GTE: Second Blockout

For my second month of finals, I'll be recreating this abandoned school bedroom from Chernobyl. This room was a bit more challenging to create the blockout for, since it was more than just solid walls, unlike the previous environment. I had to create a blockout piece for the windows, and then try to get the lighting to look somewhat similar to the lighting in the above image.

The proportions of the window pieces are off (though they are still blockout pieces and will be fixed when I create the props for this setting) and the lighting and textures still need to be finalized, but the base layout of the room is present and ready to be filled with props like the bed frames and other abandoned belongings. I was having a lot of trouble getting the directional light in my level to recreate how the sunlight acts in the photograph, so I will have to go back and try to figure out another solution.

I did figure out that my problem with not being able to build my lighting at times was somehow related to Unreal 4 autosaving, so I've since turned the feature off and haven't had to restart my level since.

GTE: First Blockout

For my first month, I'll be creating this abandoned surgical room in Unreal 4. For my blockout, I kept the layout of the room very simple (a plain box), and created pieces of geometry for the walls, floor, and ceiling. Most everything else in the environment is a prop, so I left them out of the blockout for now.

I acquired base textures for the walls, floor, and ceiling, and created their normal maps and roughness maps. Roughness is a fairly new concept to me, but from what I understand from researching the value in Unreal 4's documentation, it's similar to older Specular maps I used in past classes. The ceiling piece has a base material of plaster, while the floor is concrete and the walls are tile. I feel my normal map for the floor may be a bit too intense, so it will definitely need some adjusting.

I also established the lighting, using the base light source that Unreal provides in their default levels. Since the light in my image seems to be sunlight, the default directional light fit the role I needed perfectly. I upped the indirect lighting value to illuminate the inside of the room some more (as it was pitch dark upon putting the roof on top) and adjusted the color to give the scene that hint of yellow-green. There seemed to be some light leaking issues along the edges of the geometry pieces, so those will require some troubleshooting. There's a nasty problem I keep getting with Unreal 4, where the lighting will refuse to bake in my project after a certain amount of time, so I keep having to restart the project by moving my assets into a fresh project folder. I have no idea why this happens or if there's an easier way to fix it, but it sure did put a damper on things the first few times when I had no idea what to do. Here's hoping I can fix it soon.

GTE: Finals Preparation

I'm very quickly approaching my final months here at Full Sail, and with that comes the aptly named Game Portfolio, or Finals, courses. To prepare for these upcoming three months, I have had to select either an environment or prop to create during each month. I selected three environments, as I very much enjoy building and texturing them.

The first environment I selected is an operating room located in Harlem Valley State Hospital, an abandoned asylum. In it hangs a lone surgical lamp, with the rest of the equipment long gone. I found this scene very eerie and solemn, and thought it a good starting piece for my portfolio.

 The second environment I'd like to create is a little more busy; a schoolhouse bedroom left to decay in the area of Chernobyl. I feel this scene is a little more spooky than the first, and since the town is one of the first places that comes to mind when I think of interesting environments, I thought that recreating this bedroom would be fitting for my portfolio.

And now my final environment, a nice, pristine corridor with an escalator and staircase. When looking for good examples of interesting environments that would test my skills, this one stood out to me the most. I love the lighting and balance of this photo, and I can't wait to start working on this particular setting.