After about a week of extra tinkering and applying some fixes following hand in, I figured it's time to migrate my project over from Unreal Engine 4.27 to 5.1. Predominantly to figure out Lumen and with a complete scene at the ready with varying interior lighting shots I knew this would be the perfect opportunity to do so. 

Please do keep in mind this isn’t an exact comprehensive guide on how to upgrade projects from one version to another. For that I highly recommend checking out Matt Oztalay and Galen Davis guide by Epic Games (Davis & Oztalay, 2022)  to do so cited at the bottom of my post. I was able to easily follow along and the results came out great so be sure to backup your project and give it a shot!

Converting the Diner)

After changing the version for booting the project to Unreal 5.1, I recommend pasting the guides commands into the DefaultEngine.ini file for saving on some manual back and forths with restarting. The project did take a bit to load for the first time but was smooth sailing from there (after rebuilding 400+ shaders). Don’t forget to also enable Shader Model 6 since it prevented Virtual Shadow Maps from working without it. As you can see below problems have already arisen so let's get to fixing them.

Fixing Light Bleed)

The biggest issue I had was a lot of light bleeding with Lumen through the sides and bottom of my walls. This was due to 2 main issues; lack of thickness in the walls and no two sided materials to prevent light leaking in. To resolve these issues I found the quickest way was to use the Unreal Engines cube combined with some dark materials to block out the light where it became most apparent. However for future projects I know when modelling interior spaces or ones that will be hit with directional lights it would be better practice to model in more geometry to help bulk out any light bleeding. Another recommendation is to play around with the indirect lighting values on lights to boost the lighting bounces insides + ensure you have disabled static lighting. I have had a lot of problems trying to have both Lumen and static baked lights working which I can only assume to be some sort of clash with lightmaps/virtual shadow maps. So by disabling static lighting you can use Lumen's full realtime potential and try to avoid any odd artefacts from lightmaps. Don't forget to also set lights to movable/stationary so they don’t stop working altogether if static. 

Reflections and Global Illumination Tests) Toilets

Another issue that I had was with reflections, especially with my toilets. The entire room is angled towards the large mirror and previously I had set up a planar clip reflection to give off a mirror quality reflection in Unreal 4. However with what I can assume to be the amount of gpu stress Lumen and any raytracing does in Unreal 5, keeping the reflection plane led to drastic framerate drops. To the point of which I suffered a crash and couldn't enter the toilets to adjust anything if it was rendered in view. So I deleted the plane from the hierarchy and started back to square one, with a square reflection capture (additionally don't forget to disable the global clip plane in settings if you are not using any planar reflection). Here are some results from my testing with different global illumination methods and reflections alike. 

My summary of findings can be concluded that the least problematic method for my scene was using lumen's global illumination and lumen’s reflections with added hit lighting ray trace settings. As whilst both ray tracing and screen space did provide some interesting results in illuminating the toilets they both were quite harsh and overblown in their shadows. I’m sure with more fiddling in post process settings I could have maybe turned this down a bit but lumen was the easiest and less performance intensive on my end to get good lighting with little fuss. 

Moving onto reflections with lumen I found that the raytrace gave the most accurate and best looking reflections. However I had a strange orange tint from what I can assume to be maybe my directional or skylight conflicting with the rays being cast. Screen space ranked the worst as it was horrendously dark for some reason kind of eldritch in nature. I have a feeling my reflection capture wasn’t being picked up well or there was another hidden setting I had missed to upscale or tick. I ended up going with lumen since it removed the orange/yellowing tint issue found in ray trace however it also had its set of problems. There were two methods of raytrace for lumen to get data from the most accurate being Hit Lighting. However even between that and Surface Cache (which I can assume to be better for performance) the back wall had a dark gradient near the ceiling. I tried resolving this by buffing out the walls with cubes but the issue did not go away, so I can only assume it's my own wall meshes at fault. 

Reflections and Global Illumination Tests) Front Seating

Moving to another location the front seating area was another hotspot for lighting and reflections I wanted to test. As you can see there are some drastic differences in renders, especially looking at base ray tracing for global illumination. Unfortunately my performance was drastically chugging when upping samples and bounces and I decided not to tempt the Unreal gods after already suffering a few crashes at this point. With a more simple scene I would love to be able to try and go crazy with the values of raytrace since my GPU can support it (RTX 3070).

Generally lumen proved best value wise and performance. However when going to reflections the minimal difference you can realistically spot here can be seen in the posters/payphone. Hit lighting raytrace for lumen is a winner once again as base raytracing had some strange dark spots on the metal frame of the door and jukebox. The scene could be lacking enough bounces or maybe picking something up from the checker floor. Either way let's move onto some more notable reflection differences I found by focusing on my mop puddles.

Reflections and Puddles)

To make the tests more short and simple I maintained lumen for global illumination through all these shots the differences coming in at the reflection renderers. Surface Cache with lumen proved to boost the nearby colours as it was picking up a lot of the yellow mop bucket whilst its more precise cousin the Hit Point Lighting setting cast a darker outline there since it was underneath. Screen Space definitely won the award for the most slippery as the roughness bounced and shone right back up making for a very big slippery hazard. However the standalone raytrace proved to be more realistic in a sense of the puddle being absorbed to the rubber mat and darkening the overall reflection even with metallic points such as the back diamond wall. In conclusion, quite fun to render out and I would happily use all of these settings on a project by project basis depending on what I am looking for in terms of clarity, colour or darkness for realistic measures in puddles/roughness. 

