GAME 3001 Submissions
Ewan Couper
P1219306x
The Metropolis Rooftop Project
The outcome for the brief was an interactive 3d environment in Unreal 4 authentically styled on a city roodtop suach as New York, you'll find the full level submitted on the K drive. The level was to be designed for a Third Person Shooter so I worked design elements such as cover and player progression/level design as well as the aritistic demands of the project. The tri limit was 50,000 triangles with a texture budget of x4 2K and x1 1k textures.
Pre-production
For my research I looked intially both at American and European cityscapes and rooftops before focusing on an Industrial, run down New York aesthetic. Below are a selection of key images I refered to over the course of the project. My research ranged from inspirational and mood images to asset and material reference used during the project's development.
While I avoided heavy concept work I did produce a number of paintovers and drawing to help refine the design of the rootop environment.
Production
Modular Wall Kit
The wall tileset was build with a standard square piece being 3x3m and for the most part the rooftop environment is built with only these peieces. To create more variation in the elevation and level angles more specialised pieces were created although they kept to the scale of the standard piece. Togther the moduler set is 4,528 triangles and compromises of two materials, a tiling brick texture and a unoique sheet for the modular features such as the windows.
The wall UVWs were intially based on a project square before the the necessary adjustments were made to perserve the UVs
At the current moment the brick tiling material is 2k with an albedo, roughness,normal and height while the unique wall texture is 1k with albedo,roughness and normal. It should probably be the other way round but I've got ome really wierd texture outputs through out so it's something I need to go back through and adjust.
I created the brick texture in Substance Designer and below you'll find a grab of the node system which created it.
Modular Duct Kit
The duct tileset was created from a base piece 1m in length that could be tiled through out the envrionemnt. This asset acted as a thematic backbone for the level being both cover for the player and I also used it as a means to guide the player through the level placing it such areas. It also helped try break up the walls and floor materials and added more curves and arcs to the envrionment which is largely angular. The ducts come to 992 triangles and again utilise a 1k tiling texture.
Major Assets
Alongside the modular kits I produced a few major assets fro the environment, the water tower and watertower base anId the large chimneys which are used as the landmarks for the level both to orientate the player and push the aesthetic theme of the environment. Togther they come to a atotal of 11,182 triangles and use a combinations of textures ranging from 2k to 512, again it's pretty wierd the output range, I put that down to my inexperience in Quixel and my lack of any real texture strategy for the project.
It should be noted that the chimney uses the same texture sheets as the modular wall.
Minor Assets
There are also minor clutter assets spread through out the level,m the smaller chimenys and aerials/satelitte dishes that help to break up the major forms in the environment. These come to a total of 4,732 triangles and share a single 512 texture although this is probably overly stingy.
some of the assets reuse textures from the duct tileset and water tower materials
Intial Submission
For the project's intial submission there's a lot left to be desired. The project was very much half way there, the major assets were in however there was a clear lack of polish. While I feel my inexperience with PBR workflows and Unreal played the pre dominant reason for this was the scope of the project. What i wanted was too large for the timescale I had and while knowing this from a very ealry stage even the strict heiracrhy of asset prioritisation was not enough to overcome this.
At this stage I discussed with Mike what the big beats were to improving the level, stuff such as lighting, texture imporvements and a couple new key assets such as crates and oil drums, he felt I could push the quality fairly quickly. From this discussion I produced a quick paintover to illustrate the direction I was going in.
Polish
Working in my first action was to adjust the time of day to dusk pushing the shadows across the rooftop, breaking up the flat open space. This really helped to push the mood as well and by using Unreals exisitng partcle effects such as the steam as well as their exisitng sound assets I was quickly able to build an ambience to the level that was non-existent during te previous three weeks. I also created a selection of grafitti decals to add more grim and visual flare to sections of the environement helping to make the space feel more organic and lived in, translating a lot of the inspiration I've had with the Harlem images in my research. These took a lot of tweaking to get looking natural and non-repetative with out going over the top, they also have a very strict colour palette with little greens and some desturated blues building up to the more saturated key yellow. this also played back intot the briefs intentions of the playability of the space as i wanted to use yellow as a key colour for guiding the player although I was never able to fully realise this.
Using Bitmap 2 Material (B2M) I was able to imporve and create a number of new assets at a much more rapid rate at a higher quality then during the project's duration. Firstly i created a wooden palette to litter around the scene converting an image sourced from CGTextures into a PBR material. From there in max I was able to model the wooden palette. I also created a new roofing texture again using an image from CGTexture and running it through B2M as well as a new wooden texture for the water tower which I ran through Photoshop to add more grime elements. using the pipeline I had worked with earlier in production I alos create an oil drum asset that could be spread through out the level.
Finally I also added a number of buildings to create a vista for my renders as the strech goal in the brief. While these don't work in realtime completely in real time I've done enouhg to create a convincing effect in my final imagery. Once again using CGtextures I took a handful of building textures, editing them to create tileable versions and in Max i used these to create vary basic modular pieces to a cheap set of different buildings I could spread across the scene. Again I was concious not to go too far in populating the environment as well as avoiding any obvious repetition in camera.
Final Submission
This project has had it's ups and downs and while I feel I was able to pull it all together for the final submission there's no avoiding there's no avoiding the failings I made during production. The single biggest challange and mistake during the rooftop porject was the original ambition I had for it and while I knew it would be unlikely I would complete what I wanted in three weeks I still massively over estimated what I would achieve. While I believe I was able to prioritise and create assets to a fast pace alongisde learning Unreal and Substance/Quixel it wasn't enough on my part to overcome the problem I had created for myself. Due to this it felt like I was playing catch up from the start till pretty much the very end.
This project has been a massive lesson reinforcing the notion of starting small and working out rather then setting a goal in the mud and trying to chase it. I feel pretty fortunate that I was able to get this project over with first so I could take these lessons onboard for the UI and gateway project. that is of course not even mentioning taking these lessons on board for the FMP where it has changed my approach completely. Now that I'm more aware of my pace and what i can get done in a period of time I'm very conscious of allowing my ambition to run free after Christmas. In that way I feel this is the project that I'll take the most from, an early reminder in the year of the year as to how easy it can be to reach too far whilst failing to produce what's needed.
