495 Advanced Production

Sprint Blog 6 - April 27th, 2023

This sprint was probably by far my favorite sprint in terms of the work done and just having a better grasp of my process. From modelings to the UVing and then to texturing I feel like I have worked out to a better speed from the previous sprints. This sprint I was able to get all my assigned objects modeled, UV'ed and almost all of them textured.

I went through many iterations for the key as you will see pictured. My Producer decided it would be a good idea to go with a key with a topper on it as to help make it more noticeable. Toppers are for that purpose to make them more noticeable as they are typically really bright in color. This was the solution we came up with as to avoid making it hard for the player to find these keys as they will be used in the game.  

One thing I found myself accidentally doing was creating ngons without realizing it which caused me problems in UVing. I have a habit of going back and deleting edges to save faces on my models. I was even squaring sections off of my models for details I wanted to texture instead of modeling them. I have since gone back and added edges and even remodeled sections of models like my oven as the top most portion was difficult to try to add edges back onto it. So instead of trying to add them I just created a new model for that section by dropping a cube on it and adding vertex points with edges and snapping them to the form of the old model. This was a quick and easy solution then trying to add edges to the ngons as they never seemed to want to combine. 

Another thing I found before my solution to this was when I would try to fix the ngons it would create new "objects" in my UVing as if the single model was made of multiple objects. So I could not sew and stitch the UV's together. That is when I went with the solution of recreating the model. I did try to find solutions online such as using the Clean Up Tool but that caused the issue of creating unstitchable objects. 

You will see below that I was able to finish for the most part three of the four objects. I will be making a few final changes to some of these objects as the key needs to be changed from brass to silver per the request of my producer. The other thing I want to change is the refrigerator as I dont think I have met the mark of what a refrigerator looks like. To me looking at these images I see the texture of stone not stainless steel. 

The reason why the oven did not make it to the final round of texturing is because I want to go into Photoshop to make two png's for the control panels like I did for the coms radio. As soon as I do that I can finish making the rest of the details such as the burners on the oven. On top of that I am going to try to capture the glass that you typically see on an oven as well but not actually make it see through as the interior of the oven will not be modeled as there will be no use to the player. 

As of right now my goal is to finish the oven and make my final changes to the refrigerator and the key and then move into Unity to make prefabs of these objects and then get them into the dropbox for our Level Designer to start populating the interiors of the homes for our game. These will be easy to complete as it is only the oven that is holding me back. So after completing that I believe I should have some time to create any last minute models that my producer needs or if any of my previous assignments need to go back on I will have time to do so.  I have really enjoyed finding my rhythm and process from these previous sprints. Beforehand I would find my self rediscovering ways to use baking on my textures in a way that I can save faces and leave it to the high poly models. I have also discovered my mistakes in unknowingly creating ngons in the effort to save faces which only caused me problems in the next step of UVing and having to go back and find ways to fix those. 

Sprint Blog 5 - April 13th, 2023

To kick off this sprint I jumped into making a T-junction modular road on the request of our producer. It was never planned to begin with, was just an oversight of what kinds of roads we needed to make. I was able to quickly make that it was two simple planes which, I just bundled in with the other roads. The only time laborious part was just hand-drawing the lines onto the road. The sidewalks were easy to just snap into place as they were designed to be modular as well. I will have to say that having modular pieces is great, but only when you can get the dimensions to align with your other models. So they definitely are great when you can work out all the issues of the pieces snapping together.

Now into the actually major part of the work I really worked on this sprint was UVing my communications radio, filing cabinet, desk, and modular vents. Now unfortunately last sprint I had a loss of saved work or work I thought I saved. So I had to go back and UV pretty much all of my models again for the most part. Now I always check my sync on my Onedrive to make sure that the files have been saved and uploaded into the cloud.

One of the bigger things I did for one of my models was that I created a custom radio panel for both the coms radio and the walkie-talkie component. It was a rather easy and tedious project. I just used Photoshop and a reference to base it off of and then export the file as a png. I then just used a fill layer in substance painter with a black mask attached to a color id to keep it contained on the model. I did have to do it differently for the walkie-talkie because I did not have a color id for it so I had to go back into Photoshop and reshape the background of the png to make it fit on the walkie-talkie. 

Some of the other things I did was add a touch of rust to the vents to give them a bit more character. What I did with that was use two different rust fills in substance painter. Now the rust has a nice touch of dripping rust effect to it. The inside of the vents do have more rust but that is masked with an ambient occlusion effect that I always enjoy adding to all my models. It just helps to add a bit more of shading and help to add to the look that makes them more appealing. 

