Week 2: Getting started with production time!

This week has been really interesting and challenging for the team; We've in essence had this week and the start of next week to have a playable blockout in VR from start to finish, this is for our presentation next week to Sony.

We also had three new members join our team; Viktor, Shay and Luke. It's really awesome to have a slightly larger team now; with a larger team we can schedule in more props to make and it also helps spread the work out more, so when referring to the asset list we've added a total of around 30 additional props we can make, however, it still only uses 70% of the overall time we have to make the our project. This way we have comfort space for if things go wrong, as well as areas we can close off from players which will help reduce the amount of work required to complete the project if we start to run out of time. Yet, saying this the team is running at a good pace, with this here is everyone's weekly updates:


Hannah:

Inspired after visiting the Old Operating Theater at London Bridge we were more aware of how to improve our scene aesthetics, props and set dressing. It was impressive how close it was to what we wanted to achieve so we took even more influence from this space.
Being biased to the subject matter I focused on the types of pots and containers as well as what kind of foliage they had lying around. 





 



This meant the Art Bible had a mini over haul! This was good as we had 3 extra team members join us and we now had plenty of assets to evenly distribute among the new team dynamic to keep everyone busy.

Finally I also got around to finishing my Pots to be scattered throughout the scene. These were treated like bench mark assets in terms of detail and their use in storytelling. I've kept all 4 on the same texture map and although they have labels blank I'm planning to use decals for extra text for things like names of people, plants and liquids. For now they will remain bare until I make this decal and test if it works.




Also squeezing in some last minute journals to add to the desk! Ready for UVing...



Willow:

This week has been a lot of back and fourth with different lighting scenarios. I have been focusing on trying to balance the progression between the blue/green tones with the yellow ones. This can be tricky because with out the right balance this can just become a sickly green tone throughout. Which is not desirable! I fixed this issue by focusing on balancing a correct colour temp Vs a colour tone. I have also been working on trying to everything in the environment lit while maintaining the correct mood and avoid any early performance issues. This involved deleting the directional light after having used it to establish the original light direction. This allows us more use of movable and stationary lights over just pure static lighting.
To start work on fixing the shadows in the environment I have been going through light map density and light maps and altering where needed.
This week I also begun work on the dust particles. I didn't want these to look like simple flying dots and kept this in mind throughout the process. By adding a level of complexity that allows the dust to have depth fade I have also stopped the player from being able to walk into the particle. I have also controlled how strong the emissive of the dust will be when close the light by referencing the light location in the environment. Overall creating a more realistic feel.


 Surgical Theatre lighting Lab room lighting Dust Particles


Joseph:

We Visited the Old operating theater this week, we gathered a huge amount of reference images which already are helping with the production. I have since finished the modelling and UVing of the benchmark and have started refining my textures. its already at a good space so i will see how it goes. Apart from that I've given the necessary feedback to my fellow teammates and all is going well.

We also received 3 new members to the team. Luke, Shay and Viktor. All great additions and hopefully we can further our development with the extra hands. They are already contributing to the scene, Viktor has reconstructed the scenes frames, Shay's created a great looking floor texture. Luke is already creating scene populating props.


all in all, I'm looking forward to the Sony presentation day. and well done to the team.



Kevin:

This week I focus get my chair to be ready to put in VR although my asset was not focal point, my group wanted us try go through all our assets on list be created and have base colour to be s populated in scene.



Chris:

It has been a pretty productive week so I'm pretty happy with that.
The first thing that I managed to finish was the ceramic tile texture that i started on last week; I managed to get it to a point that both myself and the team was happy with. The variation in of the tiles is subtle enough to not look repetitive whilst also having visual interest. I had initially added wearing and dirt to the texture but as this a lived-in environment that is maintained, those details weren't as necessary so the details were made subtler.

After this I moved onto one of the more functional aspects of the scene that will be one of the Escape rooms puzzles; the levers. Modelling is what I'm most comfortable with so it was god to get back to what I know best. For the moment, we only need to worry about getting a functional block out together so once the model was done only a basic colour pass was necessary to add before implementing it into the scene.


The third and final thing I managed to complete this week was a bookshelf. This bookshelf is going to contain a false book that will open the door to the next room, so the model shouldn't be too simple. After looking at some reference for late Victorian bookshelves, I settled on two designs that I combined into one model which I'm very happy with since despite it's fairly basic shape it also comes across as quite grand and elegant. Like the levers, the bookshelf only needs a simple texture for now which i will quickly do next week before the presentation.

Thomas:

18/11/2019: Today I finally finished playing around with the low level handle mechanics inside the Interaction Master. Thanks to Juriaan's incredible help, I've moved closer towards understanding his base code. I've also made the small cabinet doors on Kyran's shelves intractable. Coding the first lever puzzle should run a little more smoothly now, assuming I would know what to reference once Event Control has been fired.



19/11/2019: Finished the first puzzle mechanics puzzle, the lever combination. Right now, the combination is randomly shuffled every time you hit play, but one could set the combination to anything the artists desire. The code is all in the BP_Spawner, which will be renamed to BP_LeverPuzzle. The Blueprint finds the first index to the BP_Handle class (which will be renamed to BP_Lever, and hopefully that will be the only lever object we will have in the scene) and duplicates it the number of times the artist specifies. It will then generate a code dependent on the amount of levers provided. Tomorrow, I will be working on the wheel puzzle.



