So originally my first initial plan was to recreate Robert's Park, this however changed soon after as other team members wanted to do the park environment. This led me to consider Victoria Road, specifically the college buildings in that area. These buildings have great significance to Saltaire's history and also became a focal point in our story. Before starting anything major with the environment I planned out the modelling methodically, I didn't want to just jump in with it. First I mapped the road and pavement. Using a basic box I extruded it to cover the road I wanted to recreate. Here is an image showing the first stage.
The fencing was actually quite easy; although it looks complicated it was relatively simple. I made one base fence using a cylinder then used my favourite extrude and resize tool to get the pointing effect. After the base model was complete I cloned it and resized a smaller model and then a larger model. I thought the 3 sizes would create a more realistic looking fencing system. I also extended the platforms at the wall corners were the loins would be placed.
Before moving on to the buildings I wanted to throw in environment features like; benches, street lamps, bins, Victoria Hall building stairs and a public sign. The sign was easy as it involved just 3 standard box primitives, nothing complicated. The benches were created with a box, simply extruding the leg segments created a basic looking bench, then using the create tool I connected them and then extruded the rear of the bench to create a back panel. I deleted polygons to have gaps in the bench design. The street lamps were created using a basic box that was again extruded upwards with a bend at the top. The bin was made with ease; it is a cylinder that I cut in half then resized the height of the bottom section. I then selected the top and bottom, reduced them slightly in size and reversed the normals. I then created polygons to connect the inner, out layers plus connecting the upper and lower section. Creating the stairs were easy, extruding continuously until it look decent.
My first building in this environment was the Victoria Hall, simple box design with an extruded roofing (one section lifted much higher), forced in wall on either side of the main entrance and then added windows and an arch. Windows and the arch was created using the bend tool, I just selected individual polygons to bend and other parts not to be so it gave that arch look.
After finishing the initial (basic) design for the Victoria I moved on to the outer buildings. These were made with standard boxes and modified with moving vertices. When I created these buildings I redesign the window arches by using the same tools but I used them more effectively. I also decided to remove the original arches from Victoria Hall because they look much better. Simple window and door shapes were added to the outer buildings.
The most significant building in this 3D environment is the Salts building. I created this building like the rest by simply using a standard box primitive. The segments were increased by at least a dozen on height, width and length. I used images as references to get the design perfect. Vertices were moved to get the angles looking right; polygons were extruded in and out to recreate the defined areas of the building.
The bell section of the Salts was added at a later stage in the development. I used the same tools as usual to get the shape correct. Pillars were added using cylinders and I copied over the windows from the outer buildings. Quarantine walls closed off the environment, they were created using planes. I added a ramp on one of the closed off walls as an entry point for the animation. Large lights can be seen in the image below but I decided to remove them as they looked pretty awful. I pulled in trees to add so nature to the environment, they weren't created by me however, I used the available foliage on the software.
Texturing was a long process; this was the case last year, lucky though I decided to use an easier technique to texture everything in the environment. UVW Unwrap was such a pain last year and would have made this process take several times longer. You could say I cheated but I used UVW map, this option sped up the process of texturing by no end. I dis-attached the roofing of each building from the base and textured the roof differently to the base. After the texture was applied I re-attached the sections together. I added more detailed textures throughout the environment and included one Easter egg poster on the rear of the main sign board. Some of my textures didn't look right or didn't really work so I decided to use available textures to replace the unused ones. Other changes happened in this process; I updated the arched windows and doors again so they were solid impervious objects. This was done so textures would be easy to develop. Before finishing the texture process I looked at the map scale. Some sections seemed to be oversized and others undersized so I rescaled them because my OCD was on alert but also so it looked correct.
Lighting was a key factor in this environment and this came now, most others added a power lighting system with sky boxes in their environments. This wasn't for me and I wanted the lights to be effective but not intruding on the environment. The street lamps are on with a strong beam of light but they don't light the environment up massively around them. A touch of fog and this creates an eerie atmosphere, something similar to the original Silent Hill games.
The animation process was hard as ever, I was given support on this part so I can't praise myself for how well it came out. I used key frames to the get the motion correct with the camera within the environment. The animation was fluid throughout with the only one issue being an overlooked camera clipping with the ramp during the jumping section of the animation. The total frames in this animation is around 1200, this allowed me to have a good frame rate in the animation.
Does your final design meet your original intentions?
I believe it does meet my initial ideas for this environment. My planning wasn't ideal; I knew what I wanted to do and planned it on a basic level. My original intention was to have more streets around the Victoria Road but this was changed due to time constraints. I knew I couldn't complete the work with the original Victoria Road idea. All the important aspects of Victoria Road are captured in the location so developing the entire street wasn't really necessary. Due to these reasons I believe it's met my original intentions.
How did you manage your time?
On the planning side of this process my time management was pretty useless and probably effected my time on the actual 3D production side. My planning came later than planned and entered in my time for 3D work. My time management for 3D work didn't start off well but I spent extra time to catch up and complete my work so it balanced out in a way. The allocated time was 8 weeks; the hours were limited to the sessions in the 3D rooms so roughly 8 per week, in total 64 hours of work. Individuals could attend for extra hours to either improve or continue developing. Attending these extra sessions helped me complete my work.
