Project Postmortem

The wondering Lands of Alice

This project was creating a level with a team of six, the theme was Alice in wonder land and we had to reference the source materials given to us by the British library. We had to develop our own style guide and constraints to fit the engine. It was Suggested that we use the side scroller element of UE4 to help us with engine.

This project I really feel I pushed to learn about and take the reigns on the things I want to develop. These skills included: Art Direction, texture artist, 2D Level concepting and over painting, 3D level concepting, 2d character concepting, character art direction, model reviewing, texture reviewing, unwrap reviewing, packing and creating, particle reviewing and assisting, Engine texture assistance. My roles have been based on over seeing parts and keeping textures and styles consistent in such a complicated level.

Most of my contribution to the level has been texturing and concepting at the start. Some of it has been correcting models, redoing unwraps and art direction for things like size and style of particle effects. My major jobs where art direction, especially with texturing and colours. My secondary role in this was overseeing character creation, like denzils mushroom and cat. When it came to modeling I mostly took first pass models from others so they could work on engine and I could fill in for our group lack of understanding when it came to engine. This meant I did a lot of re-unwrapping and re-topologysing. However it worked out really well as the quality of texture is high because I had enough time on it, but the texturing is also consistent because while we all did some mine was around 70% of the level.

Because we where assigned groups for 6 to work with for 3 months we had a lot of team meetings to start with, this allowed us to get to know each other and what we wanted to learn in the project. With this the first stage of development began, we decoded the brief and tried to sum up the ideas that we all had floating in our heads as individuals. This was via a white board to start with. It allowed us to see what ideas linked, what ideas people had the same and what we could strike off the mass list of things we’d like to do. Once we narrowed it down we all made mood boards and storyboards to match the consensus of ideas. It soon became apparent that the roles given to us didn't suit our skills so we divided labour more efficiently to suit what people where good at.

For instance i'm not a strong environment conceptor so everyone pulled together to help and we all worked hard together to visualize the story, the layout, the blueprints needed and the overall style. Next time I think I will really practice my environment work because it is very lacking, My biggest issue was working on setting from scratch, as colouring them didn't pose the same issues.

I started off with story boards (shown below).

Refined my first idea for a section of level layout.

Rough shorter story board after talking to the group.

  

It soon became apparent that as a group we had leaned towards underground. Once we agreed on the shorter board above we started to look into style for textures and level assets. This involved white boxing and paint overs but also traditional concepting and style guides.

One of my first style mood boards

One of my first mock ups of how layers of planes could create backgrounds like in theatre.

The style guide I came up with for how paper, hand painted and 3D could all fit together, looking into modified books, theatre sets and hand painted 3D assets.

One of my first ideas for how the planes and realism could fit together. 

Looking further into the style above but with more colour and lighting.

One of the last paint overs of blockouts, this time focusing on colour and lighting further. This was something I coloured but didn’t sketch. As I mentioned people worked to their strengths so I worked on colour and art direction with amber at this stage. Looking back really I should have been able to take a stronger lead on this but I'm not convinced that would have been more successful.

As I worked on so much of the paint overs and art direction I also created this level layout design from the block out and some paintovers. Naturally a lot of this ended up needing modifying and sketching over to fit but it gave us a solid colour, style and size reference for modelling the level, not to mention asset list and working out what blueprints or particle effects we wanted. 

Once we had this all together many people started modeling from the white box, however because of the plane aspect of our level and how me and amber worked as a pair to get one small part working to check style, I worked on texture right from the word go.

The first set of textures and a paint over using these planes to show where they should go

These are examples of how I worked with people using engine to show how models, placement. In hindsight I think there should have been more of this kind of communication throughout the project 

Before                         After

A lot of my work after concepting was either continuing with making textures for planes we knew would be used in game, like the backgrounds and trees, or correcting textures (as above).

Weeks 5 -  Easter

Examples of textures

Here is one of the many sheets I put together using the books from the British Libraries references and our own libraries books. The orange bit would glow in engine giving it the look of dusk without creating a too dimly lit level.

