Heist Over, End of Project

In this slideshow are all of the screenshots from the final version of the level. This includes wireframes and other screenshots that show direct lighting and roughness only. Below I'll talk about this week and my project as whole.This is the third and final week of my New York Rooftop project. I've liked this project only being a short three weeks. Its the right amount of time to do something of a good size without distracting yourself, and also means you don't have to look at the same project for so long you get completely sick of it. I've been having a hard time with this project mostly due to it being realism and in all honesty I'm not strongest at working with realism. Regardless I'm still pretty happy with what I've created though I'm aware of several ways I could improve it if I were to attempt this project again.

At the start of this week I was in a good place. The entire basics were done for my level, the design and gameplay almost all in place. So this week has been a week of polishing. I've been finding places that have had issues and fixing them up. This includes buffing up the lighting and tweaking textures so that they look better, these kinds of things.

I've also been adding new elements, such as scaffolding and chimneys that give the level some more structural and archetectual focal points. This was some crit that I got from tutors looking at my level at the start of the week. Originally my sunroof area was going to be my focal point at the end of the level, and I still quite like the idea but now the sunroof is kind of boring me. It might be because I had a hard time making it work. It doesn't quite light the scene the way I want, but I still like how it looks, and I admit it now in retrospect could of been of much grander design, and tutors suggested I design something grander to fit there if I had more time.

I think a lot of this project I could of improved by taking short breaks to concept and paint over my project because instead when I had an idea I tended to just build it being overly time concious. If I took some time to look and concept while I worked I would probably of ended up with a much more interesting design for many parts of the level.

Similarly the issue I have with realism is running the line between making realistic possible things and things that are interesting and intruiging. I think on this line I usually play far far too safe, which is a problem which I need to notice and play against in future projects. This doesn't have to apply just to realism of course it can apply to any and all projects. Though I am fairly sure now that this has made me decide not to use realism for my Final Major Project, as it's definately not my strength.

One of the big things I've noticed is that I tend to work in low poly when left to my own devices. There's nothing wrong with that exactly but considering that this is a realism based project, I think now looking at the project as a whole it would have been improved by me having used more of my tri limit. My wireframe versions of my level are strangely coherent becaues of this. I've barely even scratched the surface of my tri limit, which shows that something must be wrong.

At some point during the project I lost connection to the part of the brief that says this environment is to be for a third person shooter. I really wanted to create an environmen that held dynamic level design and gameplay and I lost that. I started to do this again in the final week putting up cover and trying to add some more focal points but it's another thing to remember for next time. I'm glad I attempted this project first because it's given me lots of things to think about and try and keep on top of for next time.

While this might make it seem like I absolutely hate this project and what I've created that's not true. I don't think my time management or production was really at fault, it was mostly just I didn't push myself to make a cool and dynamic idea. I got all of the work done in a reasonable time, and went far beyond my original expectaitons of only being able to create one rooftop I like the heist concept, but I needed to work on it more, really make it feel like a heist movie because now I don't believe you'd notice thats what I was going for if you didn't know. Adding the multiple rooftops for multiple buildings I had to be shown my tutors and it took some sessions of feedback to get an idea that looked right and was interesting in this L shaped building, and een that could still be improved.

I'm a big fan of much of my texture work during this project, although unwrapping was a repeated issue for me. I think I need to practice and work more on this. If I could of overcome these unwrapping issues the buildings would have a proper texture instead of this procedural noise texture I made in Unreal. While this texture does the job perfectly well it would of looked much better and much more polished with buildings having a real texture.

Speaking of textures there was a realisation this week about how I had actually miscalculated my texture limits. I had far more texture space than I originally thought which was both a thing for celebration and sadness. It was good because it meant I had far more textures avaliable, but bad because it meant I had made textures too small for no reason and stressed about using my limit correctly for next to no reason. If I had textured this project in substance painter this wouldn't be an issue, as substance painter can up and downscale textures with ease, but I decided not to use substance painter for this project because I wanted to texture multiple assets on the same sheet which I know I can do on photoshop. This means I've stuck myself with textures that are still to small although I like how they work and use roughness. I'm rather fond of my use of colour in this level, not going unbelievably over the top but making there be areas of vibrant colour in whats largely a dark night time level.

So in the end this project has been an interesting one. It probably seems like after reading this essay of a blogpost I hated what I created but that's not the case. I just want to really focus on what I did wrong and how I can improve. My project I think went perfectly well and honestly I am happy with a lot of what I've made for it. It's not my best work and I struggled along the way, but I've pushed my boundries and tried something pretty different to normal. I can strive to do better, and I think it's healthy to do so.

#GameArt #Rooftop #final