Captain's Table Project - High Poly/ Low Poly Workflow

 High Poly/ Low Poly - Development Process

    There are certain assets that won't look well at all unless you make both a low poly version and a high poly version to bake on top of your low poly version. The reason for that being that because we try to optimize things in engine as much as we can so that our game would run more smoothly, we wouldn't want to use far too many triangles for one singular asset - for example we wouldn't want to use assets with edges that have been chamfered multiple times but in such a way that it may look pleasing to the eye at first when you're looking at the asset separately, but then in game, the player may not even notice because they probably wouldn't even go anywhere too close to it - this is something that I learned this year and it helped me learn how to optimize my scene better, which helped increase the overall FPS of my 3D environments that I've been making ever since. 

    The high poly/ low poly workflow isn't something difficult. Basically, how I do it is I model either my high poly or my low poly first, then align both one on top of another in 3Ds Max - this is crucial as they need to align perfectly in order for the bake to work in Substance Painter. Then, I export both separately (and centered in Max) and import the low poly which must have previously been unwrapped (we only unwrap the low poly) in Max. 

     If I'm just using a tiling texture, I like to bake and then apply my material straight onto my asset. Occasionally, I would add a little bit more texture to it in Substance Painter because for example, dust is something that I find quite easy to make there. I would like to credit this short tutorial that I found on YouTube that helped me quite a lot to create the material that I've been using in my scene - Burlap Fabric - Substance Designer Tutorials for Beginners - YouTube.

    I had attempted to make a similar material in the past, although I didn't really understand the Substance Designer process, neither how to bake properly. So this time around, I had a much better idea of what I'm doing.

Captain's Table Project - Texturing

     This week I started texturing some of the smaller assets, as well as the balcony in my scene, where my Captain's Table is placed at. Once again, I began by importing my assets from 3Ds Max into Substance Painter, where I had already imported the materials that I had previously made in Substance Designer and would need. 

    On one hand, when it comes to texturing, I like to take my time adding details on Substance Painter such as dirt, dust, rust, scratches,  cracks, creases, etc. On the other hand, if I'm doing something that's more stylised, I like to take my time painting details either in Substance Painter or on Photoshop. Often times, just adding the material you've made in Substance Designer isn't really enough to make a convincing texture because in real life, objects tend to age for example, and clothes tend to wear off. 

    I encountered a small issue when I started texturing the balcony. Basically, I tried exporting a channel packed material from Substance Designer and importing it in Substance Painter, however, I didn't realise that because Substance Painter has it's own way of channel packing, it won't recognise the channel packed (Ambient Occlusion/ Roughness/ Metallic/ Height) map as separate maps. So what I ended up doing was going back to Substance Designer and manually exporting every map separately, and then imported them in Substance Painter and once again - set them up manually. 

Substance Designer

Separately Exported Maps (Fix)

(Metal should always be ticked off when making a wood material for example, wood doesn't need a metallic map.)

    In addition to that, I added some creaks and creases in the wood in order to make it a little bit more worn out, to suggest that it's been used a lot. I have this as a stretch goal, but I would like to come back to that asset in particular because I wanted to add some planks to it, which was suggested to me by my tutor and I quite liked the idea because I thought that it would give it a much better variation. 

    Once this was done, I focused on texturing some of the last assets that I had left in my scene because I thought that texturing them might be a little bit more complicated - those assets are the glass bottles and the maps scattered across the scene in Unreal. 

Captain's Table Project - Dock Rails

     Before I go back to texturing the focal point of my scene, which is the actual Captain's Table, I made one last addition to the docks - rails. The reason for that being that in all reference images, I noticed the docks had some sort of rails that would divide them from the sea. 

    As usual, I modelled the rails in 3Ds Max first, then materials, then I applied the textures. One issue that I still tend to encounter quite a lot when it comes to texturing is that often times, my textures would look completely fine in Substance Painter, but the moment I apply them to my assets in Unreal Engine, they suddenly start looking very shiny. Sometimes, ticking the sRGB and changing the Ambient Occlusion/ Roughness/ Metallic map to Linear Colour fixes that issue, however sometimes it doesn't - and when it doesn't, I found an easy fix that and it's basically going back to Substance Painter and manually changing the roughness map. The higher the slider towards the black side is, the more shiny it is and the lower the slider towards the white side is, the less shiny it is. 

Captain's Table Project - Damage Decals

 Damage Decals - Development Process

Why Cracks Form in Wood Fences and How to Avoid Them (fenceauthority.com)

    I.. found this article (the link above) on the internet.. that's literally about why cracks form in wood fences and how to avoid them. And in that article, I found this image of a crack inside a wooden bark that I liked, so I took it, cropped it, imported it in Photoshop, created a Base Colour map, an Alpha map and a Normal map out of it, exported all three maps from Photoshop as targas, imported them in Unreal Engine and created a decal out of it.

Photoshop

    Basically, how I set this up in Unreal is first and foremost, I changed the default material to a Deferred Decal, the Blend Mode in the material to Translucent and the Decal Blend Mode in the material to Translucent too, so that the Engine is will only pick up the information that's been coloured in white (inside of the Alpha map) and fade the black, therefore creating an opaque effect. Then, once I was finished setting the material up, I just placed the decals in my scene and arranged them across the wooden planks. 

Unreal Engine

Final Result

Captain's Table Project - Foliage

    At first, I wasn't going to implement any foliage in my scene - however, after I got some feedback from one of my tutors, I got very inspired to work a little bit more on the dock and turn it into a good storage area. The Captain's Table is of course the focal point of my scene, however, because I really love storytelling, I thought that working a little bit more on the dock would make my scene far more interactive.. so instead of just adding some bottles, crates and barrels in it, I decided to add a little bit more things such as tools scattered around and grass that's growing in between the wooden planks on the ground, (because technically that's the only place that it could grow through). 

   In addition to that, after I finish making big adjustments to my scene, I always like to build the lightning in order to see how it's looking so far - then, I like to play around with it a little bit more in order to make it have cool reflections and illuminate the main points of interest. Lightning for me is one of the most important aspects when it comes to building just about any type of mood in any type of scene in Unreal Engine. 

    I quite like the green-ish atmosphere because it goes well with the atmospheric fog that I've put in my scene - I think it adds to the coldness of the weather system that I've been building, and it gives it this eerie, nightly vibe that I've been going for. I got very inspired by Bilgewater, which is a region in  League of Legends. I briefly talked about it in a previous blog post of mine. 

    What I would like to do next is learn how to make some damage decals in order to add to the wooden walls in my scene because I think that would break them up quite a bit and give them a slightly more interesting texture, make them look slightly more worm out. 

Captain's Table Project - Update

Substance Designer

    I started texturing by extracting my main Substance Designer materials and transferring them to Substance Painter in order to start applying them to the assets in my scene in Unreal Engine. 

    My 3D Captain's Table environment is located in a pirate dock. When I was doing my research for it, I noticed that most of the reference images that I was pulling into my mood board had things mostly made out of different types of woods and metals. So when I started texturing, the very first materials that I focused on making were similar woods and metals. 

   When it comes to making woods in Substance Designer, I really like spending a little bit more time playing around with the roughness and the height maps because wood is usually carved, therefore it's a material that usually has a slightly more intricate texture than any flatter materials such as metal or plastic, for example. In order to make the wood look a little bit more worn out and realistic, I like to use a variation of grunge maps. And finally, a couple of Transformation 2D maps so that I can manually create, resize and rescale scratches and minor details like that. 

Wood - Material Example

Compass

    Making small details is often overlooked, but to me it's making small details that have a big impact on just about any scene because for me personally, it's always the small details that tell the biggest stories to the viewer. So in my scene, I modelled a lot of smaller props such as a map, a magnifying glass, a mapping tool, a compass, etc. 

    The compass is an asset that I found particularly difficult to texture because of it's complicated shed. So in order to save myself a lot of time, I went on Google and searched for some free, stylised images of compass sheds and I came across this website where I downloaded the texture that I'm currently using for the model in my scene - Vintage Sign Nautical - Free image on Pixabay. 

Texture

Free texture taken from Vintage Sign Nautical - Free image on Pixabay

Captain's Table Project - Rain Puddles Decals

 Making Rain Puddle Decals

    I had make a rain particle effect for my Captain's Table environment not too long ago. However, when I was making it, although I was thinking about how the rain is going to affect my textures, I wasn't really thinking about how the rain was actually quite heavy, therefore I should do more than just add moisture to my materials. This is something that one of my tutors pointed out and it made me think about adding actual puddles. Making puddles wasn't something that I knew how to do so I did my research and found out about Decals in Unreal Engine. I thought that  learning how to do those would be so beneficial for the future.

    I watched a couple videos on YouTube, but I would like to credit this one because this is the one that I found not only most helpful, but also most simple to understand for anyone that would like to learn how to make effects such as puddles - Create a Puddle Decal Generator for Unreal Engine 4 with Substance Designer - YouTube. Basically, I followed this Substance Designer tutorial and started out by using Grunge Maps. Technically, you can use a combination of whichever ones you like the most in order to create the shape of puddles that you would like to have in your scene. Then, you would like to blend all of the Grunge Maps that you've used together and add an opacity channel to your graph. Once you've connected your nodes, you would like to export your Normal, your Roughness and your Opacity maps - for puddles in particular, we don't really need maps such as metallic or ambient occlusion so exporting them isn't really necessary. 

    Once we import our maps into Unreal Engine, we would like to plug the Normal RBG in Norma, the Opacity RGB in Opacity and the Roughness RGB in Roughness. The only thing we need to make sure of is that in each one of our maps, sRGB in not ticked. Then, in the Material Property, we would like to change the Material Domain to Deferred Decal (because we're creating a Decal), the Blend Mode to Translucent because water is transparent, therefore we would like our puddles to be transparent and finally Decal Blend Mode to DBuffer Translucent Normal. 

Result

    Making Decals is a very non destructive type of workflow for certain things such as puddles because for example, I was able to resize the Decal and place it wherever I want, as well as duplicate it as many times as I wish. This made it quite easy to scatter the puddles everywhere and give my scene more sense. 

Captain's Table Project - Progress in Unreal Engine

 Development Process

    When it comes to my workflow in Unreal Engine, what I tend to do before I do anything else is establish what type of lighting I'm going to have in my scene, also where are my light sources going to be. The reason I always do that first is because it gives me a better understanding of for example what areas could be more populated and what areas could be less populated. On the other hand, it helps me give the viewer a better first look at what type of atmosphere I'm wanting to build. For example, I wanted to have more dark blues and dark greens in my Captain's Table scene because I quite liked how they contribute quite a bit to the stormy weather system that I've been building. 

   In addition to that, outside of Unreal Engine, I worked on creating some more smaller props for my scene. My idea was to build somewhat of a storyline, to let the viewer know that the pirate base had been quite populated, although it had been left in a rush - hence why so many objects are kind of just scattered around and some of the objects are just still sitting outside on the table, under the pouring rain. 

    I received very helpful feedback from one of my tutors. Basically, I wasn't quite sure at first what to do with the bottom level of my scene, but they suggested that perhaps I could turn it into a storage area, where ships offload their cargo. I quite liked that because I thought that it fits perfectly with the type of aesthetic that I'm going for.