A Lions Share

Okay so this week I've turned engine over to someone else and focused mainly on creating assets since we're sorely lacking in them for our level.

The smaller assets I created were an Ink bottle and a quill for the first clearing, since we're going to have scrolls scattered around, there needs to be a few other assets to add interest to the level.

I decided to make the ink bottle a bit more impressive by adding a lions head to the lid, inspired by an ink bottle I saw online that had a pewter owl on it's lid.

I also figured that I could use the same lions head as a statue in the game to add more visual interest.

I chose a lion specifically because the animal has relevance to the play as one of the wild beasts mentioned quite often in it, and it not only plays an important role in the play within a play, but also in highlighting Bottoms..not so bright personality.

I also focused on assets this week following feedback on our level that although we're going to be specialising a bit, we're all still expected to have made 3D assets to demonstrate our skills in creating well, game art related content. I was going to do this anyway, but now I'm going to be prioritising it a bit more.

The feedback on our level was overall quite positive, which lifted our spirits quite a bit, however it was made clear that is now essential that we start producing content and put less emphasis on concepts and ideas, and more emphasis on a finished product, which of course makes perfect sense.

It's been a fairly slow week otherwise, but I'm quite pleased with the assets I have created for the level.

So firstly here is the mini mood-board I put together to get started on the ink bottle:

And here is the 3D model:

Here is the Lions head sculpt:

Here is the unwrap for the ink bottle:

And for the lions head:

I must have re-unwrapped and re-baked this lions head about 5 times to try and get it to look good and hide seams, but in the end it was worth it! Just proves iteration is key to getting good results.

And here it is in engine:

Here is a render of it:

And here is a detail shot of the lions head on the ink bottle:

Here is the Lions head as a statue:

Here it is in engine:

And here are the textures for the ink bottle:

The roughness, metalness and Ambient Occlusion are channel packed.

And here they are for the statue:

Again the roughness, metalness and Ambient Occlusion are channel packed.

I used the same glass material as I did for the lanterns, just minus the emissive.

And finally here is the quill I modelled: (image taken a little later on-hence textures).

Here is the unwrap:

The textures are in progress right now to be finished first thing next week.

Something I proposed this week which everyone seemed to like was making a fountain to represent Bottom, the man with the asses head that Titania falls in love with.

This is because making a third character, especially at this late stage in the game would be too much, but leaving him out feels like we'd be missing a very key comedic element in the play. Therefore since Titania will be next to a pool in our clearing anyway, it works to have Bottom as a fountain near here. Especially as stone animal fountains are pretty common, so it won't seem too out of place. It also makes sense for me to be the one to make this, since I've already made a stone animal, so I'll be better suited to creating a more consistent style with the animals in the level. Plus I'm also in charge of water, so I might as well make a fountain and some water to boot.

So Action Plan time:

• Finish the Quill Textures

• Re-model and texture the purple flower

• Start work on a Bottom Fountain i.e. make a Donkey bust

• Clean up my files for the week and double check texture size for all my assets-make sure they are reasonable

• Prepare for Character presentation and poster hand in-So respond to feedback and practice any changes made

• Start work on creating some mushrooms

• Try and put some emphasis on getting assets sorted out for the clearings as right now everyone is still being very vague about what assets need to be created for the level, I want to know what exactly is being used to populate the level and how, as this will make planning my workload much easier-bring this up in the next meeting.

And I think that'll be enough to keep me quite busy. After next week it'll be the Easter Holidays so of course, a very important thing to do next week will also be to plan what everyone should do over Easter, as sadly no break for us.

I would like to get my hands back on engine soon as according to our Gantt chart, It'll soon be time to work properly on lighting, visual effects and well, generally engine stuff, which is my jam, so hopefully the sooner I can get onto that the better.