Style matrix - project 2 - final week and submission

It is done! Today marks the end of my second 2 week project and looking back on what I achieved this week I have to say Im kind of proud of myself.

Potion shop post mortem

So this week started off with the rest of unwrapping my model to complete. I was fairly confident it wouldn’t take longer than a day to do and I was right in that assumption. I only stumbled upon a few elements of my potion shop which were particularly difficult to unwrap. Mostly the building structure bulbs. The larger one featuring the large trip titch window was especially difficult as I intended the window frames to be a different material and represented as metal. Leaving this big hole in the Unwrap which just allowed it to get tangled up not lie flat. Also feedback from my last project Casto mentioned my Unwraps weren’t particularly efficient. So I spent a good deal of time trying to organise my unwraps to feature detail I want to focus on as larger and lesser important details as smaller. I also split a lot of the larger features in half, which I knew would be identical on both sides, thus creating more space on the texture sheets while keeping the object uniform in texturing. I knew it was a bit of a risk because if I hadn’t done it well I would have to go back and re-unwrap and waste time.

Luckily as I found out later in the week, while texturing, the splitting in half technique worked a treat although I did need to go back and adjust some areas when the symmetry worked against me. For example when I painted the stripes on the larger bottle structure I found while trying to paint the over the curve of the bottle I had placed the back stripes to close together so I needed to go back and correct that. This was the first time I had used substance painter and I think its awesome. Being able to paint across multiple channels at one time. I know I particularly found it difficult when manually painting in Photoshop to get the material to look convincing or for normal maps detail to match up perfectly with the diffuse and roughness.

Im pleased that I budgeted more time this project to texture. Practically a whole week to get texturing and integration into engine work done and I can see it’s paid off. Emotionally I was nowhere near as stressed out as I felt last project. Everything just went wrong during the Aviator project and I’m just waiting for my wounds to heal up a little bit before going back and attempting to fix that. As for colours I decided to go back to my Russian building mood board and pick out colours I thought worked well together to use on my model.

Finding colours that mixed well with the heavily featured gold was particularly tricky. Originally I wanted to use a mess of colour to portray where the roots of my development came from but I found that it looked too conflicting as the render below demonstrates. The green upsets the balance of colour so I found that simple royal blue, blood red and gold worked well together as a trio. To make the features I found most important stand out I changed the main body of the building to a muted beige inspired by my research into Antoni Gaudi.

Reviewing my project though there are a few errors I would like to mention for improvement for myself during polish week or when I get a bit of extra time before featuring it in my portfolio.

Interior of the bulb

I feel being able to see the corner of the square block back building intercepting through the bulb structure somewhat takes away from the convincing interior. The bottles themselves fill the shop window nicely but the bare walls behind them take away from the overall effect of it looking like a mystical cluttered shop. I would really like to add some more items, shelving and perhaps a doorway/door to make it obvious the bulb is part of the main structure.

Glass:

Although in sketch fab the model glass looks great in engine it doesn’t render the same way and I feel I should tweak the material properties until I get the glazed over effect I was able to generate in sketch fab.

Extras:

I would really like to add a plane that my building can sit on which could feature some grass. Maybe just make it outside of the brief just to make the model itself look better. I noticed the bottom of the square building is removed but the base of the glass doorway is not, probably because it was easier to unwrap that way, either way I feel these are wasted tris and should be removed.

The roof has too small a allotted space on the texture map and the edges are too sharp to fit with the rest of the building. Ideally I would like to go back and add some geometry to this.

Although I painted some bright pink dust particles on top of and in the chimney of the large bulb structure I would really like to generate some particle effects to run in engine to really sell it. Also perhaps light the building up for the night as well as the day.

Yea I think that’s it. Well done me I achieved a lot this project and the model actually looks good at the end of it all!