Virtual Environment

[virtualknightmare]

Overall Experience

This project are so valuable for me, as I now know the process on how to model, texture and build environment in UE4 a little bit better. I understand how Blue Print works and will use it for future personal projects. I found an insight that materials don’t need to only have one texture but can have multiple layers. Above all, I learned how to work in teams of skilled people, sharing ideas and working together gave me an insight on what a “small” game/ 3d company studio feels like. I learned how to work with difficult people, and how important a time scheduling is. A team leader must be needed in order to run the project forward. It was a truly rewarding & painful experience that I learned. 

[virtualknightmare]

Optimizing and Final Build

Grass-Foliage 

We ran into some issue where the scene are too laggy, luckily, one of our team mates are a 3rd year students and therefore started optimizing the build to make smooth and run in a high frame rate. One of the tutor suggested that, it could be the amount of materials sets per model. But the common reason are usually the amount of polygons in a mesh.  

my last grass were too high poly. I manage to bring the triangles to 4, if you keep scrolling down, it is higher than this. 

But, my older version maximize the looks. When you look down into it, you see that there is something to see rather than the landscape texture. But since the environment is in night time, It is necessary to have such high faces. 

It was also combined with other types of grass made by other team member. The result is a variation of grass, which range from clumped grass, to individual blades of grass.  

Street Lights

The street lights were also too high poly, and from what I recall, there were one thousand triangles. Jordan (a student tutor?) helped me and gave me some tips on how to model low polly assets. The optimized version is only 431, I was going to blue print (BP) this, but It was only used in one street. 

It turned out pretty well, I use the same texturing technique that I use for the road. I just use normal and blend with flat colour, but the light bulb is a different material. 

Fence Blueprint

An updated version of BP Fence. The only changes is that it converts the mesh into instance, resulting a faster performance. 

Majority of the assets are flat colours because we wanted to achieve that cartoony style, we just wanted to go with colour cream so the haunted house stands out the most. 

Housebase

House base were a little pit challenging. Team leader told me to have distortion, but that adds more polly. The boss did however made her own version which I then use as a the main reference such as height, width, length etc. 

Here, you can clearly see that there are no extra subdivision and only used plain rectangles and use rotation to create and illusion of distortion. 

As you see, my version (very top) is more straight and less deformed. I only rotate some planks to give some variations and make it less uniform.

Her version (bottom of mine) has extra polly. You can clearly see the deformation with those sharp shadows on the sides. Her version is only used in the normal grandmas house and not on other houses. 

Close up of my version.

Close up of her version

EXTRAS

We were required to make extra stuff for the “story” part of the project. This house is celebrating Halloween and I was required to make a coffin and candle. Originally, I wanted to BP the coffin so the player can interact with it, such as opening and closing it. But due to time constraints, I did not do it.  

These were only used in the “story” part of the project. 

[virtualknightmare]

Road and walk path

Most of all the models are done, the focus now is to texture them and place them in the environment. I made the road and walk path texture. The boss also wanted me to make an end circle road (I forgot what’s it called) to mark an end for the street. However I find it difficult to memorize or find an option to change sizes from blender to Unreal, so I made the “round” road in Unreal 4. 

For a quick texture, I just generate normal map of a road texture, then mixed it with a flat colour as the diffuse.

I used a material instance to change the size of the grain. I got this idea when I was making the landscape materials. 

The blue print that I made for the road where not used that often, only one street. I thought that we would have more time to make a small town, this was not the case as we have small team; not just working in this project, but also multiple projects from different subjects. If I known this was the case, I would had offered to make more assets or master texturing. 

The boss recommended me to add a line one the road, but, I made a little research and observations that roads in neighborhood areas, don;t have segregated lines.  

here is an example of one of those roads. However, there is a noticeable line in the middle and the the road is not flat. It has a slight tilt to it on each side, while the middle of the road is taller. But, this is stylized project, and since the normal maps already give it a lot of realism, it does not need to be very accurate to real life. 

[virtualknightmare]

I mostly finished my part, so boss just ask me to start on the “story” part. So when the boss wanted is a Halloween theme house. Iv’e been entrusted to make candles as well as coffin. I made the candles first as I thought it would be a lot easier. 

I separated the fire and the candle wax so i can apply different materials to them. 

Here is the material for the flame. I use the technique from Real Time 3D. Where the tutor demonstrate how to make artificial light. I also added the “simple grass wind” node, to imitate that wavy flames in real life.  

