Common Art - Final Summer Sprint Delivery

It's here at long last - the finished Metroid VR experience!  For the last sprint, I fixed the texture seam on the arm cannon, tweaked the metallic value of it after checking how it looked in the headset, and created a secondary UV set so that Ismael could set up a glow material to make the end of the gun more emissive.  For that, I laid out the UVs so the arm cannon was basically cut and flattened in the same order as the physical object, right to left.  I also made sure the textures on the player's other hand were connected properly, and then modeled and textured a new item - a spike that comes out of the EMMI's face plates if it kills the player.

https://youtube.com/shorts/8I4ZllhjZ8E link to final VR test - checking out the player's hand and arm cannon in the headset

Common Art - Summer Sprint 5 Delivery

This was the last 'full' sprint for the Metroid VR experience.  I finalized the model for the player's regular hand and textured both that and the arm cannon.  I made sure to look at them in VR and make some adjustments based on the lighting in the project and how they appear currently.  They aren't hooked up to the player's hand controllers yet.  Any remaining work I do on this project will likely be minor tweaks to these models and textures based on feedback and further testing from the team.

Common Art - Summer Sprint 4 Delivery

This sprint, I was working on a final pass of Samus/the player's arm cannon.  Up until now, we had used the proxy model in the game, which was lacking a lot of medium and small-level details and even some larger shapes.  Since this project is for VR, I tried to optimize the poly count, even though this is a pretty round item.  I spent a fair amount of time researching to find images of all angles of this cannon and how it functions in-game.  I completed the high-res, game-res, UVs, and bake since the last update.  The current texture you see is not final, and I will be working on that next sprint, as well as a final texture for the player's other hand.

Common Art - Summer Sprint 3 Delivery

In the past couple of weeks, the 3D modelers have been continuing to work on retexturing all the assets in the experience using the new texturing pipeline.  I worked on the factory ceiling panels that are seen outside the window [had to re-do a couple of things, because the curvature map created seams at the ends of the panels].  I spent the rest of my time working on revamping the player's arm cannon, since the current model in the game is still technically the proxy [there was a lot of medium-level detail missing in the geometry].  I will be making a final texture for that and the player's other hand next.

Common Art - Summer Sprint 2 Delivery

Last sprint, we experimented with the new workflow to create homogenous textures for metal objects and environment pieces in our Metroid VR experience.  This sprint, we added some features to the master material [namely a slot for an ID map with 3 colors that we are using to create metal color variations on larger pieces] and actually used the full workflow to start retexturing assets.  I did this for the thermal wall, water pipe variations, thermal pipe variations, power cable, and ammo cable.  For the thermal wall, I also made some revisions to the UVs and model since there were a few display issues with the old version.  

Common Art - Summer Sprint 1 Delivery

This sprint, Cameron and I have been working on creating two (and eventually more) seamless materials in Substance Designer with the intent of using alphas exported from Substance Painter for edge wear, and blending the two materials in Unreal Engine.  This will help unify the materials and make the texturing process a bit quicker.

This was my first time working in Substance Designer, so it was a bit of a learning curve, but I created a basic damaged metal material and exported that.  Next, I took one of the meshes from our project into Substance Painter after checking that the UVs were okay, and made a basic black and white material we will use as an alpha that basically just highlights the edges with a curvature generator.  Cameron plugged this alpha into the blended material he created with his smooth metal and my rough metal in UE, and we went back and forth a few times with different settings for the alpha in Substance Painter to see what will work the best.  I still need to update the damaged metal material to make it more dramatic based on the results we saw, but the process is well on its way.

Here's the first pass of this material blend on an item in-engine.

You can see the black and white alpha I made here in the 'edge texture' parameter within the material Cameron created.  The white parts display the damaged metal, and black represents smooth metal.

Common Art - VR Sprint 7

This sprint, I textured the damaged and undamaged debris and the destructible blocks, and re-did the materials from last sprint (thermal wall, floor, thermal pipe, water pipe, power cable, and ammo cable).  I also re-did UVs and fixed some mesh issues, most notably in the thermal wall and debris models.  Of course, I also created material instances in-engine for everything and re-imported all models and textures that had been changed.

The lighting is still a bit dark in the level, so I included screenshots from the UE preview window to show that the materials are in-engine but also demonstrate their 'true' intended color until we decide how we want the final level to look.

Common Art - VR Sprint 6

This sprint I created proxy textures for the floor, thermal wall, water pipes, thermal pipes, ammo cable, power cable, player's hand, and arm cannon, and created all these materials in-engine.  I also re-UVd the pipes so there wouldn't be any weird seams.

Common Art - VR Sprint 5

This sprint, I mainly worked on updating the player's right hand (the arm cannon model).  Previously, it wasn't properly combined, there were gaps in the geometry, and it lacked a lot of detail on the top and bottom especially.  It still needs a little modeling work before the final game-res is complete, and the texture needs to be made as well.

