This week I've been finishing off the cinematic, and adding very final touches to the scene before rendering it out. I fixed a few issues around the scene, including clipping button components and shadows popping in and out, as well as collision for the main hull. I also added some polaroids in the scene to make it feel a little more personalised. Despite these small things, there really wasn't that much to do.
As explained in my blog post (in more detail) about producing the cinematic, I animated the cameras and synchronised them to the rhythm of the music. I then exported the final cinematic into a .avi file and added it to a video sequence in Blender. I then added titles and rendered out the whole cinematic into an image sequence, and finally re-rendering the whole cinematic and audio together into a .mp4 file with perceptually lossless video quality. On the 14th, I uploaded the final cinematic to YouTube. After that I tidied up some of the file organisation and prepared the folders ready for hand-in; and finally on Friday I handed it in. Alongside my project, I wrote up a technical report explaining in detail the advanced technical elements of my project and how I achieved them - which can be found here.
This is the finished cinematic on YouTube:
Here are some stills from UE4:
These last 20 weeks have been very interesting indeed, with high and low times. Ultimately, this has been a huge learning experience that has allowed me to develop my skills as an artist and also as a human. Especially on a physical level, it has helped me control my stress and anxiety which I often find overwhelming in projects like these; and has taught me to realise that everything will be okay if I just have the confidence in myself and breathe. Furthermore, I feel as if this has helped me approach problem solving differently as I now know not to panic as soon as I run into a seemingly impossible problem. An instance of this was when I had issues with creating the parallax occlusion mapping (POM) decals when I just couldn't picture how to feed the values into each other. By stepping back and looking at each component individually, I could find a way to link them altogether.
I felt this has also greatly improved my skills as an artist as I think about the modelling and texturing process with a more analytical mind. I feel like I can look at a piece of reference now and know exactly how to go about modelling and unwrapping it, whereas before I was still unsure as to how to go about it. Doing this project has also increased my knowledge of the software I am using, especially when it comes to the features of UE4 and Substance Painter. I guess this all just because of repetition, but I feel like I could start a new project on a totally different subject matter, and be confident in knowing which techniques to use.
While I feel I have gained a ton of experience from this project, I also feel as if there are aspects which I could improve on. Something that I found difficult in this project was keeping a consistent file structure, as I messed it up halfway when working and merging files between my home PC and the one in the labs. I soon found myself saving files in the wrong folders and for some assets it became an issue when using baked maps in Substance Designer. Nevertheless, it got better towards the end and I know that is something I need to work on.
Another aspect I feel I could've improved on a bit was planning the scene as a whole. When I started to produce the level, I didn't have a very specific plan as to what assets I would be creating and what materials they would be; as I found it to be quite overwhelming to think about. This got better as the project went on and my vision for the level became more refined. For example, I knew I would have a computer system in my cockpit, I just had no idea what to base it on and what it would look like exactly. I've realised this is a big source of my anxiety - being overwhelmed by the details of an object and not knowing which to approach first. Nevertheless, this got a bit better as the project went on, but I do know this is something I can still improve on with practice.
Well there it is. 20 weeks later and a ton of coffee consumed - the project is finally over...
It's been really fun and interesting to create and I hope that is shown in my final cinematic. I'll probably revisit this project at some point and add to it, or even expand it; but for now I think I'll start creating something entirely different.
And that's all I have to say about that...
Comments