CAGD 373 Game Scene Final Project Post

Description

The game scene we aimed to emulate is the Comet Observatory level from Super Mario Galaxy. I worked with Preston Ram (lead), Owen Johnson, and AJ Piehl alongside myself. The premise of the scene is that you're located on a floating platform above some planet in space. As Mario, you collect stars and bring them back home to this location. Contained within this post will be reflections on the development process and all the work I completed over our 5 sprints. They will be organized into models, materials, and compositions.

What Went Right

One of the things that went well was the abilities and the sound effect implementation. Granted some sounds are a bit loud, but set the tone of the scene. Many of the abilities our programmer got in function as intended and feel as if they're from the actual game; if it was first person.

Another thing that went right in our development was having strong communication. Our lead kept the project on track and managed the Trello/ALR well. We all felt free to reach out to each other and discuss any problems we may have ran into.

What Went Wrong

One thing that went wrong was texturing. We constantly had to go back and revise materials due to objects being moved around or not fitting the texel density requirement. Looking back, the use of trim sheets would've helped with many of the resolution issues we ran into. Unfortunately, we couldn't use them due to time constraints. To fix this, we mapped out what would go where and focused on doing 3-4 materials each.

Another thing that went wrong was file organization. Our scene was essentially built in Maya instead of Unreal. This was helpful for a quick import into Unreal, but we didn't have all the essential painter organizations layed out in Maya. To fix this, I had to go back into the completed scene and reorganize UV 1-6.

Another thing that went wrong personally was the prevalence of NGONS in some models. While I didn't have an overwhelming amount, I should still check for them before uploading them in the future. To fix this I added more cuts into the models where necessary and uploaded the newer versions.

Models

Environment

Spire

The spire was our focal point of the project. It was also our hero piece, so a low and high poly version needed to be made. I created the low poly using the reduce mesh tool and ensured no parts were disconnected. Our lead designer's greybox was used to get the scale correct.

Starshroom Spaceship

The starshroom spaceship was another of the higher poly models in the scene. For the top portion with windows, I modeled one fourth and duplicated it all around.

Star Bank

The star circles in the star bank are all separated so that they may rotate in the actual scene. The container and central star are all made from the same object.

Compass

The compass has a few smaller rotating parts underneath the glass surface. This was used as a reference for the star bank above.

Garage Floor

The garage floor is all one part with planes for textures that will use alphas. The small bolts are modeled instead of textured as that's how they appear in-game.

Garden Pathway

The garden pathway can be found leading to the garden dome at the top of the spire. This piece gave me the most trouble with NGONS due to its shape.

Platforms Near top of Spire

These platforms all share a similar template. I started with the base metal platform and made variations from there. The hardest part to make was the path leading to the dome do to the curving nature of it.

Gateway

The gateway acts as a dome variant that rests on a floating island. The house was built out of a couple different pieces, such as the doorway and chimney.

Star Bank Board

The star bank board rests in front of the star bank and displays the total progress of the player, or a picture of Cody in our case. There are two planes inside to display this image.

Props

Bush

Butterfly

Chains

Couch

Couch With Trees

Flowers

Hanging Star

Luma

Mushroom

Plate

Rock

Star Cube

Star Torch

Star Trophy

Teleporter

Telescope

Torch

Textures

UV_01 Textures

UV_02 Textures

UV_03 Textures

UV_08 IDs

I only did the IDs for material 8, Preston textured the rest of it. There is also an alternate set I made for UV_01 to be used exclusively on the high poly. I created this before the spire was declared our hero piece and needed multiple LODs.