Week 7: Week before Easter

This week was the final week before the Easter holiday and things were certainly heating up: the pressure started to raise as we attempted to get things completed before the Easter break.

Amber has created a list for the team of work to consider doing during the Easter break. To our fortune, we have been given a 2 week extension for the DMU hand-in. However, we do not want to fall into the trap of ‘Student syndrome’ (leaving things till last minute). Thus, we will endeavour to get as much done as possible.

This week we got a visit from developers at natural motion and fortunately, Dan was able to get some beneficial feedback about his Alice model.As you can see, now she has a better shape and silhouette.

New revised Alice

Braden has taken a small break from working on user interface; he has now completed texturing all of the assets he was tasked to do. He is well ahead of his work and his assets match the concept style very well. He has certainly earned his keep.

Luke has also worked well under pressure. He has continued to perfect the particle effects in unreal engine. They are beginning to standout. Here is a short video of his work:

From last week, Denzil has endeavoured with the Cheshire cat. He has now posed the cat into position. After making a few tweaks and unwrapping the model, he will soon be ready to transfer the cat to Freddy to be textured.

Freddy and Amber have certainly pushed hard this week. Under the pressure, they have been endeavouring to improve the aesthetics of the level. Were once the level textures looked over used, Freddy and Amber have developed a technical way to vary the textures in our level. This method allows our level to avoid obvious texturing patterns. Using a new technique demonstrated to them by 

Braden, Freddy and Amber have created a series of mask textures for the assets.

To create these masks, they used the RGB channels in Adobe Photoshop and sectioning the 3 maps into 1 map. This technique can also be used for roughness, metalness and emissive maps; it is a great way of optimizing our level. Furthermore, it is a very time efficient method of texturing.

3 opacity masks on one texture

Our rock materials (most being instances)

Material set up in UE4

Masked planes shown in level

With the masks, Freddy and Amber were able to create 3 different materials through material instances. By doing this, it meant only one parent material needed to import into unreal engine, the children materials are made through the material instances.

In addition, Amber and Freddy were able do the white rabbit. It is a simple design, but will look cute when animated. Although, our level still needs developing. We are glad with the progress that we have made since last week. Here's he latest video of the level:

Of course this wasn't an easy stage to get to, as the fatigue from working on the project was beginning to settle in. However, we cannot wait for the final outcome for the level.