Horus using his flaming sword, but suffered major wounds to the point that he has to be on life saving equipment constantly. This being an ancient technology called the Golden Throne, he can no longer leave this and is essentially bound to it. Many of the Primarchs on both sides were killed during this civil war, there are only a few that remain. Although their legions are still operating, many of them no longer have their primarchs and as a result are suffering consequences. An example of this would be the Blood angels who were led by a Sanguinius (headshot nine). Sanguinius was killed during the Civil War and as a result of their Primark dying and their shared DNA with said Primark, the Blood Angels now have a unique mechanic where the more they move throughout the battlefield, the more they lose their sense of self. Essentially, they become ravenous vampires. On the other hand many of the primarchs that remain are severely injured or debilitated or in a similar state to the Emperor where they are currently in stasis to recover from their wounds. By the end, the Empire's power had severely diminished, and the overall universe, making it vulnerable to the threats of other races. It is now a constant war with the other races way more severely than it ever was before, as it tries to retake the land that was lost to the traitor legions, as well as Keep control over the land it currently has with its forces spread so thin.

 Due to the historical and lore importance of the actions of the Horus Heresy, I think I would like to create a scene that is based around a part of the Horus Heresy. Even though it will be with years in the future as the brief specifies Warhammer 40 K. So I can't exactly make a dungeon for around this time. As it's not part of the multiverse first millennium, but I can create something from that time. That is now set within the 41st millennium. A way to do this would be to possibly design a ship, as every legion has its own ships and vehicles to move around the ginormous expanse of the empire. If I did a ship wreck from a vehicle from the heresy that had crashed I could quite easily set it in the 41st millennium whilst basing it around some events which did not happen during this time, but started it. Before I start gathering reference for my dungeon crawlers aesthetic I need to decide on what legion I am basing my dungeon on. Almost every part of the Warhammer Imperium of Man has some kind of  Roman aesthetic. This is for symbolic reasons as the Imperium of Man dominated most of the known universe. Before losing it all during the Age of Strife. This very much mirrors the history of ancient Rome, as that rise and fall of Rome isn't just the rise and the fall, it's more like the rise fall and, rise fall rise and finally the last fall. As Rome had periods of great success and then periods where it lost a lot of battles and lost lands but would eventually regain these, much like the empire its self, as is the burden of civilization. This parallel is also abundant in the actions of the Empire, as their main goal is to expand until they have the whole of the universe within it so that they can bring peace by being in complete control and revert back to the age of technology, the golden age of mankind. The Roman aesthetic is mainly defined by its classical appearance, with complex detailing and sculpture to hyper realistic standard and architectural wonders of engineering for the time. This is very strongly seen through the design of the empire as anything of any significant importance such as seals of achievements, armour detailing, important buildings and people are all covered with this design motif. It's been mirrored through multiple things throughout history especially the architecture in newer civilizations around the world. The funny thing is that the Roman aesthetic isn't really its own thing, as the Romans tend to just steal the things they like about the other cultures they conquered at the time they existed. So it's essential Just an accumulation of all the different bits of the cultures they liked that they conquered. This is also a synonym for the Empire. As if you think about this the Emperor essentially did this to create the Primarchs, and although they have his DNA, he had to combine it with other things such as animals and other races from other planets in order to create them, so that they would Having specific adaptations to make it easier for them to traverse the worlds that they needed to conquer, in a way this is exactly what the romans did but with people.

Different legions tend to have another main design influence as well as the roman one, this is to highlight their own specific adaptions and abilities that they are suited for, whilst maintaining the overall roman aesthetic of the empire to bring a sense of uniformity to all of the emperors troop essentially the roman aesthetic is the uniform the other aesthetic choice is the groups identification badge. This is the reason I need to research the different regions, as I don't know which one I'm doing yet. The one I end up picking will adjust the overall aesthetic of the ship. Modular pieces I ended up making for my dungeon. For example if I ended up making the ultramarines led by Gilman, I would end up with a more blue aesthetic without much outside influence. But if I was to use Leman Russ, I would also have a Viking aesthetic combined with the uniformity of the Roman one.

The world of Warhammer 40K - Examining the legions: My final choice

As a start I have ruled out the traitor legions. This is because there are already 20 legions to decide from I feel like if I don't introduce some rules now, I'll be stuck on struggling to pick which legion I want to make and end up just wasting time trying to decide plus I tend to play as the Imperium, and I don't like the idea of building a set for “HERESY.” Even though I like the groups of the deathcore of Krieg and the general Militia, military of the Imperium of Man. I don't think these would be good choices to make as a dungeon, because they don't particularly fit the theme of the breathe for the dungeon, which is Gothic Medieval.. As the lower down the ranks, you are in the Imperium, the less ornamental and the traditional aesthetic seems to appear in their design. So far I've narrowed it down to. Six possibilities. These being space wolves. The Dark Angels. The salamanders. The Adeptus. Custodis. And the Sisters of Battle. So far, I'm leaning a bit more towards Lionel Johnson's Dark Angels and Vulcan's salamanders, because they tend to hold the traditional light aesthetic a bit more than the other chapters. With the salamanders being based on Dragon Knights and Lionel Johnson's, Dark Angels literally being medieval knights in space. Plus, I play as the salamanders and I quite would quite like to make a set piece for them. The legion I pick won't impact the shape of the set pieces i make majorly as the ship I would make for any of these chapters would be the same, other than the colours, but it does effect the type of environmental damage the ship would be suffering from and the props within the scene. For example while the Salamander might have a scale armour cape lying around the space wolves would have a fur version, it is an acute difference but an important one no the less as it will help the viewer identify what legion it is. I think to choose the best set to make it would be more reasonable to make a pros and cons list for each of the options. 

I've ended up deciding on doing the Dark angels as it gives my the opportunity to practice my organic sculpting, as I am doing character art next year any chance to practice should be exploited, plus I can't go wrong with the aesthetic as their look is literally the definition of the brief.

Researching the world of Warhammer 40K - Dungeon Inspiration

 This is the cathedral like spaceship, I want to base my dungeon on. Obviously there is no way I will ever make the whole thing. So if you look at the picture the little circle highlighted in blue is the bit I intend to create, ONLY this floor though. From this picture I can identify that there are two large towers at the front along with an arch in the middle. Curved roofs, at least four of them, varying in size. Large windows. Large circular columns. Along with some small guns. And a courtyard out the front with a large arch to walk underneath That is square with a large eagle on it. It looks like there may also be some towers at the back. But due to the size of the ship, the dungeon I would have to create to recreate this would be comically large, with mainly empty rooms. So it makes sense just to make a few small rooms that emulate the feel and the aesthetic of the room, whilst trying to keep as much to the original shape of it as possible. By imagining it as a long hallway type control room. I can create a section of it instead of trying to populate a whole room with multiple gadgets control panels and props that I don't have time to make.  The bowel of the ship seems to be a big part of of the design.  It is clearly there to smash its way through other ships like a massive battering ram, and it's a very key part of the design. I feel like mirroring this at one end of my control corridor would be a nice reference to it, and it would mean that I don't just have an open hole at either end of my dungeon. This would also mirror the shape of the STC miniature chamber, I would like to place inside my control room.  I must think this part through though, as circular parts take much longer to make than anything else because they don't snap to grid points or lines, so there's no way to easily arrange them in unreal on a grid. Let alone the higher poly count they require to get the curved shape, as well as the details needed to be included, and the fact that all props and objects within them, like control panels and doors and everything else will need to be curved to fit the shape. For this reason, I need to be very careful and open to the idea that I may need to rearrange my dungeon to lose these parts, as I have no idea currently how much time it would take to make them And all their respective parts. I need to keep an open mind about the idea of removing them, if I start running out of time.

 The textures I can see are mainly metals and glass. And the colour is primarily gold. Not surprising considering this is one of the Emperor's ships. And he is known for wearing only gold armour and. being surrounded by only gold. There is also a little bit of red on the domes.  Due to my ship being dedicated to the Dark Angels, I would like to have a bit of green and silver in my scene, and possibly a touch of red as this is the colours of the Legion. Although still keeping the ship primarily gold as the Primarchs serve the Emperor as does all of humanity and they so religiously worship him gold, that it would be very strange to get rid of the maximalist gold aesthetic.  The ship itself does seem to be a little bit worse for wear at the front, with some flaking gold with like a silvery beige magnolia, possibly underneath. This may be something I can use as inspiration for my own textures..

