Final Presentation

With the project fully complete and built ready to present it was a good time to look back and reflect on it as a whole.

At the beginning it we had a promising start with some great ideas being produced and we were very well organised as a team putting a quick base idea down on to paper and expanding on that. I think if we had kept that kind of motivation throughout the whole duration of the project then we could of produced an even better level in the end.

I think overall the final piece of work is good but good be improved to make it a great level. Even though the presentations are a nerve racking experience presenting in front of everyone i feel they are worth while. These deadlines inspire me to keep my work motivation in order to show off my best bits to everyone else. It also helps looking at everyone else's to see how their level compares to ours.

After getting the feedback from our alpha we as a team made a massive push and increased our work drive loads to produce our final level and if we had only worked like that throughout then we could of had an amazing level.

This was a great learning experience for me in many technical aspects as i had so many problems with rigging but from those problems i found solutions as well, with better ways to work. This project has defiantly helped me to realize how hard it is sometimes to work in a team with people being at different levels of skills and being able to communicate well and utilize those unique skills of everyone is the key to a good team.

The finally presentation went well in my opinion and we tried to show our level off as best as we could to everyone else.

Final Volcano Texture

After creating the texture for the volcano section of the terrain I uploaded it to my groups forum page and get everyone's feedback after updating it all. The main point was to increase the amount of lava that is shown on the front of the volcano. Also I tried to link the terrain with the other parts of the environment by using some of the same textures that Rob used for the valley. This is the final texture for the volcano environment.

Volcano Final Image

Final Boss Textures

With the feedback from Andy G and my team, I went with putting the lava texture on the head of the boss as well. The majority of people preferred this to the original Easter Island stone texture. With the rest of the boss textures complete, this is the final boss design.

Final Boss Image

Volcano Texture

With my involvement with the boss and it's development, i was given the task of texturing the volcano so that it would all fit together and nothing would look out of place. Looking at the rest of the terrain i tried to keep to that style to make it all fit together. I built up my textures and painted in the details i wanted after creating the AO bake for that section to highlight areas of the terrain.

 After completing most of the texture for this, i was told that this part of the terrain mesh needed to be changed as you could see outside of the map when fighting the boss. This was a bit annoying as i thought that this would of been sorted within block out stage. To make sure that all the major map parts were to the correct scale. After changing the mesh to sort this problem it meant that the UVs weren't correct and the texture was stretched in places.

I just had to adapted and proceed through the problem and do the best i could in the situation. I went back in to the UVs and tried to make them less stretched. After that i applied another AO bake to the new terrain and fitted the texture to the new UV layout. There is a little bit of stretching in places but not that noticeable and i was happy with this stage of the texture of the volcano.

Volcano Texture

I got some feedback from my team and my lecturer and added some more detail to the texture to create this:

Volcano texture update

I increased the texture size of the lava within the volcano to give the impression of size and also added a bit of colour variation to it. I also painted a bit of lava on the front of the volcano. I asked for some further feedback from my team members and they liked the improvements but just want a bit more lava painting on the front where it is now to make it more visible, which is my next task.

Crate Textures

Another couple of assets i was tasked with texturing was the alien crates which would be placed around the level. There were four different designs which were chosen to be used in the level so after adapting the UVs to my style again i quickly created an AO bake to highlight some of the areas of the models and built up a similar texture for each crate.

For this i just simply googled sci-fi crates to give me some inspiration and direction as what kind of texture style i was going for. I also referred back to earlier drawn designs done within the team.

Crate Design 1

Crate Design 2

Crate Design 3

Crate Design 4

All of these models are on the same texture sheet and they have a diffuse, specular and an emissive for the blue energy glow around parts of the crates. The logo or tag on the crates was just a simple design i made within Photoshop with a dirt alpha over the top of it to create the effect that it's been worn down with use.

Easter Island Head Texture

After alpha presentations the team leader of our group went round to see what was left to do and produced a simple gant chart with every task that needed to be completed. I was tasked with a few extra bits of texturing other peoples models. One of those models was the Easter Island heads. This was quite easy to do as i had already done this style of texture on my boss head. The only problem i had was that every body models and UVs in different ways to suit them so i had to adapt and change a couple of things on the models UVs to suit my style of working but is something i have to learn to be able to do if i'm going to be able to work in a team.

Easter Island Head Texture

Boss Full Texture

With the rest of the body of the boss fully textured and to a standard i was happy with i carried on and started texturing the head of the boss. In the original plan our team had we had the Easter Island heads as the alien technology which had been placed there thousands of years ago. With this in mind i based the texture from the Easter Island reference i had and the sandy stone texture they look to have.

 Boss Texture

This was the final outcome of the boss with this texture i had created for it.