Assignment 1: Vertical Slice

Assignment 1 of ‘Animation for the Creative Industries’ is to create a vertical slice of an original game with help from games design students, and a team of animation students. The game can be in any media and the theme, story, designs etc are all up to the team.

Week 1

During the morning of the first week back, we went over the module brief and scoring system. We discussed both of the assignments but focussed on the Vertical Slice project. In the afternoon we met our games design team and did a few activities, my team has 5 games and 5 animation students, we all got along well and especially had fun with the marshmallow/spaghetti tower icebreaker! Afterwards, we sat down around a whiteboard and got to work; EJ had already done some game narratives so we jotted all these on the board, expanded on some, and narrowed it down to a few favourites with some relevant inspirations and existing media. We had ideas like a shopping simulator, but with odd and unnerving visuals and objectives (strange items on shelves, odd-looking aisles etc), an ‘I Am Bread‘ style game where you play as a child’s drawing trying to get to the fridge, a deeper game about a child’s experience with grief, ‘The Path‘ inspired navigation game through a weird forest and a D&D-Esq combat game.

The favourite idea amongst the group was a Paper Mario/Smile For Me style multimedia horror game. As the animators, we all decided that the best medium would be a 2D 3D mix, we are all very experienced in 2D art and some in 2D animation, and we all still have the 3D proficiencies needed for a 3D environment 2D character scrolling game.

Before we met the team, we were all given roles chosen by the lecturers and mine was 3D hard surface and textures which I am very happy with! I know others in my group prefer 2D work, and they have already spoken about how they can interpret their design roles into 2D, but I can stay 3D and work on some of the 3D assets or 3D background/environment. I love painting textures as well, and I’m hoping I can do some of that during this assignment as well.

For the coming Monday, we would need to have a small section of a room finished to present, a team name and possible logo/branding, and a good idea of the narrative, style and roles. I had time after Monday’s class so I drafted a couple of logo designs (very rough!) for the team name voted by the group; Intriguing Folk!

Discussion With Group

Our group decided to meet on a discord call late evening the following day, where we all discussed possible game ideas and art styles. I didn’t really have any ideas for a game, for this assignment I primarily just wanted to make what I was told and follow someone else’s idea.

As the general idea of our game was a 2.5D forest exploration horror/mystery, we as a group listed what assets we would need for the presentation on Monday where we would have to make a draft of the slice/a draft section of the slice. I took a log and some rocks to model in 3D.

Week 3+ – Starting the Assets

I chose to focus on 3D modelling and texturing for this project, as it’s something I’ve discovered that I really enjoy! Even if I have a lot still to learn.

Miro Board, GitHub and Choosing Assets

A Miro board was set up for the group, with a section for the art team detailing every asset wanted. In the end, not all of these were made.

These assets were split up into 2D and 3D sections, and listed under the areas they would be going- A campsite, cabin, train station, marsh land, sawmill, pier and forest area. At first, the amount of assets didn’t seem too bad but it was when I found out a teammate (who was also on 3D modelling) had left that I started to feel worried. One of the games design team members, Adam, instead helped with 3D assets.

I chose a few assets to get started with, and drew up a draft of a campsite, whether this helped the game design I’m not sure, but it helped me visualise the tree shapes and textures and campsite! It was at week 3 where we still weren’t sure what was to be 3D and what was 2D, we settled on mostly 3D background with interactive assets in 2D, to stand out.

Making the Models

After testing the rocks models in Maya and Blender, to figure out which ways were best, I also took to blender for a tree draft. I actually thought this tree was decent and quite cute, but that was the issue! I wanted to match EJ’s 2D tree concept art, so I needed the tree leaves to be sharper. I also wasn’t sure if I wanted roots to be visible, it looked nice here but I thought instead if I shaped the ends of the trunk to jut out a bit, it would look fine.