UE5 Diner Short)

Having fixed up some textures on my sofa mesh and overall roughness values to try and work in tandem with Lumen I went to re render my short video set to “A Teenager in Love” by Dion DiMucci (DiMucci, 2008) now into Unreal 5.1. I’m quite happy with the result as the level sequencer had held up well and generally lighting and shadow proved to be a step up in UE5. If you want to watch a side by side comparison I edited both my renders down below for ease of watching.

UE4 VS UE5 Diner Short Comparison Video)

One major gripe I had when comparing my shots was the storage room scene, as it had  considerably suffered in quality compared to its Unreal 4 counterpart. This was primarily due to the render struggling to get the scene dark when being slotted so close to other surrounding rooms. Filled with hanging lights, neon and other large attenuative lighting this bled through the walls into the storage section. I did try my best by reducing overlap, indirect lighting and even slotting cubes between what little space was on the walls but to little change. For future reference I would highly recommend considering how far dark interior spaces are in comparison to their light counterparts in the floorplan to try and avoid issues such as this from the get go. However for the time being I am still pleased with the other 75% of the render. 

Comprehensive Static Render Comparison Video)

Wanted a more direct comparison of all my static render shots as well? Well look no further I have also made a short video with that too. All my shots from UE4 are shown for a few seconds before crossfading to the UE5 counterparts for easy comparison. I recommend checking it out as the differences in many shots are like night and day. In the most positive of ways, minus the storage room but we don't talk about that. If you like the music the full track is called “Ain't That A Shame” by Fats Domino (Domino, 2021) and can be found cited in my bibliography below. 

Summary)

In conclusion Unreal 5.1 is extremely impressive and fun to use! I must admit that despite the small issues with reflections and a handful of crashes I’ve had by upping some values a tad bit too far, the project looks substantially better. My overall lighting looks way more sunset in nature and warm to match the cosy retro vibes the diner gives off. Generally fitting a more mellow time when having to close up, mop and take care of the diner as the sun begins to simmer down. I have learned quite a bit of dos and don’ts having brought my project up through some drastic version changes and will definitely keep this knowledge handy when working on my personal projects next. I definitely want to tackle making best use of Nanite as this project used a lot of translucency so I was a bit restricted in that case. There is also definitely a whole chunk of knowledge I have yet to learn about pushing my models and textures in UE5 so I can't wait to get around with more experimenting and learning. Thank you for reading and I must once again thank Matt Oztalay and Galen Davis (Davis & Oztalay, 2022) for making their fabulous guide as I would be greatly lost without them. 

The Pink Lady Diner in UE5 - Artstation Post:  https://www.artstation.com/artwork/aogvq2

Bibliography:

Davis, G. and Oztalay, M. (2022) Upgrading your project to UE5: Talks and demos, Epic Developer Community. Available at: https://dev.epicgames.com/community/learning/talks-and-demos/J5q/unreal-engine-upgrading-your-project-to-ue5#:~:text=You’ll%20be%20able%20to,versions%20before%20upgrading%20to%20UE5 . (Accessed: 14 May 2023).

(2021) Fats Domino - Ain’t That A Shame (1956) 4K . YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FDYyf8Kqrs  (Accessed: 14 May 2023).

DiMucci, D. (2008) A teenager in love-dion and the belmonts-original song, A teenager in love-dion and the belmonts. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-Xvgv92GBc  (Accessed: 14 May 2023).

Full Title: Game 3004 Final Major Project  - Final Renders and Evaluation (Week 18) (08/05/2023)

After some work and polish here are the final renders; my project summary can be found at the bottom.

Final Renders)

Short Video - “A Teenager in Love”)

Asset Zoo and Wireframe Video)

Summary and Critical Evaluation)

Overall I must say that this has been the most enjoyable project to date. It started off a bit rocky considering I took some time to come around to the diner concept. There have been many hardships and problems along the way especially around lighting and my textures. However I feel I have gathered a greater understanding and appreciation for lighting in the engine alongside the creation of modular kits. I ended up making 1 more room than I initially intended to in regards to the storage area and even a short film detailing a short but sweet narrative of a “teenager in love”. However to answer the big questions:

Have I met my brief?

In summary yes, with even a few stretchgoals met regarding the jukebox, animations and sound design. However one aspect of my goals was to have modular walls be availablein the final modular kit set to use, which I did originally have in project. But ultimately chose to merge into one as to reduce lighting issues. 

What could I work on to improve the diner?

I still believe I can push for further detail on my textures to make for more believable and worn results. Especially with decals focused on wall/furniture wear rather than stians/dirt. I could also redo the higher poly version of the sofas as to sculpt more believable leather material and proportions. 

What would I do differently should I restart the project?

I would definitely experiment with adapting the structure of the diner to be less like the classic cart stretch design. Whilst originally this cart layout did prove useful on the railway, it does limit the space for more legroom and further interesting seating arrangements. This could also increase space in the kitchen/toilets as the overall building wouldn’t be limited in its width.

What are my overall closing thoughts?