20/11/2019: Managed to finish the first pass for the wheel mechanic, the variables stored get into an array that deletes the first index of a 5 item array when it gets to 5. I then retopologised Jo's cross model



21/11/2019: Finished the new valve mechanism that was suggested today, and implemented the levers into the scene

Urim:

This has been a busy week for all of us. Trying to get benchmark assets complete with a playable game from start to finish by next week for the Sony presentation. My role has been quite intense in terms of creating the environment as modularly as possible. The first couple of days, I spent time working on the theater room and getting that out of the blockout stage. I started with the walls, roof, and the skylight. I got them to a high standard and added a basic smart material so I can show the type of look and feel I want to go for. I then worked on the door mechanism and making sure that was done correctly without any restrictions and I did run into quite a few problems. Having a door turn from the centre pivot point was quite tricky to make sure it was done right. The UVs played a part as I wanted it to tile over to the wall as well and make it look like a seamless transition between them so the player won't notice any suspicious entrance there. I left the textures of the inner parts, which will be metal, till later as the model will be open to change in a couple of days once the wall texture is complete.

Lastly, I managed to start with the seating area and making sure that is up to a high blockout standard with basic materials by next week. I had a few issues with making them snap together but I managed to fix this by making the whole curve as one object with EP curve tool, and then the doors and the corner piece as a separate object without any notice. The next few days will be quite packed in terms of what I need to do by Wednesday which is making sure the whole seating area is completely modelled and UV'd at least.

Kyran:

This week has been a really busy week for myself. I've made a few different assets for the game environment; simply trying to get some good first passes on some key featured items in the environment so that we can quickly understand the setting and feeling of the environment that the player will be in. This week I've worked on cabinets that can be opened and closed in VR, a set of drawers that can be used in a modular way through the scene, and I also started working on the stasis chamber! This is where the player starts; trapped inside, in need of escaping. Due to the size of this asset, it requires a lot of work; setting up a modular piping system saved loads of time, and has given the opportunity for us to use this modular pipe system around the scene if we want to fill up some space in the environment. I have however come into a few problems with the stasis chamber based around material usage; due to the sheer size of the object and the fact the player will be inside of the chamber. It requires a very good texture quality. So far I've managed to pack it into 3 materials (Exterior, interior, and modular pipes) However, if we want a glass panel we could hit an issue of an additional material just for the glass piece, a simple solution would be to create a bars instead of glass, then bars could simply fit onto one of the other materials. Next, i'll be working on this asset, discussing with the team about the materials and getting a high poly sculpt over the welds etc in Zbrush to add the extra layer of detail.

Lastly, for the start of next week i'm going to make sure that we're on track with the work that's being produced, and that everything is ready for the Sony presentation.  

 Stasis chamber progress image

 In engine screenshot of cabinets

 modular draws

Adrian:

This weekly I mainly work on the work bench/table that will probably have a lots jars and set dressing items on it.

I made a low poly in maya, then put the model into Zbrush, to give the surface edges more of a natural used look.

One of the thing I dont like about modelling in maya is that the edges of surfaces can look overly uniform and perfect. Which great if you want clean edges and straight lines (which unfortunately can cause aliasing issues in the game engine).

Maya does have sculpting tools but, they are nowhere near that of the robustness and functionality of Zbrush.

One of the other reasons why I decided to put the table in for a zbrush pass is due to the fact it a pretty big prop in the environment. So having a lot of surface and edge undulating helps to give the table character and make it look more organic (well thats whay I hoping the end result will look like in the scene).

After I finished giving the table zbrush treatment, I took the decimated version back into maya to start retopologise it.

I used Maya 2018 because what im familiar with, I learned half way through the retopo that maya 2019 has a new auto-retopology functionality. Which I will try out on other props that I will be making.

During the retopology phase I realised I had made an assumption, that made the process of making this prop little long winded and give me self more work to do.

I treated every component of the table as a unique and discrete object. When really I should modelled the key features components and duplicated items like beams/ legs and rotated them and reused them. Which looking back now seem a little silly and not very time effective.

Once I finished retopology, I uv'ed the model. I decide to keep the texel density uniform across the whole object. I was a little concerned about the quality of the texture as it is a pretty big object in the environment and the player can get very close to it.

So I decided that moving the underside of the table and the inside of the draw uv shells to outside of 0 - 1 UV space but snapped 1 to the right sitting over the top of the table UV shell. Would help save UV space and increase the overall texel density.

My rationale for this was that although it can potentially cause bake/AO errors, the reality is that the player will never really see it clearly as the player would have to get on all fours to look under the table, plus the underside of the table will be in shadow obscuring it.

I am currently work in the chandelier for the main chamber.

Shay:

This week I mostly focused on the wooden flooring. Feedback from the team really helped. I think I got it to a good level for Sony but there are still some things I want to add, also I still need to see how it looks in VR. For next week I have the wooden wall and the plaster wall to do. 

To summarise the week, everyone has been working really hard to have a good blockout scene to present next week. Once our presentation is done, we will be running a full production sprint for the next few weeks after up until the Christmas holidays. In this time we should have the first room to a near finished standard.