Crying

This week has essentially been a frenzied attempt to finish everything. I find it very frustrating that a lot of the team have only started giving me their textures halfway through the final week, a week we didn't even initially know we had. The most frustrating thing has been not having the walls or windows as finalised textures, as they impact how the room is lit quite significantly. I found that even just putting glass on the windows meant I had to relight the entire room.

I also had to make the windows and walls multi-sub myself as they didn't import into engine as multi-sub. I was given the new walls as multi-sub and the windows were again, not exported properly. So instead of going to the person and asking them to re-do it, which would take a long time due to lack of response, or misunderstanding of how to do it, I decided to do it myself, using the max file I'd used to get the walls and windows into engine in the first place.

To do this I changed the IDs in max, and then applied two different materials to it. Then when I exported the walls and windows back into engine I made sure to check 'import with materials and textures.'

With the walls and windows as multi-sub in engine, I decided to make a place-holder frosted glass texture. This meant editing the glass material I had in engine, and throwing together a quick alpha texture in Photoshop. I didn't spend a lot of time on this as I had other things to do, but even though it didn't dim things out that much, it was still useful learning how to do it, in case the window person had any issues with their frosted glass.

Here are the windows without multi-sub:

and with it:

I then edited the floor texture by reducing the intensity of the normal even more, and changing the colour to a closer match for the still.

Here are the original floor textures next to the edited ones(on the right):

I have also made the materials for almost everyone's textures, except for one person.

Here are all the materials I've made(I've not included my own, because they were my task to do, I've also missed out a few I made last minute.):

I made the materials as people gave them to me, although I edited a few using multiply or constants in engine. I also had to tell a few people to edit their work, I mostly communicated this via a facebook message with the crit listed out as clearly as I could. Mostly it tended to be; too shiny, make your normal map less intense, or change the colour. I also had to change the colour mode to rgb for a lot of peoples roughness and metalness maps so they'd import into engine, as they'd clearly just given them to me straight from bitmap

I ended up editing a few more textures myself as well. I changed the saturation of the drawers, and completely changed the rug under the armchairs and couch, as that was too far off to just edit it in engine. I also made the sink less shiny, and the counter less saturated.

Here is the original and edited albedo for the drawers (edit on the right):

Here is the rug albedo and roughness edit:

Here is the sink roughness edited (the counter edit was only minor so I haven't included it.

I realised only on thursday that I could have used migrate materials to move them between uprojects. It's annoying to find out now, but it's useful to know for next time.

So onto relighting the room.

This was not something I needed during deadline week, but thankfully it didn't take more than a day to fix. I ended up deleting all my spotlights and placing new ones in. It took a while to position them again, and whilst I haven't managed to completely re-create the lighting I had before, I think it is close enough.

Here are some shots of the room lit from different areas:

I tried splitting the floor up into separate meshes to reduce light map stretching, but it didn't make enough of a difference to justify doing it, and it was easier having the floor as a whole mesh, so I decided to just stick to the original floor.

I also spent some time in the room trying to populate it and make it look more lived in, using the assets I had to hand. Mostly that involved filling the food case with jars and bottles, placing jars on the table and side, along with bottles and a few mugs. I also piled up some mugs and bowls by the sink to make it look more like the home of someone constantly on the go, like our superhero is. I do wish people would give me their fbx files with the pivot points centred, as moving them around in engine is very annoying without a centred pivot.

I also ended up putting in three new assets on Thursday which were; a light-switch, a book and a box.

The book material I made I duplicated three times and used multiply in engine to change the colour for some variety. Like so:

Here are the light-switches (placed in areas of the apartment that are near spotlights):

The books I used to make the stair area more populated and to add some interest to the food-case, to make up for the lack of variety in assets there. Here are the books in their different locations:

Here are some pictures of how I've populated the room:

This week I did find some time to polish my textures off a bit more. Not a lot I'll admit, but I managed to fix a seam on my cushion, add a bit more wear to my couch, and make the top of my armchair more yellow like it is in the still.

Here are the edited textures:

I've also done the matinee. This was pleasantly easier than I expected it to be. I did a test for it on Wednesday,

The final matinee can be seen on the k-drive, or on YouTube.

Whilst doing the matinee I realised I could include an animation in my room. It's only simple but I decided to make the slider door open when the player walked around the room. I did this by making a matinee for the door animation:

Then putting a trigger box in near the slider door:

I made a level blueprint for the event:

Which you'll have to see by playing the level.

I also edited the wall textures in case the person didn't come in.

Here are the originals(it was easier to show in engine):

And the edited ones: (I also edited the final ones a bit)

I also ended up making the windows as the texture I was given didn't work.

Here are the final windows in engine:

And the material used to create them:

I ended up using a plaster texture for some of the jars as again, the texture didn't work for them.

Some final colour shots of the room, and the beauty shot to original still comparison:

I'm upset that the amount of extra work I've had to do has meant I didn't get to edit the texture for my armchairs feet. It's a small detail you don't see in the room, but one I would have liked to have put in. I know that my individual grade contributes more to my mark than the group one, however I really wanted a good outcome for this project as a portfolio piece, and also just for the satisfaction of seeing all my hard work come to fruition. SO here's hoping it paid off.