2D: Week 014 Assignment (Concept Round 04 (Final Color))

This week the team focused on our color pass of the character thumbnails and the environment thumbnails.

For extra assignments this week the team created assets, updated old assets, updated the layouts of the style guides, continued working on the water shader, and researched sky dome creation.

My Work:

Team Task List:

Because of the success of the task list last week, I decided to continue making written documentation for the team to follow. This week I decided to announce a hard deadline for the team to make sure assets were turned in to the game efficiently. Everyone has access to this list and can check what they are doing, as well as what is being handled by another teammate. In this task list I included detailed goals of each task, what was noted during critique, and what I wanted by the end of the week. I also included set deadlines for each of the tasks, with priority tasks in mind.

Character Thumbnails:

This week I did a color pass on one of the scarecrow thumbnails, using the initial color palette we researched at the beginning of the project. 

Layout Tweak:

This week I got rid of the black bar separating the font from the page and added a drop shadow to pop out the title.

Water and Waterfall Shader:

For this week I continued iterating on the water shader. I created a waterfall texture as well. The, I added the water and the waterfall to the ground material, making lerps and vertex color nodes so the level designer may simply paint on the tetxure of the water and waterfall where they wished.

Anthony's Work:

For this week I had Anthony focus solely on creating the color pass for the environment thumbnails.

Michael's Work:

For this week Michael did a three color passes on the soldier scarecrow. He also concepted a gun for this scarecrow and updated the barn model with more shingle detail.

Matt's Work:

This week Matt focused on creating set dressing.

Ryan's Work:

This week Ryan exported his bucket model from his well and worked on animations.

Doug's Work:

For this week Doug added the corn field to the environment. He also reviewed some assets and optimized them. He also applied the wind material to the corn field.

For this week Doug updated the Windmill, adding the small details to the mesh such as windows, bricks, wood panels and a door.

2D: Week 013 Assignment (Concept Round 03 (Value Pass 02))

This week the team focused on our 2nd value pass of thumbnails, creating three strong character thumbnails and three strong environment thumbnails.

For extra assignments this week the team created assets, updated old assets, updated the layouts of the style guides, researched water shaders, and researched interactable objects.

My Work:

Team Task List:

This week I decided to create a task list for everyone, including myself. Everyone has access to this list and can check what they are doing, as well as what is being handled by another teammate. In this task list I included detailed goals of each task, what was noted during critique, and what I wanted by the end of the week. I also included set deadlines for each of the tasks, with priority tasks in mind.

Character Thumbnails:

This week I updated one of the character thumbnails, adding a new design to the pants, a different pose, hay sticking out of his clothes/body, as well as a different bird in his hat. I also updated the bird thumbnails I created, making the thin bird even more scrawny and adding a swirl to the eye. For the fluffy bird I took away the eye swirl and updated the values.

New Layout and Updated Pages:

For this week I took the critiques given to me about the layout and updated it accordingly. I also corrected a few of the pages based off of previous critique and re-printed them.

Water Shader Research: 

For this week I investigated how to make the water, keeping in mind the style and the fps of VR. I'll be adding more to this in the future, but for now this material works by using two texture nodes and two normals, both with different planar values with tiling.

Set Dressing:

For this week I assisted with set dressing, adding foliage to empty areas, cleaning up some of the wheat along the fences, adding in assets such as hay, barrels, and a wagon, and adding in the place holder lake.

Anthony's Work:

Environment Thumbnails:

This week I assigned Anthony the 3 Environment Thumbnails. Here he is pushing the idea of the environment and its final look.

Models/Textures:

This week I assigned Anthony the barrel model, as well as an update to hay. Here he decided to use transparency on planes to suggest hay straws.

Michael's Work:

Character Thumbnails: 

For this week I assigned Michael two Character thumbnails and one Crow thumbnail. In this design he is pushing the idea of the war that took place in Oz, which involved a scarecrow army. He also concepted how squadrons of scarecrows would have look with the Maya Toon Shader.

3D Model:

This week I assigned Michael the shingle detail of the barn. He has different heights to the roof so we can make an interesting layering shingled roof. He has a Maya Toon Shader on it here.

Matt's Work:

For this week I assigned Matt to update the scarecrow model. He began in Maya, then took it into zbrush, and is beginning the process of retopo. 

Ryan's Work:

3D Model:

For this week I assigned Ryan to finish his well, keeping in mind future interactions the player may have with the asset.

Animation:

For this week I assigned Ryan to take Michael's rough animation of the scarecrow, clean it up, and add the bird reacting to the scarecrow and going to fetch his arm

Doug's Work:

Interactables Research:

For this assignment I told Doug to research interactable objects and the unique ways they can be used, besides just picking up objects. We decided that we would build upon what Kay researched about interactable objects to have the player be able to drag the wagon in VR. This research is still in development. The end goal is for the player to be able to lift the handle of the wagon and drag it.

3D Model:

This week I assigned Doug the task of taking Anthony's windmill and warping it to more of a Tim Burton aesthetic and making it taller. 

Rigging:

Using the proxy bird model we have, Doug created a bird rig and painted its weights. 

2D: Week 012 Assignment (Concept Round 02 (Value Pass 01))

The team focused on creating stronger thumbnails of the characters and the environments based on the thumbnails that were created last week. We also updated models and integrated VR elements based on critique.

My Work:

Character Team:

Me, Matt, Michael

Environment Team:

Me, Anthony, Michael

Ryan:

Doug:

Doug's Blog: "For this week: I looked into how to simulate wind for the wheat field in UE4. To my surprise there is a built in material node that manipulates the vertices of mesh its applied to. Based on tutorials I referred to develop this material, black and white textures were used as an alpha to control which vertices were effected. No matter what the values of texture, some vertices were to seemingly impossible to control. After speaking to Chris Roda he simplified and improved the control of the effected vertices by using linear gradient node, which creates a black and white gradient based on the U or V direction.The material's node structure and gif of wind simulation in action. Fortunately this simulation does not cause performance issues. The FPS of the game barely drops. While there are a lot of wheat geometry, this may be a benefit of the 3 tiers of LODs."

Doug's Blog: "I also started developing an extension of the motion controller pawn that takes advantage of XYZ values generated when teleporting. Based on the combined level of the 4 environments, the Y axis is the direction where the player progresses across the VR experience. I determined this by printing the XYZ values to the screen after each teleportation. The Y value was the one to increase linearly and positively as progress is made. After this was determined, I developed a branch system to determine if the player is progressing through the world and this would data would control the rotation of the directional light that serves as the sun. This implementation would control the progression of the dusk to night but the directional light would only rotate if the player is moving towards the next environment and not if they decide to go backwards to explore further."