Synoptic Project – Polishing the level

The final task for me to do within the game project is to make sure that everything is polished and working accordingly. A lot of the features and things within the game are working as well as the models, however there are some folders and assets within the project that can be removed the save space as they may not have been used. Other than this I will be making sure that every asset is placed correctly and that the lighting is working 100%.

Synoptic Project – Implementing Moving Car Scripts

Today Kurtis worked on a script that allows cars to spawn in at certain intervals. They have a set spawn point which is an empty game object and a vehicle prefab. They are dragged into the car cycle scrips and different times can be input to add a variation on how often they spawn and despawn. There is also a movement script that Kurtis created that controls how fast the vehicles move. I implemented these scripts into the level with Kurtis’ help as he was the one who had set this up in a test scene.

 

Synoptic Project – Art Book Submission

Last week me and Ben began to take the screenshots for the art book and create some pages using them. Once they were done however we had a group discussion and didn’t like how it was looking as it was rather boring due to the plane background and simply how the photos were showing off the environment but not in an interesting way. Me, Ben and Kurtis started coming up with different ideas and how we could improve our Art Book pages. We all agreed that we liked the idea of Polaroids. We developed this idea and grabbed a template from google and took screenshots using the script that I had sourced at the beginning of the project for the progress screenshots. Using this script we changed the settings around so that the screenshots would be taken at a 1000 x 1000 resolution meaning the images would be square; and fit nicely into the Polaroid template.

I had the idea of making it look like the Polaroids were stuck onto a pin board, and Ben & Kurtis liked the idea of them being on a table. We went with the table idea and Ben had actually used substance painter to put the Polaroids onto a mesh with a nice varnished wood texture, and then used marmoset to render out the images at a nice size that would fit the art book. We went from a pretty bland to design to something unique and far more interesting. Me & Kurtis were involved in planning but Ben put more time into this as he was the one who created the renders for the pages.

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Synoptic Project – Night Time Scene Creation

Today I began to create the night time scene as I am pretty confident that the day time scene is practically finished apart from a few minor changes that may need to be made in the polishing process. This week Kurtis worked on implementing the video into the scene, which meant as that was done I could not copy and paste the day scene so that the layout was exactly the same. Some minor changes have been made to objects however it is primarily the same. However this new copied scene has a different skybox as well as completely different lighting. The client stated that he would either want fully mechanical lighting or fully natural; no in between.  Because of this we thought, why not do both. So we are.

Other than a night time sky box this new scene is primarily lit by the lights in the scene, rather than the directional light. The client stated that he would preferably want none natural lighting in the gallery room. Because of this Ben made the gallery within our VR and WebGL scene dark and mainly lit by spotlights and point lights, as there is no day and night variation in these builds. I took this same approach but with the entire scene to add variety for the player and the client.

Synoptic Project – Scrum 14/05/18

Everyone was present for today’s weekly scrum, the group has been keeping communication all week due to the final deadline being in just only a month. For me and the group this has been a very productive week as the main scenes are almost done. Ben has been working on the VR/WebGL scene and this has almost been built, it just needs some polish. I have been working on creating the main scene by importing assets and polishing the level. Luke has got a UI system working which allows the player to look at the paintings and get a description under it. Kurtis has got the video working in the test scene and now he just needs to implement this into the main scenes. This week Luke will continue to work on the UI as well as look into allowing the elevator to work. Ben will continue to work on the VR/WebGL scene. Kurtis is going to get the video working and I will begin to look into doing night time lighting for the night scene. Currently the group is 5 jobs ahead of schedule due to us sourcing a lot of the smaller assets which has allowed us to finish the scenes. We sourced assets due to time restrictions. The next month will be spent getting the levels working well.

Synoptic Project – Art Book Production

A few weeks ago me and Ben worked on getting a layout sorted that our art book would follow throughout its pages so that we could display out Art Gallery environment professionally. This layout of the images did change however what would be on the pages did not. The first image displayed is my individual page that will be included in the book. We planned on having one page per room within the environment as well as one individual page each. My individual page includes three different models and renders of these models that I was proud of and enjoyed making. Ben will also be creating a page similar to this. Kurtis & Luke will also be working on their pages. These pages are due to on the 14th and because of this we made sure to work on the images over the last couple of days.

Luckily I could use the screenshot code from an earlier feature within the game build to take screenshots of the level using the player. Each page will include three 1920×1080 images that will be scaled down slightly to fit onto the page. Each page is also designated to a different room. These rooms include; the reception, theatre, cafe & gallery. We wanted to go for a nice rendered looking and use up as much space as possible on our Art Book pages. Because of this our section is going to include little to no text. 

Synoptic Project – Continued Level Creation and Sourcing Assets

Synoptic Project – Polishing the level and adding assets

Today I chose to take a break my the creation of my portfolio and continue to work on the synoptic project. Due to spending a lot of my work time on the portfolio I have been neglecting to do work on this for the past week. My primary task at this time is to add more assets into the scene as well as polish off all of the different areas within the environment. I will be the only person primarily working on this scene from now on as Ben is now focusing on the VR & WebGL builds. Ben is creating four different scenes. One for each room, this is due to the performance issues that we would have had with the phone and web builds. Rather than having one big open environment it will be smaller levels. However the main build will still be the whole gallery.  Due to the time restrictions me and Ben discussed sourcing assets from the Unity web store to use to fill in some of the empty spaces within the scene. The first object we sourced which was an important one was a plant asset pack. There was a large variation of plants within this pack. and I used these to fill in some of the empty corners within the scene.