It was hard trying to find an easy way of making the leaves’ ends curl upwards, like the concept art – in the end when I remade the trees in Maya I actually had the leaves thin and curve downwards. When researching I saw many tpine trees, and other artist’s models, had half leaves and I liked the look of this, in the background you can see the 4 variations of leaves – 2 full, 1 half open and 1 quarter open. I think this makes the trees much more interesting, and makes them all look much different from each other.

Again, to fit the theme and concept art, I left the leaf edges sharp so that I could add ‘line art’ around the edges, when looking for inspiration I saw someone do something similar and I liked that look. The whole process of making the leaves took a long time, mainly figuring out how to achieve the look I wanted with extruding the edges. UVs were also a pain, there was 1 of the half leaves that wasn’t cut properly and so a section of it is separate to the other UVs! I didn’t notice this until I textured the very tree that this happened on.

Tent

We had to consider what time period our game was set in, we settled for the 60s-80s and we kept it flexible. While not much difference in terms of tents, there are certain looks that were popular so I modelled my tent after vintage tents and also with a mix of the A frame viking style tent – I added this after as I thought it would look interesting and more rustic, even a bit more menacing with the two large, sharp logs which I shaped like horns. I had to think about where the supports would logically go, I actually think I should have added one inside holding the tent upright. I didn’t add the little supports to the back, as you wouldn’t really see it.

I saw another tent model that had a sleeping bad and bed on the inside, and I liked that look and made one for my own tent, I think it makes it look less empty! There was another model I saw that I really liked the shape of, and another which gave the inspiration for the front opening fold as a cylinder (see these in the tent refs).

Saw Blade

This was a very simple model to make, its really just a flat cylinder with a bit of indentation on the body for interest, and some spikes. This is one of the models I got done quickly in the beginning, although the UVs caused unexpected problems (see the issues section).

Log Pieces

I had some log and wood pieces that I had to consider: A log seat, a tree stump, and later on a plank. I had already made the long log, from week 1, and in a later model I included a better short log.

The seat was very simple, just a cylinder with an indent on the inside and ends. I actually should have lowered one side of the log’s indent more, its currently lowered just slightly, to look better as a seat but overall I’m happy with this model, it stayed low poly and looks nicer than the original log!

The tree stump I spent was more time on, I saw other models of really lovely, detailed tree stumps and I wanted to give it a try. I was mainly inspired by the more angular tree stump (see inspirations) so I mixed that style with our my own style for the regular trees and I think the outcome is nice! I tried adding a little branch on the side, I like how mine came out but I could have spent more time working on that little branch area. It was the UVs and topology that gave me trouble in the end – I smoothed the stump and didn’t realise how many cuts it made and the inner log area is where this is most noticeable, I tried fixing it and removing as many 5 and 3 sided faces as I could, but I moved on after a while.

I had made a more simple tree stump as well, with a lower rim but I didn’t end up using it.

On the day of hand in, someone in the discord asked about planks, which were never made! I had to quickly model and texture a plank for the pier area, thankfully only took about 20 minutes total. It was easy to lose track of what was actually needed for the game to function. I actually remembered to scale this one way up, which is something I forgot to do for the tree stumps. I used the UE mannequin as a guide, but our game character is larger than him so I had to go larger than that. As this was made last minute I didn’t spend much time on UVs and it shows! I just needed it to be texture ready.

Barrel

Another piece for the pier, I wanted to try the barrel. This was very simple as well, I also got to learn a bit more about using nonlinear deformers, I used flare on the barrel planks. I gave the planks different widths, which I think improves it. It unfortunately has a higher polycount than I would have liked, but I’m happy with the result anyway. As I usually do, I got a bit lost doing the UVs for this, I always lose track of what the right way of UVing a bevelled cube is!

Sign Post

I had a couple of different ideas for the sign post, I wanted to do something simple at first like a branch with a plank nailed to it, but I also wanted to try something larger. I sent some pictures of references to my group and asked which type they liked best, and the bigger stone and wood sign won!

