Olivia Davy Game Art Blog: December 2014

Introduction to the brief

The brief that we were given was to create a sidescroller consisting of 4 levels, 2 main characters (male and female) and 3 NPCs. It is to work in a large group to work towards a larger goal (game) and work effectively and creatively as a team.

Each section of the level are represented by 4 themes and to include dynamic elements where possible, particle effects and movement:

· Hot
· Cold
· Happy
· Scary

The characters should be rigged so that they have some animations applied as well as walk, run, jump, punch and kick.

The project length is 6 weeks.

What area you worked on?

Within my group of 4 people I was one of the environment artists with 2 other people and a concept artist. Within the environment artists we gave ourselves things to do depending on what we wanted to learn or what caught our attention or what we wanted to do. We thought it would be a better idea to work on the things that kept our interest rather than forcing things upon ourselves. For me personally I worked on a variety of things. First of all though before we started anything we headed to the whiteboard and gathered to discuss our inital ideas. We came up with things that related to our level Hot, such as volcanos, lava, rain forests and even went outside of the box like kitches or boiler rooms which still followed the word hot. We carried on like this and took it to pinterest where all focused on a couple of our ideas and then pinned the relevent images. For example some was given the word desert, so they pinned all the relevent desert photos. Once we had a clear idea of where we wanted to take this we then went onto concepting. Throughout the group we concepted various parts however we did enjoy the idea of a volcano level and wanted to incorporate that within the level somewhere. When we first started the project we all had to do some concepting to get an idea of the way our level looked.

The concepting I worked on was:

· Shape Grabs
· Colour Palettes
· Underground Concepts
· Start Concepts
· Asset Ideas
· Level Idea as a whole
· Path Blocking
· Levers
· Statue Door Mural

Some of the concepts that I did was refining from what our concept artist did to get across the point of the idea I had in my head. The level idea as a whole was originally what I drew on the whiteboard during a meeting with the group. The concept artist then took this to draw it up neatly within in Photoshop for others to work on. I then added my own ideas on top of this and we came together as a group and discussed what worked well.

The modelling I worked on was:

Whitebox:

Main Tree
Branches
Statue
Lever

Final Assets:

Platform Edges
Flytraps
Flytrap Stems
Lever
Magic Mushrooms
Plant 1, 2 and 3
Tree Fungus
Treehouse
Vista
Vine Alphas

Within the whiteboxing stage I had created the statue door which was to be re-done to be put into the final piece however I passed this onto another environment artist which finished off the model. The rest I had worked on personally. Within the final assets I took some into Zbrush for the first time. This was a new experience for me as I have never used Zbrush before, however after spending a day on getting to grips with the software I felt more confident with using it and thus taking more models in to get the right shape for when I do the high to low poly bake within 3DS Max.

Due to the change in brief however I had to put some models to the side to focus on the models for the area that we decided to polish and focus on. This is where I created the magic mushrooms. They had an emissive map to add some more colour as one of the main points from the feedback we got was there were too many green and browns within the level. So I decided to create glowing magic mushrooms to add a variety of colours. I also created some emissive maps for the tree fungus as some of the models where to be used within the temple.

