Captain's Table Project - Final Touches

 Summative Submission

    One of the main things that I really needed to fix about my Captain's Table environment project was the foliage. Basically, I made grass in Substance Painter. However, because I made the grass as a simple material, I put it in Substance Designer, placed it on a plane and enabled the opacity channel in order to be able to export it and place it in Unreal Engine. Because of that, my foliage looked very two dimensional and it wasn't really believable. 

    At first, the way I fixed that was by using multiple planes with foliage and rotating them in order to get a more three dimensional shape - that's how I submitted it for my formative. However, upon receiving my feedback, I did realise that my foliage was way too dense. So the way I fixed this was going back into Unreal Engine, deleting the previous foliage and creating a new one by still merging a lot of planes together, although this time I didn't just make them as dense everywhere and I ended up leaving larger parts with less foliage in front of the doors for example, where people would walk more often. 

Before

After

    In addition to that, I managed to figure out what had been affecting my foliage and making the green colour look very strange - the decals. I had been trying to resolve this issue by messing around with the foliage itself and the texture on it, however I didn't stop to thing that something else might be affecting it. 

    There is box that can be ticked off in the properties of every asset which just says ''Receives Decals''. By clicking this option off, the decals stop being able to affect these assets. 

Beauty Shots

    Overall, I'm very satisfied with the progress that I've made this year during my first semester because I've learned a lot more about modeling, texturing, and even tech art - I have been enjoying making effects very much, which I never would have thought would happen because I remember how much I struggled with the more technical aspects of 3D. Also, I've learned how to work a lot more efficiently, therefore I feel a lot more prepared to start working on my FMP.