UE Forum post link: https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/fiea-vr-project-metroid-dread/505202

Common Art - VR Sprint 4

This sprint, I mainly focused on the model for the player's left hand, since it's the only asset in the game we had not created at this point.  I started out making a new model that was just based on the VR mannequin hand, then tried just replacing the palm section, then realized I could just edit the mannequin model since it is pretty similar to Samus's.  I made UVs and a basic texture based on Samus's Gravity Suit, which is the version of her we are portraying.  It was hard to find good references, since there are several designs of Samus, and even more concept art, so I was working off blurry screenshots from the game for this particular design...

Common Art - VR Sprint 3

Since the focus for this sprint was VFX and sound, I made a 2D first pass of VFX sprites to replace the proxy VFX in the VR experience.  I also added some more detail to one of the walls and am working on updating the player's hand model.

Common Art - VR Sprint 2

This week, I updated the models for the floor, the wall with the grates in it, the destructible blocks the player will shoot, and the water pipes.  I also took every asset and did basic UV mapping so the lighting and rendering would look better in the scene, and to prepare for basic textures.  I will keep working on the wall next week to add more details and make it look more like it belongs in Metroid.

Common Art - VR Assignment Sprint 1

This was my first sprint with my new team, so I spent some time getting myself up to speed and reviewing the existing materials the team made last semester (and watching gameplay to learn more about the experience we are creating).  I found references, and am currently working on updating the model for Samus's (the player's) arm cannon and creating a model for other hand, and will be sculpting and texturing these next.  The only issue I've been having is that the expected hours on this project aren't enough to do much, when it comes to modeling, so I've been struggling to find time to set aside for this class.

Common Art Week 15 - Final Delivery

Over the past couple of weeks, Team 4 has been working hard to polish the proxy edition of the VR Mad Tea Party experience.  Se had our usual meetings before Thanksgiving break and decided on our goals for this final delivery of the experience.  I made some final proxy assets (a grandfather clock, 3 variations of signs for the forest, a paint bucket and paintbrush, party banner, log, and the Mad Hatter's severed ear, eye, and finger.)  I also fixed a couple of the textures from last week by creating better UVs and added more divisions/smoothing to some of the rougher proxies.  We made some big decisions this past week as well, including changing our art style and completely re-making our presentation PowerPoint again!

Common Art Week 13 - White Boxing Complete

This week, my team worked on finishing up proxies and creating more concept art.  I made proxy models for the Mad Hatter, Dormouse, Cheshire Cat, and Singing Flowers, as well as ten basic food proxies and some other set-dressing items.  Some of the character concept art is not complete yet, so the character proxies may still be updated.  After placing them all in our game scene, I made some simple materials for everything.  I also edited the looping background music for the level (we might be replacing it with custom music I record later on).  Despite two of our four members being sick this week, we still accomplished everything we set out to do, which I'm very happy about!

Common Art Week 12 - Custom Art Style Guide and Proxy Development

Our team finally met with Chris this week, so we were able to really flesh out our concepts, characters, and proposed mechanics.  As usual, we also had a team meeting to talk about the week's goals and divide up work.  I made a Jira project so that we can start organizing our tasks in the future (and getting used to Jira before Capstone).  The main thing I did this week was proxy modeling most of the items in our Mad Tea Party scene.  I also put a lot of work into the presentation this week to further unify the look and feel, and with everyone's help we are starting to add custom art to help in that regard.  I'm including the slides here that I was solely responsible for, but I wrote the text for many other slides, including all the character slides.

Common Art Week 11 - Art Style Discovery

This week, the team focused on finding images that represent the look and feel we want for our VR game (working title, Mad Tea Party).  We used Photoshop filters and effects to try and unify the presentation, as well as researching different fonts and creating a custom slide background for the presentation.  This week, finding the images for the slides was more collaborative, but we were each responsible for the final pass of the same slides as last time.

I organized and led the meeting, and mostly worked on character design ideas this round, adding a few images to Mood and Inspiration as well.  I think the biggest challenge was trying to make the images look unified but not too similar in color or monochrome.

Character concepts: characters resembling roles, unsettling eyes

Alice (the player): seems innocent but can be unpredictable

Hatter: very patchwork appearance with clothes and skin, heterochromia

March Hare: scruffy fur and cybernetic eyes, shifty

Dormouse: dangerous aura and empty eyes (missing an eye)

Cheshire: taxidermy-like appearance, mouth can open very wide, blacklight glow

Flowers: disturbing shapes and human faces wreathed in petals

Common Art Week 10 - Art Style Guides

This week, my team worked on analyzing the art style of Little Nightmares, which will be the main inspiration for our VR experience.  We met to discuss the division of the slides with a focus on which topics played to each person's strengths and art specialization.  We made the decision to each be individually responsible for 2-3 slides and then all add images to the Mood and Inspiration slides.  I made the base presentation template and created the slides for Characters and Iconography, making contributions to Mood and Inspiration as well.

note: the slides are almost the same color as the blog background, so the outlines on the slides make the edges look a bit strange; click on the images to see them properly