This has been one of my favorite projects
to work on this year and I've found working as part of a team to be very rewarding. The group project (GP) was our first experience of group work on the course and it was interesting to experience the dynamics within and across the different teams that grew across the project's duration. On the course the GP is renowned for breaking friendships and creating an even more stressful environment than usual in labs however in my team and in the year in general this atmosphere and horrors never manifested themselves and I feel that's a great reflection on our year. While we separated into our groups we never isolated ourselves away from each and continued to be very open and collaborative on one another's projects which I believe brought out some really strong outcomes.
To bring the focus towards my group we continued this collaborative atmosphere within our team with no leader figure as such appearing, what I found to happen was individuals would step up at various points to push creative decisions or bring the team together at low points, I'd like to think at points I too stepped up to the "leadership" role and I can honestly say I felt equal to everyone on the team. This also extended to responsibilities within the group with no one being pigeonholed into one role and while I perhaps focused on foliage for the level I was also able to work on a variety of other elements.
Foliage is certainly not the most glamorous sounding task to do in any environment project but it others a very interesting challenge one of the key features of any level where it's required. On top of that I do enjoy it. From the get go we felt it was key to use the foliage to drive the atmosphere of the level through both the colour and forms. It was also important that we used it as a compositional tool to drive the player's eye and guide them towards their goal. The below image is the best example of what I'm getting at.
The overarching tree you can see on the right helps to force the players gave towards the right and the abbey, the smaller tree in the distance on the left side also helps to reinforce that the abbey is where the player should be looking. The trees were my first modelling gig on the project and I feel they turned out pretty well, the texture I'm a bit on the fence about so I may go back and redo it but I feel the trees fulfill the role they were created for pretty well. I also modeled the heather you can see in the above image which was a bit one of the biggest hurdles I faced on the project and really highlights the challenge of foliage modelling. It took me ages to figure out just how to get a realistic looking heather bush at that tri budget but after a mountain of failed attempts I'm really pleased with what I produced, definitely one of my favourite parts of the level. creating the grass was another of my roles modelling the foliage however Kit and Ben did a portion of the assets too so not all the credit is mine. Lastly on the foliage front I created some of the Ivy seen in level which was a basic high to low bake.
The other major area I modelled was the crypt and tunnel which were two modular tileset in the same vein as the cloister and main abbey. Ultimately I had to create very few assets which were repeated heavily and then dressed in decals and various filler assets to break up the repetition. Unlike with the foliage I did not create the textures although for the tunnel I adjusted the brick texture created by Ben to give it a plastered look. The Crypt through up a unique challenge as Whitby does not have a crypt so I had to design the architecture of the area to fit with the existing Abbey that sat above it. When studying the architecture of Whitby I felt one of the key features was the mutli-cylindrical pillars and arches so I used this as a base to create the tileset and I ultimately think it works very well in creating a continuity between the crypt and abbey. The tunnel that connects the crypt to the cloister was a tricky one to make, while the design and initial modelling phase was fairly straight forward but getting the tunnel to be the right size was not so. There was a lot of back and forth between Kit and I, getting it in engine, testing, and returning the model for tweaks. I felt it was really important that we get the tunnel as small and cramped as we could to create a claustrophobic atmosphere however we couldn't compromise the player experience of being able to traverse the tunnel issue free. To this end I think we struck a good balance between the two.
There were a handful of other assets I created, the rocks and our namesake the flying buttress although in the end it never featured in our level, not one. Lastly I created a couple of textures such as the Moss used across the environment and the mushroom textures modelled by Katie. I produced a few concepts although I focused more on research during the pre-production especially regarding plant life and the geography of the location.
I also took responsibility for our blog which is currently on-going that documents more in depth our progress as a team. I acted as chief whip in getting everybody to write blogs I which I distributed amongst the group while writing a few myself. My position of social manager of such extended when we created our Polycount and CryDev threads nearly a month ago now. These were my biggest managerial roles as within the team I took a more secondary position after Katie mostly focusing on document, spreadsheet and presentation creation. Later on in the project I took charge over the flythrough which I felt was perhaps the weakest aspect of our level and produced what you can see below, when the level is finally finished we'll re-render this and iron out all the jerking, zooming and creases that are present in this final-ish version.