Making this was simple enough, however I left the UVs for quite some time as I knew I would have trouble, and I was right! I must’ve made the bottom stone piece badly, as the automatic UVs just separated every single face. It was an easy fix, but took a while. The top pieces that the wood supports sit inside of were also badly made, and I spent a good while trying to get the UVs to at least not be that distorted, in the end I moved on when they weren’t as bad as they were before. If I could go back now I would fully redo the sign post.

Rock Revisit

I was just going to use the original rocks, but when I brought them into substance painter I just didn’t like how sharp they were. I took them back to Maya and smoothed the edges, but still that looked bad. I gave in and just smoothed the whole rock, I didn’t want to do this at first because they were such a simple model and I didn’t want any higher polycounts, but they actually behaved fine. I only used 3 of the rocks, there wasn’t need for a fourth. Again, the UVs somehow turned out strange, even on something so simple, but I just needed to get them not distorted and ready to texture.

Log Cabin

The biggest model I made, by far, was the cabin. Originally, someone else was to make the cabin but as they left, I had to take it on. We didn’t know they were leaving, not until over halfway to hand in, so I had to prioritise this. I actually really enjoyed putting this cabin together, we didn’t have the original cabin draft made (it was more of a place holder, a simple box with cylinders) so I made my own design and sent it to our group for opinions.

Everyone liked this design, so I got to work actually making it. I firstly made the logs, these were easy enough to make and they were my guide for how tall the walls will be. I had the ceiling above these logs in the draft but in my redesign I added a kind of support around the edges to break up the area. I also inverted the layout somewhat, the shutters in my redesign covered the door and it was suggested that I just flip the layout here. I also made the extra hidden room into a visible hallway of sorts, it opened the cabin up a bit more.

One thing I liked a lot was the little logs from the side view, as our character enters the cabin the camera should black out the outside but I thought that if I added a kind of buffer log it would look more like he is in a whole cabin, rather than in a cabin with a wall missing. I had to fiddle around with the roof and top crossing beams, as there were visible gaps that the camera would certainly see, I got them fixed as best I could.

I made every part of the house to be separate, even the logs are separated (front logs 1 has the top and every other log, while front logs 2 has those in between, for example) it meant that if other buildings were needed, ‘mid logs’ and ‘front logs’ as well as the door frames and doors, windows etc. could be used to build another structure. It was also requested by the games team that it be modular.

Rather than have 5 walls of 8 logs, making it very high poly, I ran the idea of having 2 of the camera facing walls just be cubes that a texture can go on, preferably something that matched the logs and created an illusion, by the team. They all liked this idea, I also made the top pieces above the horizontal beam at the front and back of the house simple shapes, as well as the floor and ceiling. Cáithlin offered to texture these for me.

Surprisingly, the UVs on this whole cabin wasn’t that complex. All of the logs were fine as they were, and needed little tweaking, and everything else was mainly made of cubes so UVs didn’t cause as much stress as they usually do for me! I’m still not great at them, but I definitely feel as though I’ve improved over this project.

As there were duplicates of the windows, door frames, stairs and shutters I only kept 1 of each in the file so that I would just texture 1 later, and it can be built fully in UE.

Textures

I sort of put off texturing for a while, as its something I really enjoy doing and I wanted to have stuff ready before I spend time texturing.

I started off with the simplest model of a rock, as a way to figure out which brushes I would use to match the style guide EJ made. In the style guide, the splatter I quite pronounced but I couldn’t find a nice splatter on substance, I liked the more subtle look for the textures, like the top right swatch.

I tried texturing this rock properly after sending the swatches to the group, to see what they thought (the top 2 swatches were the favourites) and this was the final result:

I hated it. Its not in the style at all, it lacks contrast and it just looks bad. I decided I’d sleep on it but I still wanted to scrap it, it took quite a while to texture for a rock but I knew I could do something better. I feel like I relied too much on reference image, and other rock models, it just wasn’t what the game’s style was.

