CAGD 373 Game Asset Production

                                   373 Game Scene Project

Game Scene Walkthrough

Game Scene Final Post

For this last week it seemed to be where I experienced the most problems in regard to texturing the

scene. Not so much on my own tasks, but rather my texturing partner Ryan. For the beginning portion

of the texturing, we couldn't figure out how come his models weren't baking his ID maps correctly. It took

several hours of trial and error but I helped come to the conclusion that he didn't have the same material

for all his low polys as well as high polys. As well as not having them zeroed out perfectly on one another.

We also forgot to realize that we weren't texturing the entire sets as a whole but rather one object at a

time, this saved many hours of work. After getting many hours of practice with painter, I became very

familiar with how baking works and why sometimes it doesn't bake the way we expect it would. Shown

below is the difference between the way Ryan's model was baking the mesh versus how mine (bottom)

was.

To showcase where I spent the most time in this project I will be sharing the screenshots of all the high

poly models that I created in Maya. I will also be showing screenshots of all the texturing that I did since I

worked on the majority of the texturing to keep the theme of the level similar across all models.This was

definitely just me volunteering to do it however, because I actually enjoyed the process. So my teammates

did not leave me no other choice. There was a few extra things that I had to do in Unity, such as adding in

the new updated models that I had to change, for painter, as well as adding materials and new mesh colliders

however, this only counted as a small percentage of the work compared to everything else I did.

Here is the work in Substance painter

There were a lot of minor things I had to adjust in terms of the high poly and low poly models in order to

get the tri-count the assignment required. Several of these models I had to rework and convert the high

polys into the low polys, then adding extra detail to the high polys in order to bake the texture

correctly. This also meant I had to rearrange some of the UVs which took a bit longer I originally planned.

However, I was still on track to completing the scene on time so it eventually worked out in the end.

The models I had to adjust included the Circle Portal, a few of the modular blocks, some of the columns,

and one of the spheres. I also decided to re-texture the portal because I didn't feel as though the textures

that I chose fit the scene very well. I added emissive paint to the portal gateway, as well as both the spheres,

one modular cylinder, and lastly the waterfall. One thing I noticed was that the emissive paint did not shine

in unity nearly as well as it did in painter, however it did stand out much more than other materials. Shown

below are 2 screenshots of the final scene in Unity with all the sound effects, particle effects, and the

models with materials applied.

In conclusion, I have learned a great deal of how to correctly model , bake, and texture from this assignment. Although the majority of my time was spent in Maya and Substance painter I was also much more familiar with Unity by the end of it. I would also say that for the most part after getting the practice I did with this assignment, I would feel very confident in my ability to model and texture my own scene for my own personal projects. It was definitely my favorite assignment to work on throughout all my classes this semester. 

Week 8 progress

During this last sprint we have been working exclusively on texturing. Since our teammate was able to get all the texture sets done before the end of the week, we began working on getting everything textured by next Wednesday. This was the deadline we gave ourselves which leaves us with around 4 days to get everything set up correctly in unity 

What we had already known however is that since we had already basically set everything up in unity already, there wouldn't be any extra time needed to fix any errors. Regardless we still decided to give ourselves a few days before we turn it in for a worst case scenario

In my progress for this week I had looked through the texture sets and began creating ID maps for a couple of the objects I was assigned to texture. This began with several modular blocks since they were the easiest and had the least amount of material variations. As opposed to something like the columns for example, or even the portal.

One of the main issues I was having was trying to help Ryan who was working on the other texturesets

Our progress in Trello was definitely on pace to be finished before next Wednesday, however this depends on whether or not everyone is able to follow schedule. Given that we do, we should have textured everything and handed it over to unity in order to add materials to each individual model 

I ran into alot of weird issues in painter, I was unable to bake down some of these ID maps correctly, although I felt I created them correctly. I made sure they were locked in the same position as the high and low poly to bake properly, yet it wouldn’t bake all the colored materials in there, but rather just the entire body of the sphere only. I couldn’t figure this out and needed some help with it. My classmate Ryan was also running into a similar issue where not all lambert materials would bake onto his model. I made an attempt to figure out why and noticed, it was only his painter that would have this issue. When I tried it with the exact same settings it would work on mine. Needed to get some extra from an instructor for this,

Week 7 progress

The last week during thanksgiving in my experience was a bit more hectic than usual for our teammate who volunteered to finish the texture sets. This was mainly because, everyone who turned their model's UVs forgot some very important steps. To freeze transformations, delete history, and also zero out the position of every model in order to get ready to be baked in substance painter. Fortunately our teammate was kind enough to make the corrections for us. Which might've messed with our schedule a little be yet not a whole lot since our Unity is essentially ready. 

