Production | Sprint 2

 The Next Leg of Production

    Prior to sprint kickoff I reviewed the cards my producer had assigned to me. I went about finding references and asking our designer for approval. Before our producer went over my assignments I had already all the references needed to begin work on: a generator, raised flower bed, scaffolding, and city walls.

    My producer wanted a standard gas powered generator. Thankfully a large stock of generators exist to choose from. The DeWALT brand was the best documented and had more angles to view the item from. 

    This would be the main focus of the sprint as it would be interacted with by players and would see frequent use in game play.

    Later I'll go into just how much detail went into this model as a whole.

    The other two props were simple and easy to find references for. The raised flower bed depicted was intended to allow players to sneak behind them and so this was the best to draw reference from. The scaffolding can serve as scene dressing as well as a means for the player to walk upon depending on need. 

    The last prop was a massive city wall meant to cordon off the city and act as a world barrier for the player. I was directed to the Jerusalem walls shown in the film World War Z.

    The most detailed part of this sprint was the generator. I took to replicating the reference's likeness as much as possible. Something that I opt to do as a modeler is make my models with as few separate pieces as possible. In this case there were only six separate meshed comprising the model. The handle has functionality and can swivel if need be.

    The wheels here each have a lock pin that is also part of the wheel mesh itself. The wheels are set up to allow for rotation just as the handle to allow for movement and animation if need be. I was advised by my producer to simplify the engine and not worry too much about making it one to one.

    To get the frame built I used a curve and the sweep tool. I duplicated half the frame and mirrored it over the axis. The mesh turned out to be quite low poly with roughly 3500 faces and 7000 tris. 

    The UVs for the generator were numerous and after a conversation with both my producer and designer it was deemed necessary to give it its own UV sheet. 

    I pushed for this to ensure that detail wasn't lost as this would be an object frequently in a players view. 

    The same conversation would be had regarding a different piece for this sprint but for a different reason.

    This very model being the culprit of yet another separate UV sheet. The city walls. This was a simple cut and extrude type of model. 

    After a conversation with my leads again we agreed that a 24 meter wall was narratively improbable and a simple selection of the vertices at the top and drag down to a little under half way was an appropriate height.

    There isn't much to be said regarding these UVs. This model was given its own UV sheet in order to ensure that the detail wouldn't be lost when a player was to walk over to it.

    Funny enough despite being far more simpler than any other model in the sprint this one necessitated the most discussion. The size and functionality were frequently in question. We settled on what would be a shorter version.

    This raised flower bed was just a cube with a few extrusions. Much of this model's detail would come from the texture. The dirt was just the top face that had a multi-cut and soft selection of various vertices. 

    The UVs were just as simple as the modeling and doesn't warrant much explanation

    The scaffolding was a touch more complicated. Again I pride and challenge myself to make a model of as few meshes as possible. The base has crossbars that are extrusions from the four main posts that are bridged together.

    The wood plank up top is just a flattened cube. Much like the former the UVs were simple.    

    Moving on to the texturing, I had a great deal of fun texturing the generator in particular. 

    Here I made a fun label in Photoshop with a few easter eggs from the production team. 

    The rust and paint chipping were two of my favorite features. I prefer to texture using masks over texture ID maps. 

    As my producer said, "Looks like a generator to me."

    The raised flower bed was simple. A concrete and brick texture with a few different generators to replicate age and wear and tear. 

    I really wanted to focus on the dirt up top as it would be closer to player view. I used some masks and two dirt textures to add color variation and lifelessness.

    The scaffolding is so thin that I just wanted to make sure its age and implication of recycled materials be known. 

    I utilized a ruined metal texture to ensure that the age and wear was communicated.

    Otherwise the masking and texturing done communicated my intentions perfectly and I would move on to the wooden walk.

    The wood was just a simple drag and drop with an adjustment to the angle of the wood grain. I really enjoyed how its lighter on the edges and darker where people would be theoretically walking

    The intent behind why the top of the scaffolding is see through is because its where the scaffolding model would be duplicated and stacked on top at those points.

    Theoretically the model is modular because the wood can be flipped and rotated to avoid repetition and the pipes could be stacked vertically and horizontally.

    The city wall was actually a bit tough to texture. Any stone or concrete texture wouldn't communicate the wear that I wanted it too. 

    I found that when I utilized a ruined metal texture and turned the metallic channel off I suddenly had a very well textured wall. 

    This is the second iteration contrary. My producer was concerned how one area of the dark spots looked like a hand swipe. Being that the wall was so tall it was improbable such a mark could be made. I simply went in and turned the dark spots down. 

    After review it wasn't all too common for concrete structures to have such a large variance in color so it worked out subduing the dark spots down.

    Lastly came implementation. This was a simple task after I had been shown how to properly implement models and materials as well as make prefabs. This time around we were given a more stringent folder format to follow as to streamline transfer and implementation. I followed this process as it was explained and proceeded to export the prefabs with their respective depenedcies.