Rocks Revisited

I actually left the rocks for after the other textures, in case I didn’t have time to revisit it but these new rocks took only around 15 minutes to finish in substance painter, a huge improvement from the last! I also think they look much better, more colour and contrast fits the 2D style better and the splatter effect is more visible.

I went about shading this differently, as the game is 2.5D I wanted just a base colour, with high roughness, so I started with a lighter base colour and blocked in the squares of the rock faces. I then went in with a darker colour on top to go around one side of the shaded area for more dimension and finally added some splatters, light and dark. I love how these turned out!

Trees

Having all 6 different trees was a bit much in the game, so I chose some higher contrasting shaped trees (1, 5A and 5B) and textured them all the same. Ad this is a 2.5D game, again I needed to make them look 2Dish, so I outlined the edges of the leaves and the indents of the trunks, painted on some more pines and painted fake highlights to make the pieces stand out.

They don’t fully resemble EJ’s concept, I didn’t make the lines black or add the zigzag pattern, but I still think these came out lovely! I like the messier blending, and that you can see the texture of the brushes nicely on these trees. If I could go back, I would change 5A’s colours, as they are the same as tree 1, I had forgotten to change them when setting up the layers! 5B is different though, its darker with a red tone, I actually like this colour scheme more. I had taken the colours from EJ’s trees, and edited them slightly so that I could have a larger range of greens.

Tent

I had quite a lot of fun designing the tent, even if I had real images to reference. I wanted to try out painting on all the folds of the tent, so I sketched up a concept piece testing out my skills of fabric painting. I really liked this concept, even if the folds aren’t that convincing, but I knew I would be more limited in substance painter.

I used the same colours as in my concept, with some slight changes so that the wood wasn’t so orange against the trees, logs etc. and I’m very pleased with the result! I only painted one side of the tent, the other side would be seen as well as this side but I didn’t like how the other folds were turning out, and I learned a bit more on what tools substance has for this kind of mirroring! I feel as though the folds here look better than in the concept, I went a bit overboard with those and I think they ended up messy; here, I think they turned out nice!

If I could go back now and add anything, it would be more shadows under the folds for a bit more dimension. Most of the folds are on 1 layer, with 1 side of the lines blended out to look like a shadow and the top  half erased and pulled back to look cleaner. I would also maybe change the way I shaded the folds, I copied my concept art but I don’t think it translated as well here.

Saw

The saw was easy, but had loads of layers! Mostly grunge layers of rust and blood, quite a few layers of shading for a metallic look because again, I only wanted base colour to be used on these, no roughness or metallic. I uploaded a clean, bloodied and rusted/bloodied saw for the team to pick from. I think I like the plain saw best, or the bloodied, the rust looks a bit too realistic as I used a generator for it, which maybe wasn’t the right call.

Log Seat

Another very simple texture, I had had loads of practise now with log and bark textures so I had this one done quickly, with only 4 layers to it! I’m happy with it, I think if I had went any more detailed it would have been too much, too distracting. I like how thick the lines are, the bold chalk brush texture is very clear and I think matches our style well.

Tree Stump

The tree stump was one of the first thing I textured, and I faced some GPU issues with substance painter (checkerboard glitches and heavy lag), I managed to get this fixed later on thankfully. I maybe went too detailed with the tree stump, in comparison to the log seat or tree trunks, but I still really like the outcome! I would maybe change the inner swirlies (rings…) colour, its a bit too red. I think the 3D shading illusion is quite good here! This image has substances material shading on, but even in base colour I think the shading came out convincing.

Thankfully, the weird UVs didn’t affect this texturing process, except a bit around the little branch, where it was a bit squished.

Plank

I managed to get a plank asset done in about 20 minutes after being asked for it on hand in day, I think I managed to keep the general style consistent even under pressure! For little assets like this, I wanted the wood grain subtler and thicker, having loads of detailed wood textures in the game wouldn’t look great, in my opinion! I’m happy with this plank, for all the time it took.

