Third year has well and truly kicked off. Armed with a brief, a deadline and all the software and tools I could hope for the week has been a fast paced one to say the least. Of course that's how I want it, straight back into the thick of it, and it's been a fun first week back at DMU and in labs. There's been a few changes to the curriculum for the first part of the year and I'm excited about the new direction of the year that the course team explained to us on Monday. Simply put there are a variety of different briefs for us to choose from and we must undertake three of the before Christmas.
Right now I'm working on a rooftop environment project with the goal being to create a realistic rooftop in unreal, fairly standard but I'm having a lot of fun with it. The idea is to approach it as if it was intend for a third person game, think Assassin's Creed or GTA, so part of the project is to consider the level design and mechanic design and how that can work into our space. This mind-set and hasn't been one I've inhabited since leaving Leicester last summer and on re-reading the brief during day two it was clear my initial concept I started to work on was definitely approached in a more visualisation-y way. That had a number of impacts on what I was aiming to get out of the project but didn't align with the brief's outcomes with the major one being my lack of designing for a playable space. Whereas I was more creating a single scene more designed with creating still images or a short video it lacks the planning for the extra dimension that an interactive environment offers.
That was kinda funny, having to change that mind-set from BMW and visu but for the most part the rest of what I've been able to bring across have been positives. A lot of the "How-I-Work" that has improved over last year, better discipline, being more aware of my strengths/weaknesses etc. has definitely helped in labs, I fell faster as well as being more confident in my decisions and direction with the project. I also don't feel too attached to the project either so while I'm greatly enjoying working on it I'm not afraid to make cuts or changes when needs be which I feel is a lot healthier then what I was before.
My goal for the brief is a rooftop warehouse with the idea being that the player is perhaps chasing a goal or trying to reach the end objective of the environment with my concept acting as the climax of that. I spent about a day working on the layout it was important to me to create a strong sense of the scene's progression and path for the player with the easiest way being to create a clear height hierarchy between the floors which you can see in the layouts. I've also explored the idea of multiple routes, one being the rooftops and the other using the fire escapes and while I don't believe I have the time to flesh that out to a polished level I think it's an important aspect to consider and to take into account while I'm creating the level. The two chimneys are also designed to help with this as well acting as landmarks from all over the rooftop and I can add to this as well through colour and form perhaps by introducing graffiti or damaged elements that could point the player in the correct direction but again that's probably a stretch for the timescale I have. Having realised I haven't mentioned what that timescale is it's three weeks which isn't long.
That doesn't give me a lot of time to get a lot done over the next few weeks but as weird as it may sound that's not what I aiming for. My idea as a whole won't be achievable by the end of the space so what I am able to achieve will act as a vertical slice to the level as a whole. What this translates to practically is to work on a small area, getting that u to the quality I want and from that point there is the potential to expand to complete the full roof. This means that I need to have a keen awareness of what is a priority for the environment which I've discussed with Mike and Stas in labs. In my eyes that means the wall tile set and ventilation, as well as the roof material and some clutter to fill the space are key to get in for hand in. It's also important I don't get too focused on details or variations need to keep the goal to get the area working and populated and then focus on variations during polish.
Keeping variation as a low priority does produce the challenge of how to keep the architecture and environment from being too repetitive or uninteresting and lets face it the Harlem/NYC aesthetic I aiming for, while a great one, is filled with hugely repetitive and fairly basic motifs, forms and features. While that makes creating a modular tile set a lot easier for myself it the lack of diversity or a visually undynamic play space may prove itself to be a key point in the project's feedback. Having said that I do feel it's going well so far, I feel have a great moment coming out of week one, currently I'm midway through the wall tile set and on Friday I knocked out what is pretty much a finalised tiling brick texture though there are a couple tweaks I want to make. The texture was done in Substance Designer which I've had next to no hands on experience with and I'm quite proud of it considering it's only like my second material out of it, procedural is the future. I've also had a lot of time with UE4 which while I'm familiar with I have little experience inside.
I'm glad that while the pace is quite relentless for this project I'm still getting in a lot of learning and new techniques into the pipeline for this. I've got a god feeling about this coming out of the first week although there is still plenty time for t to go wrong and I'm sure it probably will at some point it always does right? But I feel clear on my direction and taking on the comments and feedback I've received from the tutors I'm aware on what will trip me up on this project and that's trying to do too much in the time I have. The important thing for going into next week is to keep a very strict sense of hierarchy and priority when working on assets for the environment but with the planning and direction I've worked on this week I'm pretty confident I'll be able to accomplish the outcomes of the brief.
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