Assessment Progress

GAMA2005

Introduction

For this module we are tasked to research and design a 3D Game environment diorama. This environment can be an exterior or an interior but it needs to have:

Versatility
Consistency
Efficiency

There are things to consider such as textures than can be 'tiled' and the amount of props needed.

Initial Research for the Diorama

Idea 1

Interior of an underground dungeon

Fantasy theme: cobblestone, magical artefacts
Terrain: moss, spiderwebs
Props: Torches, skulls, chests, traps
A twits: a hidden room that has a unique design

Theming

The dungeon is located in a mossy, overgrown forest. The entrance is difficult to find within a small crevice
The first rooms of the dungeon have moss and other vegetation in them - the deeper the player goes, the darker and 'cleaner' it gets. Eventually there are magical torches and fine stonework walls.
Beneath some doors and traps, there is an area with a hidden door
There are chests filled with riches, making those brave enough to venture this far believe that this is the end of the dungeon and nothing more valuable can be found anymore
The hidden chamber has a unique design and a powerful magical item such as a portal or a crystal ball

Further dungeon ideas

The dungeon is found within a large swamp, and entered by sinking through the ground
The first room is very large and tall, with a circular pool at the bottom where the player falls into
There is one doorway that leads into a corridor, forcing the player to go through it
Eventually, faint light can be seen
Further rooms and props
Ominous statues
A large, open chamber with a large statue of a legendary monster
The hidden magic chamber is hidden beneath the statue

Breaking down this initial design, there are a total of 4 rooms to select one from to be created:

The large entrance hall
The corridor leading into a complex chamber with doors and traps
The large dungeon with treasure and a large statue
The hidden chamber

I tried creating some very quick thumbnails to plan out which area of the dungeon I want to create and what it should actually look like. I like the idea of a treasure chamber as I really feel like modelling open chests with colourful gems inside of them. Number 3 from these pictures would be what I'm going for and it contains:

Room created from stone bricks, some moss is growing in between
Wooden chests, some of the closed and some open, filled with colourful gems and golden coins
Magical torches on the walls
An ominous statue of a hooded figure holding a sword

From a gameplay sense, this room would be within an RPG game. This room is a supposed final room in a dungeon, filled with treasure. However the treasure is trapped, and the actual final rooms lies behind a hidden door which can be activated by placing a certain item on the statue.

Problems to solve

Figure out the shape of the room, additional structures, making the statue noticeable but subtle

I designed a brief shape for the room with Photoshop and then in Maya which I can use to figure out the perspective and the general look of it. I feel like a round room is more interesting than a square one, and it is also gives more room to place the props in.

Rendered images from Maya. There is lots of noise in the images but I can't seem to find a sensible way to get rid of it for now. Anyhow, I think I can use these images as suitable reference when figuring out the scene.

Feedback

Think about edge between wall and floor
More spotlighting on the centre
Clear connection between statue and centre piece
Treasure chests more distracting?
More statues surrounding the centre piece, with one of them looking different/missing something

To-do list

Think about the shape and size of the room
Pillar model
Chest model
Statue model (probably zbrush)
Centre piece design
Textures for the surfaces

Thinking about the artsyle

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Initially I was thinking about an artstyle seen in games such as The Elder Scrolls series, but thinking about a different sort of camera angle such as the top-down view from games Path of Exile and the Diablo series.

I've always been a fan of this kind of camera angle, and building an environment for that purpose doesn't require as much attention to fine detail since the camera is usually locked in a fixed angle. It is also typical for top-down hack n' slash RPG games to have the screen populated by multitudes of enemies, colourful effects and tons of pickup-able items lying on the ground, meaning that some empty space must be left on in the levels.

Despite all that, the style in the different building materials within these games' scenes is close to realism.

Path of Exile

However when I was looking at a Lego treasure chest I own, I started to really like the idea of oversized, colourful gemstones and the blocky features of the chest as well as its stereotypical style. I opted to go for a more stylised asrtsyle for this project.

Chest reference images

I used a camera to take high resolution images of a Lego chest, which I will be using when creating the model for the treasure chest. The reason I chose to photograph a Lego chest myself instead of taking existing pictures of chests from the internet is because this chest comes with the gems, which are something I want to for the diorama.

Stylised style

Deep Rock Galactic

Minecraft

Deep Rock Galactic contains massive randomly generated caves which are fully destructible, so it makes sense from the technical side of things to have objects in the game quite low-poly. It also looks aesthetically pleasing since the designers utilised the oversized objects and reflective materials really well in my opinion. The arstyle of the game is something I kept in mind when working on this project.

Another good game to think about is Minecraft. Since the gameworld is made out of a set selection of cubes with tiling textures, everything will always have lots of repetition. However combining different objects in the game as well as using the lighting mechanics, reference-able and moody environments can be made easily.

Working on the models

Empty chest model in Maya and imported to Unity.

First version of the pillar and chest. The pillar will contain four light sources and is repeated four times within the scene.

Character as size reference.