Shown in the Trello is basically the last of the Maya based work being done apart from creating the ID maps in order to texture the models. After the ID maps are created in the next week, we can finally

begin the texturing process which we predict will be done by the following Wednesday

Overall we're on track to finish a bit early than the due date, however we still allowed ourselves a few extra days just incase we run into any unexpected errors.

Week 5 and 6 Progress

During the 5th week and 3rd sprint of the project our Trello board began to see a lot of progress in regards to finishing up the modeling portion of the assignment. During this sprint we had made plans to finish the last of our models and to get them into our team member Jake, so he could layout the UVs accordingly for the texture sets in the following sprint. We didn't seem to run into many issues involving catching up with previous sprints, however one teammate did seem to be falling behind since the earlier sprints began to pile up in the assigned folder. 

Since Veterans day kept us from getting our eportfolios checked in week 5, we were allowed to create one bigger post involving progress in both weeks. Shown below is the Trello board during our 5th and 6th week or our 3rd and 4th sprint. 

In the 4th sprint and as the leader of this project I did my best to try and consistently nudge my

teammates in the right direction in order to meet our own due dates. We set our first due date for

Monday the 16th. For this date we were expecting have all models more or less completed AND

UV'd for our teammate Jake to layout the texture sets 1 through 8. However, since we were only

able to get about 90% of the models UV'd and ready to go instead of all 100% of them we had decided

to set a hard deadline of all UVs that same Friday. Shown below is a few of the UV maps and models

I had worked on personally throughout these two weeks as well as reference. 

I had began spending a lot more time creating an even more similar column to the ones in game as opposed to my initial idea to make a more generic column with only bevels. I feel as though they turned out really nice and fit the theme of the level a lot more, as well as the modular block I had decided to add some rebar into to give it more distinctive features. Fitting the feel of walking through ruins in the level. Shown below is the UV and final modular block, column, and sphere. 

Overall there was plenty more progress done these last 2 sprints compared to the rest considering

that we fell a bit behind. We believe that we are on track given that we begin texturing by the end of

the week. My teammates and I had also decided to leave texturing to one individual who felt most

comfortable working on it. The reason for this being is that we felt it would be smartest if one person

had the theme of the level and model's color pallets in mind so it would be consistent among all models,

rather than multiple people imagining the textures on similar objects differently. The only thing that I

had an issue with was modeling the waterfall piece shown below.

I couldn't figure out how to make the faces that I pushed inwards above the model continue smoothly over the edge of the model. I will have to get a bit of help from the instructors to figure this problem out since I couldn't figure it out myself.

Week 4 Progress

During the 2nd sprint the trello board didn't see as much activity as sprint 1, however after checking in with the rest of the team on Tuesday I had seen the progress that was made, but they forgot to add screenshot attachments and to move their objective to the verify tab. During my time on Trello I had assigned sprint 3 objectives, but I have yet to add new cards since we are still working on the modeling portion of the assignment. Considering we still have over a month remaining to complete our scene we haven't fallen that far behind, however we still are falling a bit short of completing our sprints the week they are assigned. Nonetheless we will aim at hopefully completing them quicker moving forward. Shown below is the trello board. 

For this week I had decided to make a meeting time for my team to make sure that we were all on track and on the same page. I had first scheduled it with two of my 3 teammates on Saturday but I had found myself busy with something else and missed it by mistake. The last group member Jake, had agreed with me to meet on another time because our Saturday meeting time didn't align with his schedule. What I had decided I may have to do to get us on track more is to maybe even share the work with whoever may be falling behind considering not all of our modeling skills are the same, some members may require additional help from the rest of the team. Shown below is the second half of the completed sprint 2 list.

My portion of the second sprint involved working mainly on the last couple modular blocks as well as the waterfall and sphere. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get done as much as I anticipated since my other classes required a lot from me the past week, although I did make good progress I felt. Shown below is what I had worked on for the week.

Week 3 Progress

For the third weeks progress report me and my team worked on several different parts of our scene.

We got a lot of the blocks modeled with low and high polys alike. It was definitely a lot more organized

than the first two weeks since we were more familiar with trello. Shown below is the trello in progress.

For my portion I was actually reworking the pyramid model and working on a few of the modular blocks

for the scene. Shown below is the pyramid for the new model that I created.

Other than this we fell a little behind for our sprint 1 however it seems that many of the tasks are fairly simple since most of it is creating the modular blocks within the scene. We haven't changed the positioning of the environment yet but we are still deciding how we want the placement of everything in our scene. 

Week 1 - 2 Progress

    In this first week, as a team of four, we were tasked with creating a game scene from destiny. We decided to split the workload amongst whoever was most comfortable doing what. This way we would avoid having to waste any time and work much more efficiently. The Scene we decided to take reference from is a level on the planet Mercury. Shown below are the areas that we tried to replicate. 

Shown below is the second part of the game scene created by my teammate Reggie. 

