So my first blog post of a
new year at Uni! So it’s year 3 and in the deep end of it all. It’s time to
think of FMP ideas and to most likely scrap everything! But that’ll be a different
blog post. For now I’m going to talk about the first project we were giving
which was our PBR Texture Project.
So with the release of UE4
I was pretty excited for this project. I wanted to get used to UE4 and have a
look at what it has to offer me. Hopefully this time it isn’t as buggy. However
what is this metalness and roughness. When I first heard this I really didn’t
understand what was going on. It was like I was starting from the beginning
again. Well I actually was, but you know what I mean. Although I had a face of
pure confusion while hearing about these metalness and roughness maps I felt
like it was the start of something new.
So having got this project
I went out and took some textures. Now I didn’t really know what was going on
and ended up taking a trip to Yo!Sushi for food. Cause who doesn’t like sushi?!
Even so headed back and started working on my textures. I was ready to start
making tileable textures to apply to the texture balls in UE4. We were giving a
level template which had the texture balls already named. We just had to create
our own textures to apply to the balls.
So in having all the
tileable textures done it was time to make the metalness and roughness maps. So
to start with I was randomly change the values between white and black and all
the grey in-between until I created the right material. I added in some normal onto
certain materials such as rust to give it that bit more of a definition. I thought
I would understand metalness and roughness but even at the end of the project I’m
still wondering how it works. When I thought it was right and it’d make iron
look metal it made it look matte. Which confused me. In the end I just kept
tweaking the textures until they were right within engine. It’s not a good way
to go about it but hopefully with time I will be able to figure it out. I really enjoyed this
exercise and sorting out what material needed what property was fun and
interesting.
It also has been good to
start learning particle effects as well. I hope to get better at these particle
effects and learn other ways of creating them and changing them within Unreal.
With the spark particle effects I found that it only came out across one plane.
I wanted the sparks to come out from all different directions when they spawn
and possibly make it circle around the mystical ball before they die. With the
smoke as well I have found it difficult to control and get more a mist feel
rather than a smokey feel. This probably meant more tweaking and possibly a new
particle, however by using the smoke particle I was able to change it in some
of the ways I wanted it to look. The only other issue I have with the smoke is
that when you look at the smoke in a specific direction the colour changes to
black. I couldn’t figure out how to fix it but it will be something I come away
with knowing to sort it out in the future.
Happy little family! |
It's so pretty! |
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