Barrel

I spent probably way too long on the barrel, but I love the outcome! This was one of the first textured assets as well, where I really started experimenting with achieving a 3D look on just a base colour. There were quite a few lays on each lambert of shading, bringing darks in, then pulling it back with lights, etc. but I think the final barrel looks very nice!

If I was to change anything, it would be the wood colour. I feel as though these colours are more typical for a barrel, a sort of light, saturated orange, but its a little bit too red toned against the other woods I textured. I also maybe should have added some more messier splatters and smudges, for a more grunge look and to fit better with the other 3D assets.

Signpost

The biggest issue I had with the signpost is, actually, the writing. I spent a lot of time trying to get that etched-into-wood look, but to little avail. I’m happy with the overall signpost ,I think the colours are nice and I especially like the stone bottom, but I haven never been good at drawing text. I did try adding downloaded text, as both a texture and an alpha and fiddling around with that, but it never worked as I wanted. I wanted dark hollow text, with shading inside and a lighter colour around the edges so that the writing looked as thought it was chipped into the sign planks, but I couldn’t get the overall shapes to look good. I would definitely go back and spend more time on the writing.

Thankfully, the bad UVs on the stone top supports didn’t affect the texturing, although I did keep it quite simple just in case.

Log Cabin

The biggest asset again was the cabin, naturally. I love the outcome of this model, it took around 2 and a half days to complete but I think it was worth it! There are certain parts that I had help with, I gave Cáithlin the UV snapshots for the ceiling, floor, front and back top pieces and flat walls.

The roof is the same on both sides it was just easier to copy and past the shading as you would only see 1 side of the cabin. Unfortunately, the underside of the roof came with problems, probably something to do with UVs, I ended up leaving it as I don’t think you notice it. I would maybe go back in and add some darker shading to the roof tiles, I love how they came out but could definitely benefit from more shading. I’m more experienced with 2D art so getting to paint this roof was more fun for me!

I didn’t spend much time on the chimney, again because I didn’t think you would really notice in when in game so its much simpler, I used just a square shaped textured brush to add bricks, and just some grunge and lighting around the edges.

I also love how the wood grain came out, I think on its own this model would look great! However, one thing I’m a bit worried about is the levels of detail of the cabin logs, against the other assets. I think the logs look good, but they’re maybe a bit much against the other pieces of the world!

As the detective will find a carcass in the house, I added a little trail of blood which I think really improved the foundation, which I left very simple. Originally I was going to do the whole house wood, foundation planks as well, but I felt as thought that would be way too much wood, especially when I had a chimney that would have stood out if it was the only stone piece.

As much as I liked the idea of a wood door, I decided to change the colour. I had it as green, to match the roof, but I didn’t like the colour on the door. I changed it to red, which looks much better in my opinion, but I still think the colour is a bit off. I should have gone back in and added some mud or smears of blood, I think! Especially on the fallen door, I feel like that would have been a nice touch.

Issues Faced

I believe the biggest issue that I faced was the amount of assets needing done, after finding out about the person meant to be on modelling too leaving. That left me and one of the games design team Adam on 3D assets, but he had his own other stuff to do so I was primarily in charge, and it was hard to keep track of everything. I managed in the end, but I wished I had more variation of assets made.

I also had a few issues with UVs, as I am one to have… I hadn’t noticed this on the saw until I had brought it into substance, I took it back and tried to fix it but to no avail, thankfully as I’m only using base colour this wasn’t noticeable, but I couldn’t figure out how to fix it anyway. Unfortunately I had more trouble with UVs, I need to practise them more, I at least think I’ve improved a bit during this project!

There were some other issues with substance glitches, and colour swatches but I think I managed to fix everything. The style guide did have a colour guide, but with no browns and that was my primary colour (plus I didn’t want to take the monster’s brown colours, as it would blend in too much) I’m not great at choosing colours but I’m happy anyway with my assets!

Unreal Engine

As my assets were quite large and labelled confusingly at times, like the trees for example, I went onto unreal to build the assets and get them ready for the games students. As they needed their own time on the project, I didn’t want to take any time from them by going into the original game file and so after talking with them, they said the best way for us to set up the assets was to migrate them, after I built the cabin and set up the textures.

