The Pre-production practices has been both a good and bad journey, but it has been extremely helpful and made me realise areas I need to improve on. For this project I decided to create an interior abandoned arcade caused by a nuclear accident, going for a realistic environment. This will be more aimed towards companies such as Ubisoft, EA games, Sumo Digital, Massive Entertainment and other studios.
To begin with, the whole process with research, design and development went well at first. I had an idea what I wanted to create at the beginning and got feedback I could improve on. Although, I am still concerned about my scene as the feedback has been very different. Right now, the scene needs a stronger story telling. As I produce my scene, the production stage should add some storytelling by using decals, normal edge decals and vertex paint. At this point, I am not feeling confident over the scene but I am confident about my pipeline and how to approach this project.
The reason it went bad at the end is due to lack of time and stress, this was when I did the rest of my research. I have been quite confused about the brief, I felt like I knew about the whole brief at first but as I progressed, I got a bit lost when it came to researching about any unanswered areas such as trim sheets. Luckily, I managed to get everything done in the last two weeks by researching, problem solving and experimenting trim sheet, materials, normal edge decals, decals vertex paint and ivy generator. Even though I managed to do my research within those areas I learnt extremely a lot. The beginning of this module, I did not know anything about trim sheet, normal edge decals and ivy generator. I decided to use these for my project as it is used in the game industry and I was able to learn and understand how it works.
What went well in this project was mostly everything, besides the concepting and developing areas as I mentioned above. Other than that, with my research and trying out new stuff in new softwares such as Substance Designer, Unreal Engine and Ivy Generator has been easy and natural for me to learn. By experimenting the different areas, I have been able to problem solve and approach my plan differently as I came across various issues. One of them were pixelated decals which was caused because of the UV unwrapping, from now on I know how to UV unwrap my models better by making sure I use up the UV space.
Things I could have done better for this module is my presentation. I did not have enough research, which lacked information. If I had the chance to redo my presentation, I would have talked about my approach using normal edge decals, decals in Substance Painter and Unreal Engine, vertex paint and ivy generator. I could have spent less time on my thumbnail the first few weeks, as I spent too much time on that. Instead, I could have spent more time on researching.
This module has been very helpful and is the most important stage for me. I like how I had the whole semester to plan everything, allowing me to do deeper research and answer any unanswered questions such as trim sheet and why they are used in the industry. Comparing it with 2005 – Game Art environment module, there wasn’t enough time to experiment and lack of time due to other modules. Therefore, this module has been useful for me.
Overall, I learnt a lot and it has been a great experience. The beginning went well but the end was stressful. I am glad I managed to get everything done, especially my research and experiment that I enjoyed a lot. I learnt a lot, which can be used for future projects such as trim sheets, normal edge decal, decal vertex paint and materials. I was not able to finish my high poly models before the submission, but I will finish them during the Christmas before the next semester which I am confident about. I have learnt from my mistakes and can now improve on it. The experience from this module will be very useful for my career as I have been able to do step by step breakdown that is used in the industry like modular assets, foliage etc.
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