The Golden Line: Production Week 8: David Hamblin, Microsoft Feedback

The last 2 weeks were very busy as everyone is putting in extra time to polish the project to the highest standards we can achieve. Great to see so many determined and hard working people in the team. We missed last weeks blog due to the Easter Break and everyone was focusing on finishing up their areas as best they could in order to prepare for our first functional build!

It even worked just in time for our WiP industry presentation!

We had an industry guest from Microsoft, David Hamblin who gave us some glowing feedback which made us all very excited to see what we can achieve in the final two weeks.

Thats right, we even have our Lilith in the scene now!

The bar is open!

''Who's going to mop this up?''

The entrance to our generator has had a face lift!

Transformed area for the generator room

Welcome to the Golden Line!

Kyran

This week I've been doing a variety of things, from creating more assets for the generator, to set dressing for our environment. I think this has been an incredibly productive week, We have managed to completely flush out a nice looking generator area. Furthermore, working along side PG, we have brought Lilith to life in the scene now which is awesome to see.

Over the next week I've been assigned to mainly set dressing the environment. This is where we are beginning to round off the project now. so set dressing to ensure the environment feels coherent throughout will be very important in the final weeks of the project.

Willow

Over the last week I have put my efforts into a variety of different areas. This included helping to make more props for our cafe area. This included tables and chairs as well as some smaller assets such as a coffee machine so overall this area could feel a bit more lived in.

My other responsibility this week was to start blocking out our sequencer event to show of the environment that we have made and at this stage really is starting to feel like its coming together with all our assets making their way into the scene. The sequencer event will likely be completed early next week as at this stage it just needs slight refining and the aperture and focal distance on the cameras need a artistic touch.

This week, as a team we where also lucky enough to have Dave Hamblin from Microsoft come in to the uni to give us feedback. This was generally positive with only a few recommendations, mainly for unfinished areas. Therefore, as I have done throughout the rest of the week I have continued to refine my lighting. I am fairly happy with the main hall by this point so I am focusing my efforts in the elevator room and the generator room and will continue to do so over the next few days.

Viktor

Corridor

As you might have seen in the last update, I was building modular pieces for the corridor and we have encountered some issues with the light baking. I had to tweak them a little bit, merge the smaller pieces together to get rid of all the visible lines. To get a more authentic London underground feel, I've added pillars to aid the scene and serve as surfaces for story elements, decals and smaller props.

When the foundation was in place, it was time to dress the scene and do minor tweaks in the materials, so put my modular pipe kit into good use, added a World Aligned grunge texture overlay to the walls and updated the floor mesh so we can vertex paint some puddles on top.

Flowerbed

The balcony area was missing an end to cover the gaping hole, so I've built a flowerbed and populated with Hannah's foliage while trying to keep the Art Deco style. I've used some references from Art Deco balconies. It turned out quite well.

Decals

Even with the updated materials through the scene, it was still missing the level of grime used in the original Bioshock games, so time for creating decals. I've had a few decal mesh in place, but they were only good for limited use, so I've learned about deferred decals, created exposed concrete, plaster repair and some grunge decals to project over the meshes. They help hiding those ugly light baking seams too!

Pillars

The railing on the balcony were missing some details and didn't connect perfectly to the railing of the stairs, so after a quick discussion with the team, I had an idea, to make some pillars to aid the rails and *khm* potentially hide some issues *khm*. Not finished yet, as of time of writing this blog, here's how it looks. Base mesh was done, detailing in Zbrush is done and now time to retopo so I can bake details in Substance Painter.

Hannah

I've finished up the cafe and after wrangling with textures and alphas to have the option of flickering lights it is now all done! The cafe now has a nice level of dust and grunge. Although I forgot to measure a shelf spacing so Kyran was very helpful in chopping off the base of his bust so the Lilith bust can now sit on the shelf! I just need to fix some bevels and I'm good to go!

Cafe in home test scene.

I also finished off some propaganda posters for the scene to help the set dressing. I also spotted that our main flower bed by the fountain was still a block out mesh. As Giulia was swamped with the broken balcony pieces, posters and extra story props I offered to re-mesh this and texture it using our tiling dirt material and Viktors trim sheets.

My final task this week was to put together our presentation for David Hamblin from Microsoft. It was amazing seeing how far we have come from original concepts and research to our nearly finalised results. I even finally got in our end game sequencer to end our game experience! Below I will share some highlight slides of our progress! We got some amazing feedback such as ''Even though you have no audio, its so atmospheric I'm making up the sounds in my head''...so now of course we are aiming to have audio in the scene to enhance this experience!

My tasks for the coming week include finishing up my smaller props for the cafe, flower pots, register, cups, sofas and maybe even a wrench. I'll also be writing the Lilith voice over script and perhaps even recording this in the evenings!