Quite a Long Absence

UE4

It has been a bit since I last posted.

I thought I'd revisit this old project and work on that for now. Still chiseling away at the animation and the Island project but we'll see!

Texturing the Railroad Scene.

UE4

Returned from the vacation and back to texturing a few atlases in this environment. Will have a tweaking phase later to adjust everything but for now will lay the texture work in first!

Some Progress

UE4

Finding some time to add more assets into this scene and still have to add elements for the ocean floor and trying my hand at modeling some characters.

After that I was going to apply APEX cloth to various parts of this level and get an idea of how that plugin works. Still much to do but will have to wait till after I get back from my trip next week!

Speedtree

UE4

A screencap to show where I am at currently. I am finding the two hours I get each day during work isn't enough time to progress but it just means I have to be quicker and make less mistakes to achieve the results I desire.

Will still need to model more bits and then refining along with texturing!

Smaller Scale Project

UE4

It has been some time and I have grown accustomed to the work schedule. I think it is time to start on another personal project and this time it will be far smaller than previous ones. This is a test to see how much I have learned and how it could be utilized into this project.

Comparisons

UE4

It took me a bit to convert the assets to Unreal ready but already the difference is substantial. Making preview builds only takes at most 5 minutes, in comparison to Unity's minimum of two hours, and not only that either. The PBR quality between the two engines are vast in the look when it comes to lighting; I could write more on this but so far, at least the current version of Unity, has many limitations that make it difficult to appreciate.

Enlighten Nightmare

Unity5

After so many days wrecking my brain in understanding the Enlighten engine in Unity I am near wit's end on this thing. I had to turn off the terrain I made, set all lighting parameters as low as it could go, even making each section of the environment into system chunks, breaking up large meshes, and other things to see if the baking would speed up.

Alas, it did in a sense: what took five hours went down to two.

Again, this was just a test bake on seeing what things look like but at this point I may take a breather and reconsider just porting this shiz into UE4. I will have to redo the textures as they will not be a clean port but in the grand scheme of this I can say that I wish the Beast engine was still a part of Unity.

The common thread I found online is that the bake times are too time consuming for quite a few users and that does not instill confidence in me on how to get decent lighting in the environment.

Non Non Biyori Progress

Unity5

Finished measuring the interior of this school building along with adjusting the initial atlas and tileable textures to unify the scene. The major thing to work on is the roof and setting up the exterior section of the map, maybe even create tileable glass materials instead of the default ones I set up.

Quick Progress

Unity5

So far the Maya and Unity study is going smoothly, I am finding a rhythm that is working out and making the transition from 3dsmax to Maya less of a head ache than I anticipated.

Classroom Hallway

Unity5

Another fresh start on a new project. This particular one is vastly different in many ways from previous endeavors: for one, I have to use Maya, second, utilize Unity5 and work from there. An ultimate challenge for preparation on the new job next month and immersing my mind into using both programs!

Detail Props

UE4

Finalized the 2nd atlas texture and sprinkled the environment with more detail props. Onto the last batch of assets and tweaking this piece!

Overdue Update

UE4

It has been awhile since I posted an update but still working away at this. Recently was successful in landing a job somewhere, and thus, revitalized me to get this piece done.

Over the weekend I spent rendering over 70 props and started the texture process for all of it today. Once that is in a final stage I will spend more time placing assets around this scene before doing the last bits of texturing and prop making, then and only by that point, will I be nearing completion on this project.

One Atlas Down

UE4

Textured one of the atlases and updated several textures with a dirtier look. Next on the list is to continue populating this scene with assets!

Slow Progress

UE4

Taking more time on this project than I would've in past ones but will continue till I get to a place I feel works out for this thing.

Squatter's Bastion

UE4

Some progress on this, I finally understand how to do 2 way blend materials along with experimentations on parallax mapping!

Back to the Spiral

UE4

Got back from vacation mode the past two weeks and delved right back into this environment. Modeled the majority of the architecture, except one asset, then can move on to dirtying up the piece and making this into a squatter home. The one hiccup was creating details that follow a spiral shape, I had to use Loft and alter the deformations in order to get the results I desired.

This will be the first time I use the spline mesh blueprint to create wiring and cabling; if this works out the sci-fi piece will be a whole mess easier to model than I had previously anticipated.

Last Day Before Vacation

UE4

Today may be the last night I can get some work onto this piece. Replaced all the temporary assets with semi-working ones and made a tileable texture along with other things. During volunteering at the con I will be thinking about this and what else to add into it to get the "squatting" look that I have in mind.

Spiral Dream: A New Project

UE4

This will be a tinier environment than the last few I have made but I still plan to shove quite a bit of life into this piece towards a kind of story that I have going in my head. Sadly, will not be able to touch this for nearly two weeks as I will be on vacation.

Even if I will be away from the computer this baby will be rolling around in my mind!

Texture Updates and Lighting Changes

UE4

Changed the lighting around again and think it is getting closer to what I am wishing for it to be. I got around to texturing the large atlas for several assets and continuing to get them fleshed out. Only a handful of other tasks to do before I post another update on facebook.

UE4 4.8

UE4

I upgraded the project to 4.8 but sadly it crashes on occasion when I import or auto import changes to meshes so this may be a bit slower going till I figure out what the hell is causing that. I ended up turning of fDFAO, as even though it was a bit optimized, is too much for this scene.