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Introduction
During the production stage of where I will modelling the guns and working on the throwables, I decided it would be best to fit in some level design work to keep the flow of the production moving and so I don't fall behind. On this page I will cover everything I went through to completing my side of the level design which will include the modelling process and the final building I had planned to create for the level. The rest of the level design work would be completed by one of my team members Alex Needham which will be linked here.
Creating the building
After sketching out some ideas and creating some block outs, I decided to work on the final products which I started with the building. My building consisted of three stages. The outer walls, The interior design and the exterior design. I broke it down like this to help me to texture things later on. In the video, I modelled the entire building starting with the outer walls and moving on to the interior and exterior design and while I was doing this I kept the block out building to the side which helped me know where the windows were and what the interior was like. I did a good job at keeping the topology clean and not creating any N-gon's. I was happy with how the UV unwrapping turned out as it was a lot to unwrap and some models were a little complex but I managed and got through them all as well as unwrapping them well enough.
To help me get further and create the most accurate models in my building a used some tutorials. I used some gameplay videos of similar games that I researched into to help gather more details on building pieces such as doors and window frames. I found this to be a much better method than finding reference images online as I can skip through and find the important pieces for my building that I was looking for.
Tutorials
Another tutorial I used to help model some parts in my building was a staircase video. I used this to understand the best way to modelling stairs in maya. I struggled to understand how to start with this but I realized it was a simple method. This helped me learn a new way of modelling as I have never tried to model stairs in Maya before.
Texturing
The next step, was texturing everything. I did this in the longest way possible but I had reasons to why I textured things the way I did. I am proud of the final textures on everything such as the main building and the doors as well as the broken glass. However I did encounter some problems during the whole texturing process as I will speak about these issues later on. As much as the texturing was a very long process I didn't have any issues texturing anything the whole time. I understood what I was doing and just got on with the work that I had to do with no issues.
In the video I broke up the texturing into different sections and what I mean by this is that I would combine specific models together in Maya based on the category. A great example would be combining the main walls of the building as one group and combining all the interior props as one group etc. I did this because having all the models on one UV map would be too messy and everything would scale up to the size of the UV map which would mean bigger squares would show. This would be an issue as the outer walls of the main building wouldn't have had enough detail and would cause the materials to blurry which is not what I was looking for. This was the reason for me to put certain models into their own group to allow them to have their own UV map to stop the issue of having blurry materials.
Modelling the floor
After creating the building, my next step was to work on the floor for the level where the buildings will sit on top. The floor had already been created by Alex Needham as a block out for a temporary build in Unity. I used this as a guide to help me model a final version of my own so that I can get on with texturing it in substance painter. The model had nothing complex to it so it didn't require much skill or time for me to get through it. I added more details to the new map by re shaping the whole shape to flow with the walls, as well as adding the roads into the ground for elevation.
UV Unwrapping
The next stage of the modelling process was to UV unwrap everything. Seeing as I had little time to finish off my models, I had to automatic unwrap this model to save me some time. I didn't want to do this as it doesn't always unwrap it perfectly but I had to save myself time so I don't stress towards the end.
Texturing
The final step to complete this model was texturing it in substance painter. I think it turned out decent and worked in our game, however I had some problems with this model that I wish I had changed if I had more time to do so. First problems that I came across were the painted lines for parking bays as these ended up looking too big and didn't match the scale of the buildings or the walls. This problem was due to me not comparing the size with any buildings as I guessed and went with the flow. Another problem that I came across were the materials being blurry which was a major issue as this would sit below everything in the final game which meant this would be the first thing that everyone would notice however, I had no time to restart or fix the problem.
How did it go?
To conclude the model as a whole, I think it resulted in a great final piece which displayed in a game that I helped contribute to. I think the materials were great and I think the models that were apart of this structure had great amount of details which helped give this building some shape. I think the final floor looked great and added to the final result in the game. I did a great job at modelling everything from the block out that my team member Alex Needham created. Overall I am happy with everything that turned out in the end but I did have some issues throughout modelling.
Any Problems?
A massive problem that occurred in both models were the textures in the final look. This issue was the textures being blurry which was something that really let the whole game down. This had made the game look lower quality but also didn't match up with some models on the level. This had been a huge issue as these were textures that were visible enough for anyone to see as they were on the building and the floor of the map.
Solutions..?
At the end of the project, I went to a tutor about this situation to see what my issues were and how I could stop myself from doing this in future projects. I got told that Maya has a way to stop the textures being blurry which were in the UVs as there was a setting to change the quality of the UVs to 2k or 4k etc. This had me disappointed as I should've spoke to someone about this as soon as I saw the problem, however it allows me to learn from this in the future and allows me to not come across this mistake again which was something that I had felt benefited me in a better way. Without this issue or the solution to it then I don't think I would've been able to learn better from it and take it into my next projects.
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