I definitely didn't expect to explore filmmaking as much initially at the start but this project has definitely inspired me to look further into editing and creating short clips of my scenes to a more narrative standpoint. My greatest challenge has had to have been the front of the house section since originally it was going to be so much more neon pink and blue teals. However with my peer feedback and growing understanding of designing more better composed scenes I strangely enjoyed decluttering the diner and scaling everything back to a more vintage destaurated warm reds. I end up overscoping or overusing my assets to the degree where it can become noisy and muddled so taking that step back to ensure that the true focal point shines through alongside making my render more cinematic with the film settings; truly changed my scenes for the better. And taught me a great deal along the way.

Lighting wise I believe this is my strongest level to date. And I definitely want to explore further venturing into Unreal Engine 5 with this project or other softwares to really dive into simulations/modularity on an unparalleled scale such as Houdini to push the limits of my models to the extreme. 

I do want to also close off on a formal thank you to all my peers in class who helped give invaluable feedback and advice on how to tackle certain issues: looking at you Barry that lighting tutorial was a game changer. And many more friends and lecturers who helped out tremendously. I would not have gotten here without them and their support. Stay tuned to this blog for more cool works to come!

Full Title: Game 3004 Final Major Project  - Final Polishes and Decals  (Week 17) (01/05/2023)

Research and Making Decals)

With feedback dating back to my earliest weeks I have always wanted to add decals to spruce up the scene and add a narrative layer of dirt and grime of what customers came before. I realise combined with the tray and plates/bread I can easily make sets of trays with food eaten/split to showcase a narrative that had taken place earlier. 

In particular after setting up shots I knew that puddles and larger stains of ketchup/milkshakes would prove useful to draw the eye in the focal direction I wanted. So I went onwards to make a wide array of decals predominantly from alphas that I would paint over to extract a more finer base colour, and utilise levels to provide a roughness/height to export out. I knew I wanted to utilise the most of the deferred decal workflow as it would cost the least performance wise with its culling but provide a bit of normal detail keeping the decal generally low cost.

Research of Flag and Cables + Making)

An element I thought was missing with my further addition of sound was the movement of outside wind. I wanted to emphasise the wind's effects and what better way than to create America's number one article of high flying glory; the American flag. Its simplicity and boxy shape meant that I could limit it to its own small UV map and easily bash it out model and UV wise. 

I then textured it and added a bit of wear to the end considering the rough conditions outside would make the flag dry and break off over time. I did however pay attention to another detail missing from my diner that being cables. A few weeks ago I made sockets with texture and a plug but no cable which made all of my machines very unrealistic in terms of where would it even plug in? So I set out to make a simple cable mesh and add it to this flag mesh to make the most of the remaining uv space to add more contextually relevant assets to tie my diner into realism.

Blueprints) Sound Design + Sound Control)

With the music in the jukebox functioning I didn’t want to leave the diner empty and quiet so I went a more unrealistic gamey route to add a backing track. This music would be fairly quiet and I soon realised that its elevator-like qualities proved to make it easy to work on top of when the jukebox would play. However there was an issue of how loud it would have to be and vice versa quiet when a track is playing. For this I made a simple quality of mind blueprint that evolved to help control the other sound effects popping off in the diner in regard to the kettle or flickering light. I would have a delay that would be set on the sound as well as for the effect of quietening down for the jukebox, a casting to node that would set and check the audio volume at all instances. When below and cast to it would slightly quieten the music and when done playback with a track it would once again cast and bring up the volume. A strangely easy and working solution that I thought would cause a lot more problems considering my initial behemoth of a jukebox setup.

Cleaning Files, Asset Zoo and Placing Flag)

One core area I needed to make to meet the desirables and also be able to see just the scope of assets I have created thus far was the asset zoo. This started off as a bleak white space filled with a jumble of my assets that I then assembled in orderly groups of where they belonged in the diner e.g. the kitchen or toilets. I also went and gave everything the industry standard naming convention and ensured unnecessary materials or textures that proved to be unused were wiped out. Soon I realised that it was difficult to discern details such as the actual wireframe of the meshes so I applied a material on top of a duplicated mesh copy to help make this easier to spot in renders. With my textures and flag it was also quite easy to throw into the scene and apply the cloth modifier with a few tweaks in the config to ensure it behaved as expected with a bit of extra movement in a simple grass wind material.

Making Cinematic Video and Lightmaps Exterior Fixing)

One of the most fun and enjoyable aspects of the project thus far has to be making the cinematic short film tied to the track “A Teenager in Love '' by Dion Dimucci. I wanted to use the aspects of the prom posters to tell a short narrative tied to the music about a teenager in love. I slowly took the camera in and ensured it was always in motion to shoot more interesting shots. I also added a few sound effects to exemplify the “rejection” the teen feels when not getting calls or feeling distant when things go wrong eg the lights flickering. These shots in general showcase the areas best to my work and I wanted to further push it in song form to add a bit more of a lighthearted goofy atmosphere. I ended up using a new plugin called Movie Render Queue to ensure the exports came out as frames so I can get crisp images with no motion blur and tie those frames directly to my sound. 

Bibliography)

gaming with dark, gaming with dark (2022) Fridge humming - sound effect, YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/Q9IQ8IbM9r4 (Accessed: 01 May 2023).

Arizona Ambience, A.A. (2022) Arizona Desert sounds 1 hour. sunrise in Mesa, natural sounds of sunrise relaxation #naturesounds, YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/LoO63RtYqP4 (Accessed: 01 May 2023).

Sound Effect Database, S.E.D. (2020) Light flicker sound effect, YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/7Y4-4gATXFE (Accessed: 01 May 2023).

