PRODUCTION LOG 01
PRODUCTION WORKFLOW
In the production stage, I am going to have the following workflow when it comes to creating the assets:
3D models to be created with Maya and then exported as .fbx files.
some models may require additional details, in this case Zbrush will be used for sculpting; Maya also has a sculpting tool, but I believe Zbrush does a better job when it comes to that.
Once the models have been created, I am going to use RizomUV for unwrapping, UV maps, and their layouts. This tool is new to me, but as I've been playing around with it I have noticed that it does a great job when it comes to creating optimised spaces on UV layouts; it can also speed up the process compared to Maya.
For texturing, I am going to use Substance Painter as I have been using it for a while now, and I am satisfied with the results it gives. It is also widely used in the industry. Some models do not need unique texturing, such as walls, pillars, pipes, etc., for these instead, I am going to use Substance Designer to create tileable textures/materials. Substance Designer is primarily a software that generates textures from procedural patterns inside node-based graphs.
Finally, the last step is to import the meshes and textures in Unreal Engine where materials will be also created.
STRUCTURAL PIECES / MODULARITY
The models I wanted to start with include walls, pillars, and trims, as this is the way I usually like to work on larger environments, from big to small, starting with structural pieces. According to scales and proportions table, I need the following:
Large wall 4x4 m, minimum 20 cm depth
Medium wall 4x3 m, same depth
Small wall 4x2 m, same depth
Additionally, I will need variations on height from 4 to 1 m.
The walls were created in Maya using simple polygon cubes, following the above sizes guidelines.
One thing I had to consider was that the walls needed to be modular. So, in order to do this, I made sure that the pivot point was perfectly aligned with any of the bottom corners of the mesh (as seen in figure on the left). This will be useful later on in Unreal, as the vertices will perfectly snap and there will be no gaps, overlaps, or light leak issues.
I followed the same steps when I created the pillars and trims, the only difference is that the pivot point aligns with the bottom of the mesh (for pillars) and left side (for trims) instead of a vertex (examples in the pictures below).
There are two more sets of modular meshes that I am going to use throughout the level, metallic beams and railing bars. These meshes will be low-poly due to their low importance in the environment.
Metallic H-Beam, base, and connectors.
Railing bar, pole, and base.
As these meshes will receive tileable materials (which are made of seamless textures that can be repeated infinitely in any direction without showing visible seems or edges where the image is repeated), they are now ready to go straight into Unreal Engine to replace the blockout meshes. The process of making tileable textures will be explained later on in another post.
Wall_Snap.mp4Beam_Snap.mp4Examples of meshes snapping in Unreal editor.