Environment Development
This week, it was brought to our attention that we couldn't light up our scenes without having the larger portions of them textured. My focus this week was a start to the texturing of the environment and to use some new techniques across the environment too. Below are quick glances of how the environment looks with these new textures added to larger meshes. I'll go more in-depth after these Gifs, briefly discussing methods I used.
I'll start of by addressing some improved aspects of the environment, primarily the addition of colour and a breakup of proceduralism. So far, it’s a vast improvement from the typical grayscale tiling it was before and the layout of the chairs is better, they aren't as crowded together and spaced out correctly. However, the material doesn't look too detailed and quite flat. The material for the floor also contradicts the colours of the seats, with the seats lacking a similar level of saturation. Attention to the floor’s material is required, to help define the edges of the chairs better and the chairs should be brightened up to match the surrounding environment.
Something else I did was implement the use of the Trim sheets I made before, to help create a sense of reoccurrence of design across the environment. I planned to use it on the balconies from the beginning, but after applying them to the environment I feel that I could use them on a trim board that goes around the theatre.
For now, the environment can now be used to create good lighting ideas on how it will be lit by end. However, I came across some issues I need to sort out by the time this project ends, and I plan to address them in this coming week.
The first issue I came across was the scale of the brickwork across the different walls. To fix this I’ll either make the walls all one object or fix the scale of one wall to match the others.
In substance painter the materials looked less glossy, but when I imported them into unreal their surfaces were very smooth, and the sky light made bright glares from their surfaces. This was more jarring on the red plastic flooring as the steps beside it were more matte in appearance and the wooden material was less glossy in substance designer. These issues may have arrived from not utilising the light tool when making either material, or from the roughness values being left too high for either material.
Moving on from the environments design, I tried to make a new prop for the environment and experiment with making a beauty render of props I made earlier. To stick with the idea that the theatre was abandoned during a concert I wanted to make a prop related to stage management, which led me to making this Sack Truck. It was my first time trying to make a tire too, the angular edges make it obvious when you look closer but from a distance it looks alright. the paint on the steel and the areas of rust make it look more authentic and worn down. I feel that its colour fits in with the values and appearances of the other tool props. The obvious improvement for this prop is the smoothness of the tires and fixing the threads to be more appropriate to the size of the object.