I then use the foliage paint, to “paint” it on the level with ease. 

I also finished and textured the street lights. I used the same strategy with the candles, I used different materials for the light and the pole. I then attached the mesh to the fence BluePrint, so we can just place it in the level with ease.

[virtualknightmare]

Because I’m responsible for landscapes, I also made some grass foliage. At first, I modeled each blade of grass then duplicated it to form a grass clump. 

This however will make the performance of the computer to lag heavily. So I rendered five angles of the grass clump and save as image. I then use that image as a texture and placed it “planes”.  

As you can see on the numbers of triangles, this method is more optimized for faster performance while achieving similar results. 

[virtualknightmare]

Landscape material

landscape material update (3 layer material)

since the last post I added another layer of the material for landscapes which is the mud. 

the materials can be controlled with how much sloped, contrast, etc just like the previous example. 

Steps on developing the MATERIAL LAYERING for Landscape

I wanted to learn how to use the landscape sculpting tool so it would be easier to make the landscape. The tutor showed me a technique which layers multiple materials on top of each other and depending on the angle of slopes, those materials will show up and be updated during sculpting the landscape. Here are quick steps and how I manage to make it. I did follow a four part Youtube tutorials each goes for 40 mins-1 hour long. First part of tutorial is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdWo_ffOr8s 

But! I’ll walk you guys through it, but it will be summarized. 

1. 

1st step is to make and compose the materials for the grass, mud, and the rocks. This cannot be done using normal material but instead we use Material Function. 

The idea is to make the texture blend betwen a large size texture and a smaller one, so when we go further away, the texture tiling wont be noticeable and require more distance to see the the tiling effect, for the small size, its the opposite; so when the user goes closer to the texture, it wont be pixelated. The input Vector is there so I can change the texture scaling. 

We also need to this to normal maps; have a large and a small version and shared with the same parameter. In the middle is basically the blending part. We take a pixel depth then divide by how far we wanted the blending to occur using the input BlendDistance scalar, then we clamp it.  

this is the final version

As you can see, if go closer to it, it will transition to the smaller version and making it look sharp and un-pixelated. same goes for when you go further away. Most of the materials shares the same nodes and layout but different textures and normal maps. 

2.

The next step is to combined all the material function into one.

The sturcture

SOOO.

we bring in our functions and make sure we have parameters connected with the 3 different things, so we change them in the material instance.

The result will go to mat layer standard, this node will allow to also blend the normals and not just the texture it self. 

this basically masked the slope angles, so we can change how far a material should “fall”/ reveal off the slopes. 

this part is basically just combined the texture and the slope mask, and place where texture should be seen; either on top or on the bottom of the material. 

You do this to the other materials. 

when finish setting the materials up, I connected all of them to layer blends. This part were a little bit confusing but basically, you just place the end results and place them accordingly on which textures should be the base, the in-between, and the top.  

3. 

Make it into material Instance so you can apply it to the landscape. 

Here you can see that you have full control on how far you want the top 2 materials to “fall” on top of each other. Texturing were provided by other team member.  

You can see that it updates real time when I'm sculpting the landscape, very handy when you cant texture for your life. 

and if you want to change the grass slopes, you can do it with ease. It would look much better if the textures were great, but texturing is my weakness and needs improving. 

UPDATE 31/10/2016

Mountain and big hills were not used in the final production. I thought that some sort of mountain or hill in the background would be more appealing, but in the end, it was scraped and were replaced by cities.  This however gave me ideas and understanding of the process of creating multiple materials and layering them on top of each other. I learned that you can use alphas so other materials can be seen. Much like the cracks between the rocks on the top, you can see the mud in between. It was a very valuable lessons and experience that I gathered during the project as developing complex materials are very important and can save A LOT of time rather than texturing it by hand. 

[virtualknightmare]

Because the landscape, yards and lawn are very large, I wanted to create a material that changes depending on the height/ slopes. here is an examples of two materials, combined into a material editor, as you can see it automatically changes, depending on the slopes. 

You can also also change how low the other material should appear, and the contrast between the two materials. I will add another material such as mud or sand, to make it more realistic as well as visual appealing. 

[virtualknightmare]

House base

I thought i could just use the fences BP for the house base. However, with a close inspection of the concept art, the house base has some distortion in it. Therefore, I just modeled it as a whole. 