On the filing cabinet that I modeled I did want to save faces because the coms radio took a lot so I resorted to painting the lines that separate the drawers from the others and I also stamped a normal on the lock to give it some detail as well. It's not the best but it is not an object that the player will be needing to look at closely and continuously. That also goes for the coms radio as the png looks a bit blurry but was acceptable. The reason for that alone is the UV space that is being given to that section of the model. If it were to be made bigger I believe we would see a bit clearer look of it. Though with the time that was already put into the coms radio having to redo the UV's I thought it be best to leave it instead of going back to reset the UV's again. Now if my producer asked me to I would have, but I wanted to push out the models and then prefab them and get them to the Dropbox for our Level Designer to use and start placing around the level. 

At the current moment I am not sure what to expect on my next models. As of this moment I am modeling a key that will need a really bright color for the key itself so it can be seen in a room or wherever it is placed. Because currently its the size of a finger so it will definitely need a bright texture added to it.  Some other things that were talked about was modeling an oven and another table. Plans do change so after the team meeting we will know our next goals/assignments.  One thing I would like to add is that during this sprint I became infected with covid and had to remain in my apartment which in some cases sounds really good to get work done but not fun to do when sick. Though fortunately it has passed and I am able to be with my classmates again and the team to continue working on the project.

Sprint Blog 4 - March 30th, 2023

This sprint was pretty interesting and quite a learning experience with a touch of disappointment. To explain why it was a sprint that started off great with three models being submitted for review. Those three models being a coms radio, filing cabinet, and a table. Only the table and the coms radio was sent back because it was thought that the coms radio did not look like a coms radio enough. So in the images seen below I had added a mic and a radio handset to the coms box to help make it more identifiable as a coms radio. The table was a concern because of what I will call "Phantom edges" that looks really strange. They could only be seen from the renderer, but in the editor they were not there. After clearing that up with our producer it was cleared to move onto UV'ing. 

I have been told to make a single material for the filing cabinet, desk, coms radio, and the modular vent models to help save space for other objects, as well as they don't require that much pixels for their textures. I am also saving space by baking a high poly model of the coms radio onto a low poly to save on detail and faces to fake some depth to the model itself as well. Because the tubes and wire are taking a lot of the face count for the curves and twists I set for them. 

For the moment I have the desk and filing cabinet UV'ed in their own UV space until I have finished the coms radio and unfortunately the vent modular models. 

Now I'll cover the learning and the disappoint I experienced. It was towards the end of the sprint and I had just finished UV'ing the Modular Vent Models and submitted them for review. I had finished UV'ing on my desktop and saved on my onedrive folder. I went to class with my laptop and continued working on the coms radio there to UV it. Saved and then waited for it to upload to onedrive. Next day I started my desktop to continue working and onedrive syned the files that were uploaded from my laptop the previous day. My UV's for the Modular Vent Models were gone. The only explanation I can think is I did not let the desktop upload the files to the cloud and then the laptop work had synced to the desktop and had overwritten the work I had reverting the UV'ing I had done with the Modular Vent Models. So now I am UV'ing the Modular Vent Models again and from now on will be making sure the files are uploaded from whichever device I am working on. I don't understand why I did not check my desktop before I shut it down like I always check my laptop. 

Sprint Blog 3 - March 9th, 2023

This was definitely a fun sprint because I got the final adjustments done on the roads and prefabed. Since then I have been working on another modular set of a vent system. The vent system is big enough for the player to crouch walk into and present an alternate way to explore buildings from a safe spot. The vents themselves are pretty simple but I did make it so that the vents have enough space to peer through in the event that it can provide the player an idea of where they are in the building. I could have just painted the fins on but I thought it would be nice touch to add to the vents without much trouble of adding them or the amount of faces it added. I even threw in a maya human model to show the visibility of the spacing of the fins on the vents. The method I used was using a bunch of cubes at an angle and using a boolean to remove the space that the blocks occupied on the vents to achieve this. Then after that its an easy clean up of any edges that may have been added that are not necessary.

The vent system is comprised of a four-way, three-way, deadend, corner, and a straight vent. This modular set should be much easier to put together because there isn't any curves like the roads had with the corner turn. On top of this modular set being easier is the lack of needing to add any other models to them like the roads had with the sidewalks. So I do not need to take into account of making any curves to make another model's curve. The only thing I can see that needs to be modeled is wires that suspend the vents from the ceiling but those should be a simple model to make and play next to the vents.  In this next sprint, I will probably add those before I start texturing the vents.

I have also created models for a radio, table, cabinet. I tired to find newer designs of office furniture that would be found in this post-apocalyptic world. For the radio it seems all you ever find is outdated tech posted online but it works. I believe it would make sense too because its mobile and functional. There is a lot of detail in the face of the radio that I intend to bake onto the model in Painter to save the amount of faces that there already is. Because I am trying to be conscious of how many faces there is and to remove the ones that are not going to be seen to save space for performance in the overall game. There wont be just one of each of these models around the map so saving on the faces and baking on the smaller details will serve very well for the game. I did however use the same method to achieve the lines on the radio's radiator that I did to the vents to get the space between the fins. Another method I actually have not used for a while was using a curve line to map out the curves for the transfer tubes on the radio and then extruding the tubes to get a more natural look then trying to do the extruding by hand. 