Researching the world of Warhammer 40K - Dungeon layout: Interior inspiration

On this merit board, there is a collection of images from Truro Cathedral. Which I gathered through a virtual tour of the site and using the snipping tool built into my PC. I also gathered some images of cathedrals on the web. I then had a look on the internet for images regarding the Space Marine Legions. I and am specifically looking at that being Dark Angels and Night Lords, So that I could use their symbols and armour and helmets as props and inspirations for little Easter eggs in my scene. I also gathered some images of holy Terra, Including some from fan art and some official, so that I have a range of inspiration Because if I only used official fan art, it would be likely I'd end up repeating someone else's work. I also gathered some images from the Warhammer 41st Millennium tabletop, war game As this is the media of Warhammer that the public is most familiar with. Obviously different sets can be personalised to the person who paints them or makes them as part of the Warhammer game is that you can make your own legion to play as, and not use any of the ones that already exist. But I tried to stick to the official sources for the legitimacy of my dungeon's aesthetic. And environmental storytelling. I also included some vehicles because the architecture of Warhammer 40 K sets aren't exactly built by the Imperium most of the time. As they're often fighting heresy off world, they may not yet have set up a colony with their own aesthetic. As a result I thought that using some of their vehicle designs for architectural inspiration. Would work better, as they tend to be universal, more abundant. And A better representation of the 41st millennium s aesthetic than the architecture, as the architecture of the sets tends to be that  From the era of expansion.

Researching the world of Warhammer 40K - Dungeon layout: Exterior Inspiration

Before making my dungeon I wanted to draw out some concept art for how I wanted the modular set pieces to look, such as the walls arches my shrine and some other big parts of the layout As I very much struggle to go straight into modelling a concept without anything to base it off of or arrange my various inspirational ideas without actually  Drawing out a definitive design. That's why I decided to make a little concept sheet of how I wanted the big pieces of my set to look, so that I wouldn't  End up procrastinating and finding it overwhelming to start working because I there was too many ideas in my head to be able to go straight into modelling, but with no definitive idea of how I wanted anything to look. There are only very basic illustrations just with enough detail to show off the parts of the design that really matter to me And then once I have an idea that I liked, I would go in and make it a bit more detailed to see how I'd want it to look, and try out some small other ideas. And some other bits were just illustrating some things from Warhammer lore that already exists For example the STC chamber that I just found it easier to draw out a little representation of it than trying to find the image every time. It was essentially just a way for me to organize all of my ideas in one place, instead of having them across various mood boards and images. And text.

To start with my concept sheet I decided to draw a small sketch of the outline of the shape of the part of the dungeon I'm creating for my initial inspirational image, as it's so zoomed out to focus on the whole design of the ship that it's quite hard to see the actual shape Of the part I wanted to make. So I thought it would be best to decide on a definitive shape that I would be using for the outline of my dungeon before going any further. I didn't need to be particularly detailed so I mainly just drew some construction lines and some main JR architectural features and went from there. This would allow me to plan out the inside of my dungeon and use some of the exterior architectural design traits to inform the interior, so that my own designs would fit in aesthetically with the original Warhammer aesthetic. The first thing I decided to create was an arch, because to me, one of the most important architectural features of a cathedral with a medieval Gothic look is the large, imposing arches. It's the first thing you see when you walk up to a church, or any kind of extravagant ancient building tends to be columns and arches, as they are quite hard to actually pull off. I started by sketching out some very basic line illustrations of the shape that I wanted, although I do have to apologise for the order I wrote them in from right to left instead of left to right Like any normal person. Because I'm dyslexic and forgot that was a thing. So I knew that I wanted to have the massive traditional arch shape in the centre,But I felt that using the same shape on the outer sides of these large supporting ceiling beams would be a bit too much to look at. So I thought I'd simplify it down to a more modern, streamlined look. This was also inspired by the aesthetic of the vehicles from the Warhammer model kits, as they tend to be a lot more modern in appearance than most of the other assets within the Imperium, with a lot more flat panelling and few details. I suppose it's because they're more Expendable Than the larger, more ornamental things like Gigantic warships and the buildings on Terra for example. I also wanted to incorporate the two headed eagle in my arch somewhere, as this is crucially important important to the Symbolism of the Imperium. Wherever you look in any official art, you'll see that two headed eagle everywhere, with its one weird beady eye staring at you. I knew I had to include it so I ended up deciding to make it a part of the arch itself. This way it's very large and very clearly illustrates to anyone looking at my work that even though this is my own design based on the Warhammer universe, it's clearly meant to be set in that universe. I also thought they'd make quite interesting light holders. As my arches are going to be quite dominant in the scene, and it will be quite hard to actually get the main directional light of the scene to go through them as their shadow will most likely make the room quite dark. So I thought that if I was to put a spotlight as if the eagle was holding it in its claws. That was facing downwards It would help to lighten up my scene, as well as give it quite a clinical feel, like an office being very well lit, which helps add to that idea of it being very technologically advanced. The next thing I decided to design was the front of the ship. As I needed a way to end my infinite corridor dungeon as the way it's designed makes it seem like one large room instead of a proper dungeon layout. So I thought that I would need some kind of end point instead of half of it being open to the world As a clean break in the ship would not be very realistic. And I don't want the corridor to go on forever with nothing in it So it's best to keep it small with the parts I'm going to make so it feels full instead of a large, sprawling area with nothing in it. I decided to make the Front of the corridor. Some kind of command center with a rectangular hexagon shape, but with large arching windows that reach up to the ceiling. The most important part for this part of the dungeon for me, was to make sure that it mirrored the shape of the bottom half of the ship seen in figure ??? This is going to be quite a large set piece to build, and quite honestly, if I get stuck for time I may have to choose between it and the STC chamber. On the second half of this page, as they're both quite large things to build and I'm limited on time, so I may have to pick one or the other. Curved elements take a lot longer to build than anything else, because they are so hard to line up properly in the game engine. Once they're being made as well as making sure that the models that are curved line up perfectly. So I may not have enough time to make both. Out of the two, I'd say this part is the more time consuming as it every monitor would need to be different because the curve isn't exactly the same on every side. So if I have to ditch one, it was probably going to be this half of the ship But this is more like an extension task than anything else. The control panels are probably the biggest thing within my scene that I may have to drop because they take so long to make. You need to make so many little modular elements to make sure that they're different from each other, as well as make altering their shape so that they fit in specific areas areas. So this is probably the thing that I'm dreading the most out of all of them but I included some concepts for them in case I do end up making some.

 This is a tree I designed for my set. I wanted it To look alien like. So I decided to pick some of my favourite weird things about Earth and combine them into a tree. This resulted in a Venus fly trap on the tree trunk of an weeping willow, and big palm like leaves and some leaves that very much mimic peacock feathers. I liked the idea of using a palm tree because it felt exotic, and considering this would be on an alien world it felt right to use something that would be a little bit different. The trees on this planet are supposed to look incredibly dangerous, so I wanted the tree to have quite a scary silhouette with lots of spikes and sharp bits and very shaggy looking. Give it a very grungy and dark aesthetic. To me, it kind of reminds me of the Grim Reaper with all the shaggy black cloak and everything. I also hoped to repurpose the leaves as modular pieces so I could use them as unique pieces within the grass to place my own touch on the grass generator I intend to use in Unreal Engine, on my plateau.  As much as I love the design I can see that it's going to be a pain to make. Especially when it comes to unwrapping, because in ZBrush I've only ever used Polypaint and that isn't easily transferable to game engines or anything else really. So I'm going to have to either retopologize it or decimate it So that I can unwrap it and add a texture. Though, due to the complexity of the shape I don't think the trim sheets will be an option for this I'm probably going to have to go into Substance Painter and texture it manually. The leaves Of palm three will be a horrible thing to make, as they're so spindly. They're going to be very difficult to separate, and the curvature of organic objects is incredibly hard to make. In a modelling engine As ZBrush hates planes, so it's best to make leaves in Maya or something similar, and then take it over to ZBrush to make a high poly version of it. But because leaves tend to be made out of planes it doesn't always work out and it tends to go terribly. Due to the complexity of the leaves, at the very minimum, I would like to get the tree and the Venus fly palm heads made as without the leaves tree does still work It's just not as complete as I'd like it to be. I'm not sure how this part of the project will go yet. Personally I enjoy the project of digitally sculpting, but I hate ZBrush, so depending on how I get on with it I may end up ditching this. I will have to see how it goes before I make a decision.

