firstproject2022

[firstproject2022]

Things I want to develop in my 3d design skills and level making

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Presenting my work online

[firstproject2022]

Future idea’s for projects

[firstproject2022]

Evaluation

What went well in this project?

In this project I think overall I really succeeded in what my aim goal was which was to make an aesthetic Japanese scene. I learned many things in this project like how to model in blender, how to apply textures, adjusting my lighting skills and many other things that come  into making a scene in unreal engine 4. I'm really proud of the outcome because this was another project that I came into pretty unsure how to approach everything because before this project I didn't know how to model things properly or how to make textures and apply them to models etc so I had to do a lot of research and do a lot of trial and error to make everything work the way I wanted.

What could of gone better?

Although overall I think my texturing was a success I definitely could of done better because some of my textures were stretched on my models giving them a slight funny look which I didn't like at all obviously so I defiantly should of tried to do some extra research at the end of my project to try to fix that issue. This was my first time making a completely 2d environment from scratch so there were errors in pretty much all my pieces of work but that just comes natural as I’m a beginer so I will have a ton of room to improve in things like my modelling skills, lighting skills and even basic things like how to position my assets as I think that's a major skill people sometimes overlook as if you place everything in poor positions then everything will turn out terrible so you definitely need to focus on where you’re place everything 

What will you do different next time?

Next time I do a 3d design project I will be focusing on things like improving my model making more to keep advancing my skills to make some really detailed and cool models, I want to also really up my knowledge on how textures work and how to get the best textures possible as that can really make my worlds look ten times better as you can’t have models without the textures and you cant have textures without the models when you’re really trying to create something detailed so working on my texturing will be great. I also really want to learn more about lighting in unreal engine and do a ton more research on how you can make better lighting and what types of lighting you can go for because lighting can be the effect the mood massively like in a horror game you need a really dark and spooky lighting with some occasional dim lights around locations to really bring that scary vibe in or you can just try to make a really realistic sun set which is what I tried to do to bring in that calm and peaceful feeling.

Conclusion?

Overall I’m really proud of the outcome of my Japanese environment as I was sceptical at first how everything would turn out due to my lack of practicing in model making and texture making but it seems everything worked out well as looking at my project I don’t see too many massive flaws and when I have showed friends they have all been very impressed and had fantastic reactions which was a massive relief and showed that I achieved my goals I set myself to accomplish.

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Talking about the layout of my design and how everything worked out

I placed out my scene the way it is because I wanted to create a very peaceful environment that works perfect for a desktop wallpaper and I figured that a pathway leading up to a Shrine would be perfect as I would be able to capture some Japanese man made features like statues and shrines etc and then when it comes to pathway’s they capture light perfectly due to tree’s having light shrine through the leaves and branches then reflecting onto the stone path.

Due to my big inspiration and recent passion of 3d world design I really wanted to focus on nailing down a lot of aspects that come into 3d design so I tried out a bit of modelling, lighting, foliage making with animations and texture making as I would say they are the core foundation when it comes to making your 3d environment so I found it essential for me to practice those skills and get a good idea how every one of those topics work so in my future projects I will have good knowledge on how to do everything.

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Video of my scene with music

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Taking pics of my current finished scene

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Wrapping up everything in my project

After a while of tweaking some things around to position all my assets in the right location to get a really nice looking scene and still felt something was off and my biggest concern was my ground textures as they seemed so white and colourless so I decided that I'm going to do what I did for my Tori Gate Shrine and just change the colour a little bit. So I hopped in the material editor and just made my textures A nice dark brown as I think that would be the most natural look.

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How to change the colours of my textures in unreal engine 4

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Animating my grass

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2sx6JPdlmw&t=36s

I wasn't very confident with my animating abilities in blender so I decided to look on YouTube for unreal tutorials that may be able to help me out with making a wind effect for my grass and found this really useful tutorial that had exactly what I needed.

All you have to do for this tutorial is to open up your material for your grass [if you haven't got a material then turn your texture into a material] and then add in a node called “simple grass wind” and then plug the “RGB” into the “AdditionalWPO [V3]”. 

Then hold s and press left click to get a “param” node and then made two of those as we need one for the wind intensity and wind weight.

Now for the wind intense param node I said the default value to 0.05, the Slider min to 0 and the slight max to 0

For the wind weight I set the the default value to 0.015, slider min 0 and the slider max to 0. 

I then applied this and saved and have a nice flowing grass.

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Animating my tree

For my tree I didn't know how I was going to approach the animation but then I decided to see if technique I used for the grass would work for my tree leaves and funny enough it worked perfectly so I followed the exact same steps but I changed some values a little bit.

Wind Intensity Default value = 0.05

Wind Weight = 0.25

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Making normal maps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJqWHsllczY

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Making the lighting for my scene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WucYoO--KY&list=PL4mRaHZim4UTyyckQNrGnsQuc61dSJRwd&index=40

So by using this tutorial that I used for a previous project I thought the lighting worked out really well so I used the same steps which was starting off with getting the light source and rotating it around to get the time of day I want my scene be in so I judge that by where the shadows ago and hove big the shadows are. After setting my scene to the time of day i want I then change the sky colour to a dark orange so I get that nice aesthetic orange sun set scene. I also tweaked the intensity for how bright I wanted the light to be.

Now in the sky sphere I clicked on the refresh material section so that everything updates itself and everything is in the correct place.

After that I moved onto adjusting some features like the sun brightness, cloud speed, cloud opacity and star brightness. 

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Adjusting the level of the ground to give it an uneven bumpy and natural look. Also adding hills.

I needed to fill my level up more and I didn't have any assets that really filled up large areas so I decided to scale up the fair back of my scene into a hill/mountain so that the back of the scene is fully covered and it also helps with the path leading into a unknown location.

For the majority of the ground I didn't want it to be a pure flat floor as that makes it look unnatural and man made so I decided to get the noise tool and just go over my scene using it and being more aggressive with it in certain locations so the overall ground looks nice and natural.

[firstproject2022]

Adding some textures to the ground

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWOlIvq0Etg&list=PLIKUlDx2gWfhLzMONozewtSagf2oohXHe&index=62

Here is my layout for my material for the ground, I just plugged in some some simple nodes to made the floor look a little better and to scale up the texture a bit more so when you look at the ground it doesn't look repetitive.

Now click on your landscape and then on the landscape material click on your new material.

Now click on the landscape mode and then go on the pain section and then add your new material and then click on the + and select non weight blend

Once that's all done you’re free to paint your surface and apply your texture’s to the ground

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Adding textures to some models I have made

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Creating accounts for ArtStation, YouTube and Twitter

On my profile I filled out my summary telling people that I am a games dev and design student giving them the notice that I'm currently learning the overall aspect of game making and I said that I have taking a big interest in level making and 3d design so they should expect 3d work from all types of styles and designs.

In then put I'm up for freelancing as if someone was to come forward and want some 3d models designed or a level helped made then I would be glad to do some freelancer work for money.

And then for my software I use I put unreal engine as that's the game engine I study at college and then I put blender as that's what I'm currently learning right now for my current project.