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  - Making Retro FOH Machines (Week 10) (13/03/2023)

Research) FOH Machines

Having gone into laborious detail researching my Wurlitzer 1015 I decided I wanted to do justice to the remaining machines at work in my diner. This helped ensure they were fit to the period and would have been seen in diners also. The first order of business being the tills which had a bulky, low light LED and button clad design as the “THBNCRCR01” National Cash Register. Quite a catchy name and its design, unfortunately yellow with time, was very well documented online and I was able to get plenty of references to its design. Its buttons being unique for every dollar press would mean they would need separate unwraps however this would be a small price to pay getting the detail I need. As for the dime box, a model close to the Wurlitzer 1015 has previously been lurking in my research but I had yet to go into detail of documenting other machines such as the Sunbeam coffee maker, Kenmore Sears Microwave and much more. By searching sites such as Ebay.com and Worthpoint I was able to gather a lot of ref from individuals selling these relics that show off a lot of surface detail texture providing useful later on.

Modelling and Texturing) FOH Machines

As for my cash machine, I already had quite a high poly variant modelled beforehand but its mesh was very unoptimised. Much of the surface was bevelled in that was great for baking detail but served unnecessary geometry in the long run. I opted to target weld these extra tris out whilst also keeping the silhouette. For my dimebox much optimised had to be done as well since the irregular shape of the dimebox mad geometry difficult to bend at lower cost. With a lot of welding and cutting with a final symmetry this was achieved but I ended up having to separate the inside rotator of songs next to the mesh. This is to prevent baking issues. A element I had to research and consider mid model was the inclusion of a tap. For a diner sporting and advertising a large soda fountain it would be impossible to serve said soda with dispensers and ice cream. So I went on to model this in from cylinders also. The texturing process was quite simple however for many of the alphas with pictures/text from the product itself I would have to recreate these elements in Photoshop. Or utilise Photoshop with an AI upscaling tool to use the original referenced pictures as texturing base colour alphas. 

Lighting Updates) Increasing Indirect Lighting

One element I grew to learn more about was the indirect lighting element of the Unreal engine. Turns out a lot of my shadows and general scene was horrendously dark and unrealistic due to the nature of the low bounces. This was a simple fix as all it took was increasing the value of indirect lighting bounces on my lights, predominantly directional to 8-20 more. This was a hard element to balance since too little would prove dark but having too much could overblow the scene. Additionally static lighting suffered if too much was being bounced/overlapped. So I ended up removing a lot of lights to try to keep things simple, with improving indirect lighting it ended up filling the scene way more. So the ultimate cost was very performance efficient.

Bug) Emissive Fonts

To cut down on having to make alphas and textured geometry of elements that could change in font, my sign posted neon came about as a test of the Unreal text tools. These tools worked quite well at first until I realised the fonts I had gathered refused to be imparted into my scene without being set as offline first. Following setting the fonts as offline the project baked every single character down onto a sheet that at first made them appear black but then followed up with a blocked line. I had to use some old forum posts (Dj-Mindar, 2015) to resolve the issue of fixing the fonts by manually reviewing a lot of default settings and upscaling them. Strangely generating mesh distance fields for text was also disabled which rendered them unable by regular to be used as alphas in the font material hence getting rid of the glow. Really buggy overall but with a lot of tweaking I was able to use custom fonts of which I have linked below in my bibliography. These fonts were sourced from Dafont.com. 

Bibliography:

Dj-Mindar, dj-mindar (2015) How to make clean big text renderers with custom fonts?, Epic Developer Community Forums. Available at: https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/how-to-make-clean-big-text-renderers-with-custom-fonts/328859 (Accessed: 13 March 2023). 

Studio, D. (2022) Batuphat script, Batuphat Script Font. Available at: https://www.dafont.com/batuphat-script.font (Accessed: 13 March 2023). 

Dafont, D. (2005) Loki Cola, Loki Cola Font. Available at: https://www.dafont.com/loki-cola.font (Accessed: 13 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). 

Full Title: Game 3004 Final Major Project  - Formative Feedback and Posters (Week 9) (06/03/2023)

Formative Feedback)

Following my presentation I got quite a bit of feedback regarding many aspects of textures, model quality and reusability. The first issue being the high gloss and roughness of my floor as all of it looked fairly clean but was highly glossy as though recently mopped but without residue. To remedy this I will turn down the roughness and add more realistic dirt and use it for a diner of around 20~ years of age. The secondary point was that as many of my models had yet to be made they had quite low geometry and appeared quite inconsistent in values. It was quite difficult to focus on the hero asset of the Wurlitzer 1015 due to how tonally bright and overshot much of the scene was. With some advice I will use post processing and redo my lighting to make my scene less intense in the coming week. My final point of feedback was in regard to the lack of decals to truly make assets stand out and have more narrative to them to make for a messy diner. I will consider this in production and will be sure to make plenty of decals of wear and tear as to not make elements of seating, counters and more mirror copies of one another. However with a lack of assets I will prioritise production and have decals be within my final weeks of polish should my schedule workout.