Week 2: Starting block out, Unreal Engine 5.4 & Fork

Week 2 - Graybox layouts

To figure out the layout of my dungeon, I decided to start on paper because it's a lot faster making big scale changes on paper than rearranging a whole set, rearranging models can take hours whilst drawing them out only takes 15 minutes each. I already had a pretty strong idea of what I wanted my dungeon to look like, as I am using my reference image of the commanding warship as the basic of the over all shape of the dungeon. I can also use the location of some of its features like the door and front towers to inform the layout of the inside, an example being that there will be two small box like rooms at the front of the ship as the base of the pillars extend to down onto the floor level I am trying to recreate, I can the design the rest of the rooms to my own preference as long as the fit around the preexisting features I know have to be there. I am intending to make some control panel props otherwise my dungeon will just be a collection of empty rooms as I won't have enough models to fill it. I'd never be able to make enough props to fill it. So originally, I was going to leave either end of the corridor open so that you could continue expanding on the set, but I was curious about putting a U-shaped part on the front of it just to close off one end so it didn't feel so unfinished. I wasn't going to do any side rooms originally, but I thought for a dungeon it was a bit linear in its level design, so I thought to show off the usability of my modular pieces, I should create some side rooms. I started by looking at how I could continue the shape around the STC chamber, One way was to to make the dugout control panels to encircle the STC chamber and to create a sense of flow to the environment So it's like the outer side Quests would always lead you back to the linear quest of going through the central control corridor. I still thought this was a little bare though, so I decided to add the towers, at the front of the bow In front of it. This removed the awkward gap between the side rooms and the front of the ship. I also decided to add a plateau where I could display my Venus fly palm. As this floor level is at the very top of the body of the ship it would be a bit weird if a tree grew up through the floor. After adding the towers I thought they seemed a bit too clunky for the scene and clogged up the view of the player. So I thought I would shrink the towers down and added an extra side room a bit further up the corridor. This also mirrored the shape of the STC chambers circular body. This was also when I looked for the placement of my shrine. I ended up deciding right at the front of the ship, because the captain should be able to be right at the top and head of the ship so they can direct it and its crew. Symmetry was a very important aspect of the ship for me  As it should feel aerodynamic as it's part of a  warship in space. Eventually, I decided on a layout that had large enough rooms for combat and small enough rooms  That would be perfect to hide little items in for the player to pick up. It also had a sense of symmetry, even though both sides are different and practical layout aesthetics, for the idea behind the ship.

Week 2 - Starting block out: Part 1 - Creating block outs

After starting out with making planes as directed by this week's mural, I needed to define a thickness for my 3D assets. I knew that I wanted the pillars to fit perfectly into a grid square. This was for a few reasons, to start with it will make it easier for me to line up my set pieces to the grid, it makes it easier for me to hide the joins and as I have decorative trim on my on my walls I need the pillars thick enough to be able to hide the end edges of the beams within the pillars. This has resulted in my wall being almost skeleton like thin, for the minute this will work for a block out, but I’ll explore different wall widths when I finish the block out, as I’ll be able to visually see what width the walls should actually be so that they don’t look silly, plus realistically they should be thicker as medieval building walls are typically made out of thick stone walls. The pillars also need to be wider than that of the people in the set, otherwise it sets an odd scale preset and detracts from the realism of the scene, which will reduce the immersion for the player. Immersion is the most important thing in games as if a player can’t be immersed in the game they are playing they will not be able play it. Immersion typically corresponds with fun as a game can be terrible and riddled with bug but as long as it’s fun to play people will become immersed, but as this is a rendered set piece the thematic and aesthetic accurate is the most important thing here as fans of the Warhammer universe will want to be able to see the universe they love seen in a way that accurately represents it.

Week 3: Refining block out and making my first tiling material

Week 3 - Making my first tiling material

 During this week's practical we were introduced to Substance Designer, a program used to make tileable materials. It's a very complicated program but it's quite fun. But it's definitely going to take me some time to learn it. During the practical we had to follow along with an instructional tutorial presented by one of our lecturers. Our task was to create a standard brick tiling material. I struggled following along due to the pace of the lecture And ended up losing my place. So I decided to switch to the mural and just follow along at my own pace. This worked out pretty well I had one small issue with blending modes  As the details in my grout between the bricks would not come through with the little gritty texture, as seen on (fig. 14:) turns out the blending mode was selected wrong and it wasn't overlaying over the texture of the bricks, but I spoke to the lecturer at the time and they were able to help me figure out which blending mode I would need to get it to work. The biggest issue I have with this software is that there are a lot of nodes with the same name, but the suffix on the end is different, so you quite often end up picking the wrong node and then wondering why it's not working when everything's set right, when it's actually you've picked the wrong blend node or something. With this material, I wasn't too worried with how nicely it came out, as nothing in my scene requires this texture, so I just followed the tutorial to the best of my abilities and went to see how it would come out. It came out okay, but it's not something I would actually use in a project since there's a few rough bits with the blending in of the white of the colour on the bricks. But it was useful tutorial to learn what the nodes do. I'm not going to put any more effort into improving this as I'm not using it so it'd just be a waste of time. But it was useful and I intend to have a look at YouTube to find some tutorials that would make similar or close metal panelling to what I want to make, so that I can use that as my tiling material instead. And hopefully learn a bit more about Substance Designer. In the meantime..

Week 4 - Reading week: Catch up & Rest

During week for I decided to finish off a feature of my arch and to take sometime focusing on one of my other projects due in 2 weeks, as I hadn't done much to that one up until that point and I need to spend some time on it. As i was sick over week 2 I am slightly behind the others in my class I have almost caught up at this point but I need to finish off my arch with the large eagle emblem that need to sit in the middle as a lower supporting beam. As without it it seems visually implausible that it would be able to hold the weight of the roof that the size of this structure gives off. It also need to intersect and join up with the center 'Y' shaped support. To make the construction of this center arch plausible the eagle needs to be quite thick and connect to either side of the arch. Obviously I am not an architect but I like to think that I can fake it enough to a realistic enough standard that with some tweaks and mathematics I could never do, you could actually make this. This accuracy of this iconic symbol is crucial as if there are any inaccuracies like the number of feathers or the eye being on the wrong side people will very quickly notice. So to try and get it to look as accurate as possible I am using a trick that Michael Boylan taught us for zbrush sculpting, where you use PureRef with the setting set so that it will cover the screen but transparently, so you can work on another application underneath the image, I know that you can use image planes to do this within maya but this way it doesn't take as long to set up. I ended up using Fig. 1: as a guide, as I already had the image.

Week 5 - Mesh detailing & peer review

Week 5 - Peer review: Submission & response

This was my submission for our first peer-review session, sadly at the time I forgot that it was actually due and had to do this 30minuetes before the deadline on my phone and as my updated set pieces were saved to my computers hard drive at the time I didn't have access to the most up to date photos of my set pieces, despite this my overall submission was well received and I didn't seem very far behind the other students at all despite my sickness in week 2. I didn't get a huge amount of comments in comparisons to some but the comments I did receive focused mainly on the layout most people liked it, one comment was very realistic in terms of my scale and pointed out the risk of over scope, this is a valid concern of mine and I'm glad that they pointed it out I often suffer from realistically realizing what I can make in the time and if i can fill the rooms otherwise their existence is pointless. Someone also pointed out the dangers of the curved walls but from a design aspect as they associate warhammer with having large blocky shapes not so many curved elements.