I also remade the fence to make it fit with the overall scale of the environment. As you can see here, the fence is fairly almost the same height as the house’s base. 

[virtualknightmare]

Start of A1

NOTE: Continue to read older post as I added thoughts as to how my work contribute to the final production. You can tell because it says “update”

Trees- Because im modeling fences and bushes, it does not take that long. Which is why my team leader wanted me to do some modeling. My task is to model the trees. 

UPDATE 31/10/2016

These foliage were only used as a proxy model in early stage and were not further developed / included in the final build. 

I wanted to make it stylized so I just make it low poly. 

[virtualknightmare]

Because we are making the outside environment, the front yard will take majority of the scene. And in the concept art, the front yard has some flowers, grass, bush etc. So, instead of placing it individually, I made a ‘procedural foliage spawner’ . Its like blueprint but Its is easier to set up. 

UPDATE 31/10/2016

The foliage spawner were not used in the final production due to the fact that the team member in charge of the foliage created a Blue Print which randomizes the placement of the branch and leaves, which is very intuitive and less boring because every time the tree is dragged, it randomized it, so each tree is different. However, the trees need to be placed individually by hand and cannot be used in foliage spawner. 

Noting is going to waste, because this knowledge is valuable for future personal projects. Now I know what is needed, and the steps on how to apply one in the scene. 

[virtualknightmare]

I wanted to explore on blueprint more.So, I used the fence Blueprint (BP) and modify it so my team can use it for the road. Instead of manually placing roads, we can just use a generated road and save time. 

I also started modeling the shrubs and plants. The concept art is not really clear for the plants, so I just made my version. 

the use of textures will be very important because it will mark where the leaves are and making believable.  

[virtualknightmare]

Proxy Roofs

The group that I was in has a small amount of person (6 including me) and are making the exterior. Like all students, we have other subjects to prioritized. Like in real life, things always don't go according to plan. The roof of the house was delayed so I lend them a hand. I did a quick model of 5 roof from the concept art. These are only proxies and were not included to the final production. 

Grandmas house

House 1

House 2

House 3

House 4

Street

[virtualknightmare]

KNB22- Grandmas House (Exterior)

Our team are focusing on the exterior environment for the Grandmas House short film. My job so far is to make the fences, the base of the house (the one that looks like a fence) and the shrubs/bushes.

To tackle this, I rely on blue prints in Unreal4 to easily generate fences. This was my first step, because this requires a lot of research as well as trial and error. The modeling part is the low priority because it simple and easy to make. So I just focus more on the blue prints. 

This is my progress so far. I manage to find a Youtube tutorial and explain how to make generated fence in Unreal using blueprints. 

The fence mesh/model is just for testing, it will be replaced by a different fence which will closely resembles to the concept art. But for now, it’s just blue printing.

1.       How to control to how many mesh can be placed in a spline

-find out how long the spline is

2.       Gets spline is the length of the spline and the division

-for example if spline is 20 units long and the mesh is 5 units, the division divides the length of the spline to the mesh, so 20/5 = 4. So the mesh will only appear 4 times in that spline.

 -the spacing adds the spacing between meshes so it have a gap between meshes in that spline

3.       Creates meshes and place them along the spline

-start the loop by index 0

-ends the loop with the last meshes that was created

-constructionscript is needed so that for every time the blue print, the loop will be executed.

4.       Next node is to allocate a mesh to used for the spline

-add static mesh is where it places a mesh through the spline

- set static mesh is where  you can choose a specific mesh to be place in the spline

- set material is setting a material for that mesh that had been set

-the manual attachment is to tell the static mesh component to not attach the static mesh that is created to the root component

5.       This make sure that the data is formatted in a right way, it also defines the locations of the mesh

-the scale sets the meshes scale so we can rescale it

6.       The Get location at distance along spline is a node that lets the mesh be movable with the spline

-get rotation at distance along spline makes the mesh rotate from the spline

7.       Randomising the fences formation because in the concept art, not all fences are the same.

-random stream it makes sure random values are the same every time for every individual mesh which is generated in the spline

-make rotator- can pick which X,Y,Z is randomed

BUSHES/ SHRUBS

For the bushes, I started looking for inspiration as well as concept art. I looked at the original concept art but it is not define as to how it should look like. Because its stylized, I decided to look for a cartoony style for inspiration. 

UPDATE 31/10/2016

As the project went on, another team member were entrusted to foliage. I was unable to produce shrubs and tress, but I only product a grass clump.