Mathosian, M. (2012) BellSouth pay phone ring, YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/-F-l1pZqrwE (Accessed: 01 May 2023).

mycompasstv, mycompasstv (2019) Whistling kettle - free sound effect SFX, YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/Xx7FSL7z0Lw (Accessed: 01 May 2023).

MacLeod , K. (2016) Kevin Macleod: Casa Bossa Nova [1 hour], YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo13TduW7JA (Accessed: 01 May 2023).

Full Title: Game 3004 Final Major Project  - Adding UI and More Blueprints  (Week 16) (24/04/2023)

Feedback) Desaturation and Relight

Working off of the great “de-reddening” of the previous week to break down noise I ended up also using more post process effects to knock down noise. I ended up looking from afar and trying to break up my tunnel vision that has built up over the past 5 months to see what imperfections lie value wise. And realised that the entire scene was very saturated still. Particularly on red, almost a varnish of red coat to a fresh new diner was the aesthetic occurring. So I used a LUT and some highlight selection to knock down only the red values and the effect was instant. The diner looks steadily worn in but well used and taken care of. Without any blaring reds. I also followed a lighting tutorial to breathe a bit of light into my scene and it changed everything. Kudos to Ryan Manning on his spectacular interior lighting series available on Youtube (Manning, 2019). 

Making and Animating) Payphone and Final Assets

The final scrub of assets came in the form of feedback from some peers. Noting that whilst a lot of the diner was finally fitting together there were elements missing to make more contextual sense of areas such as the sink. Or the copious amount of packaging but no cardboard origin. Additionally I want to try to tackle sound design following my successful jukebox blueprinting the previous week and so need a prominent nose. What better place to make a public phone than a public busting diner? 

I fell instantly in love with the retrofit of the Western Electric Two Piece Payphone (1964 variant). Its design dated the diner's age to a minimum of 10 years of operation. Additionally its semi complex dials made for a great challenge to finish off my assets for the diner on and would really draw attention to the entrance nearby the jukebox. I ended up gliding through modelling, texturing and animating with ease thanks to the copious reference available for all these models. 

Feedback) Adding More Geometry

A bad habit I tend to go back to is over optimising my meshes. Almost to a comedic low poly level. This has unfortunately caused an effect on most circular objects to appear hexagonal if not very rigid so I have opted to, with some peer guidance, add extra loops to geometry such as the sofas, walls and even jukebox pipes. This simple fix added a lot more believability and rigidity to the mesh since the amount of repetition from these assets at such a low poly knocked down the remaining meshes around it.

Bugfix) Lightmap Issues with Floor

The ghost of lightmap visited me when making the floors and has since haunted me when I started this project. I have time and time again tried to resolve the issues of strange dark shadows being baked into corners, flipped normals and more breaking in the UVS of my floor. I ended up getting so frustrated I remade the entire floor as optimally and straight unwrapped as possible however I did not realise the real solution was a much quicker fix. In reality due to the copious large export of the lightmap the entire scene had assigned very comically small lightmaps to much of my assets. Many of which were in the highly under texel density bracket and needed to be brought up. Once I did this for the floor the issue finally went away.

Blueprints) Moving Doors, Cupboards And Toilet

One thing all my blueprints for moving doors, cupboards and even the toilet stalls have in common is the lerped motion of angle a to b. After some tutorials and testing I found the most effective way to animate between two points that could be changed at any time was to timeline a lerp as an alpha channel and have it go through values 1 to 2 of which are parameters. 

Broken Doors:

An unfortunate issue I had with other blueprints was that rotating the angle of the mesh over the 90 degrees to have it facing another direction would inherently break this rotation. So by setting the points manually you can easily animate just the perfect amount (and even expand this by making “locked” doors). These locked elements will jiggle and portray the message of it being locked adding just a little bit of flair to the first person experience.

Fixed Doors:

Blueprint) Clock Animation, Crouch, Pickup Items And Zoom

The most difficult in rank of blueprints I added next in comparison to my behemoth of a Wurlitzer blueprint had to be the physics pickup controls. For zoom and crouching all that had to be blueprinted was the boolean switching of cameras adjusting in and out or the camera moving down when on crouch and releasing when not. For physics objects the first person shoots a ray that scans if you can even pick up the object and once it successfully does so it adds it to the object. When you drop it it restarts the process. Quite easy in theory however adding the motion of scrolling the objects like a real Gmod game and the fact this script runs on every frame causing some issues if you drop and grab the object too quickly… The blueprint was a bit of a nightmare to set up. However, careful delays and checks function well. The clock on the other hand was simply a timeline similar to the door however I wanted to add a bit of randomness in the starting position due to having clocks out of sync around the diner. I believe manually without some radio signalling clocks would naturally fall slightly out of sync seconds wise so this little random assignment adds a bit of variety amongst the clocks on runtime.

Blueprint) Adding UI Image and Text

Some of the easiest but most game breaking blueprints I had to set up have to be the text on screen blueprints. These only consist of colliders and an image/text that is projected when in the zone. However the unreal engine collision box is more inconsistent than my printer when low on toner ink. When bridging the edge of the box or being just a tad bit on the fence of entering/leaving it always leaves. Meaning that the text prematurely disappears. This issue also affects all other blueprints with collision boxes aka all of them. Super annoying and I ended up having to give a delay of a few seconds before the text removes itself to make it readable when it decides to prematurely vanish. I have linked below in my bibliography all of the helpful tutorials that have helped shape my blueprints to this point.