Week 5 - Drawing for games: Ature (simplified posed human body)

 This week during drawing for games we looked at ature. The Simplified anatomical representation of the human body, which allows you to pose and position it without worrying about drawing in the minor details and complex costuming. It's all about the line of action in humans this typically correlates to the curvature of the spine. When drawing if you imagine the spine as a line that extends from the head to the feet. The weight of the whole body will follow this line of action. The curvature of the line of action follows the direction of the three main structure of the body, these are the skull, rib cage and pelvis, this is because this is the three main locations of weight on the body and this dictates where everything else sits so that the body is balanced and isn't going to tip over. A good way to measure this it to make sure that the feet and head always relatively inline as if the feet extend to far out from the head the body becomes off balance and you will likely fall back/forwards. The purpose of Ide is to figure out the posing and proportions of the body without going into to much detail in some ways you could say it is the 2D version of a block out for an anatomical figure, or possible a rigging skeleton. We were given a series of images to replicate in our sketchbooks to see how accurately we could display the anatomy of a person in these positions. This is known as master studies. When you are replicating someone else's work as a way of practice (but obviously not profiting from it). I ended up doing ten figures from the two sheets I selected I manage to complete 3 in class as they were a little more complicated than the others and continued with the rest at home as I found a second sheet of poses that I liked and wanted to replicate to practice. Many were action poses and some were standing poses. Anatomy drawing is not one of my specialties, but I wanted to practice it and I saw this as a good opportunity to. This week's work doesn't specifically relate to this project at all, so I wasn't able to interlink the two the two at all this week. As this is an environment portfolio project and doesn't include any kind of character creation so it was kind of pointless to try and combine the two, it would feel very forced. Needless to say, I had fun doing it anyway. This whole page of sketch probably took me around 3 hours to draw, this went much better than my attempt at pose as I had learn from my mistakes and managed to keep things simple.

Personally my favourite is number 6, I just get more of a sence of feeling from it, than I do from the others. Not to say that I dislike the others, I can't see any major flaws with any of my other sketch. I'd say that the weakest of the bunch is number 1. This is pretty normal as your first attempt at something is often the worst, whilst you get warmed up. The only problem with it is the front leg sticking out it is to short and looks dislocated. I knew this was a problem area when I was drawing it at the time, but I had tried to fix it at least 4 times by that point and thought that it was better to move on than get stuck on the same pose, as I could always come back and fix it later. I must say though I didn't intend for it to look like number 8 had belly flopped onto number 9 and got punched in the stomach, but I started running out of room on the page and began to overlap drawing. It did make me laugh when I was drawing it though.

Week 6 - Trim sheets & tiling materials (continued)

 This week our task was to start creating a trim sheet. Since I had not been able to create a tiling material that would fit my scene in week three, as mines all metal and they were teaching us how to make bricks. I thought it would be a better idea for my time to make a tiling material this week as I hadn't had time in the previous and start planning out my trim sheet, between this week's practical and next week's. I also have a deadline for another project due this week on Friday, so I'm not going to have as much time to spend on this project this week as I would like but I'll try and get a few bits done when I get the chance.

I decided to make a floor tiling material this week, but realizing that the design that I want wouldn't work in Substance Designer, I decided to implement a different method for creating a tiling material. I created a plane that was 4X4. I ended up deciding on a pattern that was a lot like the polystyrene ceiling tiles you see in offices, I chose this because I think it lends to the industrial look that I am going for. I also included some Gothic medieval architecture into the panels by including a cross in the center and across extending outwards to the edge of the tile. I had to do a little bit of engineering for this as I only created the quarter of a cross in each corner and I needed the to line up when the tiles were lined up together. I chose a cross because of its strong connection to that of the Christian church and the fact that in my mood-board for architecture I was able to spot the symbolism of the cross multiple times within the architecture of 40k, this help to create a link between my project and the gothic medieval theme of the brief, but also links with the more modern aesthetic of 40k with the more industrial look.

The one on the left is the standard floor tile, and the one on the right will have a floor grate embedded in it but I have not yet got round to making that. The floor grate on the left was relatively easy to make. It was a series of offset in extrudes. That allowed me to create the shapes that I wanted. The biggest issue I had was the symmetry of the shape as when I first made it the crosses on the corners that should match up when multiple tiles are placed down did not line up. They were all different, so I had to delete three quarters of the shape and mirror it in several ways in order to make the shape completely symmetrical, so that the crosses would always properly connect when more tiles would be added. This was a bit of a silly mistake, because I could have done this from the start and saved myself a lot more time than making the whole grid myself. Lesson learned, this is something I struggle with I take a lot longer to realize thing than most people do, I need to think of a way to remind myself of quicker way I have learnt to do things before I start doing it the long way. I very happy with how this tiling material turned out but I think that I want to do something a bit more unusual for the gridded plane as I think a simple square grate will be a bit boring and over used, I quite like the idea of introducing some kind of diagonal element to it so that it has some resemblance to hazard tape create a consistent thematical aesthetic between it and that hazard tape like strips on the walls and doors.

Week 6 - Center piece floor tile - Texturing

To create the texturing of the adepteus mechanicus logo floor tile I decided to stick with the iconic alternating half white half black tha the symbol is known for. I didn't want to overcomplicate the colours or the attributes of the texture to much as the resty of my scene has a lot of green, silver and gold in it and I feel like if I add in another colour that it will become overwhelming, so to keep it simple I went for black and white with a paint pealing effect. This was a pretty simple texture to make as I just had to use on of the prebuilt metal texture below it edit it a little bit so it didn't look so much like a stock image texture. I then just create a simple fill layer on top with a colour, roughness and height channel with a mask and a generator. The trickiest bit of this to make was the opacity map as on the original high poly sculpt the gaps between the skull and the gear are filled in, but when I first out the model into maya it sat just below the grid and as a result my floor tiling material cam up through this gap. I liked this a lot and decided to make a stylistic choice on making this actually possible, the way to do this was through an opacity map. I ended up having to paint it on as there was no way I could add an identifier material to a flat plane for where I wanted the opacity map sections to be as the shape was far to complicated. Overall though I think this piece turned out pretty well as there were no baking errors and I would consider the texture on it to be pretty realistic. This is officially my first completed piece.

Week 6 - Trim sheet planning

 As this week I wanted to make sure that I got my tiling material done. I decided that . I should at least start planning out what I want on my trim sheet and the proportions of the different sections. The list of textures I decided that I wanted are:

1.  Decorative arches,

2.   Hazard tape, but with a 3D element,

3.  Decorative crosses,

4.  Stained glass,

5.  Plastic,

6. Rubber,

7.  Bolts/ Rivets,

8.  Fabric.

 This is how my trim sheet sectioning looks so far. The red, yellow and grey are bits that are going to need to be modelled. The rest are currently textures, so I don't need to model any of these parts. I just need to create a flat plane to sit on the top which I can then export to Substance Painter to texture and then bake down on top of the low poly plane below. The colours are going to be material identifiers, so that in unreal, I can apply the trim sheet material to the colour identifier it sat on which I can then colour code my modular pieces so that I can use tiling and trim on the same object, a bit like in marmoset. By doing this it means I can create large models that don't require the bits that need to be trim and the bit that need to be tiled seperately, this save me time as it would be hard to arrange all of these pieces at the right height in unreal engine 5. It also save on the call count as unreal only has to call up one model and not multiple and then arrange them, so its a more efficient way of planning this out.

Week 6 - Trim sheet making

After finishing the planning phase and doing a few other bits that I need to do in class I managed to get enough time at the end of the week to be able to start making the first modelled component on my trim sheet. I decided to start with the arches as I thought that this would be relatively quick to make.

This piece took me about 40 mins to make a lot longer than it should have as I was struggling with the mirror tool, I dont know what I have done to it but it took about 8 tries to get it to work and mirror the other side of the arch. It just kept overlapping and not joining the vertices, in the end I just got it to mirror properly then used verge vertices withing a certain distance of each other. I intend to mirror this several times next to each other until it extends past the length of the plane so that there are no weird baking artifacts on the edges. I am currently thinking of putting a simple skull in the center of the arch bit and an eagle in the top section. This way I can reuse some of the pieces already in my scene as I can shrink down my large eagle beam model from week 4 and remove the back, this will save me so much time.

