Before beginning my setup in Unreal Engine I took notes on the above video for advise on how to optimise my environment for gameplay.
- First step is to research your brief throughly and gather a lot of reference materials
- Strip down complicated and clustered referene images but keep the functionality of the scene believable and immersive
- Work off a human model to scale accurately
- Blocking out a scene is very important for visualisation
- Work biggest assets first to fill space then treat small assets as space filler and scene decoration
- Don’t be afraid to edit textures in Unreal Engine because lighting can have a huge affect
- 14:30s, light doesn’t always have to come from a light source e.g a lamp, lighting can be added to highlight details
- It is better to have many lights that are dim that to have one big light source
- Particle system for dust
Beginning the Unreal build
For the start of my Unreal builds, I just pulled in my assets to Unreal Engine and started the build in a similar way to how I tested my assets in maya. This process was simple to do as I had the full layout of the buildings from maya. 
Lighting Tests
For my nighttime scene I set up various different neon lights to test out how they would work against the textures. This and the streetlight was the main source of lighting in my new scene, whereas the old bars only light was natural light from the sunset.
Adding Decals
To reduce the polys coming into the game, I textured details as shown in the blog post on textures, by using basic models and painting details on. The other way I added details is by adding decals to my scene. Decals use the colour and opacity to put like a sticker onto an asset. I’ve used them as shown to break up the texture on the pavement and to make the street look more imperfect and unnatural. This means for something I wanted to keep low poly, like a pavement, I can make a basic model with a singular texture and low poly but add details ontop. Decals were also great to enahnce the visuals of the scene for the example below, I used them to create graffeti. Graffeti is seen almost everywhere in a city, but particularly in alleyways, so I added some quixel graffeti as shown.
Smoke
In the unreal starter ocntent, there is a particular simulation for smoke. I added this to the front of my AC units to simulate steam by rotating them and scaling them down. I also wanted to do a shot of a smoking area with a lit ciggerete and used the same smoke simulation, however this time I scaled it down and slowed the steam to simulate burning.
Material Intinces
While using my baked materials, I originally imported the material on a full wall, seen the import was successful then left the textures the way they were. When it came close to the deadline and I tried applying the texture to other walls it would not wrap properly and look distorted. I realised I had redone the assets UV’s and this was causing the textures to worp. When I first made the walls, I made a full wall, then cut it in half for a smaller wall or cut a hole in it for a window. But after I done this I reset the UVs without realising the texture wouldn’t automatically adapt to the new UVs.
Instead of reimporting and reUV’ing, I used material intinces to rotate or scale. This also prevented me importing more matierals to the file which kept it optimised for gameplay.