The final thing I will go over is the texturing I did for the bench, damaged bench, and the monitor that I modeled. I had a easier time modeling these because it was simple to go back to maya and flip UV's around to get the wood grain to apply correctly to the benchs for realism as well as applying the rust to give it an aged feeling. I did think to add moss to the benchs but it was left out because that might be applied at a later time and to save time on spending it on texturing other objects. Now I could have put some forethought into how I want the UV's laid out but I believe it is easier to check the UV layout in Painter and then use a texture to find any artifacts or stretching on the models. Then going back to maya to make those corrections to bring into Painter.

I gave the monitor a simple texture of just and some reflection on the screen with some scuff marks. They are not as contrasting from the rest of the texture as I thought because moving it to Unity looked a little different which happens but I was fine with it. Its just little details added that might come out based on however the level designer chooses to use the models which I look forward to what he had in mind. 

Looking to what is coming next is model review and making any adjustments to the models and then moving onto UVing and texturing. What is coming is UVing the table, radio, cabinet, and the vents. Texturing will be the next phase after that and then prefabing them and giving the unity package to our level designer to start utilizing them. 

Sprint Blog 2 - Feb. 23rd, 2023

Currently I have modeled a monitor, a bench, and a damaged bench for this sprint as well as UV'ed them. I have also gone back to fix up the modular roads because of visual imperfections and misalignment. I have talked with our level designer Trevor, and he showed me some of the things that need and can be improved upon. 

To fix this I have gone all the way back to Maya and I am realigning the models. I plan to make them into the prefabs from there instead of Unity to bypass any more issues potentially in trying to set them up in Unity. This will take space in the texture space but I believe it will be fine as the modular set already takes up two materials already. So to keep the current quality the modular streets can be split into two materials. This could cause issues with how they are textured so there will be some quick testing and playing around with to see what will work best with my process. Currently, Trevor does have models to continue his level design so it should be a quick swap out that won't interrupt too much of his own process. It is still going to be modular so it will be quick placement.

Now for the models I have done between that time of altering the roads, I did model the monitor after my own monitor as talking with our Producer Justin, this world is not an old one but more into the future so there was no need to model a big old monitor with a whole back end hanging out the back of the screen. This monitor is simply in the fact of being a flat screen. I have also already started texturing it along with both versions of the bench in a single texture pack to help save space once they are implemented into the game scene. The monitor screen will have some slight reflection and scratches as it will have been sitting around and because of all the chaos in the world and some dust for effect as well. 

For the benches I went with a cast iron bench reference that you would find in a city park.  I made it into two different versions by request of Justin. One being a damaged model and one to be a non damaged model. Just to break up the overall scenery of the game. Because this is supposed to be an apocalyptic world after all.

For the moment I plan to finish fixing the issues with the road and get that to our level designer as soon as possible and then finish texturing the benchs and the monitor and also get those prefabed and implemented into Unity so those can also start being utlized by Trevor.

Sprint Blog 1 - Feb. 9th, 2023

For this sprint I was tasked with modeling, texturing, and implementing designs for sidewalks and roads.  Out of all the shapes and curves I had to design the modular piece for the roundabout was the toughest. I decided for myself that making it a shape of a Y would be the best way of making a modular roundabout. I used a nonlinear deform tool to bend the planes to curve at a certain degree and then tested to see if you could make a roundabout with the piece. 

Designing the sidewalk was probably giving me the most trouble of modular design. I found myself making more pieces to fit with the first set I had created to fill in gaps. I also found the design of the texture being switched up several times to find the best looking sidewalk possible for the game. Creating the lines was the toughest on the sidewalks as I wanted to texture them instead of modeling them on the sidewalks. Even that had to be changed up later down the line for a more improved sidewalk.

I added different modular sidewalks such as the 45 degree corner and a 90  degree corner for some different variations. I also smoothed out the inner edge of the sidewalks so it wasnt just one edge but three edges. This is because sidewalks dont just have a sharp edge, at least the ones you would find downtown along the asphalt road.  I also created slops in the some of the corner pieces for extra detail of an actual downtown street sidewalk. 

Towards the end of developing the roads I ended up hand painting the curved roads and using a mirror tool for the straight roads. For the texture itself I found that a more worn road would be good to go with as for the setting of the world that the team is designing to help create a unifying theme of apocalypse. 

The final version of the sidewalks came down to having another line added just before the edge of the sidewalk to simulate a curb to give it that extra detail.