Communication

Our group had a discord server to ourselves with loads of channels for different things, hard surface modelling, character design and UI etc. Everyone was very active and helpful, we scheduled at least 1 meeting, sometimes 3, a week to catch up and discuss issues, work load, what needed done etc. Feedback was passed easily around the group and was taken easily as well. During our presentations and time in person to chat we were organised about internal deadlines and discussed everything that was needed for the following week. Our Miro board was frequently updated too, with new ideas and updates, and we kept all of the assets well organised in a google drive.

References and Inspirations

I made a few different PureRef files which had other 3D models’ wireframes and base colours for inspiration, plus some real photographs. I added some of my own models in these files too, for colour swatches. Similarly to another recent project of mine, our main inspiration for the aesthetics was Little Nightmares – as I researched this for our last project, The Haunted Mansion, I could visualise the assets clearly and they heavily influenced my textures, they have clear wood grains and bright highlights, splatters and grunges which I included in most of my assets.

A game that I was reminded of from the start, when discussing our game, was Tale of Tale’s The Path; a game I love the look of! In the beginning we talked about having a distortion in the world as you continue the game, later we changed it to a red overlay, which is something The Path does too. In terms of assets, I actually took inspiration from the tent found in game for my own tent’s shape:

The assets in The Path aren’t in the hand-painted style mine is, but there is heavy contrast on things like rocks and headstones, even a bathtub (which also has a splattery look, and very grungy) I even looked at The Path’s tree textures, and took inspiration from the grain (there’s only so many patterns you can do on wood and bark…).

As a group we were inspired by the 2.5D look of Smile For Me and Paper Mario, although both of these games have a much different tone than ours! Smile For Me has 3D backgrounds that look 2D, also relying on base colour as I had. There isn’t much grunge in the game, unlike ours, but that fits their clean style and the blocky 3D assets really help made the game look interesting but not jarring. They painted on the details and shadows, and I tried to do the same with my own assets.

There wasn’t really a 3D style guide, so I took it upon myself to try fit the atmosphere of the game and make my models sharp and chunky. This style is similar to Paper Mario, the sharp, near flat edges look nearly 2D by themselves so I wanted to recreate this look. There is also a nice noise texture over all of the Paper Mario 3D assets, we as a group liked this feature and that inspired the heavily textured brushes used on the assets.

Reference Boards

Playtest Sessions and Feedback

We had 2 playtest sessions this project, the first one didn’t go very well as there was little feedback left on our game and it wasn’t very helpful. The second session was much better and we had a whole list of feedback we could then apply to our game.

I even left my own feedback! There were a few comments on the area visuals, which is something I would need to consider- making rocks and nicer trees, Cáithlin had made some 2D bushes already so I wouldn’t need to worry about those fillers. As I didn’t like my original rocks I was just going to leave them, but after this feedback I decided that I would fix them and texture them for the game. There wasn’t much other feedback to the 3D assets I made unfortunately, most people when asked what they thought said they liked them, but they needed to be textured to look 2D as the tutors had suggested in the weekly presentations.

Some critic from tutors was that I needed to get things more organised and planned better, which I agree with. I modelled things then left them to be textured way later, when I should have finished everything in 1 go so as I wouldn’t drag the team behind who needed assets. I need to work on my time management, in a studio other people would be relying on me, as my group was this project, and I cannot have them waiting on me.

I took this feedback and applied it when texturing my assets, all of them rely on base colour only, with high roughness so that there’s no shine, and I think I achieved the 2D look well! One of the comments said that the landscape needed to be more hand painted so I made sure that my assets were very clearly textured and looked like 2D drawings.

If I could go back and add anything to all of my models, I would maybe add more 2D like scribbles or even darker lines as ‘line work’ but I am very proud of my creations this project! I feel as though I’ve definitely improved in my 3D modelling and texturing skills.