Week 6 - Drawing for games: Heads, hands & feet (or what should have been)

As we had a deadline the following Monday for another project our teacher decided that us doing game art should focus on this during the lesson, so during this session I continued to work on my concept art deadline, but I did take some picture of this weeks content for me to complete before my next drawing for games session in the following week which I will submit with that lesson then. The images below were my finished products from this drawing for games session.

Week 7 - Environmental story telling & Unwrapping

 This week's theoretical lecture was on the environmental storytelling within a game and how this relates to level design. This lecture mainly consisted of telling us how we can use props, textures, decals, and shapes within our scene to tell the viewer a story without directly implying it through a monologue or epilogue or writing it out. Essentially, as I would call it, Easter egg culture. Every fan of any fandom loves finding an Easter egg. I already have a few of these planned out within my scene, these being the reference to the Golden Throne and the symbolism of the Dark Angels Legion within the scene, as theoretically this ship could belong to any one of the Primark legions But because of all of the representation Of the Legion I want to use it is telling a story of what has happened to this ship. An example of how I've done this that within my textures there are a lot of scratches and damage and overgrown foliage. This suggests that this ship has been here for a while and has been damaged in some sort of battle, all the references to the Dark Angels clearly make it appear as a Dark Angels ship. I also intend to include some decals of the logo for the Night Lords, as this is who they fought during the Horus Heresy and I want to leave some Easter eggs to show that a battle between these two factions took place on this ship and that is why it is now crashed on this alien forest planet and has been for a while and is starting to be overtaken by foliage.

The video above is a "Detailed diatribe" by the Overly Sarcastic Productions crew on You tube, I used this as my main inspiration for how to use environmental storytelling in my scene. During the video they pointed out that a season Zelda fan would be able to tell that some of the locations within the game that are not explicitly pointed out are still references to past games and the lore of BOTW an example being that lanayru's promenade (a location on the map in the game) has the same architectural features as the temples in Skyward sword, there are also illustrations of the loftwing on it, even though they are mentioned and do not appear at all or on any other architecture in the region of Hyrule. This is an amazing example of good environmental story telling and it is something that I want to mimic in my own scene with the symbolism of the dark angel being obscured by that of the night lords.

Week 7 - Environmental storytelling: Unwrapping

 Due to the nature of the lecture this week there is no practical, So this week we were given free reign to do whatever we needed to do during the lesson, I decided that I was going to do some unwrapping. Unwrapping is my least favorite part of making models As a result, I tend to leave it till last Probably not the best idea, but I can never get motivated to do it unless I'm under time pressure and have to get it done. It is boring It takes ages and I always have problems with it. One of my most common problems is when I delete an the automatic unwrap and create a camera based one and begin creating UV shells and unfolding it. It breaks all the geometry into separate polys and I have to go and refuse all of the vertices. This takes absolutely ages trying to find them and fusing them and I hate it. Although during this project I have found a quick fix. This being a button that merges vertices within a certain distance of each other (which you can set, or just select the vertices that you want to join and it will merge them at the center point between both vertices) this is called the merge vertices button, Pretty obvious right? But I'd never noticed it before. How dense is that?. I wish I had found this out before. It would have saved me so much time on my previous projects.

 These are the models so far that I'm looking at unwrapping Obviously not the floor tiling bits as they will be baked onto planes and don't require unwrapping or the tree because I'm not happy with how it has been ZRemeshed. It doesn't show all the detail that I need it to, and it's too rough for the smoothness of the shape. I need to speak to a lecturer in class about how I can properly Make a lower poly version of this without retopolgising because to put it simply I don't have the time. Foliage artists are some of the most well paid and most skilled people within the game art world. As a result, their skills are very well sought after and it's a very difficult profession to learn. Me trying to do this with my first ever model is pretty much unthinkable.  The pieces I'm going to be unwrapping today include all the walls, doors, arches and pillars.

Week 7 - Environmental storytelling: Unwrapping - Outer arch

 Unwrapping the arch was pretty simple It mainly consisted of breaking up all of the  Trim like pieces of the object into as little pieces as possible with the checkered squares staying as square as they can and then breaking up the parts that could not be kept together.

 I tried to create as little seams as possible for this without breaking the squares of the UV checker pattern.  This is quite an easy shape to unwrap It just took a little while because of all the little pieces. One thing I did want to keep in mind whilst unwrapping this though, was try to keep all of the seams on the underside of the shape because this is a top down dungeon crawler, you are going to be looking at all of these objects from above above, as a result you don't want any seams on the top sides of the object as the player will instantly notice them, so I tried to keep all seams in edges that are either inside pillars or underneath the object so you wouldn't see any seams on the texturing.

Week 8 - Decals & Peer review

 This week we have peer Review, an online theoretical lecture and an in-person practical On Thursday. On Thursday, we're going to be learning about decals and how we can use them to enhance our scene without having to expand our texture budget or Polycount count budget poly, which will increase the efficiency of the loading time in the game engine. Decals are essentially finding image PNGs that you can use. Like sticker alphas in Substance Painter, but you have a bit more control over them. They seem quite easy to use, but referencing their origin seems like it's going to be horrendous, as there's no way I'm going to get enough time to make my own decals so I probably just find some Creative COMMON licensed decals (copy right free). Currently I wouldn't say I'm at the point where I'd be able to import decals into my scene as much to my own detriment I'm trying to avoid avoid Unreal Engine for as long as possible because quite frankly, I despise it and it frightens me. I struggle with learning new software, it takes me much longer than most people would, because I just cannot remember what any of the functions are. It took me over a year to learn ZBrush and two years to learn 3ds Max. I would need a much more detailed in-person tutorial on how to use it than the murals are able to give me. So im trying to do as much of the work outside of it before I have to bring it in to unreal. My plan is to obviously use the repository as that as part of the brief, do the decals and import into unreal so I can learn it as I go. But I won't be importing my model in to for a while yet, as I intend to make the scene in Maya in my rough block out and just keep replacing it and then import it into unreal as one large asset because I don't really fancy laying my whole scene out again in unreal, especially with my curved walls that I can't snap to anything. I know in game studios I would be cursed out for this, but for what I am doing next year, being character art, this isn't something I really need to go into to as much depth as other people would, it also give me more time at my own pace instead of being rushed to be able to learn the software.

Week 8 - Peer review

 This week is peer review, I submitted the work that I have done so far and got a few comments. I got several compliments about my tree, this greatly improved my opinion on my project as currently I don't have the time in my life to spend on it as much as I would like and as a result I am starting to realize that I have over scoped and am going to need to drop somethings in my design, this has greatly decreased my moral and enthusiasm for the project, so it is nice to have some positive feedback about something I am passionate about. I did receive a constructive comment about my tiling material, but as I submitted the bricks, to show that I had made one even if I am not going to use it, I didn't see the point in acting on it as it's only a placeholder thing really. I was currently working on building my new tiling material to replace this, but I didn't see the point in including it as it wasn't really much to show, plus when I was making my tiling material the first time round, I was on the GA computer and it crashed and it hadn't saved before it crashed, so I lost all my work and now I have to remake it. I was going to submit it for this but at that point I didn't have any thing tangible to put on here so I just put the bricks one in for filler. The only other constructive comment I got was about the topology of the low poly tree, and I could understand that because I wasn't happy with it either. I used Zremesher to try and get it below 20,000 for the large object poly count restriction, but I just couldn't get it low enough, only within about 5000 over the limit, but it was still an improvement form the high poly tree being over a million. I need to find a way of making a low poly for this tree without topologizing (as it will take far to long to do) that isn't going to have such bad topology as zremesher. It just not usable. It has not got enough resolution and the polys are too uniform to match the odd shapes of the tree, and can't get the resolution for the really spindly twigs.