Bibliography)

Aspland, M. (2021) Picking up and moving objects | inspect item part 1 - unreal engine 4 tutorial. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR7PVYo2ZGo (Accessed: 24 April 2023).

Aspland, M. (2020) Press E to interact | on screen prompt - unreal engine 4 tutorial, YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os7uf-wiU8o (Accessed: 24 April 2023).

3D Ross, 3D Ross (2020) UE4 smooth camera zoom in & out, YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/vVqkU-_vj_E (Accessed: 24 April 2023).

Manning, R. (2019) Ue4 - interior lighting (basics). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUEEIOyyKVo (Accessed: 24 April 2023).

Full Title: Game 3004 Final Major Project  - Blueprinting Jukebox and Dirt  (Week 15) (17/04/2023)

Fixing My Dirt and Grass and Adding Dirt)

One issue I spotted when peering out of the diner was the inconsistencies in texture to HDRI. Overall my grass was very saturated and din;t blend well with the ground when compared to the HDRI that sat beyond. My textures stood out quite a ton due to saturation and so I went on to instance these values and destaurate them down until the grass matched the horizon. This took quite some time to tweak but combined with setting my horizon much further in the HDRI I believe the overall effect is much smoother and believable when walking around indoors. In a similarly highly similar fashion I added a trek of this dirt atop my surface checker material as to wear down the ground. Making it more believable to its aged state. However I know with decals I can push this further.

Blueprinting Jukebox)

The blueprint for my jukebox ended up taking quite some time and collaborative effort. Due to its high function the blueprint needed to do 3 things; synced lights with the sides of the bubbler tubes, play music and animate the motion of playing music. The first order of business was relatively easy to set up since it required smooth timelining between values of colour that would be updated on the 2 lights setup nearby the Wurtlitzer. This did mean however as the update would occur on runtime that the lights would need to be in playode when taking shots or simulated to see the final effects. After some gradients and testing with timing the transitions are smooth and I am quite happy with them. 

(Broken jukebox above issue has now been resolved)

The other 2 blueprinting functions were made with a lot of booleans, branching and checks with help from a friend more experienced in the Unreal blueprinting scene. (Ryan, 2022) Together we figured out how to swap tracks from a provided list of downloaded tunes and how to randomise between them. For animation the interior elements of the arm, pusher plate, record spinner and the record itself were all separate. And had specific pivot points that would allow animation to push out and spin said record. When interacted at anypoint the animation can check its progress and cancel. Which I think is quite nifty but did prove to break a couple of times. The tunes included are all sourced to the period of the 70s of the diner and have been cited below. Have a listen because they are groovy!

Preparing for Further Blueprinting)

Considering how my blueprinting functioned for animation in the Jukebox I realised the doors, cupboards and just about anything that can move on  pivot point once interaction would be way easier to set up. So I went on to prepare some meshes by splitting them apart from any larger elements and setting pivots on the hinges to ensure they can be animated in a similar fashion the following week. An element I do want to add however to make it more obvious is text or some sort of UI images to showcase the interact key, since it's not entirely intuitive that the key is E. 

Bibliography)

Ryan, M. (2022) Max Ryan Portfolio. Available at: https://maxryan110701.wixsite.com/portfolio (Accessed: 17 April 2023).

(1959) A Teenager In Love-Dion and The Belmonts-Original Song . Youtube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-Xvgv92GBc (Accessed: 17 April 2023).

(1967) Ain’t No Mountain High Enough . Youtube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABfQuZqq8wg (Accessed: 17 April 2023).

(1955) Bill Haley & His Comets - Rock Around The Clock (1955) HD . YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgdufzXvjqw (Accessed: 17 April 2023).

(1955a) Fats Domino - Ain’t That A Shame (1956) 4K . YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FDYyf8Kqrs (Accessed: 17 April 2023).

(1964) Oh, Pretty Woman . YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KFvoDDs0XM (Accessed: 17 April 2023).

(1951) Rocket 88 (Original Version) - Ike Turner/Jackie Brenston . YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbfnh1oVTk0 (Accessed: 17 April 2023).

(1962) Roy Orbison - Crying . YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNdBLBleO90 (Accessed: 17 April 2023).

(1961) The Wanderer . YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbYa7NBYyRc (Accessed: 17 April 2023).

(1978) John Travolta And Olivia Newton John - You’re The One That I Want . YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itRFjzQICJU (Accessed: 17 April 2023).

Full Title: Game 3004 Final Major Project  - Adding Storage Room + Acting on Feedback (Week 14) (10/04/2023)

Acting on Feedback) Unifying the Values and Adding Storage Room

A time and true issue my diner has suffered is noise. I realise that there's a good reason most of my classic diner references are all one colour; red. And it's due  to the association, brand and even tones that red exudes. Red is a part of America and is simple and easy to clean. It's also light on the eye but has aged like a fine classic diner wine. By having a lot of my neon, seats and sofas blue and pink it was highly noisy but also threw off the original style of a diner. 

All my colours were luckily made on instances and after reverting it back to red the diner looked heaps better. Moving onto my walls I also ended up changing the ceiling material to fit a simpler panelling by cutting out the needle geometry. Since much of the ceiling had horrendous geometry to account for the tiling issues caused by the original material. By making a purely seamless tile and cutting out the geometry (geometry is cheaper than fancy textures) it began to finally take shape in a more orderly fashion. My final large-scale change during this time was my re-exploration of the counter, since now the entire diner grew to become red. 