Placing the objects in Unity.

Texturing

Various textures I created in Krita to use for the stone parts of the room.

The runic symbol had two designs. In the first one, the image was simply too thick and unrealistic, and looked out of place when put into the scene. For the second one I wanted to go for a runic symbol that represents a gate some way.

Fitting the different textures onto the objects in Maya. Currently, there are no texture maps since I have had some trouble with them. This is something I'll look at resolving once the all of the basic textures have been put into place.

Thinking about lighting

Testing out lighting for the first time.

The room is lit up by torches which are located on the pillars. There are certain reasons why I chose to do the lighting like it is

Dim lights

The room is not very populated by objects, leaving plenty of empty space. Using dim lights and directing them properly can be used to 'hide' the emptier spots of the room and instead bring the attention to the center.

Magical green orbs

This dungeon is ancient - it has been waiting for someone to delve into for a very long time. Ordinary flames would have gone out several times and someone would have had to keep re-lighting them. This is not the problem with glowing orbs though.
The orbs do not have to animated and are easier to have just sit there instead of regular flames.
Using a different colour can be used to adjust the mood of the room. While a standard warm light would feel more welcoming and calm, the cold green light keeps the player more on their toes, signifying that the location they're currently in is not normal.

At the moment, the textures on the rune symbol and the walls look very flat. This is because there are no texture maps. I will have to look at applying maps however I will be doing it later due to problems and time constraints.

Wood texture that will be used for the torches. Originally I was planning on making them look like they're made out of iron, but the pillars simply look too gray and I wanted to have some colour mixed in. The torches use magical orbs instead of fire, which makes it reasonable for them to be made out of wood.

Current progress. Torch textures are in in place, next I will create textures for the chests and their contents and insert them into the scene.

Tileable gold coin texture and different coloured gems in Maya.

Placing the treasures in place in Unity. Even from this image it can be seen that there's plenty of empty space along the walls, which may be resolved by making the chests and pillars larger, making the room smaller or adding more assets. Due to time constraints I will avoid modelling completely new items.

Updated wall and pillar textures

After feedback, I created new textures for the walls as well as textures for the pillars to replace the initial ones. Adding these sort of dark lines to the texture helps emphasize the polygonal shapes of the pillars, making them look like they're build out of bricks.

The new textures inside Unity.

List of Changes that need to be looked at:

The runic symbol must be redone to fit the shape and style of the room more
Find a way to make the room darker if possible during this stage - makes lighting effects stand out more
Think about populating the room with a few more objects - there's plenty of empty space
Maps

Redesigning the rune

For the runic symbol to look good on the ground, it needed to fit the shape of the room. I looked at different sort of existing runic symbols, specifically ones with a circular shape, and spend some time designing and drawing a circular rune.

Here is the new design. The shape looks better with the room and its surroundings. I chose a colour which is much lighter than the floor and walls of the room in order to make the rune stand out more - after all, it is a very important element in the scene.

The symbols that I drew have no meaning, and I simply selected shapes which look aesthetically pleasing.

The updated rune in Unity. I think I managed to achieve which I was after with the colour choice and shape.

The attempt at applying maps and post processing

Adding texture maps was something I really wanted to do for the different textures in the scene, but unfortunately they had to be left out of the final version as I kept running into troubles.

In Unity, there's the possibility to create and add a normal to any texture, but it seemingly didn't have any sort of effect on my materials.

I then used Materialize to create height, diffuse and normal maps for the wall tiles and the rune, but I couldn't figure out how to apply them for the Unity scene. I tried using the Hydra viewport in Maya to apply the maps in there, but even with the tutorials I wasn't able to do it.

The post-processing tools have hanged since the guides provided, but I managed to find new ones which allowed me add effects such as bloom and colour grading to make the scene look nicer moodier.

Summary

Things that were missing

In the end, there were a couple of things that I had initially planned but didn't make it in to the project. These were: the moss, the statue, texture maps. The reasons for these include time and computer constraints caused by the pandemic, but also my own decisions.

The statue was left out as first I tried to create it in Zbrush. This, however, didn't work out as I planned, and I gave up on the idea of sculpting a human figure and thought about a hard-edge replacement object. However, after adding in the lighting and deciding that the runic symbol on the middle should be the main focus of the room, I decided to leave the amount of objects as it was and ditched the statue - with the current setting, it would have been sitting in the darkness and additional adjustments would have had to be made to make it relevant.

I had enough work to do to get all of the essential elements into the projects on my personal laptop, and adding moss onto the surfaces seemed obsolete and something I ended up not paying attention to in the end.

What I learned

Although the extraordinary circumstances caused my work to not be as good quality as I had initially aimed for, I am content with what I achieved and am keen to work on game environments in the future. I learned essential skills about in-game 3D models and textures:

Thinking about the amount of polygons and detail for different objects in an environment
Texture size, UV map placement - You should always consider how to make your texture files as effective as possible
Thinking about the relation and coherence between objects - everything must look like that it belongs in the scene

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