Week 15: Benchmark

So this week we started refining the level further and one key thing that stood out was the introduction of a benchmark area. This was suggested by Emma and it involves making a portion of our level to roughly finished standard so that the quality of the environment could be compared to this section later on down the line. This would also help our moral in the project.

So as you can see we've cut out the village area completely and moved it further out of view, with the benchmark area being the starting point of our level, the level has shrunk further but that just means we can pool our efforts into making and populating a small area to a higher standard than if we were to make a large sprawling environment that would spread our efforts thinly.

I made a start in making wooden planks that would be able to be used around the level to make various structures and to populate the level like that would be seen in tomb raider, Having not used Zbrush in a while, getting used to it's controls and learning the best ways to achieve the desired sculpt took me a while and I think further down along this project the sculpting of statues and temple assets will further test my skills.

Following on from sculpting, I've had some trouble with baking Normal maps for my planks, however Mark was kind enough to help me on it. I suspect it might be an error I overlooked but I'm confident that my process in baking is correct.

I also made a start in making straw thatch for the Rickety shack in our bench mark area but I'm having trouble in making a convincing silhouette of the straw alphas. Mark suggested i go down the route of his grass planes and bake a thatch alpha sheet for the edges.

I don't think this produced the right result I'm looking for. I tried to research some examples of thatch roof in games but they are often in the style of European wheat Straw thatch, however the traditional thatch roofs in Indonesia are made of long flat and rather wide strands of grass.

Here's a comparison, The textures are different so it's going to be a challenge getting this right. or maybe i'm just over thinking this.