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).