Due to being able to resize the plants I also added some smaller ones to the desk to try and fill in that space.

A few weeks ago I also started to create a small ketchup and mustard bottle. This was not particularity hard to model, it was just to be a smaller asset to fill up an area in the cafe area.

Here you can see what the asset looked like once I imported it.

I also sourced some fruit as well as pizzas. I have also began to look into different food asset packs however they are not so great so we are looking into alternatives for this. 

I made the outside of the scene a bit smaller by removing a section of road, also adding in some smaller assets such as fire hydrants, benches and telephone boxes. I will continue to fill up this area however the inside of the gallery is the main priority at this time.

 

The files within the unity project were starting to get a bit out of hand, due to this I started to group all of the different objects together. We had already done this previously but now I have put them into designated rooms.

 

Portfolio – Beginning Production

As the portfolio deadline is in just over a month I have finally been able to download the Marmoset Toolbag. Due to it being a pricey bit of software I have had to wait till this month to finally be able to download it due to there being a 30 day free trial. My aim is to get my portfolio done about a week before it is due in so that I have plenty of time if any touch ups are required. Rather than using a website to build my portfolio I have opted to create a video showcase that will include multiple images of my models. These images will include different renders of my models using marmoset as well as a screenshot of the model within the environments they were made for. I am also going to include some turn table renders of some of my models; as this is a nice little feature within marmoset.

As I had never used marmoset before I had to do some research into the software before using it. The layout is quite simplistic and very user friendly. However I had no idea how to export renders or use any of the included features.

The first and most important thing I had to research into was what maps needs to be plugged into where and how the work flow works from Substance Painter into marmoset. From this I found that I had to simply export my textures from substance as a PBRMetalRough. I made sure to create a new folder for these newly exported texture maps so that I could easily find them. I then plugged the different maps into the designated area. I made note from a youtube tutorial that I used so that I could always check it for reference when importing the maps.

_Base_color – Albedo: Albedo
_Height – Displacemect: Height / Scale 0.0
_Metallic – Reflectivity : Metalness / Metalness 1.0
_Normal – Surface : Normals / Flip Y
_Roughness – Microsurface: Gloss / Gloss [x] Invert – 0

Plugging them in was fairly standard however I needed to make sure to flip Y on the Normal maps as well as tick Invert on the Gloss Map.

Using my Satanic Book model as an example you can see the textures go onto the model rather nicely. Depending on the model I had to change the brightness of the sky however as it caused some models to look very white.

I then had a go of using the Turntable feature. To add this I clicked onto the model then went Scene > Add Object > Turntable. This added a 10 second animation which came to 300 frames. However the file was exported as a video rather than separate images. This made it easier to handle in the video editing software. This is a gif of the turntable as I cannot upload video on this blog.

As I am doing a video I opted to use Sony Vegas. Due to the simplicity of the system as well as having a little bit of prior knowledge in the software. I would have used Adobe Premier but my license for that expired, so I could have used the college version but I would not have been able to access the file from home. I am aiming to have the showcase video be around 4 to 5 minutes long and include various different models and tasks I may have done over the two years. The reason I have chose to try and make the video around 4 minutes is due to not wanting it to drag out and have all the separate images on screen for too long.

Synoptic Project – Minimal Viable Product & Overall Progress Update

Today was the day of the Minimal Viable Product deadline, at this point I am really happy with my groups progress. The whole scene is starting to come along very nicely. This week Ben sorted out the lighting so that MVP ready. This really brought the whole level together. All of the assets in the scene look great. Below is a video walk through of our level so far.

So far my group are 6 jobs ahead of schedule. Which is really good. The reason for being this far ahead is due to many jobs getting completed this week due to the MVP build. Small tasks such as adding music were finally completed. It’s nice to see good progress being made, especially with all of the green included on the job list. Many of the final tasks have already been started they are just long processes involved before they are fully complete. In terms of assets the only things that are really left are smaller objects just to fill in some of the areas to make it feel more like a real world location.

Feedback –

“Look at your AO settings, the spread is high and intense. Overall product feels good and complete. You need more smaller assets now. GO TO A GALLERY. TAKE PICTURES. MODEL THEM! Things like trap doors in the floor etc. Menu is a little inconsistent. WEB GL build needs doing. VR build needs doing. When you hand in make sure you hand all builds in. Assets are good. Think about placement of assets – that fire door needs moving. Get your artbook sorted you don’t have long left! Consider adding a donation collection model – this could be linked to a paypal so people could actually donate. Outside needs trees and bushed etc. Map could look cleaner and more professional visually – put some transparency on it. Cafe could look more contemporary. Indoor plants.”

I am really happy with the feedback that my group received. A lot of  it includes small things that my group already planned to do in the coming weeks so that it would be fully complete. The AO settings will be sorted by Ben due to their high intensity. For the overall environment we plan on creating smaller assets to help fill out the level to make it more immersive and like a real life location. Our primary objective over the next couple of weeks other than continuing the creation of the level is getting the screenshots prepared and placed into the template so that they are ready to be printed into the Art Book.