Pirate Ship Project- Week 1

Week 1

After the first day I started to model modular pieces that would make up the majority of the scene.

My focus was creating assets that can be re-used and fill up the space to make it seem crowded,

I'm also limiting the playable area with boxes and netting, so although the player can see the

environment, they can't explore every nook and cranny. 

There are a few things that I did to hide some blemishes, I created pillars that hide where the walls

meet. The reason for this is because the shape of the ship's walls bulges in and out, which makes

it difficult to create modular pieces to fit perfectly together, and I didn't want to make the walls

of the ship one large model. The solution was to hide where the walls meet with pillars, to keep

the immersion of the scene.

I also started to think about the small section of this environment that would be my narrative scene,

and set up a camera to get a feel for what I could do. As I only want to showcase a small slice of everything I think having the camera's facing towards a window allows me to focus on a small point.

After modelling the walls, floor and ceiling. I thought the first thing I would make props wise would be a cannon. This model would take up a large area of the scene and would also be repeated, it also got me into the pirate mood.

For this environment I have a 50k tri-budget and 2x2048 texture maps (includes diffuse, normals, and packed maps). I can see from this that I have a lot more freedom with modeling than I do textures, which is why I decided to make a lot of my assets mid-poly. This process needs chamfered edges and weighted vertex normals. With this I can apply tiling textures to the models and still have nice crisp edges. Additionally I'm going to try something I haven't done before, having edge damage as a trim sheet. This will need planes floating above the chamfered edges and unwrapped to the trim sheet. 

You can find more information about it from here. 

I have never attempted this before, so I'm unsure of whether this trim can be a normal material or has to be a decal. If its the latter then it would most likely slow down the FPS however it would depend on numerous factors.

There is another method that I'm aware of, Sunset Overdrive's Ultimate Trim. This method requires the trim/ tiling texture to have beveled edges in the normals. The model is then unwrapped to these beveled edges in the texture sheet. The positives is that the models can be low poly and have fake normals on edges, no need to add extra any extra geometry. There are some drawbacks to this method such as making cuts or seams in the UV's to make sure it lines up to the texture. The reason for why I'm not doing this approach is because I want my edge damage and my normal material to be separate, and allowing for much more freedom and re-usability of the textures. However I may try this method in a future project. 

As I have 2x2048 textures, I must break it up into smaller texture sheets so that I have a variety of materials in my environment. My thought process for this is that anything that needs to be large or takes up a lot of space would be a 1024 texture, such as the walls and floor of the ship. Assets that need to be baked such as the Hammock and Bag will have their own texture sheet. Textures such as metal and rope can be small 512 textures as they would tile much more. And the Treasure Map will have a unique 512 because it would be a small asset. 

There is one last 1024 texture that I may use for a generic wood material or broken down into four 512 textures for metal variations or more decals.

At the end of the first week I was able to get a lot of my props to mid-poly and placed within UE4, and after looking at my scene I was able to get a better idea of what the narrative could be. 

As I'm doing the gun deck of a ship I thought it would be interesting to focus on one of the crewmen, who he would be or his goals. I thought that this gunman wanted to desert the group to make his riches and leave his pirating behind. Then I figured out why, he stole some of the loot that was recently acquired by the pirates. And lastly was when would he make his escape? When could he leave without alerting anyone? That would be either night or early morning when everyone is still asleep. 

After figuring out the broad strokes of the story I could focus on the small parts that would be evidence or clues to this. Whatever he stole must be worth a lot to betray the crew, so it had to be either an expensive item or something that led to more expensive items. This can easily be a Treasure Map. If he was going to flee he would need food and tools for the journey, that can be a Bag holding the provisions. And finally how can he escape without alerting everyone? Through one of the cannon windows, a rope would lead out of the window to the sea where a row boat would be. 

From that I can make a narrative with three items, a Treasure Map, a Bag and some Rope.

From these screenshots you may notice that there is a clear lack of ropes, the reason is because I am going to make the ropes using procedural splines within UE4. I'm creating ropes this way because it would put a large dent in my tri-budget if I were to model them, and secondly I would have to guess where the place these splines blindly. Doing it in UE4 allows me to accurately place the splines within the scene. 

Also the ocean and sky you see outside the window is a HDRI image that is free and sourced from here.