How could you manage your time more effectively?
In all honesty, I lost focus at this stage. Being focused, enjoying my work, more practice with the software that could have given me more time to develop my plan and actual work. I effectively slacked off for several weeks and this made me late in terms of time efficiency. I did however redeem myself when crunch time came and I attended additional sessions to complete the work. A poor start that ended well in summary.
What did you struggle with?
As before, animation has never been my thing and learning this will be the biggest hurdle I'll have to overcome. It's been hard for me to grasp the animation side of the application and my first attempt last year was totally forgettable. I received help from my tutor and other students regarding developing my animation. I gave the direction and plotted the movement of the camera but the actual animation was set by my tutor and class colleagues. Texturing (UVW unwrap) would of been difficult if I didn't use mapping but thankfully I did and this wasn't an issue this year. The only other struggle with textures were some of my own textures didn't tile good enough so decided against using them. Modelling wasn't a struggle but just time consuming, I spent too much time on the little things in the environment and making object too exact.
What did you find easy?
Lighting was incredibly easy; I simply placed the Omni lights in the environment and then placed them into the street lamps. Simply selecting setting options and the job was done for lighting. This was the same case with fog, nothing difficult, finding it was harder than using it. Texturing was easily done thanks to UVW map, the tool did most of the job, and I just had to modify the positioning of the textures.
How does your finished design compare to professional examples?
My final design reminds me and others (it seems) of Silent Hill. I believe this is down to the fog and lighting more than anything else. It wasn't really my intention to do this, I did want an eerie environment but not at the levels since in the Silent Hill games. Silent Hill games have dark, foggy and limited light environments to create an empty, long since gone environment feel. In a sense my environment is very similar but for different reasons. In terms of graphical effects I believe my environment is very comparable to something like Silent Hill. My modelling isn't highly detailed to the buildings it's based on but resembles them and looks recognisable so I believe they're professional enough. The animation looks smooth and fluid throughout with only one incident of clipping. The clipping can be seen but only for a millisecond. Due to my skill level with the software at this moment I'd probably compare it to something from the 6th generation of gaming.
Comparison of Silent Hill 2 gameplay screen-shoot and below that is my HD render of my environment.
What do other people think of your finished design?
Looking at the comments on the YouTube uploads; specifically comments regarding my scene, it seems to be really positive with people giving high praise and compliments to my work. Most people liked the atmosphere created in the environment with the lighting and fog effects. Other positive comments were directed at the animation within my scene of the trailer. The only negative comment was about the lack of creatively my scene had, I can understand and accept this complaint but I was recreating an existing environment so my creatively was limited.
What could you improve upon?
Four areas of this finished design could have been improved.
1st my planning; I could of done much more here, I visualised my work but never got it down on paper before my 3D work started. That would have been the biggest improvement I could have made to this work as it would have settled my thoughts, ideas and gave me references to my work.
2nd my modelling; although it didn't need to be hyper realistic it could of been far more accurate to the actual environment I was recreating. The outer buildings could have been more detailed with more realistic and accurate textures. Another point would be the curvature of the street in reality, this isn't present in my environment and with more time it could have been included.
3rd my texturing; my initial textures didn't really work well with my environment and something noticeable with the buildings is that they're covered in clay brick textures. Factually this is completely inaccurate, Saltaire buildings were made with sandstone bricks, unfortunately the texture I had taken on camera and modified didn't work well enough for me and with time constraints I opted to drop it for a tileable clay brick texture. This and the use of UVW unwrap would of made the textures looked more sharper and more realistic.
4th my animation; as stated before I would of fixed the slight clipping issue that was present only for a millisecond. This little improvement would have made the animation 100% perfect.
If you were to do it again what would you do differently next time?
Time management would be the 1st real thing I'd do differently, less slacking and more focus. Additional planning and more time spent on the software it could have been completed with higher quality and ready for editing much sooner. Other than that and what I've discussed in my improvements answer I would have done this process in a pretty similar fashion.
What did you learn?
I've learnt new skills and tricks with the software. You can do a lot by simply extruding, moving vertices and resizing standard primitives. I didn't really do things like this last year. I never used effects before this project, the lighting and fog really improved the look of my work and made it feel much more atmospheric than it would have been. My skills with animation still needs to be higher, my learning curve needs to accelerate so my work in the future will look better and more professional. It seems obvious that creating outside environments is much harder than making indoor environments. Much more needs to be considered, for example; environments are open so more content needs to be made to fix the foreground and more importantly the background. This isn't an issue if you place obstacles the sight of the background or even effects to make the background harder to see. Interior environments don't have to consider this aspect and will ultimately have less content visible unless windows are placed throughout the environment; this for me makes exterior environments harder to develop for.
Overall I'm extremely satisfied with my work, I'd like to thank the positive comments I've received on the YouTube uploads which also helped my self esteem.
Below is my final design in video and the Red Hawk's final game trailer.
No comments:
Post a Comment