final evaluation

 

This project challenged me to work with a high to low poly workflow which was new, which I found I enjoyed much more since I was able to build upon a base without corrupting it making it a much less destructive workflow.

one good point was the detailing of the mantle piece, I originally used z brush to model this detail in but the clarity of the line was somewhat muddled in the result but it did provide a base to build upon in substance painter using a height brush. This clarity of line made the patterns much easier to l make out and look much higher quality. I think that in the future I would work more with the height brush in substance painter for these details over modelling them in since it is much quicker and gives a better result.

one thing I don't think worked as well was the dog bed that sits in front of the fire since the edges looked disjointed in the unreal engine, the painting of the texture here is also much messier than the rest of the scene so it stands out which although a muddy dog bed wont be perfectly blended and tidy it could be better melded together overall. Doing this would make it look more believable and would mean it didn't look as out of place in the final scene.

during my journey throughout my project I faced a few challenges I had to overcome , one of these was issues that came up during my baking process in substance painter that would effect both the normal and ambient occlusion which effected my ability to paint on the pieces. I found that painting this out manually was the easiest way to fix this and it also meant I had full control of the changes made and there was no chance of loosing details on other areas by messing with the bake settings, the best of both worlds in a way.

another success was the Sub UV fire effect as although it is a small part of the process it turned out really well and tied together the final scene and was crucial in the cosy atmosphere I wanted my scene to have. I also discovered ways to automate the process of splitting a video into its separate frames and laying them out evenly on a contact sheet which means the process was much more efficient than screen shooting a video frame by frame which waste a lot of precious time in a project pipeline

an improvement I would make to this project is the uv quality since some areas have slightly stretched UVs which lowers the overall quality, a good example of this was the front areas of the iron centre piece, here the quality of the uv is lower than the rest of the piece and it looks a bit more stretched than it should and if I were to reverse time to earlier in my project I would make sure to take more care and to review the UV s more carefully when unwrapping and check them for any disjointed areas.

the final thing I will talk about is how I was able to ensure consistency across the different textures when I split the model into smaller sections when painting to lighten the load on my pc. To do this I painted the base texture for one section such as pillars and then made the folder into my own smart material, this kept the colours and textures consistent across the model so that one piece wasn't less realistic than the other because of a change in painting style accidently. removing the human error in the process since it is easy to convince yourself they are the same and continue until someone points it out much later down the line and its a big fix .

In conclusion I think this piece turned out pretty well and although I defiantly have improvements I could make as I have already gone over previously but I also think that looking back I should have tried to be more ambitious and add more items to the scene to build up more of a narrative and challenge myself further. I think the most successful part was the main mantle piece since it grabs the attention of the player because of it grandiose which is what I wanted since this is a hero asset and I also am very happy in the detailing of this area in particular . I think the least successful part of the piece was defiantly the dog bed as it just wasn't of the same quality as the other pieces in the scene and had the most room for improvement overall.