Research) Posters

To keep the diner walls busy like a classic cluttered American diner of the period I went to research posters/ads of the time to tie it more into the period. When scouting my local library I found a book perfect for the purpose. I took out a book by Steven Heller all about ads/posters of the 70s (Heimann, 2004). Each page was a goldmine and I ended up taking photos of just about half the book, particularly focusing on the food, rock and roll posters and anything coca cola related since much of the advertisement looked fittingly retro dated. 

Modelling and Texturing) Posters

I then took these shots into Photoshop to raise the values and clean up the edges. I ended up having about 80 shots I quite liked so I had to cut down quite a bit in the final cut, making for 2 pages of posters. I also made my own posters in reference to pop art of the period of pricing of some menu items I wanted to focus upon like milkshakes and hot dogs.  I tried to keep pricing consistent and kept checking back to my menu board I made and the physical menu as well. After I made the base colour with a bit of padding bleeding colours I brought it into Painter to add the additional polish of roughness and normals. I was advised here to add little pins and details to the edges of many posters of which would be hanging on their own as to give them a more realistic sense of design. 

I did however want to frame and distinguish more fancy posters in regard to rock and roll and added a tiling frame on the bottom of each page to use it in a hybrid trim fashion. I combined these maps in Designer as well with an alpha to make the final sheet. I then took this sheet into 3DSMax, cut out the UVS, duplicated and moved them slightly to bring all the posters to separate instances. I could have instead opted to design a fancy material with scaling in the engine but figured geometry was way cheaper than 50 material instances with a lot of UV tiling so this worked out better. 

Making) Signs, Pots and Narrative

Bibliography)

Heimann, J. (2004) 70s: All-American ads. 1st edn. Köln, America : Taschen. 

Boyarsky, B. (1972) ‘LANDSLIDE VICTORY FOR [Richard M.] NIXON’, Los Angeles Times Newspaper (Wednesday Morning, November 8, 1972) Front Cover Headline: ‘LANDSLIDE VICTORY FOR [Richard M.] NIXON’. 1972nd edn, 8 November, p. 1. 

Boyarsky, B. (1972b) Los Angeles Times newspaper (Wednesday ..., Los Angeles Times: Good Soft cover (1972) 1st Edition | Bloomsbury Books. Available at: https://www.abebooks.co.uk/first-edition/Angeles-Times-Newspaper-Wednesday-Morning-November/16885734074/bd (Accessed: 06 March 2023). 

Full Title: Game 3004 Final Major Project  - Making the Wurlitzer 1015 (Week 8) (27/02/2023)

Research) The Iceberg of the Design and Structure of the Wurlitzer 1015 Jukebox

Welcome to the deep dive on America's greatest jukebox from the 1950s. And yes whilst this diner is set in the 1970s this prominent hit of a machine was still very much in use then and even today. Many units are still going and can fetch for as high as $11,000. Or more. But for such feats of engineering without micro computers and a whole analogue scene to get them playing just about any old record (or even CDs) I cannot be more impressed. Anyways the core components j wanted to figure out was the record mechanism and the tubes. I ended up breaking down the bubble tubes and colour changing a bit further down but the record mechanism is in itself worthy a mention. Thank you to Uncle Doug (Doug, 2013) for providing such great video resources to showcase this in action. In itself it's fairly simple, as the record selected revolves out and then is pushed up. The machine need not know how lower down the record is or how long it has to play. It pushes it up till it meets the record head regardless and plays till it reaches the centre punched into all records. Following a successful play it redoes this in reverse. Using gravity to bring down the record and revolve back without a hitch. And with this in mind I will model the components separately for animating in similar fashion. 

Modelling) Both High and Low Poly

Fortunately making this detailed jukebox was relatively easy to start as I did greybox a similar geometrical jukebox many weeks prior. Unfortunately for me was that the model I used as reference for the greybox was an influenced modern jukebox of the Wurlitzer 1015. Not the actual one. So I had to manually model the clubder tubes in, use a lot of splines for the fanciful metal work across its middle pieces and dot out every single button by hand. It took many hours but as a hero asset I knew the detail would be worth it. Some might ask with a high poly as crazy as this one why not opt for Zbrush? As it has high capabilities for making these metal slides. This ultimately lies on my own time constraints. For working with Zbrush would need Z-Remeshing and would not provide such a clean mesh as 3DsMax could during modelling. And such I made both the low poly insides, outsides and high poly all in 3DsMax. 

