Unit 7 Work
This is the small room I made while experimenting with the Unreal Engine.
I tinkered with the lighting, added textures, and resized objects.
This is the mood board me and my team made for our building we will be making. we assigned different people to different roles, and set to work on coming up with modular pieces to create in 3DS Max. I feel like we went about doing this very efficiently, and that it has done its
This is a door I imported into Unreal. I made it in 3DS Max, then exported it and its textures. I then had to resize it as it was considerably smaller than seen in the screenshot.
This is the event graph showing the coding for the key. The code tells the key to destroy itself upon being interacted with by the player, leading to the door to being opened.
This is the event graph showing the coding for the door. The code tells the door to begin rotating 90 degrees upon being interacted with by the player, this rotation being over a set period of time as dictated by the timeline node.
This is the timeline the door follows when it begins to rotate. The timeline spans a total of 1 second.
This is the door and the key together, seen from the editors view. the video shows the end result of the coding put in place, featuring a quick demonstration of the player interacting with the key, causing it to disappear and cause the door to open for the player. Overall, I feel like the whole process was fairly difficult even for something so simple. This difficulty wasn't necessarily to do with it being too time consuming or in depth, but more to do with the fact that it is quite 'fragile' in the sense that one minor mistake along the line means the end result either doesn't work as intended, or doesn't work at all. A good example of this is how when editing the event graph, naming something incorrectly, or missing a singular part of an asset or code completely negates the option to use other lines of code later on. Like the Lerp Rotator or Event Action nodes. From this exercise, I feel like I personally won't be too fond of work done in the Unreal Engine.
What my team works on
My role in the team, at first, was to make an assortment of props and other miscellaneous objects to be placed around the map to make it more detailed. Soon after, however, my role changed to be in charge of the sound design for the level. This was mainly due to sound design being more my forte, so I could better contribute to my team by doing something I am good at. Thus, I was tasked with finding/recording sounds to be used for the game, and tweaking them appropriately.
For example, this is a screenshot of what the footsteps on a wooden floor look like in Adobe Audition. I use Audition in college for this type of work as it has the features I need, and I can easily import sounds then edit them before moving onto exporting them and sending them to my team in a short amount of time.
Despite my personal preference of Ableton over any other program, I have grown an interest in Audition (and all the other Adobe programs, for that matter) and will most likely make an investment in purchasing the whole Adobe package for use at home.
Because of the theme of my teams project, I need to find and create sounds that suit this theme. The theme being a mid to late 1800s dockyard. There are many things to consider in regards to all things audio when it comes to the theme. In the 1800s, lots of dense urban/industrial areas would be packed with workers, carriages, boats and water, etc. And all those are independent from the player, meaning none of these are created by the player. Sounds created by the player are not as deeply varied as the other sounds, however they are just as important. These sounds will include: Footsteps on wood and also stone, interactions with various objects/items,
This is Connors role in the team. He was in charge of creating the roof pieces for the building, as well as assembling all of collective parts together within Unreal.
This is kyrylo's role in the team. He created a wide variety of different assets to be placed within the level to add more realism by creating more clutter. They meet the requirements and also fit the theme we chose to do. Linking it to my role, depending on where ever or not the objects have physics attached to them, I may need to create sounds to accompany them. For example, a metallic clanging sound for the bucket hitting the floor or being pushed about.
Evaluation
Production timeline
Originally I was fairly excited to do this unit, as I prefer to work in a team so I can divert my more of my attention to one thing, as well as receiving feedback simultaneously. Our theme was determined early on, through selecting from a collection of paper slips inscribed with various different themes at random. We ended up with a UK dockyard. Due to the slip not including a time for it to be set in, my team decided on basing it off of the dockyards you would see in the 1800s. While I was slightly disappointed that the theme wasn't something more... 'Futuristic' or 'flashy', my team started to formulate ideas and vague concepts on the whiteboard by our stations. We set out the rough proportions of our building that we were to make, what shape the building should be in, as well as any props that should be included. We assigned each other roles within the team, giving ourselves a field to work in so everyone could pitch in and contribute to the team. Early on, I was designing and making the modular wall pieces that would slot together to create the shape of the building. The other roles were as followed: One person focusing on the roof pieces in order to work with the wall pieces, one person on random asset creation (props, etc.) and two people to work on texturing all the assets created by the three other members, with one of them also making it work within the Unreal Engine. However, early on, I started to struggle with the scale of the walls, as well as exporting them properly. Although the issue with exporting was fixed early on, I still felt that I struggled with the role I had. After a brief discussion, I swapped roles so me and another member were creating various props, and the walls was left to another member. After creating 6+ props, I started to get more distracted due to a lack of interest in using 3DS Max which I struggled to control. By now, the other members in the team were starting to switch the roles around and move onto new roles, as we had created the basic parts. This was the point when a member needed to start working on the sound design for the project. Being passionate about sound design, I took this role the moment it came up. By now, the roles had changed to be as followed: One member working on the UI for the game, one working on props, two texturing all the assets as well as importing them to Unreal, and one member doing the audio design for the game.
