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M O D U L A R T O O L K I T
COLLECTION OF ENVIRONMENTAL ASSETS
Maya 2018, Substance Painter, Photoshop, Unreal Engine
Packages:
To create a visual database of assets, from which I can construct multiple scenes and levels.
I want the scenes to reflect the aesthetic of one of my favourite games; Bloodborne.
It will involve the following:
- Mass High-to-low poly model conversion
- Texture Packing
- Knowledge of lighting in Unreal
Project Brief:
Stage One: Project Schedule & Modelling
The scale of this personal project was enormous, and required me to create a schedule in order to finish it within a sensible timeframe. Due to me working full-time, it was difficult to judge how long I would have on a daily basis to work on this project, but nevertheless this was the schedule I eventually decided on:
Three Weeks - Hi-Poly Modelling
Two Weeks - Lo-Poly Conversion
Three Days - Hi-Poly Colour ID Mapping
Two Weeks - Lo-Poly Unwrapping
One Week - Texturing
Two Days - Unreal Material Generation + Model Implementation
Ten Days - Scene Generation (All five including the Toolkit)
Three Days - Lighting & VFX
One Day - Rendering, Screenshots and Videography
I made a list of every possible asset I would need to construct a city, and then created a massive database of
Hi-Poly Assets in Maya. I used deformers and duplicated certain pieces I needed from other pieces in order to speed up the process and maximise variation.
Stage Two: Lo-Poly Modelling & Unwrapping
I exported each Hi-Poly Model into Maya in numerical order, duplicated them, and used edge-loop deletion and vertex reduction methods to drastically reduce the number of vertices on the new version.
Once done, I 'Colour IDed' each model for material allocation in Substance Painter.
I also made sure to 'texture pack' multiple lo-poly objects into one map, to conserve space and reduce memory consumption in whichever game engine I would implement them in (in this case, Unreal Engine 4).
Stage Three: Texturing
I used Substance Painter to bake the Hi-Poly colour ID'ed models onto the Lo-Poly unwrapped models.
In addition, I converted a handful of collective textures into Smart Materials, and applied them to similar objects or ones that would connect adjacent to them. Overall, this greatly sped up my workflow.
Stage Four: Implementation & Modular Assembly
The next step would be to assemble a 'toolkit' of every asset available to me.
The result was this Modular Asset Assembly, of which I could pick and choose pieces when I required them.
After that, I moved onto creating a secondary toolkit, this time assembling all the walls, floors and roof components into usable buildings, and grouped in the Hierarchy as such.
S C E N E O N E : C A T H E D R A L O F L E N G S K
UNREAL ENGINE LEVEL
This scene was heavily inspired by Vicar Amelia's Cathedral from Bloodborne.
I initially designed this scene to resemble the precursor to an ominous boss fight, at the end of a long road.
S C E N E T W O : R E D R U M R O W
UNREAL ENGINE LEVEL
This scene was inspired by the open streets of Yharnam, the fictional gothic-esque world featured in Bloodborne. I opted to create a sunset ambient sky to provide a different feel to the backdrop, one that is more peaceful yet with underlining sinister tones.
I knew I wanted a massive building to compliment the horizon line, something the player's eye would be drawn to as the main objective. This was another level-building exercise, that I oversaw from start to finish.
S C E N E T H R E E : T H E E C C L E S I A R C H D R A G O N
UNREAL ENGINE LEVEL
This was the most ambitious and challenging scene yet, inspired by the likes of Devil May Cry, fused with the aesthetic of Bloodborne and Shadow of the Colossus.
Almost all of the modular assets were designed with this sub-project in mind; that they would ultimately combine together to form this titan concept.
What's more, the entire creature was designed to function as a playable level; a platforming challenge that the player would have to overcome.
Description:
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B A C K T O M A I N P A G E
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