Missing Projects (Catch Up Part Two) Blitz Environment Project

I'll take this opportunity to show you the work I produced for project two of the Game Production segment of the Game Art course. The second project of my second year for Game Production was another project from Blitz Games studios and based on a live art test they set for prospective employees. It was another good opportunity to gain experience of actual projects set by real game studios.

We were provided with two building frontages in the Blitz folder, the task was to create a third building to sit between the two provided befitting the age, style and location of the current buildings. We were given some examples of styles but obviously I wanted to do some concepting before hand to explore various possible outcomes.

I initially brainstormed some ideas for various building types, I then chose six of my favourites and began to gather as much possible visual reference, mainly from the internet to support my concepts.

My final concepts are below;

My initial thoughts were that I wanted my model to be unique and, although having to befit the provided two buildings, I wanted mine to also make an impression, I didn't want it to completely blend with the other buildings, I also wanted my building to be a focal point inside the scene.

Initially I decided to model the strip building, I thought it would be something different and it would be a good idea to do a day time scene and a night time scene in which I could illuminate the neon lighted signs as well as learn how to create neon signs once imported into UDK. After some thought I couldn’t see any reason why I couldn’t merge two of my building concepts into one model, and as I also quite liked the idea of the billboard building, I didn’t want to do it on its own as the rest of the building looked quite plain so I decided to model the strip club with a billboard on top of it.

To begin modelling I used elements from the provided Blitz models in order to give myself a foundation to begin working from. I took the Blitz models right down to their most basic forms and then began modelling on top of them. The odd thing about this project is that no definite tri limit (or texture limit) was set but a rough guideline was given by suggesting to use the provided Blitz models as reference for tri limit. The Blitz buildings were around 5000 tri’s each so I decided to try and stay around this count with my own model. I also decided to stick as closely as possible to my concepts whilst modelling so that I could finish the model with the desired look.

At the beginning of the project I was very satisfied with the outcome of my concepts and felt like the project was going to go well but now I’m at the end I feel because a lot of work has been done in just a short amount of time the work hasn't been to the best of my ability and lacking in most areas for the sake of just getting it done in the time frame.

The biggest positive for me in this project has been learning how to use and implement NDO2 within my work. It seems to be a very powerful piece of software and with further use I believe it is going to complement my work greatly in the future.

I am not completely satisfied with the final model for my building. I think it looks interesting from top to bottom but I do also feel that some areas are lacking quite a bit, particularly the middle section were there is just a row of windows which looks quite boring and breaks the detail between the sign and billboard at the top and the entrance and signs at the bottom. I also feel that some extra detail could of potentially been added at the bottom of the model.

I am also not completely happy with the outcome of the renders, one reason is that I was a little unsure how exactly to set up the camera to properly demonstrate the environment scene. The other issue I had was with the outcome of the night-time scene as I would of liked more time in which to research and set up lighting, in particular the glowing neon signs for the night renders.