What's left to do then? The only major area is the vista and after that smaller details fixes and polish to get it were we want it. I finally feel that the majority of the work is behind us, it's funny, there was a moment the other day between myself, Ben and Elliott as we asked ourselves what was needed to be done next. In the silence that followed Ben tentatively asked if that meant we were done and he was right. Well, almost. We have a list, a definitive, totally final, list of what needs done and to be honest it's mostly polish like I said before. There's a real sense that the light at the end of the tunnel is nearly on us and it feels like the right time to be winding down on it. The Group Project has been a fantastic learning experience and I'm in no doubt it will most likely be one of the best from the course overall. Now as I begin to ease away from the project I feel a much more competent artist and I'm more confident in my judgement and abilities. Ultimately though I just had the greatest time working on it and I believe we create the strongest outcome we could.
Foliage is certainly not the most glamorous sounding task to do in any environment project but it others a very interesting challenge one of the key features of any level where it's required. On top of that I do enjoy it. From the get go we felt it was key to use the foliage to drive the atmosphere of the level through both the colour and forms. It was also important that we used it as a compositional tool to drive the player's eye and guide them towards their goal. The below image is the best example of what I'm getting at.
The overarching tree you can see on the right helps to force the players gave towards the right and the abbey, the smaller tree in the distance on the left side also helps to reinforce that the abbey is where the player should be looking. The trees were my first modelling gig on the project and I feel they turned out pretty well, the texture I'm a bit on the fence about so I may go back and redo it but I feel the trees fulfill the role they were created for pretty well. I also modeled the heather you can see in the above image which was a bit one of the biggest hurdles I faced on the project and really highlights the challenge of foliage modelling. It took me ages to figure out just how to get a realistic looking heather bush at that tri budget but after a mountain of failed attempts I'm really pleased with what I produced, definitely one of my favourite parts of the level. creating the grass was another of my roles modelling the foliage however Kit and Ben did a portion of the assets too so not all the credit is mine. Lastly on the foliage front I created some of the Ivy seen in level which was a basic high to low bake.
The other major area I modelled was the crypt and tunnel which were two modular tileset in the same vein as the cloister and main abbey. Ultimately I had to create very few assets which were repeated heavily and then dressed in decals and various filler assets to break up the repetition. Unlike with the foliage I did not create the textures although for the tunnel I adjusted the brick texture created by Ben to give it a plastered look. The Crypt through up a unique challenge as Whitby does not have a crypt so I had to design the architecture of the area to fit with the existing Abbey that sat above it. When studying the architecture of Whitby I felt one of the key features was the mutli-cylindrical pillars and arches so I used this as a base to create the tileset and I ultimately think it works very well in creating a continuity between the crypt and abbey. The tunnel that connects the crypt to the cloister was a tricky one to make, while the design and initial modelling phase was fairly straight forward but getting the tunnel to be the right size was not so. There was a lot of back and forth between Kit and I, getting it in engine, testing, and returning the model for tweaks. I felt it was really important that we get the tunnel as small and cramped as we could to create a claustrophobic atmosphere however we couldn't compromise the player experience of being able to traverse the tunnel issue free. To this end I think we struck a good balance between the two.
There were a handful of other assets I created, the rocks and our namesake the flying buttress although in the end it never featured in our level, not one. Lastly I created a couple of textures such as the Moss used across the environment and the mushroom textures modelled by Katie. I produced a few concepts although I focused more on research during the pre-production especially regarding plant life and the geography of the location.
What's left to do then? The only major area is the vista and after that smaller details fixes and polish to get it were we want it. I finally feel that the majority of the work is behind us, it's funny, there was a moment the other day between myself, Ben and Elliott as we asked ourselves what was needed to be done next. In the silence that followed Ben tentatively asked if that meant we were done and he was right. Well, almost. We have a list, a definitive, totally final, list of what needs done and to be honest it's mostly polish like I said before. There's a real sense that the light at the end of the tunnel is nearly on us and it feels like the right time to be winding down on it. The Group Project has been a fantastic learning experience and I'm in no doubt it will most likely be one of the best from the course overall. Now as I begin to ease away from the project I feel a much more competent artist and I'm more confident in my judgement and abilities. Ultimately though I just had the greatest time working on it and I believe we create the strongest outcome we could.
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