BA2b (Project 2) - Week 3 Summary

Jobs and Roles for this Week:

Charlotte (Myself/ 2D) - Cobblestone Terrain, Ground Terrain, Foliage, House Texturing

Natalia (2D) - Vegetation, Leaves, Grassy and Flowery Terrain, Rock Textures

Billy (2D) - Hand Vambracers, Staff, Crossbow Bolt, Additional Environment Concepts

Jack (3D) - Modular Houses, Stalls, Mushrooms, Well

Johan (Blueprints) - Level Building, Speed Tree, Polishing the Mechanics

Group Critique Session with the tutors (Feedback)

( 17th March 2015 )

- There should be less grass over the whole level so the terrain can be seen

- Flowers should be spread together in seperate areas - for example around a tree

- Rock textures shouldn't be too detailed

My Concept Art and Process:

1. Moss/Leafy Decal

One of the first things I did this week was creating a mossy decal which would be placed over rocks/terrain and underneath various assets. Here is a mood board which shows my research into it.

I looked at different photos of moss and originally thought that rounded leaves would fit well with the hand painted style. However, after I finished my first draft and asked my team about it; Billy and Johan agreed that they should have sharper edges with a more leafy appearance. I then used the Liquify tool in Photoshop to quickly see what the leaves would look like and I also agreed that it suited a mossy look much more.

Here is my finished moss decal, with lowered saturation as it was originally too bright inside Unreal Engine.

Sadly my decal didn't make it into the final game because Johan had a lot of issues with Unreal Engine making it half transparent and unfortunately couldn't find a fix in the time allowed. Hence why we will be making no more decals.

However, I still really like it and it was good rendering practice!

In Game Example:

Strengths:

- Team Collaboration: Talking about my work with team members has helped me improve the overall look of my decal and I'm glad that I asked them what they thought.

- Art Style and rendering: The bright highlights against darker shadows on the leaves fit very well with our hand-painted art style direction. Weaknesses / Improvements:

- Further Polishing: Not a major issue but I could've neatened parts of the leaves if I had more time to work on it, however I needed to start working on other areas of the game.

2. Lavender Flower Texture

In Game Example:

Strengths:

- Texture Speed: I managed to get this done quite quickly by drawing one stem with flowers and then duplicating it, which was the same for the leaves. Weaknesses / Improvements:

- Further Polishing: Similar to the moss decal, I could neaten areas of the flowers and leaves. However because they will be fairly small in the game, it's not essential to do so as the player won't see them in detail.

- Petal Variety: The only draw-back with duplicating the stems is how similar the flower petals look. If I spent more time on it I could possible redraw a few different variations.

3. Primrose Bush Textures

In Game Example:

Strengths:

- Primrose Leaf: I'm really fond of how the primrose leaf turned out and think it fits the stylised environment very well with the bright highlights.

- Using more than one colour: I used red tones within the shadows of my primrose leaf veins and the primrose stem, which I feel adds a lot more vibrant impact to the overall textures instead of being just yellow or green. Weaknesses / Improvements:

- Possibly More Detail:- I could've added more details to the centre of the flower to look more like a primrose, however there is the risk of making it a lot less stylised.

- More colours within the primrose petals: I could've added more colourful tones to the petals asides from just yellow, and used more oranges like I did around the edges of the flower. I will keep this in mind for future texturing.

4. Ground Texture

Here are the different stages my ground texture went through before I came to my final version which is shown at the bottom. I talked to Billy and Johan while they were working for their opinions and they both mentioned how the original ground texture looked too much like rock, rather than dirt. I went back and made the shadows lighter however this still didn't seem to solve the issue, so I did the same again but much more dramatically. In addition to this, I also added small stones and cracks of dirt that were more scattered.

Strengths:

- Team Collaboration: It was good to get feedback from the team so I could further improve the textures appearance and believability as dirt/ground. Weaknesses / Improvements:

- Practice: I still have issues with drawing believable hand painted terrain, so this is something I wish to improve upon in the future. I can do this by repeatedly doing studies and hand painting more terrain from real life photo reference.

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