Waiting Room Over
- olirant
- Dec 4, 2015
- 4 min read
At the start of this week I was worried. I was worried that this Sci Fi hospital project would be a disapointment like the last two, more so the first. But at the start of this week the project started to come together and I realised that this quick project was probably one of my favourites.
The week was spent mostly texturing assets and putting the level together. I don't think there were any major problems during the week. But I am very happy with the end result, and more over I'm happy that I'm happy with a Game Art Project.
This is definately a project I would include in my portfolio. Lets discuss why. On one hand the level is far smaller than I intended. I concepted a far larger project and in most of my blogposts I talked about wanting to explore large level design. Inversely I'm actually much happier that I made a small environment. At some point I had that moment of realisation that trying to make a larger environment is what completely destroyed the New York rooftop project. So I focused on a smaller environment. Infact I actually made the environment smaller after the assets were made.
Making assets is not my strongest point. I wasn't too good with scale here, despite working to one and all the assets being the same size relative to eachother I made it far bigger than the concepts were showing. So I decided to fix it, and downsize many of the larger environment assets. I vastly prefer the smaller more compact environment, it fits the medical idea more and generally looks nicer. I'm far happier to have a small environment project that looks nice than a big one. I made this project using modular assets, something I had not really done since the Off The Map project and even then barely, this set of assets could be used to make a far bigger level if it was part of a real game. All the parts slot together, even with the size change. In retrospect it would be far more practical if I was an engine worker in a group project to resize all of the assets that needed resising outside of Unreal instead of doing it in engine, as it would probably confuse other members of a group.
One big problem I was having with this project is making it look like a hospital. I knew the colours I wanted from day one, the white and red. I recieved a lot of feedback that the colour scheme is perhaps the strongest part of the project and I really do like how its worked. This week I added both the holographic cross and the panning appointment board to really knock in the hospital theme. I think it did the job, and had made other small assets based on feedback to make the environment feel like a more tangable place. The appointments board is actually my favourite part of the project desite it being one of the easiest things to do, it's just satisfying to me.
My second favourite part are the corridors. I love how they turned out. If I had an extra week or so I'd love to make a larger maze or something with some corners and T junctions. They have a good sci fi feel and feel both clinical and slightly claustrophobic. I was intending to make this project not feel creepy like a horror environment but as its a hospital, I wouldn't mind it being slightly unsettling. The doors openning was something I added at the last second and just makes it nicer to walk through. I did however make a mistake with the doors. I didn't think about the extended extruding window when designing the doorframes so it actually clips. I don't mind exactly as I noticed on the last day and there's really not much point in fixing that. But maybe I should of noticed and changed it earlier for a nicer result.
The main problem I had this week was with collision and lightmaps. Both similar I find. With collision I basically skipped it. It would of taken far too long for me to make collisions for these rather obscure shapes, as making holes in collision would be rather difficult. In the end what I should do, if I have this problem again is break the asset down into smaller parts. i didn't want to do this at first but did it later for the lightmap issues. Lightmaps were a big problem for me. With large modular peices I didn't want the lightmaps messing up. Again the only real fix was to take the assets apart. But in the end after maybe 2 days fighting them on and off it now works and the lighting I think works rather well, if it isn't alittle simple. Lighting wise the project is mostly simple. Looking at it now, perhaps the main room doesn't have enough light as the corners sort of fade into darkness. I didn't overload the light because otherwise the cross in the middle and the reflective surfaces were covered in glare, but maybe I should of worked more to find a best of both worlds situation. I am very proud of the lighting in the corridors, and how hte light makes the holograms glow in the main room.
So at the end of the project I'm really happy with what I made in these last few weeks. Making a polished and complete environment in three weeks is a challenge, and I'm glad that this time I've made something I can be proud of. It isn't perfect, I could easily spend more time working on it and buffing out seams and adjusting almost everything but I'm leaving it in a good place I think. This project got me out of the confidence down spiral I was in after the last projects went so bad. I actually now feel excited about FMP, and confident enough to do environment art and engine work again for it. My ideas for my FMP are really starting to come together and in the next week I'm going to refine the ideas into a full brief. I'm also for the next week of tweaking work focus on my shopfront project. That projects hand painted style is what I want to do for my FMP so I want to retexture it to its original grandure and also make the model somewhat more interesting using some feedback from tutors.
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