    When creating my part of the modeling portion I used Maya while my teammate utilized Unity's ProBuilder. When in Maya I wasn't too sure what the poly count would look like after detailing the models, this led me to question whether what we already have is enough. Shown below is a screenshot of everything so far put into unity.

    Something we haven't decided on yet is whether we will orient my part of the scene to be facing the same way as it is in game, or rotate it so it's more of a linear shaped map. If so we might actually end up modeling within the cylinder as it is in game. This part of the reference is shown below. 

    Once we have decided what orientation we will end up with, we have decided to make the boundaries of our game scene cliffs all around, considering there is a part of my model that drops like a cliff. After this we will move onto creating more High poly modular models that we can place around the level. Shown below is a screenshot of the Trello board showcasing how we're organizing the project amongst team members.

    In regard to our roles in the group, I've taken the role of the team lead where I will make sure everyone is assigned a specific role and is staying on task to meet every week's deadline requirement. We will keep track of everything over Trello, a project management website. This is the first time I've used Trello so it took a bit to understand the basics of it, thankfully my teammate Jake was more familiar and could help me set it up. After a few walkthroughs I eventually figured it out and will try keeping it updated and posted by next week now.

Object List

Sphere 1  (low and high) 

Sphere 2 (low and high)

Triangle pyramid portal (low and high)

10 Props (low)

Section 2 

Surrounding Wall (low and high) 

Waterfall piece (low and high) 

Stair pieces (low and high)

Modular Pieces

Blocks (5-10 versions) (low and high)

Columns (3 versions) (low and high) 

Donuts (low and high) 

Stairs (4 versions) (high) 

 373 Micro Tower Scene 

 For the Micro Tower Scene assignment our objective was to create a tower base with three toppers that would sit on top of the tower, meant for a tower defense game where the camera is top down at a 45 degree angle. These models will be UV'd ID'd and textured in substance painter, along with 4 low poly props of our choosing. Lastly, all models and textures will then be imported into unity to place in a scene where we utilize the terrain editor for the first time. Below are screenshots of the models in the Maya scene.

Overall my process throughout Maya went fairly smooth. I spent the most time trying to balance out the poly count between my tower base and all three toppers, so I'd meet the maximum requirement of 2500 (low poly) 5000 (high poly) and 500 per low poly prop. Creating the ID map before I went into painter was the last step. Shown Below are my ID maps for all my models, excluding the four props. 

This part of the project was actually the quickest however I ran into a bit more problems during it. Beginning with the baking process, for a good chunk of time I was trying to figure out how come my ID maps weren't showing, but rather my UVs were as shown below.

It took a bit of trial and error but I came to the conclusion that the issue was my naming convention in the baking process. I had forgotten to rename the low poly suffix to _ID from _low. Once I changed this it finally baked onto the objects and I was able to move forward. Shown below is my progress texturing.

One of the main problems I had after the texturing process was simply being able to import my models and textures into Unity. Although I had created my environment already and had it ready to just insert my models and textures for the finishing touches, for whatever reason Unity was not accepting them. I'd receive an error message shown below alongside my scene. (Failed to import package with error: Couldn't Decompress package)

Aside from not being able to figure out this error, I'd say that I was happy with the results of the look I was trying to achieve with my tower and the toppers. Unfortunately I couldn't showcase them within my Unity scene but I'm sure there is a simple fix to this error that I will try and figure out in order to complete the project on my own. 

Scifi Hallway

In this assignment I ran into a bit more problems than I originally anticipated, however I did complete a good portion of it. Beginning with the modeling portion of the assignment, one of the things I had realized too late was that I spent way too much time trying to model the perfect Scifi hallway. The reason this was a problem was because later on when I had tried to bake the mesh maps and make ID maps I was confused and ran out of time before I could get help. Given the fact that my car broke down and kept me from getting back to Chico (where my PC) in a timely manner the week before it was due, I seemed to have fallen behind. However, I did makeup for as much work as I could while I was back at my PC.

Shown above are screenshots of my Maya workspace. Although it doesn't show a very organized outliner, I assure you this was just an outdated screenshot. After I had Fixed it, it was much easier to read. Soon after I entered into Substance painter I ran into my main problem. Trying to bake the mesh maps. This ended up with me having to skip this part entirely and going to the next step in Unity.

Shown on this link is a YouTube video showcasing the work done. https://youtu.be/okCgpdA1vUI

Below is a teaser of the beginning of the hallway.

The assignment was meant to showcase not only modeling skills, but texturing skills as well. Unfortunately since I wasn't able to complete the texturing in time I wont have much to showcase other than what went wrong in Substance painter. Shown below is before I attempted to bake the High poly mesh onto the low poly mesh.

Shown below is after I attempted to bake the High poly Mesh.

As much as I was familiar with Substance Painter I haven't done any baking in this program for some months, so I must've been missing a crucial step aside from the ID maps.