Its strange bricked neon/pink design no longer fits. And so I tried 2 different styles. The first being a simple white with a metallic strip running up. I figured a bit of metal would distinguish the front side and with the white being contrasted from the checker floor it could look quite nice. Unfortunately in the engine it proved to be a harsh dip of values from white to grey when looking past the bar into the metallic backing. And so I went back and obtained more references of a more traditional red style, and white stripes (very american) counters. The primary difference also obeys the topper being a lighter tone of metal.

 This worked a treat since its worn edges and almost fabric quality of it fit well with the red theme. And the stripes aligned well on a long stretch causing natural lines of focal points to be seen. Directing up and down the diner. 

Full Title: Game 3004 Final Major Project  - Texturing and Placing Kitchen/Toilets (Week 13) (03/04/2023)

Texturing) Kitchen and Toilets

Texturing the assets came quite easy as many of the models shared similar likeness in base coloured and roughness values when it came to metallics. However for any minute details on the microwave, written dial notes of temperature and even toilet paper height I had to utilise Photoshop to curate specific alphas. Due to my living situation this was relatively easy to go and take photos of real life reference for paper, labels and other minute details which I could later fine tune and manipulate in Photoshop for applying in Substance Painter. 

I ended up using a lot of mask editors to make the most of height maps where I could to further roughened up and make my assets appear used. These are areas of high foot traffic especially the toilets and I realise that I will need to make decals a priority up next since all elements look a bit too sparkly and clean for a diner. 

Placing Kitchen/Toilets in UE4)

Following export into the engine I had encountered a few issues with my master materials since not all of them utilised two sided rendering or opacity maps. I ended up having to create a few different base line master materials to get the most optimal build for my material instances considering many clear/alphas elements of my models. Placing these assets with their grandeur size made arranging and filling the spaces of the toilets and kitchen much easier than the smaller food/cutlery elements. However it was still equally as fun since seeing the textures come to life in the engine is always a treat after making hundreds of layers masking the detail in.

Tackling Feedback) Adding Storage Room and Texture Value Issues

During my work I got some great feedback in regards to how I would get the most out of my assets, especially the smaller elements. This would be to create a storage room leading away from the kitchen to a smaller longer stretch. Creating this room would shakeup the structure of the internal diner quite a bit since the bathrooms would have to compensate for the stretch. However with the already tight spaces toilets are I believe not much would be at loss. Since most of the small assets are difficult to find and definitely not in large enough quantities to supply demand for a diner as would be required. 

Full Title: Game 3004 Final Major Project  - Making Toilets and Kitchen (Week 12) (27/03/2023)

Feedback) Decluttering and UI

Whilst gathering reference I realised that interaction wise my scene was beginning to suffer from 2 main issues. The first was clutter. Some peer feedback and personal review made me realise that my abundance of small assets whilst filling a very beforehand empty diner has made the space extremely noisy. Especially in the permanent cupboards, walls and general rest spaces. There was none. In views down the corridor it was hard to find something to focus upon as so much was happening on every single surface. I realise to amend this I will have the perilous task of deleting some of my placed props but it is better to have areas of rest than to have too much. My secondary issue was interaction wise; there was quite a limited pool of concepts and UI at the moment. I realised I wanted to take if possible in the direction of a stretch goal to make a minigame with a menu. I drafted a simple cleaning sim concept that perhaps after deadlines I would be able to push to making. The main narrative here being that the owner of the diner (a man suspiciously looking like John Travolta) has a date and needs to close up shop early. The space is a mess and there's a time minute on getting the area clean before he returns. Queue the gameplay loop. However blueprinting wise I have never made a game before and as an environment artist will focus on loops over function at the current time to ensure I am able to submit what I have in mind and am making before fussing about gameplay.

Research) Kitchen and Toilets

My main source of reference for a lot of smaller details was that of my own home kitchen. I realise that there are core large elements to ensure that my industrial variant for the diner meets the visual quota. The primary aspect is using a lot of metal and tonally grayscale pots, pans, shelves etc. Such materials are strong and definitely hold up well in the heat and grime of the kitchen. But with their modular usage I would also have to ensure I make decals later on as mentioned beforehand in my formative presentation so that there is enough grime/detail to distinguish some variety among the kitchen. Moving onto the toilets which have a  similar aspect of surface texture and material definition. Much of the toilet assets are modular and clean cut ceramic material. Decals down the line would definitely spruce up the grime and wear however I need to keep a lot of aspects similarly designed to make the most modular use of them. When in regards to the toilet and stalls.

Modelling) Bathroom and Kitchen

For both my kitchen and bathroom a lot of my high poly assets were done and were in need of a review so new meshes were only completely made for elements such as the fryer. In the toilets my stalls proved to be very reusable so I ensured to cut down and make a modular set of the walls, door, lock and top header liner so that I can cut down on UV space. For my kitchens on the other hand the large size of my fridges, ovens and heavily detailed machinery did mean that optimising is much more difficult in this regard. I did however do my best to optimise UV unwraps by duplicated handles, feet, buttons and any other easily repetitive aspects. One might also notice that my fryer has a net that lacks any real definition for its high poly variant. This is due to the fact I will instead make a material alpha of a grid mesh and overlay it in texturing to capture that wireframe mesh feel. Instead of spending countless hours modelling said texture in.

