STREAMPUNK TOWN
Final Year Project
The aim of this project is to create a 3D environment for that can help demonstrate new features and techniques for game asset creation for use in the client’s lectures. The environment that will be created is Victorian era steam punk environment inspired by games such as Dishonoured and Bioshock Infinite.
The features and techniques used in the project are the following:
•PBR Materials
• Assets with dynamic properties (E.g. cloth)
• Good instancing (displaying the same object multiple times)
• Modular Assets
• Implemented Different Light Sources ( via Unreal Engine Blueprints)
• Destructible Object
• Photogrammetry
• PBR Materials Creation
• Decals
PBR Materials
This was one of the most important elements of the project to implement because it was the kickstarted this project. I made sure that all the assets in the environment were PBR by using Substance Painter to texture them. I tried to take full advantage of PBR materials
Assets With Dynamic Properties
To make sure that this feature was being used I choose something that would stand out in the environment, this being a flag. Luckily Unreal Engine has a built-in dynamic cloth feature and will do most of the heavy work to demonstrate this feature.
When creating the flag, I had to make sure that there were lots of vertices so that the flag could bend. After creating the texture, I important into unreal engine from which I added Clothing Data. After all these processes were completed, I had a dynamic moving flag.
Good Instancing
I mentioned previously that every building in the environment in a mixture of assets reused. This is already a good use of instancing however my client wanted a simpler way of demonstrating this, after a discussion with my client we concluded that the scene would have small and high walls that can be reused and easily be demonstrated. When creating these new assets, I made sure that they kept the same aesthetics as the building next to it. You will see below a diagram of showing the different objects.
Modular Assets
It was important for a project like this that I made assets modular, this will allow me to reuse assets and at the same time optimize the project. Modularizing of assets were heavily used with the buildings as it allowed me to make a variety of building with a small collection of assets.
Implemented Different Light Sources
The original way of implementing lights into the scene meant that you’d have to manually change each light source to change the lighting in the scene. My client pushed me into investigating into Unreal engine 4’s Blueprint system that eventually led to easy manipulation of all the lights found in the scene. This meant that you could lower the brightness of all the lights in the scene with one simple in engine slider.
Destructible Object
one of the project original objective that was agree upon before the project started was having an asset in the environment that was destructible. I achieved this objective for the project with a plugin for Unreal Engine 4 called Apex Destruction. This plugin automatically destroys an object into chunks. To make the destructible assets more efficient I used one finish asset of a plank and stuck duplicates together to create a crate. This allowed selected planks to break individually and be more realistic.
Photogrammetry
The client said that creating this statue using photogrammetry would be another great element that he could showcase in his slides. I have already used photogrammetry in the past so I already knew the process to create assets.
After taken picture of a real world statue, I placed the pictures into Meshroom which created a High-poly model, after exporting the High-poly model I created a Low-poly mesh for use in Unreal engine that retain the detail via Normal Maps
PBR Materials Creation
When creating my own PBR Material I would use Substance Designer. You will find a variety of materials I made in Substance Designer running in Unreal Engine 4, These being Cobble Street, Brick and Grass Materials.
Decals
The last addition to the project was the use of decals. Decals allow for the placement of materials on top of already place assets within the environment. This is heavily used in games such as Doom Eternal as it can allow for last minute environment touching up.
My client wanted it as something that can be demonstrated in his lecture slides. I wanted to make it obvious that these decals were in the environment, so I created two custom posters that would be seen in a steampunk environment like this. Decals are natively supported in Unreal Engine 4 so implementing them into my project was surprisingly easy.