I think that textures are one of the really good things about my work on this project. I've worked with scanned materials from our library here at DMU along with hand painting textures and I feel they all fit together well which isn't that easy given the way they are completely different styles normally

Example of my texture setup I did in engine:

The crystals I created by looking at the best way to have a translucent texture but still retain an amount of PBR. This wasn’t easy but by changing the setting in the material as well as using specularity I got the right look for crystals.

The cat that glows a bit to help visibility in its dark environment.

Although I learn more about engine texturing and got quicker I competly let myself down by not doing roughness and metalness and normal maps and not setting them up. We did this so I had more time to fix things and paint textures, which some members where very weak at doing, but I didn't learn enough about engine on this project because of it and I feel like I will have to counteract this by doing a lot of PBR work over summer to learn how to do it quick enough to spend longer on an albedo.

 So, after all that, this is how it came out!

I think a lot of the work I did shows up because it’s texturing but I do feel like my input was not as much as it could have been for some areas like modelling. I’m also very aware that all the effort I put into rewrapping and fixing silly mistakes like nested verts and bad topology went completely unnoticed by the group due to the nature of correcting someone’s work that’s in progress rather than giving it back in a spot the difference like fashion. However part of me is pleased because even though I wasn’t directly modelling the amount of correcting has meant my skills are still getting used and I’m still an efficient modeller in 3DS Max. I feel that for the most part my skills in art direction and texturing have come along so far that the pain of group work has very much been worth it.

Five Things to work on:
texturing speed, working on own maps whole way through, critical paint-overs throughout project, understanding more in engine, my time management.

Five Things that where a success:
My hand painted textures, helping unwrapping, art direction improvements, helping retopologize models, working together in a way that played to our personal strengths.

One thing learnt:

How to use matinee to animate in engine!

week 23

all hands on textures, ahoy me mates there be tilables in these waters

My love is to texture, my life is to texture, texturing is love, texturing is life. While I've been more under the weather my main job is to make textures for small assets, correct textures and make tileables for the background planes of our level. Yes truly the paper cut look of the project has gone into full swing, all things said and done it's going swimmingly.

Last week I went to our own library to research old looking books and I found some real gems. Who would have thought some of the DMU collection is over 130 years old? After doing this I scanned them in and used them as texture reference. so this week has also been spent texturing around 10 books for the terrain of our level. I'm excited for my team mate Denzil to take more pictures of books on his own adventure to the British library. I will be using some of these books that the British library have supplied in our level too.


This project is going so well so far and I can't wait to begin my character input for our level, which is the mysterious and ever enigmatic Caterpillar.

Week 22

Modeling, modeling how art thou modeling

With the asset list written out for people, a task me and my team mate Amber took on, it was time to assign tasks. Dan our main character artist is on Alice duty, while Denzil our secondary engine and character artist is on mini assets and blueprints. Braden is a UI and assets man, who is ahead of the game and currently unwrapping. Luke, who must hate our constant "could you model this please" by now, is well, modelling. Amber the engine whisperer is trudging through our final layout and modelling a few environment features like ceilings and floors (thank you team leader!). While little old me is texturing (joy of joys), minor correction for models and doing all the dirty work like "could we just move this plane down a bit".

As may now be an obvious statement we are in fact on track, something that is almost unsettling. I think the turning point was finalising the style guide and having regular sanity checks with our team members.

My life has been made much easier on this project, while half my time is spent correcting, hue shifting and lighting advising; it's also keeping things coherent. Something that is both ambitious and has major transition in both style and colour, needs very tight art direction to succeed. To my surprise, it is me and Amber together that have answered the door of art direction when it came knocking.

Here's to answering the door that knocks, here's to talking mice, here's to Alice in Wonderland and another 150 years of nonsensical story telling.
Time for a Good week said Freddy... and it was.

Week 21

Week 21


The time came for someone in the group to go on their own adventure, but rather then wonderland the trip was to go to the British library. After a little group talk it was decided I would make the journey from Leicester to London to visit the home of all books.

I loved the day out and the placement of
St Pancras station is pretty wonderful too. Once inside we where escorted by the curators to a small meeting room where they told us about the origins of Alice and showed us around some of the books that would be part of the exhibition.