My role in the team work
I am not the most proud of my work and contribution to the team early on in the project, as I kept procrastinating and struggling with some of the asset creation, but this changed when the roles switched around and I moved on to doing sound design. With the sound design, I had to find/create sounds to be used in game, which all needed to fit a set criteria. With the theme, most of my sound involves interactions with wood and stone, as well as the sounds of waves and water. I also needed to find rat/mouse noises, as one member made a rat model to be used in the level. After recording a couple audio clips and downloading some as well, I started to work on editing them in what ever way I needed to. for example, I sped up the walking sample and shortened the gap between each step in Audition to make it sound more like running. I also created a duplicate of most of the files that had added reverb or echo, in order to reflect the environment the sounds are coming from. I primarily used Adobe Audition in college to apply any effects to the sound, and found that the program was easy to use and very effective. I feel as if I contributed well enough to my team, although I could of done a much better job earlier on.
The problems I faced while fulfilling my role in the team was my habit of procrastinating, which I thankfully am getting better at overcoming. Other problems include difficulty in recording Foley sounds at home, as despite my microphone being more than satisfactory in terms of quality, it doesn't have much in terms of mobility. Despite this, I managed to provide my team with enough sounds for the project.
Programs and equipment used: Ableton Live 9 Intro, Adobe Audition, OneConcept MIC-700, M-Audio M-Track
Jamie and Eoin(Texture/structure work)
Jamie and Eoin were in charge of texturing any assets we created, and Eoin was also in charge of finalising the project by actually assembling everything and also doing the programming in the Unreal Engine. To create the textures for our assets, they used Photoshop and Gimp and then add them to our assets. They used a program called Materialised to test the textures on objects, in order to determine which textures would work the best and which wouldn't work with our assets. Eoin also worked on building the overall structure in Unreal, and edited/entirely recreated our assets appropriately. Early on in development, he experimented with multiple different styles for the walls and floors and when he was happy with a style, he developed further assets to be used with it. From his work, he has also learned to ensure that the measurements within 3DS Max coincided with those within Unreal, as doing this allowed him skip any unnecessary further scaling within Unreal. As a result, we also learned from this too.
This is an example of the work Jamie did using the assets created by Kyrylo. According to Jamie, the most difficult to texture was the various ropes as it was more finicky to do compared to any other type of object we created.
On the left is Eoins earlier wall designs. As you can see, he created as many variations in shape as possible in order to have the largest possible selection to work with. Then on the right, we can see the versions that he developed much further, going as far as creating mock ups of the building we would go on to create in the final. All of this worked very well as a means of testing what we all felt was the best possible result we could get, meaning our end result was as high a quality as we could possibly make it.
More of Jamie's texture work, showing what he created and tested in Materialise.
I didn't really learn as much as I hoped to during this unit. I felt like Unreal is quite difficult, or at least in terms of completing any task outside of using the preset blueprints. I feel this way mostly about the visual coding for things such as doors, keys, and other animated or moving parts. I feel like over time I will get better at it, and become more confident, as I would with any other skill. However, I do still dislike using Unreal. I also learned about Adobe Audition and I quickly discovered how good it was as a means of compiling and organising my audio, as well as applying some simple effects to them. I will hopefully endeavour to buy Audition for use outside of college, for personal use as well as for college work.
Practical skills
Work flow
I feel like the team I worked in established an effective workflow, working efficiently and overcoming obstacles that came up through the project. Usually I tend to not have the best of workflows but in this project I feel like I did a lot better than I usually would of. I feel like this is mostly down to the fact that the two members who acted as the leaders for the team were able to come up with a system that accepted how I tend to be, and allowed it under certain circumstances. I will definitely attempt to recreate this for myself in future projects, even if they are done solely by me.
Post production
I am very pleased with how the product turned out, and am impressed at how hard we worked as a team. Even though I did hardly anything to impact the appearance of the product, I am still happy with what I contributed. Some of my early assets can be seen in the level, however they aren't significant and act more as clutter. I am fine with that, as I find clutter visually appealing. I feel like working as a team is what I excel at most, namely the more creative roles. As much as I want to become a really good 3D modeller, I feel like I enjoy sound more. However, I also am confident I would do good as a manager or creative director, as I thoroughly enjoy coming up with new ideas, but I tend to end up not making my ideas appear on screen. There is also a more egotistical side to it, but I wouldn't feel that way in a negative way. Despite this, the two members who DID act as the leaders/managers did a very good job at it. From this whole project, I have learned more about how I would fit in a team of developers, and I will definitely use it as a guide to where I might want to go post college.
This is a video showing the level, and all the work we put into it. I didn't pay much attention to the development of how it looked over the course of its development, so when I saw it before it reached its final form, I was shocked at how great it looked.