UE4 Shader Work) The Bubbler Tubes and Changing Colour Tubes

As mentioned before I wanted to include the illusive and recognisable colour whirling (get it?) mechanism. What was thought to be some chemical mixed LEDs or coloured bulbs is actually much simpler in operation. The analogue machine moves a tube round and light is brought through sheets of transparent coloured plastic. This colour is what is seen on the tubes and by syncing this rotation you can change the entire lower half in succession to a variety of 4 main colours. Pretty impressive for a machine over 60 years ago isn't it?  Anyways to replicate this I made sure to keep a separate material for this and furthermore set up a custom shader. The shader would pan through the colours and as the UV channels aligned in the order from centre to out it would be able to similarly cycle out this colour. And similarly pan out the bubbles vertically moving them like actual rising bubble tubes.

Issues and Broken Gifs)

However this was not without issue. My UV channels were quite spread out as I wanted to bake them with their detail in a more spaced fashion. This was a bad choice in hindsight as it gave the sides a delay since the tubes were not perfectionally aligned. So I had to amend this and bam boom my Wurlitzer 1015 is another step closer to behaving like the real deal!

Shots of Wurlitzer)

After many hours working on it here are some kickass renders. It's still not rigged unfortunately as that intiself will take time and blueprinting so I am leaving that to a very hopefully stretch goal. However I'm quite pleased with the detail I was able to get away with and the shader at work. Now to polish up the rest of my assets in a similar light! 

Bibliography:

(2013) Wurlitzer Bubble Tubes: How They're Made and What Makes Them Bubble . YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hIyw-YgSm8 (Accessed: (27/02/2023)

Full Title: Game 3004 Final Major Project  - Decal and Diner Menu Design (Week 7) (20/02/2023)

Material Instances and Setting up Neon Splines)

With my gathered reference I realise with the design and name of the Pink Lady Diner I might as well add pink to the diner. As this design is based much upon Grease and their infamous Pink Ladies gang it would pay good tribute to have actual pink and blue dotted about. Fortunately there was a lot of reference for diners that had already adopted this light pastel colour scheme and all i had to do was set up some clever material instances. With my master material adding control for hue shifts, brightness and even saturation with nodes plugged before the final output of the base colour I could easily manipulate the results to fit exactly to what I needed. Additionally the benefit with colouring the base mesh as red means all hue shifts are of the same value to get the same shades of pink and blue across all my meshes. And so I went assigning every furniture a splash in a recurring pattern of pink or blue. I then moved into the neon as I really wanted to instance some bending neon strips around my scene. However to prevent myself having to manually build this neon line I went for the easier route of creating a blueprint with a spline component. This spline would then build upon its end another neon strip until I met the end of where I wanted to place it. I then ran this strip along the entire upper ceiling much like my references to line the reflective metal walls there with an emissive neon. That I could once again control the brightness of material instances.

Diner Menu Designing and Iterations)

Designing the diner menu was one of the most fun parts so far as it dictated much of everything in the kitchen and front of house. I first began by gathering a lot of reference for simple but effective menu designs particularly taking much inspiration from r/VintageMenus (Reddit, 2023) subreddit of old menus. This also led me to figure out appropriate pricing of food items and how I would bundle them appropriately to make meal deals at breakfast or lunch. I ended up opting for the classic set of eggs and sausage combos, pancakes and hashbrowns and even cereal for an easy breakfast. I figured that for the most family friendly experience as well I might as well cater to all possible taste buds and went the classic diner route of hamburgers, fries and shakes for lunch/dinner. With pricing and items locked down I went to spicing them up with unique names and references to all 1970s pop culture. In total I have around 30+ references. Can you spot them all?

Decals of Best Selling Diner Items) For Whiteboard

With a great menu comes a great board of deals. To seal the deal on many popular items and most likely the best to go food combos I wrote them up onto decals which would further be plastered onto my boards. I kept to 3 key whiteboard pen colours of black blue and red and wrote the deals out by hand to give it that handwritten style. I also drew quick sketches of burgers, coffee and other items. leaving room for one board that would ultimately tell of why the toilets were shut down, Jolene. An infamous leader of the local teen Californian highschool known for causing trouble. With a prank going wrong in the ladies room it's currently shut and undergoing repairs. 

Bibliography:

Reddit, R. (2023) R/vintagemenus, Vintage Menus: Do you want celery with that? reddit. Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/VintageMenus/ (Accessed: (20/02/2023)