Looking at the original manuscripts and journals from Lewis Carroll was inspiring, it gave me a renewed appreciation of shorter stories and how narratives can be described in game format.


But one fabulous adaptation in our groups work thus far has been THE HOLY STYLE GUIDE. And low the Gospel of game art proclaimed that group should have but one guide for style and one style guide the group should have, and now we do. Praise be to game art, hallelujah.


All this said and done (unfortunately) this week has for the vast majority been spent modeling by our group. Thus my joyous work load has been spent toiling over textures for around 9 hours a day... politely put I no longer wish to texture another mushroom as long as I live and if I do it'll be too soon.

Therefore next week I shall be concepting for the caterpillar character and maybe, if i'm really good i'll even get to model some crystals.

Week 17

Group work Grafting

With only 1 week left it's really time to pull the proverbial finger out, I've been modeling and unwrapping until my eyes bled trying to get it all together in time. Part of me feels it'll all be ok and part of me feels like it's bordering on the impossible. Nevertheless Obo's orbit park is in progress coming to a moon near you soon.

Most of my time this week was spent settling on an idea, finding new reference and just running with what worked. In hindsight, which is ever 20/20, this may not have been the best way to tackle my task. In hindsight, oh wonderful hindsight, it may not have been a plan to throw all the ideas on the wall and watch for what stuck.

Such is life really, we learn from our mistakes because we can tell where we went wrong afterwards. If we knew how tits up they would go we wouldn't do them in the first place.

All that said I honestly don't think it'll be a complete failure, we've all learned so much about cleaver unwrapping and how the engine works that it can't be seen as a loss. Not to mention how much we've all laughed making this broken bootleg of a theme park reality.

I mean come on, who wouldn't want a go on Game Human Pixel Hero Palace Much Fortune?

Week 28

It may have been Easter but I'm an artist, never miss an opportunity to learn, never miss an experience that could inspire you.

http://www.getyourgeekon.co.uk/?p=655

So I went to London a few days ago, to see Philip Pullman's Grimm Tales, honestly it was amazing it's so worth going to see what they've done with the space.

The Grimm Tales is an almost contemporary theater piece that takes 6 tales and works them into small plays, each is around 15 minuets. The contemporary part comes from the way you move around the warehouse, exploring each set as you traverse from tale to tale.

    

Contradicting the contemporary style of set design the acting is very classical, incredibly talented and due to the nature of the space, intimate. The actors and sets are surrounding as you watch the performance, it's enchanting to be in and the level of immersion into the world of Grimm is incredible, for 2 hours you are not in London any more.

  

I can not rave about the sets enough, it is perfection, the decaying Victorian style and sense of macabre surround, the aesthetic is never broken through out the whole building, so even unused rooms have been transformed for you to explore after the show.

  

Something about all of the components worked so well and it would be interesting to translate into games. I'd love to look deeper in what has worked to find what could in fact be applied to not just to story telling devices in games but in the sets we creates for players to explore.

   

Just understand that I want to live In this world and that Tom Rogers, the man behind these stunning sets is my idol.

Week 20

Whats the Concept Behind this?

The first thing to tackle in any environmental concept is the feel of the level. Is it realistic or stylised? Is it moody and mysterious or happy and bright? Where does the journey lead the character and what kind of genre would it fit into? 

These are the questions as a group we have been answering this week. As of yet the style of the level isn't nailed down but we all have some strong ideas to represent Alice.

Some of us want a more realistic approach while others want a heavily stylized approach. This is causing some issues in nailing the concepts too. We all roughly know what we want out of the level, including which parts of the book we're involving in our game. However as of yet the one style to rule them all has not been found.

To help us in our quest to find the golden style, we have white boxed out the level idea. Using this we're all painting over it in different ways, to try and show others what we're thinking of for our game. This has proved very helpful and Braden has become chief gray-scale paint-over man and somehow I've been nominated as colour all the things gal. This was a task that I've never considered myself at being that strong with, however I really feel I have taken it in my stride and rode into battle with colour on my side for once.

And so the tale of paint-over Braden and colour it please Fred has begun... or at least for the next week or so it has. I must admit our journey through wonderland has been wonderful so far.