Back again

My first week back at uni was a mix of emotions. First great stress and panic over how much my illness over Easter effected my work flow or lack thereof followed by optimism ( quite foolishly placed I’m sure) but for now at least it’s a nice emotion to have before I actually come to terms with my future and what it may hold. For now at least I will work pedal to the metal to finish my project and get the best I can from it. It’s a no lose situation if I do need to repeat the year I’ll have a great portfolio piece and if not then it’s a nice piece of work to carry me through to the end of the year and still be a great portfolio piece. Anyway I’m relatively pleased with productivity this week. The beginning of the week I was fairly over whelmed with my work load and to speak with a tutor about my illness over Easter and how it has affected my work. Her advice was to concentrate on a corner or half of my level and complete it to a high standard rather than work on all of it and lose quality. This effectively turned my project into more of an interactive diorama than a level but I must admit realising I had halved my work load was a big relief to me. It was unfortunate circumstances but I am determined to make the best of the situation.

The first thing I tackled was finishing my fountain once and for all which meant completing the dreaded curvy bind weed that hung on the front of the model in the concept. It wasn’t the most difficult thing I’ve modelled but it was definitely time consuming and due to the curvature shape the UVW unwrap was very fragmented and broken up in order to get the uniform checker pattern across all of the splines. I realised this could make standard hand painting relatively difficult so I decided to paint, add roughness and generate the height map all in Substance painter. Despite the programme having a personal vendetta against me we got there in the end. I particularly like the albedo of the weed combined with the roughness map I want the plant to look almost wet and alive like its drinking the blood from the drains and thriving. The alphas were easier than I thought. Its no problem for them to share a texture sheet I just needed to swith on a blend mask within engine so it would only mask visible the right parts. The clinging vines look really effective though and add to the characteristics of the plant.

Fountain finished

Fountain finished

During the Easter break I mentioned that I had made some small filler props but I had missed out on making a flatbed cart. So I felt that was the next asset that needed to be modelled. It took me approximately a day and a half to model and unwrap, hey I’m speeding up! The cart is actually based on a replica Victorian era hand cart I found on Ebay! The pictures uploaded from multiple angles really served as great reference material. I will have to tap into this resource bank with future projects. I’m Pleased with how the cart turned out and it really looks the part when it is loaded up with the props made during Easter.

From the cart I moved back to texturing but this time it was onto the hand painted textures again which I have found are particularly time consuming but the finished results I am really very proud of and don’t regret taking as much time as I did to complete them. Even with just the albedo the crates look great. I feel like it would be more productive to work on the normal and roughness later on once I have fully modelled everything that I want in the level. As it stands currently I still have one major building to model 2 minor buildings and a fair few smaller assets ranging from market stalls to shop signs and weapons. I want to work on the concept for the major building over the weekend so will probably be uploading my progress with that in the next blog post.