Full Title: Game 3004 Final Major Project  - Making Food + Counter (Week 11) (20/03/2023)

Research Food/Ingredients)

By utilising sites such as Worthpoint (2020), I was able to scourge a lot of useful packaging from all times of the 70s. Since a lot of mascots, branding and general styles have significantly changed especially overseas in America this site was invaluable to view the genuine article preserved by collectors. I used these listings by collectors to gather references for each side of packaging, material definition for tins and cardboard. Alongside pricing since it was most of the time stamped into it with the expiry date. Some listings actually contained the product inside which is remarkable that nobody would use it in near 50 years. With a comprehensive list of all my sources please refer to my bibliography if you too want a scroll through the past of tea, coffee and cereal of the USA packaging brand standards.

Research Countertops and Small Assets)

Knowing a lot of my cutlery and smaller metallic assets would need the metal channel most, I wanted to pack these assets together to keep values similar and costs down. A lot of the reference I have gathered comes from industrial kitchens such as the toaster and countertops. However some also come from my own home see the bin for reference. I figured a blue bin would provide a splash of colour in the very much sterilised and grey metallic counter space. Additionally I made note of smaller details in my knives and straw holder to ensure the model would be accurate and usable. Turns out the straw dispenser has a little cup which when lifted would tilt out a straw able to be grabbed for soda drinkers. The knives on the other hand are cut to purpose with smaller finer sharper blades to carve delicate meat/spread butter on bread with larger, chunkier metal slabs slicing through bread and heavier ingredients. With a lot of reference in hand I went into modelling.

Making Metal Countertops, Small Assets and Bins)

Having already made a bulk of these in high poly modelling earlier, the optimisation stage let a lot of tris to be deleted/welded down. A particular challenge I faced was what to do with the knives since I could very much bake the blades down to a plane and use alphas to cut them out. However for shading this could make shadows breakdown since the plane would lack the geometry to back it up. 

Considering how many knives are in kitchen spaces/the importance of them in the preparing food process I chose to weld all these blades down to as best I could to optimise geometry. But kept it very flat On other elements such as counter legs and knobs/buttons of appliances that share many similar elements e.g. the griddler I simply UV unwrapped one and deleted the rest on the low poly variant. Saving both space and making my texturing process much easier. In texturing I was able to use the Painter font tools to write in the brands and warning labels on a lot of my hot kitchen appliances whilst using alphas to spruce up the height detail in my mop. I ended up taking pictures of my real life mop to make easier alphas and this translated surprisingly well with a bit of levelling in Photoshop.

Making Food/Ingredients)

Making the food was quite a challenge as figuring out the mesh for the majority of packaging was rather simple. It was the individual unique models of bread, eggs and bananas that proved most difficult to make. Since the unique shape and sizes would mean unique  unwraps slowing down my process. Much of the cereal and boxes packaging was able to share geometry and be much easier to UV unwrap in bulk. I wanted to define much of the bread and other ingredients as best as I could but realised that with the scale, a lot of elements apart from say bread/cereal would be very small. 

So I could get away by making a lot of alphas instead to layer over the texture in Substance Painter. With my suave of reference from Worthpoint (Worthpoint, 2020) I could easily mask out the logos of real time brands, change them up a bit and render them directly to my textures. For elements like the bananas, soda crates and plastic casing for bread I had to individually paint these details in. For once I had to ask myself what is the roughness value of a slice of bread.

Placing Assets in UE4)

The most fun but also unexpectedly longest step was placing all the assets I had just made. Now with my previous week I had slowly been accumulating more and more of a modular set of set dressing for my front of house and kitchen. It was up to my eye and camera shots to best divide subsections of cutlery, plates and food. I themed the ingredients around what was easiest to reach such as the MinuteMaid juice machine being close to cups and the toaster being close to bread. Making it more plausible in a realistic diner setting. Surprisingly it began to get busy quickly and overall Im quite happy with how it's coming along.

Bibliography:

Worthpoint, W. (2020) Vintage 80s Betty Crocker Supermoist Carrot Cake and cream cheese frosting mixes, Worthpoint. Available at: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-80s-betty-crocker-supermoist-3823280399 (Accessed: 20 March 2023). 

Worthpoint, W. (2020b) Vintage flour sack - rose flour- 50lb, Worthpoint. Available at: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-flour-sack-rose-flour-50lb-1994972896 (Accessed: 20 March 2023). 

Worthpoint, W. (2020b) Vintage bigelow ‘constant comment’ tea tin - 50 bags 3.2oz, Worthpoint. Available at: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-bigelow-constant-comment-tea-4556327497 (Accessed: 20 March 2023). 

Worthpoint, W. (2020b) Vintage advertising Bigelow constant comment tea 24 tea bags tin full of tea, Worthpoint. Available at: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-advertising-bigelow-constant-3780081213 (Accessed: 20 March 2023). 

Worthpoint, W. (2020c) Vintage Bigelow Cinnamon Stick, lemon lift, Plantation Mint, tea tin 3 PC lot, Worthpoint. Available at: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-bigelow-cinnamon-stick-lemon-2028069650 (Accessed: 20 March 2023). 

Franklin, T. (2023) Sugar frosted flakes allowance box, Flickr. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/neatocoolville/742785828/in/photostream/ (Accessed:20 March 2023). 

