For the proposal I made a simple model but now I was able to make a more complex model for my final submission. I copied the scene I had already made and slowly started adding details to it. Since the structure I had made before was laid out in a less efficient way, I began to consolidate the layout, so that it required less models.
Following on from our session on Blender Modelling, it was a lot easier to make more complicated shapes and layouts. As I made more of the gallery, I had new ideas of what I could add which included making window frames and a suggestion of a second floor. I did not want to model a new floor, so maybe I made the glass in the windows to look more smoky to obscure details. I added a lift along with a lift shaft at the beginning of the main hallway, which, while not accessible, would at least suggest a way of getting up as a method of accessibility. Some other details I added included spotlights in the main hall and an interesting design on the front door. As I went on, I gradually added 3D sculptures onto my podiums. Up until now, I had just been working on the building itself, but now I had to construct the surrounding area, which up until this point, had been quite cold and plain.
The main things I wanted to add were some grassy areas, some foliage, but also more interesting walls. I went about finding some reference images, to give me some ideas. Once I had found the inspiration I needed, I began adding street lights to the front of my building and added a raised bed of grass in the space immediately around the building.
In one of my sessions in University, I received suggestions from my tutor as to how I could improve my model, such as adding some outside seating as well as making the pillars of my building more detailed. He suggested I look up doric columns for some inspiration. After finding some column designs I liked, I made my own design using similar shapes and patterns. The process was quite complicated and difficult, especially when constructing the ridges around the pillar, however, eventually I was able to make a design that I was proud of.
I wanted the outside seating to wrap around the street lights, therefore, I started with a simple cylinder shape, making it more complicated as I went along. Though not as difficult as the columns, this process was still a challenging one. For now, I was happy how the outside looked. I went back inside to try and see how I could improve what I had made. The thing I wanted to improve on was the main hall as I felt it lacked detail and could be made more colourful. I tried using the textures I already had, but this did not really solve the problem. Instead I made a new texture in Photoshop using one of my artworks as a base. After a lot of tweaking and changing, I saved and added it onto the side and back walls of the main hall. I played around with applying the texture to different parts of the walls until I was able to find a happy medium between the negative spaces. I decided to make some of the colour bleed into the side rooms and the main lobby, as well as make the front door orange to match the colour scheme of my logo. I felt it created a more satisfying result.
One of the last details I added was some bushes and some miniature trees in pots close to the front door, which involved making basic shapes such as cubes and spheres, warping their shapes slightly and selecting the “randomize vertices” option to make the shapes appear uneven.
Next stage was to import my blender scene into Real Engine, during this process I experienced a lot of technical difficulties. I started by using a plugin but as I kept using it, I started experiencing more issues, so I switched to an alternate method, which involved exporting my blender project as an FBX file and then importing it into Unreal Engine. The main issue I was experiencing was that a lot of objects in my scene had a black layer which obstructed certain parts of my model. Another issue was some of the faces of my models looked invisible from certain angles. After getting assistance from my tutor, I found out it was because of the “normals” of the model, which were apparently flipped the wrong way. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a solution to how I could remove the black overlay from the affected models. Therefore, I had to just cover them with new objects made in Unreal.
Finally, I wanted to add more dynamic grass to the area around the main building. I went about finding resources online, which led me to the epic games unreal engine content store, where I specifically searched for grass models. The first set of models looked cool for the most part, except for the fact that there were two desaturated and dead looking, compared to the rest of the scene. The second one fitted my scene a lot better, but I had to pay online for it. However, because I liked it, I decided to purchase it anyway.
The last thing I had to do was to record a walk-through, which I ideally hoped to do through VR. Although I had set up all the VR equipment the week before, I had not actually tested it inside on Real Engine as yet. Doing this for the first time, presented me with some of its own problems. Once I had finally got it working, there were still a couple of problems I did not have the time to fix; firstly it was lagging quite a lot and secondly the movement system was not quite working. Because it was getting close to the submission deadline, I needed to take some test videos anyway, just to show that it at least worked somewhat. I got approximately 3 VR test videos done before the headset started to play up. To not waste any more time, I simply took a final video navigating through the environment on my computer.
Because there were so many files, zipping the folder and uploading to Canvas took slightly longer than I expected, which I wish I had allowed more time for.
In the end, I created the majority of what I set out to make, except for a couple of elements which I was unable to develop in the timeframe, such as the “make your own piece” room and the VR functionality, however, I was ok with that because the making of the space was what really mattered to me, which I had achieved to a standard I was pleased with.
Comments
Post a Comment