Week 8 - Control panel - modular pieces

 This week I also started to make some of the panelling and props I would need to sit on my control panel.  I started by making the base shape of the control panel. The reason the centre section is so much higher than the other sections is because I've tried to make it practical and inclusive for the personnel that would be on my ship, as the centre bit is for a Primark. That's why it's so high and in the lower bits are for a standard soldiers. That's why it's built lower. This centre monitor is an extra little bit of height for the Primark and helps you realise that this is the centrepiece of this control panel and that it's for the most important person because it's the most detailed. I wanted to make all of the control panels  Switches, lights, keyboards Screens. Modular because I could reuse them as different things as well. If I was to take this little screen cube box I've built, for example, off of this, I could quite easily make it the control panel for a door. If I sat on a little column, and then I've got a modular piece that can be reused in multiple places, and a keyboard can be moved around for the different parts. The control panels and switches can obviously be reused on well, everything, and the panelling to show that the control panels access panels for construction and repairs can be reused on the walls to make them a bit more unique than each other Considering I have so many rooms, if all the walls were the same, it would be a bit boring after a while.  Modularity is key in any set, as it allows you to save time and money on building more resources, and you reusability is amazing because it means you don't have to import multiple new assets You can just copy and clone the same ones and use them in different places without adding more of a loading budget to your game.

Week 8 - Drawing for Games: Portrait

Week 9 - Lighting

Week 9 - Drawing for Games: Folds - Master studies

Week 10 - Presentation & tiling material 2

This weeks lesson is all about the presentation of our scene in unreal as I am still playing catch-up and not yet ready or wanting to go in unreal this week I am intending on making the main tiling material of my scene, I i did start making it last week but the computer crashed before i could save, so no I have to remake the whole thing over from scratch again. Hopefully it will be faster this time.

Week 10 - Tiling material 2: Metal panels

 Due to the fact that I have an an extension Added to my regular deadline. I am not currently at the same point as other people in my class, as this week would currently be. The clinch for most people. I don't have that. So during these lessons I have been doing the bits that I've been struggling on or need a bit of extra help on. So this week I decided to focus on making my main texturing tiling material. This being my metal panelling, trim sheet. Although we had the tutorial on how to use Substance Designer in our Thursday practical weeks back. Personally I didn't understand in any way how I could use any of those skills to  Make this type of material as I didn't understand enough of what all the Different nodes did. So I decided the best course of action would be to find a tutorial on YouTube as an Instructional manual for making this.

Week 10 - Tiling material 2: Metal panels - Tutorial: Making metal panels

I have tried indipendantly for hours to try and get rid of the dark rings cause by the blend of the tessilation factor. I've tried adding blend nodes changing the input and oput locations and the types of blend from normal to multiple, to subtrtact and so on but I can't fix it. I struggle to infer instructions from text I find it easier to speak to someone in person and to be able to visually see what they are doing, so i am going to wait for Thursdays lecture to get some help on how to fix this. In the meantime I am going to complete the next part of the new tutorial on how to add moss to my texture, so that I if I have issues with joining these two tutorials togther I can ask for help for this ass well on thursday. This tutorial was quite hard compared to the other one, as there were many more steps involved with more complicated node set ups, plus i had to try and infer how to attach this node group to my previous work.

I think my finished product is amazing and I don't see anyway I could make it better. If I added anything else to it now I think it would be two much. I don't know hat else to say about it other than i think its perfect. I'm a lost for words.

Week 10 - Drawing for Games: Drapery - Life drawing

Week 11 - Optimisation: Layout

Once again, I'm behind in lessons as usual. Optimisation was that as I had finished one of my main modular set pieces being these massive arches going through the corridor, I wanted to see if they obstructed the viewer's view of the playing area at all. As is a top down dungeon crawl it's important that the player can see where they're going,Due to the top down perspective, ceilings and beams are an obstacle prepared to see around and can quite easily agitate them into not wanting to play the game anymore. Obviously, if people don't play a game then what's the point in making it? So I decided to try three different possible layouts for my pillars. One was one every four squares. The whole arch, not just the side bits. Then I tried every eight steps and then a set of every 12 steps. The red line is for the pillars separated by four steps. The yellow line is for the pillars separated by eight steps, and the green circle is for the pillars separated by 12 steps. My personal favourite was the 12 step gap because with the other two The arches are just too close together for you to see through. It's not feasible to have. If you were playing and looking straight down, you would not be able to see your character Most of the sides. It's a combat game. You wouldn't be able to see any enemies coming at you, or loot or possible interactable items because the beams and the ceiling have been away. So as a result I'm going to use the 12 step gap between the center pillars for my own dungeon.

The second image with the yellow circles are the pieces that I still need to build. At this point in the game. It's odd that I'm still building bits, but considering that they're not part of the main modular must have set to be able to submit the assignment, I'm not too bothered about doing them now. Although looking at it now there are quite a lot to do. The Yellow circles highlight problem areas and things that I still have to build. That's for yellow circles up the middle a bit that I still need to build as there is a massive circular dome that's supposed to sit in the middle of my dungeon so I've not yet got round to building along the circular walls to encase it Search. The second circle in the line is the represent that I still need to build the components for the control panels. The next circle in the line is to represent that I need to build my shrine. The fourth circle is to show that I still need to build the ramming head of the ship at the front and all of the control panels That needs to go in It. 

Long story short there is still a lot to do and I am starting to panic now, I think I am going to confine my dungeon to just the center corridor with just the STC chamber in it and not the curved control room at the front, as there is just to much to make. What I have made so far looks good and I am proud of what the pieces I have currently made, but it feels unfinished and I would not in anyway consider this near completion.

Week 11 - Optimisation: Shrine - Throne

Week 11 - Optimisation: Shrine - Throne: Inspirational mood-board

Week 12 - Props

During week 12 I had a very limited amount of time that I could spend on my project as I already had other deadline needing hand-in that week, so wasn’t apply to make massive progress with the project, this week. You have been warned.

Week 13 (Easter) - STC chamber

Next I started making the circular walls for my stc chamber. I didn't want to extend them all the way up to the ceiling or they would obscure the view for the play since the hole at the top is not big enough when looking straight down into it to look all the way around the room. and having walls that high would also obscure the view of the other rooms as well. The walls themselves don't need to be that complicated only curved as I am going to use a use a tiling material on the that doesn't match the rest of the ship as I don't want to fell like it was built in the ship it is supposed to be something that they picked up and installed in the ship it doesn't actually belong.

I decided to tidy up the bottoms of the dome pillars so that they were attached instead of a bunch of overlapping shape as it would make it easier for me to line the bottoms of the dome pillars up with the tops of my wall pillars. I also deleted the parts of the dome pillars that extended out and through my center arches, so that they looked like their interlocking beams were connected to improve the realism of the scene.

Week 14 (Easter) - Trim sheet

Week 15 - Textures

Week 15 - Textures: Trim sheet

Week 15 - Textures: Floor tiling materials

My plan for the floor tiling texturing was to keep things pretty simple and keep to my colour palette of green, gold, silver, black & white. Creating the textures themselves was a pretty simple affair but making the masks was a long and tedious process. As my geometry is baked onto a plane I can't use the poly paint function that I have come to love so much and had to paint in the masks for every material by hand. This took ages, it didn't help that at the time my version of substance painter was corrupted and anytime I made several paint strokes without letting it compute it, it would crash and close the application, but eventually I managed to get this finished.

Sadly, by the time it came to texturing my grated version of the floor tiling, that I had started at university to create the opacity mask my version of substance painter had pretty much become unusable. Just by opening the file it would crash and since I am so close to my deadline I just decided to leave it as I didn't have enough time to figure out what was wrong with substance painter and fix it.

(AD deadline) Week 16 - Refinement and unwrap

This week I am unwrapping all of my must have modular set pieces ready to be exported to unreal so that materials can be applied. The fact that I am doing this now shows just how far behind I am, but I have currently applied for an EC deadline and am waiting to hear back, otherwise I will just have to wait for the referal verdict and continue on then. My time management skills are terrible I should be at the stage of rendering by this point. My problem is that when it comes down to situations like these I don't think work to a pass, I think just rush to get everything you had planned do so your not a disappointment people, so they don't think less of me and as I have no concept of time I always think I can get it all done in time. The worst thing is that I am self aware in the fact that I know I am doing this to myself, but not at the moment it happening. As you can probably tell I am currently entering panic mode and just trying to get the bare minimum done in time so that I don't fail. I need to work on this as this can't keep happening especially next year when i will be in a group and if i do this we will all fail and that is not fair on my other team member. I think for next year I am going to strive to contact my study skills tutor as soon as I am given a brief to help me create a Gannt chart for the whole project that they can help hold me to so this doesn't happen again, esspecially that now I will have the learning support that I will need for next year.

