Week 8: Sentry Gun Post-Mortem
Project:
For this project, I had to
design and build a sentry gun. I’ve been given total freedom on the style and
design choices which is the total opposite of the previous project. I had a
limit of 5000 tris which seemed like a hell of a lot when I built the first
model to use for paint overs, but I found myself quickly running out of tris
when building the final thing!
Summary:
After the project had been
set, I started my research by creating a board on Pinterest full of various
things that interested me and had quite cool shapes. Once I felt as though I’d
collected a sufficient amount of reference, I started creating moodboards in
Photoshop to aid me in creating a bash kit. When creating my bash kit, I used
the lasso tool to select all of the interesting shapes and filled them in using
block colour so I could later place them together in order to create new assets
in a fast and enjoyable way.
From here, I then went on
to ask my peers to choose their favourites so I could create iterations and
hopefully become that little bit closer to getting a final design!
I decided to take the
third idea forwards as I really liked the shape and I felt that it’s something
that I’d be able to iterate on even more and still have a fairly simple yet
interesting design. After choosing the design, I made a quick 1000 tri block
out in 3DS Max to aid me with the paint-overs in order to get the proportions
correct. I also did a few iterations on the neon lights and added a few extra
assets - as shown on the final design on the left.
From here, I then went on to ask my peers to choose their favourites so I could create iterations and hopefully become that little bit closer to getting a final design!
I decided to take the
third idea forwards as I really liked the shape and I felt that it’s something
that I’d be able to iterate on even more and still have a fairly simple yet
interesting design. After choosing the design, I made a quick 1000 tri block
out in 3DS Max to aid me with the paint-overs in order to get the proportions
correct. I also did a few iterations on the neon lights and added a few extra
assets - as shown on the final design below.
Beauty Screenshots:
Here’s the final turret in
UE4! I keep forgetting that 3DS Max doesn’t support PBR and always end up
feeling disheartened at just how bad everything looks. UE4 seems to make
everything look so awesome, I love it! I’m actually really pleased with how it
looks in engine – definitely makes the messing about with UV packing
worthwhile!
Technical Screenshots:
I used my favourite method of modelling again
for this project – strip modelling. I find this much simpler than box modelling
as there’s much more freedom with topology and edge flow. As my design is based
on the curvature of Art Deco appliances, I had to work out which areas needed
to contain the most amount of tris. Looking back, I realise I could’ve removed
some edges from the base and had more in the barrel as some parts of it look
slightly blocky in comparison to the rest of the pitch.
I always seem to enjoy
unwrapping and packing UVs, but for some reason, I didn’t like it at all for
this project. I think I re-packed it all about 6 times before getting fed up
about too much unused space and left it for the day to play around with the
model in engine. I had another go the following day and enjoyed it a lot more
and managed to get a fairly efficient layout. I’m still not 100% happy with it
but it’s much better than what it was!
Additional Information & Screenshots:
In addition to the set brief,
I decided to set myself a stretch goal to really push myself and escape the
dreaded comfort zone. I decided that if I had enough time, I’d try and animate
my emissives. As I’ve never attempted them before, this was quite a daunting
task - so setting myself the goal of making them flash seemed horrific at the
time, but was something I wanted to do to try and achieve full potential. I was
surprised at just how easy it was. I had all of these visions of having a
breakdown because everything was going wrong, but for once, everything went
right. Which worried me even more.
From this, I took a
variety of screenshots in UE4 and applied different filters to them in Photoshop
and adjusted the hue.
I then took these further
and added gradients to them to give them more ‘depth’.
I’d taken inspiration from
retro film posters and the atomic/nuclear designs of the 1950’s which fits in
well with the style of my sentry gun and all the initial research I produced.
In addition to the poster
and glowing emissives, I decided to change and create a sound effect that
matched the style of my gun. Again, I had help from other classmates but the
process was surprisingly simple. I must admit, I was worried about changing the
blueprint and breaking everything at the last minute, but luckily I plugged
everything into the correct places and the sound worked! Blueprints are
awesome.
Conclusion:
Overall, I’m really
pleased with how this project went but there are still certain things I’d like
to change.
I loved the freedom I had
over this project and I enjoyed the whole thing from start to finish! Getting
to grips with the blueprints in UE4 was proving a challenge at the best of
times, but they were really fun to try and figure out what part of the turret
they were affecting, and how I could change certain components to make my gun
act the way I wanted it to.
If I were to do this
project again, I’d probably choose a more complex design or do many more
iterations of the one I chose. This was because I found the texturing really
simple – although it looks good, I have a gut feeling that I haven’t done
enough.
However, I did complete my
set stretch goal and even did some extra work on the side too which I’m really
happy with. I feel like I’ve learnt so much on this project in comparison to
the others – mainly engine based knowledge.
In hindsight, I’d also
liked to have spent more time on the concepting process. I think I panicked
about putting it into engine so much that I didn’t allow myself as much time as
usual on the concepts so my design probably isn’t as good as it could be, but
I’m still really happy with it!
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