The platform edges were broken up so they made the whitebox platforms look a bit more interesting to the player and so it looks like an old temple which has been crumbling. The flytraps were to add a bit of fantasy as they were oversized and what is used as a platform for the player to descend from the bottom of the tree to the temple roof. The stems were concepted by the concept artist and pulled the normal figure of a plant stem. This added a sense of fantasy again and created interesting shapes. The levers were part of the main puzzle that I came up with for our level. The player had to interact with the levers dotted around inside the temple to open the statue door to progress further into the level. Each lever was placed on a smaller pillar and the handle of the lever itself was modelled to look like it was made out of natural materials found around the temple such as a small branch from a tree. The magic mushrooms came from research into exotic plants and also from Scary’s level who used mushrooms within theirs. I came up with the idea to make them purple and glowing to add some contrasting colours from the brown and green background. Plants 1, 2 and 3 were to add some life and organic shapes into the level as it was somewhat lacking organic forms. It was based within a rainforest/jungle environment but there was no plant life apart from the trees which didn’t make sense. So I started working on more organic and exotic plants into the level. Their albedo were also interesting colours which added some more contrast and took away from the sheer amount of browns and greens. The tree fungus were to be used as platforms to traverse down the main tree. Originally the platforms were simple cross sections of tree trunks and textured like trees however the feedback that we were given was that it was too boring. So we decided from peer feedback to add tree mushrooms which normally grow on the outside of trees and bring them inside. With this I went ahead, modelled it in 3DS Max and then Zbrushed it to bake it down. The treehouse was meant to be put into the final of the level however where we cut it down it didn’t matter too much. I modelled it exactly the way the concept artist had drawn it, I pushed some of the forms so that it wasn’t as box like or square. I worked on the vista between the level and the volcano in the background so that when you started at the top of the level not everything was floating in mid-air. On top of that I then worked on some alpha vines which were used to add some natural vines quick and easy.

What worked well?

The things that worked well for me personally was I was really happy with my mushrooms and plants. I enjoyed taking them into Zbrush and working in more detail to bake down into the normal map. I felt it worked really well. The mushrooms were able to bring in something that we were missing and they didn’t require too much time. They were simple and effect and that’s what I enjoyed with them.

What worked well within the level as a whole was the temple itself, especially with everyone’s assets coming together as a whole. With one of our environment artists working withing engine to make everything look as good as possible it helped to see how the level would like once the engine guys had finished putting everything together.

What didn’t work well?

One of the main things that I thought didn’t work well was that we weren’t able to figure out an effective way on how to transition between our level Hot to the next level Happy. It was quite a hard call to make and the communication between the two levels was a bit non-exsistent and thus we weren’t truly able to get down a strong idea.

What problems you faced?

The problems we faced throughout the whole project was that only one person could work on the engine at one time and that if we wanted to check our assets within the level we had to wait for the person who was working on our level to import it and place it within the level. This cost some time in places and meant that we weren’t as productive. Other problems were getting the right size for assets, although we had a general outline for sizes it did vary and a lot was changed within engine anyway.

How did you overcome problems and issues?

While one of our artists was working in engine and we had some spare time waiting to see if things were working correctly we made some more assets or adjusted the textures for our models. With the end of the level lacking we were able to make a quick fix on how to tie everything together. Rocks that were already made were scaled and placed around to show the floating island idea that Happy has in theirs and that linked it quite well.

What would you do differently if you were to approach a similar project?

The things that I would do differently is try and get the idea down as soon as possible. I would also make sure that I only spend around 1-1/2weeks concepting rather than the 2 ½ weeks we spent. This meant that we would have had more time modelling and polishing off at the end rather than rushing about it. I would have also liked to work in engine more and help out with lighting and particle effects. This would have eased off the main environment artist who was doing a lot of the engine work. I think that the colours needed to be down and finalized as we spent a lot of time changing the colours within engine and within the textures of the models.

Conclusion/Summary

Overall this project was an eye-opener on how to work effectively as a large group of people working on one game. Even though previously I have worked as a team it hasn’t been in this size and having to work collective amongst individual groups. I’ve learnt a lot of this project especially from the people I have been working with. They’ve helped me a lot to excel in software that I haven’t used before and that has made me feel more confident. I felt that I have produced effective work and it has added to the level rather than be a waste of time. I felt that I kept on track with time and that I wasn’t rushing around too much with trying to get models fully textured and exported.

I think I could have been more involved within engine work and put in more of an input however I didn’t want to mess the engine up in-case I broke it and it would set us back. This is why I held back a little. I wish I had also done some more intricate models such as a statue rather than doing smaller assets.

However overall I think the group worked really well together and I’ve been happy with all the work that everyone has produced. Everyone has had their input and worked hard at what they were given. I think the level that we produced works really well and it came together in the end.

Here are some beauty screenshots of my work within the level: