Week 16: Overthinking things

So this week began with a talk to Mike Pickton our tutor, we discussed ways on how to make a convincing thatch roof and the solution came to me straight after I asked my question.

Previously the alphas on the edges of my thatch look really bad because they were intersecting alphas, after speaking with Mike we decided that the best way is to create the texture so as it tiles only on the X axis left and have the alpha on the bottom of the texture. Here's the result.

I've also made a quick corrugated sheet metal for the shack so that it looks like an improvised shack that's been abandoned, however the texture of the metal in the environment looks like it is covered in blood rather than rust. I tested this out on marmoset and it's very different. I think it might be the lighting situation that we have set up on unreal so I think I'll come back to this as there are more pressing matters to do first.

Something that I have learned from my time doing the Game jam last weekend was the power of a new programme called Bitmap2texture. It's part of the substance pack and i highly recommend it for making quick and easy tileable textures. I used it to create my landscape textures. Dom was kind enough to compile them for use in the landscape texture painter.

Denise concepted some really nice things for our benchmark area such as a stairway that was adorned with eagle statues either side and rows of large stone feathers protruding out the stairway skirting. The minute I saw this I knew I wanted to sculpt the piece. Time will tell if I just burdened myself with a complicated task. However Denise broke up the concept into repeatable assets so it has made my life easier knowing there is only a few things that are repeated to create the asset.