Production Week 6: Easter Break (hah!)

Hi it's Viktor here this time, giving you a brief introduction what have happened this week in our project. Getting close to the deadline, everyone is working hard and trying their best to finish the required areas.

With Easter coming up, we had a shorter week than usual so we had less time accessing our project due to school closures. On Wednesday the tutors requested an update from the team's producer to tell them how progress is going. I've spent more than an hour explaining everything and walking through every tiny detail with Phil and Juriaan. 
They were pleased with our progress so far, complimented on the overall design, most of the asset's quality and the lighting of the scene. Some things need addressing, the elevator area needs texture updates as they were too low quality and we had to shift our focus from making the outside environment even more alive and pretty, to make sure the elevator and generator room areas are finished to a high standard.

Our balcony cafe failed the greybox deadline but has made a drastic visual change

As we had a no-greybox deadline we rushed to apply textures to the elevator area even though it doesn't make sense!

Our generator area has taken a massive visual change too!

Viktor

Until this week, I was focusing on building the outside environment of our game level, as we've been advised a few weeks ago. Plans included me building the St Paul's cathedral that you might have seen in last week's upload. After a feedback session on Wednesday, where I was presenting and walking through our tutors in the level as I'm the producer and most up to date with the deadlines and assigned workload, they highlighted that some of our starting areas need a lot of attention still and the textures applied there are not at an acceptable standard. So all my buildings outside are scrapped now and I've shifted my focus onto the elevator area and the modular pieces of the tunnel.

It became apparent that the concept of tiling textures and working towards a set texel density is not fully understood for some, so I was trying to help many people in the team understanding the concept, explaining terminology and walking them through the process.

Elevator corridors
So this week, I've built some more wall pieces that are snapping together, a floor that goes with the exact size and will finish the entrance area nicely. The textures are not applied yet, as this week we're out of school and I have no access to our Unreal project, but once I upload everything should be perfectly tiling with the materials already in the scene.

Tyrone

Modelled and textured Tunnel connecting entrance hall to elevator room, and modelling the elevator room itself. I am hoping to add some grunge inside the engine, using vertex painting as I used seamless textures to keep good pixel density, while maintaining a 1K texture set for everything.

Now I am currently working on getting the main room textured, working out what works best.

Giulia

This week I finally completed my rubble pile set, which only needs to be imported and added in the scene. I fixed the UV issue I had with the individual rubble piles in Houdini: once they're in the scene, I will share the complete process. I also started working on the collapsed balcony pieces, they are already been decimated and UVed. 

I also worked on the outside area and added more buildings and rocks: the sealife and organic assets still need to be tweaked to make it look more lively, but at least we now have a more believable background which resembles Rapture's landscape. 

Willow

Over this last week I have returned to having bit more of a focus on prop making as now, as a team we are all really trying to focus on polishing the areas we have to the best of our ability. One of the main areas still currently unfinished was our balcony area, therefore to aid the team member who is mainly in control of this area I made and textured the tables and chairs for this area. This area was to have bit more. Flourish then the others and therefore adding small details became necessary here.

This week I also dabbled in making VFX. I made small water drops falling from our ceiling that could go ontop of our puddles. Since I don't have loads of experience here I recruited the help of online tutorials and finally collaborated them together. 

In terms of the lighting it hasn't changed dramatically over this last week. But I did begin to block out the cafe area, this will have be massively adjusted when the mesh's and textures are in but it's a good starting point. I also further developed the lift and corridor areas but these will likely need a new texture pass before I can complete this area.

After having a review from tutors we discovered some of our assets need ever so slight refining so this is also something I have begun to focus on and will be my main priority next week.

Hannah

Moving away from the smaller assets I've been building, finally I am working on an important part of the balcony area of our map. Liliths Cafe! Taking reference from Waterloo station pop-up bars and restaurants I have been looking at an upper class vibe cafe that would act as a shrine to our character Lilith. 

I've even included a shelf enclave where Kyrans bust from his specialism could be placed! I spent much longer UV mapping on this as I was trying to meet our texel density as best I could. As this was the first very large mesh I had created for the scene and it was important I got this right with a creeping deadline and our scene texel density under scrutiny.  

For now I have applied base textures to everything and will work on the extra meshes to build this little scene, cash register, shelves, tea cups etc to finish the look. Applying at least these base textures means Willow can continue working on lighting whilst I apply the texture details. 

I failed the no-greybox deadline and won't be able to continue texturing this until I have access to college PCs again!