(AD deadline) Week 16 - Refinement and unwrap: Pillars

(AD deadline) Week 16 - Refinement and unwrap: Door + Doorway (one object)

My next object to unwrap was the whole in one door. This again was quite simple to unwrap I just took a little bit of time to complete due to all of the pieces i had to separate. The only thing that I struggled with was the arches as the unfold tool kept trying to straightened them so i ended up have to unfold each poly on it own to properly unfold the section to the shape of the curve. Packing this shape was a little tricky, due to the shape of some of the pieces they took up a lot of space that most other pats of the shape couldn't fit around, so I had to try a few different variations of packing layout before I was able to find the right one that used up the uv editor space ethe most efficiently.

(AD deadline) Week 16 - Refinement and unwrap: Door + Doorway (multiple)

(AD deadline) Week 17 - Unwrapping & material identifiers

This week I am continuing with unwrapping as I didn't quite get it all finished last week due to personal circumstances.

(AD deadline) Week 17 - Unwrap and material identifiers: Shrine

(EC deadline) Week 18 - Clinic

This week is all about finishing off those last little bits. The main things I want to get done this week are setting up my scene in unreal engine and getting ready to render. Unreal is going to take a while to set up because I need to arrange all of the pieces, set up the lighting and apply all of the textures.

(EC deadline) Week 18 - Clinic: The tiresome trim sheet

(EC deadline) Week 18 - Clinic: Shrine: Texturing

 Texturing my shrine was a pretty simple affair, as I'm trying to keep a sense of cohesion between my set colours I have been able to create a basic smart material without the masks that I need on of my reusable metal textures and materials such as rubbers and fabrics and paint textures. So I was able to just import these into Substance Painter and then use the  Poly paint brush. In order to paint these back onto the areas of the shape that I wanted them to be on. This severely cut down on the amount of time this took to do, as I only had to make two textures in order to finish this. I just had to make all the masks again. The two textures I had to make was the silver rusted metal and the green fabric. I used a pre-built material for the fabric as they're far too complicated for me at my current level to ever be able to construct and just added some dirt and grunge modifiers on top of it to age the fabric a little bit. As otherwise it all seemed too clean for the setting of my ship. The metal material I made from scratch as they're pretty quick to make. I just created a bunch of fill layers including roughness and metallic and generators with rough . Patterns on them and coloured them a few different shades of brown, and changed the tiling slightly to create a more realistic feeling to the rust. I didn't particularly like how large the tiling of the metal. Texture on the wings was but I kind of understand what caused it, with the wings having to be so small in order to fit on the UV editor. There's not really much I can do to fix this as I don't really have enough room in UV editor to make them any bigger, so I just upped tiling to the highest amount that I could so that it would look more realistic than it was before. It didn't turn out too bad, but it is a little bit noticeable.

(EC deadline) Week 18 - Clinic: Shrine: Rendering

As I finished texturing my shrine this week in substance painter, I thought that it was only fitting that I render it in substance painter whilst I had it all set up and ready to go. I used painters renderer to create some images of my shrine showing it off at multiple angle of view from the right front, to the right back and a front facing view just for good measure. I wanted to make sure that I showed off what I had made for my shrine as it is one of the modular pieces I am most happy with. The textures are reasonable and the modelling is a good quality and there are no baking artifacts. I like the colour palette and the use of gold really makes it stand out as well as continuing on with my reference to the golden throne as one of my main inspirations. I would say the only thing on the entire model that I am a little upset about is the rusty texture on the wings, its tiling is a little large, but this isn't something I can easily fix as it is to do with the size of the unwrap section on the uv's and its resolution. I can't make the wings any bigger or they will not fit into the uv editor and I can't make the other pieces any smaller. This is the highest tiling amount setting you can have in painter and although it look better than it did its still a little bit oversized, I wouldn't say that it completely ruins the texture for me though its more of a pet peeve at this point. I don't see any issues with my unwrapping or texture maps they all look pretty good to me. I'd say that my biggest let down with the set piece is that there is no high poly baked onto it, but this is the same for all of my model, so I will go into further reasoning in my main conclusion about why this happened.

(EC deadline) Week 19 - Scene organization

 This week is my deadline week so I'm very pressed for time I'm just going to try and get the bare minimum of the modular kit set ready, and try to fix my trim sheet beforehand Again, it's going to be a big push, but I'm really starting to get drained and emotionally exhausted by this project and by this point. So I just really want to get it submitted. I'm going to attempt to fix my trim sheet but if it doesn't work out I'll just leave it as it is and submit as I have made it and it is half working. It's just not great.

(EC deadline) Week 19 - Rendering (UE5)

This week I am rendering my unreal scene ready for submission. I hate Unreal and rendering so this is going to be fun. Joking its going to be my worst and most stressful nightmare. I found the learning material for rendering difficult to follow as we were not show where any of the rendering buttons were and I struggled to follow it, so I found a tutorial on You tube on how to properly render in Unreal Engine as I had no idea where to start. I had to use the capture high resolution screen shot to capture the images I wanted.  They didn't turn out too badly in all fairness and I don't mind them all that much. I just wish the other end of the dungeon was closed but I don't have enough time to set up all the pieces I only have an hour till this deadline is due, and I already haven't done my references sheet or anything else for that matter And I'm not gonna have enough time to write a conclusion. Honestly at this point, I'm having a bit of a panic attack but I'm trying to get the must have submission bits ready.

(Referral deadline) Week 20 - Conclusion

Due to personal circumstance I don't have enough time to finish this project to the standard I want to, plus now it is capped there is no reason to do much more than I already have. It would just be a waste of time and energy. The reason i missed my deadline to begin with is that my computer got stuck on rendering and ran over the deadline as I already believe my portfolio submission is at 40% the only thing I wanted to do is fix the timesheet, This proved more complicated than I thought, so I focused on enhancing the rest of my scene to the best of my ability, and just showing off the fact that only one spot is broken. And managed to do everything.  This week I just want to focus on finishing up  Tied up my mouthscene.

(Referral deadline) Week 20 - Conclusion: Scene organization & lighting

 Before doing my lighting, I decided to change the layout of my scene slightly as I didn't like the fact that in my first attempt to submit that half of my dungeon was just an open space to the world. So I decided to replicate the dungeon on the opposite side just to close it off and then create a little alleyway that I could use as a photographic opportunity to frame the shrine. This way that although there was still an opening, you Couldn't see it from the angles I was rendering at This took me about two hours to rearrange as I had to reset up my modular shots as well since for some reason they hadn't saved last I made them. This was a bit time consuming and I probably could have done this earlier Say that today wasn't so much stretch for time but it's a consequence of me just being exhausted from stress and quite frankly I haven't got any patience for this project anymore and it's very hard to get into a headspace a, where I want to work on it. Now I just want it over with.

 To set up the lighting in my unreal scene I started with setting the directional light so that it was at its lowest point, as I didn't really want it interfering with the lights in my scene otherwise you wouldn't see them. But if I turned off the skybox, then the scene became too dark to actually see what was happening in it So I found this was the best way of making sure you could see what was happening in the suit, but without the sky drawing any focus to it. I used rectangular box lights as a way of lighting the wall lights within my scene I place them over the top and used a dark blue lighting colour and limited luminescence to light the either ends of my dungeon layout. I also added lights to the beams that the eagles are holding in the scene, as they are supposed to be large overhead lights like you would see in an industrial complex. This wasn't a very hard task to complete complete, or it didn't take very long. I simply just created one rectangular light and duplicated it eight times and just modified the size slightly for the overhead lights as they are thinner and longer than the wall lights. Other than that I didn't have any other lights in my scene as I didn't want it to seem like it was in too good working order Considering the environmental storytelling and the narrative that I had created around my scene. But I knew that it had to have lights, even if it was a little implausible. Otherwise it would be pitch black. This took me around an hour on average to do, mainly just because it was fiddly, lining everything up.

