Evaluation

Evaluation

Throughout this module I have learned to successfully create my own 3 dimensional game environment that coincided with our module criteria. We had to choose from 3 subjects; Sci-Fi, this consisted of creating an environment to do with UFO’s, aliens and other foreign bodies. The fantasy concept consisted of making a game level based on myths or folk tales such as Rapunzle, Snow White and Goldie Locks. The final subject was to recreate a replica of Kirkstall Abbey using all correct measurements and detail.

I knew instantly that I wanted to do the Fairy tale environment so set out mind mapping what kinds of things could be incorporated into the game.  Immediately I thought of myths involving ancient dragons and shrines. I began making mood boards of different valleys and caves to build the shrine that I had in my mind, I also looked at dragons and statues in the hopes of modelling some stone dragons to stand either side of the shrine.

After some planning and further thought into the environment I decided against modelling dragon statues and made my own race of mythical creatures that might be seen in games such as Skyrim which them in their own right are set in fairy tale esc settings.  The creatures I designed were called the Vrana, Croatian for “crow”, in the initial concepts of them they were fairly rounded wearing long black robes and white wings.  I modelled these creatures easy enough and placed it into my environment but after we had the BETA test crit I had realised that my environment didn’t have nearly enough assets in it and the majority was created in Unity alone, only the bird models and a cave were made through Maya and neither were particularly challenging. Immediately after I decided to revamp my entire environment, changing the layout and look entirely.

The first major change I did was to make my game level from both interior to exterior to just interior. I made mood boards of various caves and textures of moss, bark and rock to get the optimum look for my environment.  The next hurdle for me was creating a more realistic looking crow statue, my previous model of the statue was an assortment of standard polygons that lacked any real challenge to model, I restarted by posing the human model in Mudbox and importing it into Maya, once imported I had the task of making the robes for it to wear, this was one of the most challenging things I have done in Maya as it was hard trying to fit each shape to the body of the model without it looking too fat whilst keeping the poly count as small as I could.

Along with the bird model and cave I also made the shrine floor and bridges to link one end of the shrine to the other. Making the bridges was fun as its not often I use deformers in Maya and it gave me good practice on how to better myself at using them. Making more assets for my level made me very proud of myself as I really felt that I had improved in my Maya skills and overall 3D modelling abilities.

Although the creation of my redone environment was done in what little time was left I think I worked to the best of my abilities.  I have thoroughly enjoyed this module, probably more than I have the other modules I have done so far this year, Unity was simple to understand and fun to learn about, I also learned how to do some minor programming which I used in my environment for when the character walks through water. This tied into sound engineering also that I enjoyed as it really gave my environment some extra life.

In the future I will definitely be trying to make some more of my own environments to further myself in this area of game design and look forward to the next opportunity to work with Unity and Maya as one.

Things to be improved:

- UV maping, I am still not completely comfortable with UV mapping and tend to stick to tile texturing which I need to stop doing as much, however I have been practicing at home and I am improving.

- Time management.