Post-mortem of Second Unit at AIE - Teamwork is key
Phew, second unit done and dusted. As challenging and intensive as this unit was, it flew by even faster than the first!
The main focus for the past 6 weeks was on Level Design Fundamentals, which entailed working in a group to design and create a level for a competitive multiplayer game called Mother Duck made by our teachers.
We began by finding a location in Melbourne to take reference from for our level, and settled on recreating a section of Federation Square. We took dozens of photos for use either as a reference point when modelling our level and it’s assets or to use directly for making textures in Photoshop. In retrospect, I definitely should’ve made more of an effort to take pictures of possible level assets and textures in both greater quantity and quality.
We then went through the process of designing the rough layout of our level on paper, and deciding which real-life elements of the location we wanted to carry over into said level. This led into greyboxing our level, to get an idea of the scale and general design of the level that we were all happy with.
After blocking out our design in Unity, we began modelling our assets in Maya. This part of our assessment was definitely one of the more challenging (and beneficial) learning experiences I went through in this unit, being someone that had never used any sort of digital modelling software before (let alone a program as complex as Maya).
In addition to modelling, I also learned how to create textures for our assets (yet another highly beneficial skill). This part of the project probably challenged me the most, both in terms of understanding how UVs work (essentially the map for how a texture is applied to a model) and how to use said UVs to create a texture that can then be applied to a mesh.
The last part of the assessment was importing all of our completed assets and textures into our level, and adding finishing touches (primarily visual tweaks and post-processing effects). Through this process I learned how much post-processing can contribute to the visual fidelity of a level.
To conclude, I’d say that the most important thing I took away from this Unit is how important both teamwork and communication are in a group project. This level wouldn’t have been possible if my teammates weren’t as helpful and communicative as they were, so shout out to them!
