The second week of our project was spent creating a few more concept work on our assets primarily, and to make our presentation and showcase it to our class.
First, we had another discussion about our style and how we would describe it. We all discussed keywords that we all agree would fit the style and emphasise what visuals we are going to create. This was the list of words we came up with.
These words will eventually influence our work as we figure out, what makes the scene look wonky/warped? what made the room decay? Why would the furniture be antique/victorian?
Our teammate Jennifer helped to write out a paragraph describing our theme and style using the words above. This will help our visual direction and will give the class an idea of what we are going to create.
During this time, I made some sketches of an asset we would like to add to the mansion, a grandfather clock. I focused on the words and themes we discussed once before to give a theme to the assets, etc. monsters, animal/human bones, gothic look. These were fun to create and I tried to capture the keywords into my work as much as I could!
Next up was the presentation. I helped start us off with a template and we started filling in the slides as we communicated through discord. We spent the weekend designing our slides, adding our work, references and our plans for the upcoming weeks. We described our initial idea, listed our assets, described our concepts and our practice with Unreal engine and Maya. We voiced over the slides with an explanation and then edited together for next Mondays class to present!
Source
Link to presentation:
https://ulster-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/keaney-d_ulster_ac_uk/EQzBRsVZ949IsPzum2QPkcIB2zTo9pp4ruCkE_ir7naQxw?e=wUPqJ3
During the past Monday class we also had our first proper introduction to Unreal Engine. We took some time to understand the workspace and navigation, meshes and materials, nodes, instances etc.
We experimented with the landscape function of Unreal Engine as we will be using this in the future. We followed videos made by our tutors to create a nature landscape with foliage use and texture painting.
Lastly, we touched on blocking out in both UE and Maya. This process will help us roughly structure our layout of our Haunted Mansion later on. I used this method to practice blocking by making the year 2 room i was in at campus. This taught me how to use reference, and observe my surroundings to see if I can replicate it.
Sources:
https://learning.ulster.ac.uk/webapps/blackboard/content/listContent.jsp?course_id=_323028_1&content_id=_6087411_1
https://learning.ulster.ac.uk/webapps/blackboard/content/listContent.jsp?course_id=_323028_1&content_id=_6087412_1
https://learning.ulster.ac.uk/webapps/blackboard/content/listContent.jsp?course_id=_323028_1&content_id=_6089085_1