Worthpoint, W. (2020b) Vintage A & P sunnybrook farms dozen eggs carton, vintage carton, Worthpoint. Available at: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-sunnybrook-farms-dozen-eggs-3876140091 (Accessed: 20 March 2023). 

Kerry, K. (2023) Nestle Everready Milk Cocoa, 1970’s?, Flickr. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kerrytoonz/20393144676/in/photostream/ (Accessed: 20 March 2023). 

Worthpoint, W. (2020) 1930-1950 Nestle’s Everready Sweet Milk Cocoa 1lb. Box No.81 /tin top/bottom/ NY, Worthpoint. Available at: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1930-1950-nestles-everready-sweet-1785841210 (Accessed: 20 March 2023). 

KitchenAid , K. (2020) Steeped in history: The rise of tea in america, KitchenAid Stories. Available at: https://stories.kitchenaid.com/article/steeped-in-history-the-rise-of-tea-in-america (Accessed: 20 March 2023). 

Worthpoint, W. (2020b) 1970’s Betty Crocker Snackin’ cake choc. chip box vintage advertising doughboy, Worthpoint. Available at: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1970s-betty-crocker-snackin-cake-choc-3884230252 (Accessed: 20 March 2023). 

Liebig, J. (2023) McDonalds Trayliner Placemat - M-M-mornin’ - worth waking up for - 1980, Flickr. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonliebigstuff/2971747235 (Accessed: 20 March 2023). 

Worthpoint, W. (2020c) 1970’s Reddi Wip Whip Cream Canister Vintage Grocery Store Item, Worthpoint. Available at: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1970s-reddi-wip-whip-cream-canister-1878778655 (Accessed: 20 March 2023). 

Worthpoint, W. (2020d) Vintage 1950’s Pepsi-Cola Box of 10 1/2" drinking straws (400 straws), Worthpoint. Available at: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-1950s-pepsi-cola-box-10-2-3884211114 (Accessed: 20 March 2023). 

Worthpoint, W. (2020e) Vintage 1950’s Pepsi-Cola (double dot) drinking straw original box with straws!, Worthpoint. Available at: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-1950s-pepsi-cola-double-dot-4556330752 (Accessed: 20 March 2023). 

Full Title: Game 3004 Final Major Project  - Working on Feedback and Lighting (Week 9) (06/03/2023)

Making Vents)

With some advice from my peers I realised that a diner situated in the hot california sun would do well with some air conditioning but wanted to make it subtly fit into the side panelling of the diner. I was able to find some ventilation that fit this style and used Substance Painter to paint the height and normal detail out. I wanted to also use this as an opportunity to test plane/decal workflow for predominantly normal decals as the vent sits atop the side panelling. Either method will mean an alpha map on the base colour so performance wise it will have to call for it however the shading will be different since defredded decals can cull it to make it cheaper than regular decals. This is something I will have to check works best.

Fixing Values and Reflections) + Making Light Caps

With some help from a classmate who knows many valuable tips and tricks about lighting (Fellows, 2023), I was able to cut down on the overlit nature of the scene. However when applying a look up table of greyscale the difference was most notable. That by keeping a lot of my lights static simple and directional being the predominant lighting source I was able to get a natural dark gradient. However, even improving the lighting still had a long way to go as my core feedback issue of reading the scene was a struggle to do with the amount of colours and dark textures. I might have to add some panel lighting in the behind bar area to make values less contrasted and easier to read. One issue I uncovered was that previously a lot of my lighting was bleeding through the ceiling with directional due to the nature of the structure not being thick enough. So I duplicated the mesh and shelled the exterior to create a low poly cap that would absorb much of the directional rays creating a much more realistic and darker interior. Without overexposing the lightmaps of the interior.

Placing Posters, Pots and Neon Fuses)

Having made a lot of the assets the previous days I went on to apply and place them as seen here. I originally used one poster to get the framing and placing everywhere before fixing the poster to be different variants as having John Lennon on every wall might prove  a bit eerie. Additionally values of the posters helped with composition and picking what to place upon the walls, dedicating some framed more noisy pieces by themselves. Whilst having smaller similar coloured posters align others to make for a variety of wall clutter. 

This definitely livened up the scene as it had looked quite bare beforehand. In regards to pots and neon fuses, more aspects gathered from my formative feedback added much to the scene. And I am quite happy to have incorporated them to make better sense and reuse my assets. 

Saving UV Space) Signs and Glass Cups

Considering much of my interior wall space and exterior signs fell onto the realms of similarity I knew the only way to break this was to add extra signs. Specifically women and mens toilet signs and anything flat like the exterior diner signs. With a lot of squarish UVS taken I realised I had a lot of space left under and with the maps using opacity and alpha it was best to add my glass elements here to make the best use of it. A lot of my glass simply requires normals and I was easily able to pack them in below alongside a tray, cup and plates/bowls. 

Making Signs and Glass Cups)

Having modelled them in high poly already, a lot of my process was having to delete and optimise these meshes into a lower poly variant or add additional polys should circular edges look too sharp. I then exported this out into Painter for baking and texturing before stitching the final two maps together in Designer and evening the normals there to ensure it wasn’t too contrasted.

Bibliography:

Fellows, J. (2023) Artstation - Jacob Fellows, Jacob Fellows Artstation. Available at: https://www.artstation.com/jake_fellows18 (Accessed: 06 March 2023).