December the 27th

December the 27^th

Been probably too long getting round to updating this blog with an update or so, times been a little thin but I have managed to put some character into the scene.

Right now I’m playing around with the lighting and UE4’s material instances to see if I can make textures more modular. Especially when it comes to small objects such as Cans, one of the thoughts that came to mind was to have the objects on one texture sheet. While this sounds like a nice idea, I’m not shore that would increase Draw calls in the scene as the texture would be associated with the same 3D objects. All in all this requires more research; I’m currently creating a texture sheet with objects in the same aria of the scene into one to see if this improves workflow and optimization of the scene.

I am also working on the lighting in the scene, not shore if I’ll get it perfect in the end but I’m spending too much time obsessing over it.

For now, here is the updated scene to date.

Definitely need to get into more ZBrush related stuff as creating high poly objects in it are so far pretty amazing to see, though i just need to get my head around the UI of the software and it should be just a matter of skill rather than lack of experience soon afterward.

Recovering and moving forward

Recovered now to the point where I can put in my lenses, so I can progress with the project, still hazy and it would be until 9 months time until they discharge me.

Job seekers telling me I have to apply for just about anything I see, even senior positions as I have a “chance” if getting it apparently, but I think it’s more like reputational suicide that stretches to the long term, especially for a graduate. Moving on to the project update.

Managed to solve a problem where Quixel experts would create everything with an extremely strong reflections, all I had to do was to turn off the textures “sRGB” in UE4 and it became almost realistic to the Quixel render.

Managed to furnish out most of the kitchen aria, with textures to go with it, the only problem I am having with it is the various “Object had wrapping UV’s” error, so far I have only managed to solve 1 problem where I re-imported the Table mesh after force deleting it from the scene. Everything else remains the same with the error, even after changing the Light Mapping UV’s. It might be that I’ll have to delete and redo the light mapping UV’s or delete history and make shore that I’m not exporting the FBX with history enabled. This error might also be the reason that the Fridge handle does not seem to cast a shadow on the inner part of the kitchen.

So in a nutshell, everything from the lights to the cooker have been created, noticed a scaling problem which is a downer, but it should be ok since it hardly noticeable within the kitchen. I believe that the next step is to start populating the scene with objects such as plates and object, the ones scene in the kitchen anyway, the idea is to do thing methodically and then move on to the next peace. Until next time, here are some screen shots so far.

Update 26th

Update 26^th October

It’s been a while now, so it means that I can update with a larger amount of information.

At the moment I’ve been focusing on trying to complete the environment with as little unique textures as possible so that I can have a more modular texture set. Looking at Tor Frick’s technique of creating modular textures, he uses strips of the texture within a 512 by 1024 (or the other way round) and revolves the scene around them. While I have been trying to replicate the process within the unreal engine, there are some elements which need to be unique, for example the sink in the kitchen aria. However I do believe that for the next environment I shall try to replicate the process more efficiently, as well as combine the grayscale texture for roughness and metelness into one single RGB texture to save on texture memory within the game engine.

I have also been looking at other peoples techniques on Polycount and have realized that it is more efficient to work on one object at a time until completed until detailed. I shall try this technique out and see if it works for me in terms of productivity. If does I shall move towards that workflow, and continue with that.

At the moment the scene has a moving TV, windows, walls, tables, re-furnished kitchen, and shower base. Right now I am going to furnish out the Kitchen aria completely, then move into the shower section to flesh out the place, and so on. After which I shall decide on the next aria to move into.

Here are the screenshot so far of the place.

the Radiator will need to be rescaled but that can be done within the editor.

Update October 8th

Have been around and about lately, ben told that I need an operation on my right eye which could leave me blind, and it’s happening on the 30^th or later, so hopefully I won’t become partly blind.

Anyway apart from that, I decided to do some research to see what other Environmental Artist have been doing on the market place. So I downloaded a scene that Quixel showcased nDo and dDo with. The Sci-Fi Hallway gave me some valuable information as to how I should be going about my scene. And I had realized that I had made some mistakes for the scene.

One of them was that I was using blocks of 3D models instead of planes, which would allow me to use higher resolution Light maps and a consistent amount of texture tailing for the objects. While I have no intention of changing the models right now, for the rest of the scene I have conducted a cull against polygons which cannot be seen by the viewer.

I am also creating the radiator under the window of the apartment. All I need to do is normal map it and texture it and it should be good to go. I’ll be manually texturing this object as I wanted to get the most resolution out of the texture as possible, so I shall be using this technique from now on for any interior environments.

I have also managed to get Maya 2015 LMU.exe to work, after uninstalling internet explorer it managed to get through and get itself up and running, I’m assuming it will work with programs such as 3DS MAX 2015 now too, but for the moment I shall be sticking to just Maya, and possibly will go into Mudbox for future terrain.

Anyway, here are the progress shots so far.

In this I have updated the Material to be animated slightly with another masked texture to give the screen more life, I would like to do more, such as an animated news logo but there does not seem to be an optimal way of achieving such a look with the program. The Scene is also Gray-boxed out so I have a better feel of the final scene.

 

Update

Been a while since I last updated, although I might have been a little obsessive with almost dayly updates, so I think I might dull it down into larger updates less frequently, or it will look rather boring and uninteresting.

Anyway, moving on, at the moment I have been researching into what I need to do to make my scene more efficient in the game world. I found out that I can literally use the geometry brush to create most of my scene, and convert them to objects; this pretty much solves the time problem, as I do what to get this scene done pretty soon. Mainly because I have spent a while on it now and it should start getting more complete by now. Ill also have to look into mesh/vertex painting to make my scenes more vibrant with life, as in, more realistic and less obvious that the scene is modular.

I’m not feeling ready to present the rest of the scene at the moment as nothing is archly placed in there other than the table since I’ve been doing some research into various tools that I should be looking into. I’ve also been looking into tutorials on making the most out of my materials in UE4, which is necessary. So for the moment ill show off the table and the TV screen that I'm working on.