Below I have listed my notes on the feedback given to me weekly in semester 1. I have just drafted the feedback for semester 1 because it involved the planning stage, whereas I feel like in semester 2 there was less feedback that influenced the project and that feedback was mostly ‘how-tos’ on production.
Week 2 Michael + Aodhan
- Putting the building together as you work will help with asset lists and prevent over/under modeling
- Think of who is reconstructing the saloon and why? This was a good point to look at as there are saloons today but they have very different looks and feels. A saloon can be preserved or completely redesigned, like the images below
- What old propers could be mordernised? e.g oil lamps with neon bulbs
I found the images below to show how a saloon can have modern elements
Week 5 Alec
- Try to photobash to get a final design and a clear concept
- Talked about modular asset creation and how it creates a building
- Put in a human for scale and work objects in cms as some off my models are scaled wrong and by the time I come to fix them in Unreal it might need remodelled or retextured, so its best to do it from the start
Week 7 Sarah + Daryl
- Ground looks very flat, make the teerain less een, as well as profile of houses is very even and could do with extra rescaling or hero assets.
- How will you transition from new to old?
My aim to keep to transition from the new to old building is to swap out similar assets for modern day alternatives. For example, the old saloon sign will get replaced with a newer neon saloon sign. Old wooden columns will be replaced by new metal ones.
- Edges need to be belleved in maya in low poly or zbrush if the asset is high poly already. Objects in real life never have a sharp 90degree corner.
- Look into baking textures, will save a huge amount of polys
After daryl and sarah suggested baking textures, I followed this tutorial to learn how to do it efficently. In short, I need to make a low poly asset then use a high poly copy to put the details I want onto it. In substance painter I will open the low poly file and follow the steps shown to bake the high poly, so the low poly model will reflect the high polys details. I will attempt to do this for the modular assets that repeat a lot in the scene in an attempt to reduce polycount.
- Focus on if it is cinematic or gameplay because this will heavily determine the direction of the project
Week 9 Henry
- Avoid NGONs that were appearing in the above assets due to attempting to bevel from the last feedback. Polys should have edges of 3s or 4s.
- Have a look at similar projects in marketplace or use your assets to build and get the look and feel of the project.
Marketplace was great to look at as it showed me how an entire project can be made using one wall, one column, one step etc. The project doesn’t end up looking repetitive due to individual textures or hero assets.
- Work from good references, my reference is an octagon style building but i’m currently building a square style one.
After this feedback I took my own references images from in game of RDR2.
Week 10 Alec
- Alec liked my models and agreed on my plan to take the models into unreal and swap them out for my finalised assets during production.
- Alec advised me to put together one of the simpler buildings as I was having difficulty visuallising individual assets as a whole project. I put together a simple house shown below from the modular assets I had made so far
Week 11 Michael and Aodhan
- Talked about introducing characters as props or doing small movements to liven the scene. There was a disscion that instead of using characters I could use props appearing/dissappearing and day and night cycles to symbolise time. This is a similar suggestion to how I produce my animatic. I also found the below reference image of cranes to show how I could do a time lapse