Group Project

Now it’s time to write a blog entry to do with the group project.

The group project, something I haven’t enjoyed as much as I wish I had.

After deciding on a back room and working out what we needed to do. Originally we wanted to change the building into something more gothic and have some grand cathedral like architecture. We soon decided that this would take a lot longer than we would have to make the project and so decided it would be best to make the room that we were going to use to our best ability and then fill it with items and make it more resident evil styled.

After deciding everything I made a basic white box of the room. This was to work out where lighting would go, where items should be placed and to help with scale. Originally I got the scale wrong so I then edited it so it would have a more correct scale. I spent a lot of time on the railings in particular when making the model since I felt they were a very unusual shape and would cast some rather nice shadows with correctly placed lighting.
When I had created the white box I used it to help with creating a concept for the level. I changed the colour of the lighting to work out what would look better. In the concept I blocked off areas and added rubble to hopefully give it a more run down, broken feel.

After doing that I started working on my 3D work. I began with making piles of rubbish and boxes and then created smaller assets like plug sockets, shutters and signs. I created a few items to add into the group project and I made them either dirty or broken to fit with the style of the level.
I double checked that everything was correctly named and collision meshes were placed where needed on the items. I made sure everything had the needed texture maps, not just diffuse but specular and also normal maps.

Finally I decided to place my items in my own unreal room to prove I could use unreal. I created some fracture meshes for my items and I also added some physics so things could be shot. I scattered my 3D objects around the room so they can be seen and walked around.
After getting everything until unreal that I had made and everything had been placed into the group project I considered that part of my work was complete.

Working in a group project has been a new experience for me and though I did not enjoy it as much as I should of I still wouldn’t dismiss a third year group project. I feel that if the communication in our group was a little clearer and a little more forced then the project would have been made a little faster and more items could have been made.

The group has taught me a few things. It has allowed me to speed up making items. I have definitely sped up using 3DS Max compared to when I was using it for the Mortal Engines project and I feel the pressure of having to get my assets completed for another person on time has helped.