(Referral deadline) Week 20 - Conclusion: Final renders

(Referral deadline) Week 20 - Conclusion: Final renders - Shrine hero asset sheet

(Referral deadline) Week 20 - Conclusion: Final renders - Modular shots

(Referral deadline) Week 20 - Conclusion: Final renders - Trim sheet & tiling modular shots

(Referral deadline) Week 20 - Conclusion: Final renders - 8 Portfolio renders

(Referral deadline) Week 20 - Conclusion

List of Figures

• Figure 1. Chris SWISS. n.d. Imperial Eagle [digital graphic]. Pinterest [online]. Available at: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/8725793013708885/ [accessed 29th January 2025].

• Figure 2. Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd. 2023. Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum Core Rulebook - Imperial march [digital illustration]. PC Gamer [online]. Available at: https://www.pcgamer.com/the-new-warhammer-40000-tabletop-rpg-is-like-playing-dandd-in-a-horrifying-galaxy-where-everything-wants-to-kill-you/ [accessed 29th January 2025].

• Figure 3. Johannes HELGESON. 2022. Warhammer 40K Horus Hersey Fanart – The Primarchs [digital illustration]. ArtStation [online]. Available at: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/yJeWO8 [accessed 5 February 2025].

• Figure 4. Oliver CATES. N.d. Warhammer 40k Propaganda Poster [digital image]. Pinterest [online]. Available at: https://fr.pinterest.com/pin/7177680635299297/ [accessed 24 July 2025]

• Figure 5. Holly HANN. 2025. Dungeon crawler design document. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 6. Holly HANN. 2025. Venus fly palm. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 7. Holly HANN. 2025. Playing with layouts. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 8. Holly HANN. 2025. Making blackout pieces [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 9. Holly Hann. 2025. Layout 3D [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 10. Holly HANN. 2025. DFG pose [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 11. Holly HANN. 2025. Block out refinement [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 12. Holly HANN. 2025. Scaleman [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 13. Holly HANN. 2025. Modular pieces [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 14. Holly HANN 2025. Bricks [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 15. Holly HANN 2025. Master studies perspective [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 16. Holly HANN 2025. Perspective [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 17. Holly HANN 2025. Eagle beam [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 18. Holly HANN 2025. WK3 PR [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 19. Holly HANN 2025. VFP side [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 20. Holly HANN 2025. DFG ature [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 21. Holly HANN 2025. Floor tiling [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 22. Holly HANN 2025. Adeptus mechanicus alpha [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 23. Holly HANN 2025. Adeptus mechanicus tile [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 24. Holly HANN 2025. AM tile texturing [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 25. Holly HANN 2025. TS planning [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 26. Holly HANN 2025. TS arches [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 27. Holly HANN 2025. GAR 102 D1 [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 28. Holly HANN 2025. WIP 1 [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 29. Holly HANN 2025. Outer arch UV [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 30. Holly HANN 2025. Center arch checkered [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 30. Holly HANN 2025. Center arch UV [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 31. Holly HANN 2025. Best UV wall [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 32. Holly HANN 2025. DFG value [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 33. Holly HANN 2025. WK 8 PR[photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 34. Holly HANN 2025. Decals [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 35. Holly HANN 2025. Am tile retro topology [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 36. Holly HANN 2025. Control panels [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 37. Holly HANN 2025. Portrait LD [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 38. Holly HANN 2025. Portrait master studies [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 39. Holly HANN 2025. Lighting [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 40. Holly HANN 2025. Master studies drapery [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 41. Holly HANN 2025. tiling colour overlap [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 42. Holly HANN 2025. Tiling complete [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 43. Holly HANN 2025. DFG LF drapery [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 44. Holly HANN 2025. testing arches[photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 45. Holly HANN 2025. To do list [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 46. Holly HANN 2025. throne front [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 46. Holly HANN 2025. throne back [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 47. Holly HANN 2025. master studies [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 48. Holly HANN 2025. zremesh vs decimation [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 49. Holly HANN 2025. problem areas [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 50. Holly HANN 2025. baking [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 51. Holly HANN 2025. textures [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 52. Holly HANN 2025. master studies grid [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 52. Holly HANN 2025. master studies sketches [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 53. Holly HANN 2025. dome finale [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 54. Holly HANN 2025. dome walls [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 55. Holly HANN 2025. dome joining [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 56. Holly HANN 2025. skull arch added [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 57. Holly HANN 2025. eagle arch added [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 58. Holly HANN 2025. hazard tape [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 59. Holly HANN 2025. crosses [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 60. Holly HANN 2025. planning Ts [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 61. Holly HANN 2025. Unwrapping Ts [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 62. Holly HANN 2025. TS texturing [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 63. Holly HANN 2025. TS modelling [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 64. Holly HANN 2025. TS blinn 6 [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 65. Holly HANN 2025. master studies gouache [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 66. Holly HANN 2025. Pillar UV [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 67. Holly HANN 2025. door uv [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 68. Holly HANN 2025. 1/2 door uv [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 69. Holly HANN 2025. door material [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 70. Holly HANN 2025. banner uv [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 71. Holly HANN 2025. shrine uv [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 72. Holly HANN 2025. adding materials [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 73. Holly HANN 2025. TS material UE [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 74. Holly HANN 2025. Tiling material UE [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 75. Holly HANN 2025. Shrine texture [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 76. Holly HANN 2025. shrine hero asset sheet [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

• Figure 77. Holly HANN 2025. TS UV display [photography]. Private collection: Holly HANN.

Full reference

• BRICKY. 2022. Every Single Warhammer Space Marine Legion in a Nutshell. [YouTube user-generated content] Available at: https://youtu.be/Ae2Beeleswc?feature=shared [accessed 24 july 2025]

• 3Ds MAX TRICKS. 2023. How to create parametric shell | 3D's Max modeling tutorials [YouTube user-generated content] Available at: https://youtu.be/uNkSCWfDLzA?feature=shared [accessed 24 july 2025]

• Epic developers community. n.d. Using Texture Masks. [website forum] Available at: Using Texture Masks in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.6 Documentation | Epic Developer Community  [accessed 24 july 2025]

• ExplorAR.co,uk. n.d. Virtual Tour [online AR] Available at: Truro Cathedral - Virtual Tour [accessed 24 july 2025]

• Kalyson. 2019. Substance Designer - Metal Plate Material  [YouTube user-generated content] Available at: https://youtu.be/dcmzrb7dLBY?feature=shared [accessed 24 july 2025]

• Kalyson. 2020. Substance Designer - Metal Plate Material  [YouTube user-generated content] Available at: https://youtu.be/OdXdmDw2tHM?feature=shared [accessed 24 july 2025]

• Overly Sarcastic Productions. 2021. Breath of the Wild: The Eternal Hyrule - Detail Diatribe. [YouTube user-generated content] Available at: https://youtu.be/BaErDSSKTKA?feature=shared [accessed 24 july 2025]

• Luetin09. 2019. WFT IS WARHAMNER 40K” - EXPLAINED - FULL BEGINNER’S GUIDE + EVERY MAJOR FACTION | Lore/History. [YouTube user-generated content] Available at: https://youtu.be/M6M9-oFEKpk?feature=shared [accessed 24 july 2025]

• Luetin09. 2022. 40K - THE DEATH KORPS OF KRIEG | Warhammer 40,000 Lore/History. [YouTube user-generated content] Available at: https://youtu.be/ZYzOqlGRYGQ?feature=shared [accessed

• Luetin09. 2016. 40K - THE EMPEROR OF MAN [1] The Rise of Humanity | WARHAMMER 40,000 Lore/History. [YouTube user-generated content] Available at: https://youtu.be/KyPjE1Sn-Ts?feature=shared [accessed 24 july 2025]

• Luetin09. 2016. 40K - THE EMPEROR OF MAN [2] Heresy & The Imperium - WARHAMMER 40,000 Lore/History. [YouTube user-generated content] Available at: https://youtu.be/2F3y2bJzDJQ?feature=shared  [accessed 24 july 2025]