Chris Lucas, PPJ, Spring Week 9 Post Mortem

Post Mortem 

I learned a ton, working on this project. Firstly, about optimizing and creating assets for VR. I love working with VR, and I’ve optimized assets for games for VR before which is definitely its own task, but not too difficult. Creating post-processing and VFX for VR though often requires its own version of the effect, because of how VR cameras work. On top of this, working with the lightweight render pipeline, which also requires its own graphics constraints, made many usual art pipelines more complicated. I know more now about making VR assets for Unity’s Lightweight Render Pipeline than I did when I started, but it’s still enough of a roadblock that I think I prefer using the normal pipelines and optimizing through those.

For texturing I definitely got a workflow down. The process continued throughout the project mostly the same, and while there were bugs or fixes to models and UVs that needed to happen often, the pipeline itself rarely changed, and was very smooth from start to finish, which was wonderful. I got to build up a library of substance designer patterns and substance painter smart materials, and also learned several workflows for creating game foliage in Zbrush. That was great, but is also one side of one of my ‘could have been better’ moments. Earlier on, I spent a lot of time making things for the plant wall, models, foliage, gardening tools, texturing those, etc, when it would have been a much better plan to do larger texturing sweeps of the game early on.

I also learned more about how color palette can interact with lighting and player visibility, and quite a bit about how to select assets that should be busier, vs assets that need to be textured more plainly so that they don’t demand too much attention. Since our game is all in one room, and also in VR, it was an interesting challenge to make sure that it wasn’t too busy or cluttered, while still maintaining a gothic tone (which is mostly ornate decorations).

Overall, there were some early choices that I think would have saved a lot more time as the project went on, but I learned a lot, got to test many different pipelines for asset creation, and enjoyed working on a fourth VR project.

Chris Lucas, PPJ, Spring Week 8

Tasks:

• Texture new scene items by week 8 (95%) 9h 30m
• Total Hours: 9 hr 30m

Positives: I got a ton done this week, even though I missed basically a week from being sick. The machine got fully painted, and went through some initial iterations, baked, and implemented in game. The piano got textured, baked, and put in game. Textures on the machine also got baked and implemented. Really just about everything in our scene item model log is textured now, save maybe a side table or two.

piano in game

first iteration machine

second iteration

in game

Negatives: As a running theme, being sick for nearly a week wasn’t great at all, especially since I still have my other class work to do. That being said, I’m mainly satisfied by feeling better, and a lot got done this week too. Some pipeline issues pushed back texturing the bar some, but other than that, it’s just jars and small things that need in game materials.

Looking Ahead: Texturing more areas and adding in some VFX

 

Chris Lucas, PPJ, Spring Week 7

Tasks:

• Texture new scene items by week 8 (85%) 4h 30m
• Total Hours: 4 hr 30m

Positives: I’d started doing materials for the machine earlier, so that’s in the works, and I got to do some smaller materials for the filler objects around the room. There was also a lot that went well for other projects, just not this one. I was demoing two other VR games for Philly Tech Week this week, so that was cool, but I definitely was pressed for time to work on this.

Negatives: After doing the demo on Friday I also got too sick to work, and had flu symptoms for the weekend and into the early week as well. I’m working on getting better, but didn’t get much else done, so playing catch up.

Looking Ahead: Texturing more areas and adding in some VFX

 

Chris Lucas, PPJ, Spring Week 6

Tasks:

• Texture new scene items (80%) 7h 30m
• Total Hours: 7 hr 30m

Positives: One of the big things for this week re-sizing and baking the room layout to be a higher resolution. When I did that, I also took care of some other critiques of the room that needed revisiting. The glowing circuit lines, for example, were mostly procedural, and so I went in and touched them up, got rid of ones that made no sense, made sure they’re clean. I also reduced the amount of blood, and added a puddle under where the dripping from the ceiling was. I also textured the piano, and began doing materials for the Machine.

less busy circuits, + higher res

newer blood puddle + other side of room

Negatives: Mostly the ‘negative’ is still just that there’s a backlog, but I’m moving through it.

Looking Ahead: Texturing more areas and adding in some VFX

 

Chris Lucas, PPJ, Spring Week 6

Tasks:

• Texture new scene items (80%) 7h 30m
• Total Hours: 7 hr 30m

Positives: One of the big things for this week re-sizing and baking the room layout to be a higher resolution. When I did that, I also took care of some other critiques of the room that needed revisiting. The glowing circuit lines, for example, were mostly procedural, and so I went in and touched them up, got rid of ones that made no sense, made sure they’re clean. I also reduced the amount of blood, and added a puddle under where the dripping from the ceiling was. I also textured the piano, and began doing materials for the Machine.

updated blood pool , cleaned walls, higher res

Negatives: Mostly the ‘negative’ is still just that there’s a backlog, but I’m moving through it.

Looking Ahead: Texturing more areas and adding in some VFX