Level 3 Games Development
By Eoin Matthews
Isometric Interiors
This will be the page where I will be showing my progress working on my isometric interiors. I will be including screenshots, time-lapses, commentary and concept art on this page, starting with a blog on what kind of primary and secondary research I conducted along with images of said research in order to find the style, theme and direction I wanted in order to create my own assets and rooms within my own isometric interiors.
Concepts
When I started on this course my original goal once I had finished was to be able to produce my own mods for the games I enjoy playing such as Fallout and Oblivion using the Creation Kit, after just a month of being on this course I have gained a great insight into the games development process. From attending EGX 2018 and being able to interview select developers and questioning them about their backgrounds and where to begin when developing a game, be it indie or AAA.
The first subject covered was concept art which will be used to visualise my ideal interiors in which I will expand upon through further research. Below are the original concepts I created for my interiors.
Before these concepts I experimented with 3DS Max, creating my first initial interior's. These were later scrapped due to time constraints and the overall size of these scrapped rooms although by doing this I was able to develop my skills more and learn more about the process that goes into developing assets and interiors and what must be altered to be able to keep to a deadline.
In the videos below you can see my progress when creating my first interiors, ranging from duplicating items to merging two objects together. One particular problem I faced when creating this room was trying to connect the two walls together as my initial idea for this room was that most of the detailing would be done on the walls and the approach I took towards this was too time consuming and cost me valuable time, that I could have used to start creating assets for this room. After I realised this I scrapped the concept, but still continued to use it as a reference and guide to influence my final interiors.
In this interior, I wanted to try and replicate my workplace as accurately as possible with my newly developed skills. As I had only learnt how to manipulate shapes I didn't get much further with this interior but overall it was a great way to learn new methods when creating key aspects of my final project.
Research
In this section, I will be talking about the different types of research I looked into when I began producing my final interiors. Starting with the themes and "story" behind the interior, the way I try to think and imagine an interior is to give it a backstory as an idea of what to look into for research and try to base my concept around that. The main interior I wanted to create was going to be sci-fi themed, with my other two interiors being simple based on my own personal experiences, such as a bedroom and kitchen. When starting my research I created three separate mood boards reflecting the styles and themes I wanted in my final project, aside from the two different themed rooms in which I created based off of my own room and kitchen, with some minor or major changed made to fix the aesthetic of the room in question.
After creating these mood boards I went out to collect reference images to be used within my project, these range from close up photos to capture the detailing within the material to distant images to contrast different scales of lighting and shapes. When looking for these textures I travelled to the local hardware store as I thought it would be my best bet to gather a large number of materials in the time permitted. Here is a selection of photos I used for references towards my final project.
Gearing up Production
After I had gathered my research and developed an idea of how I was going to approach creating my final interiors and also experimenting with 3DS, I was ready to begin production.
Starting with the most basic room out of the three, the bedroom, created in the likeness of my own room. Most of the development of this room was made at home as at the time I was still uncertain of what to make for my first final interior. As you can see from the pictures below.
After making a basic template of the room, I added more details such as a blind, bed and a desk. Which later on I modeled some more to give them more definition within the scene.
This was just the start of the process as now I had something to work towards and so I set off on developing my final interiors.
Once finishing my basic interior I decided on creating all three of my interiors within the same 3DS file to help with production and to save time creating assets as I was able to repurpose select items within my interiors to use in the other interiors and to speed up development. In the time-lapse video below this, shows the process of creating the base in which I was to start working from.
Separating the rooms and designing their floors.
The floor in the middle is the one I wish to work most on as I am interested in the Sci-fi genre so a lot of my time went towards this interior as you will see later on.​
When creating the bedroom I wanted the floor to have as much as an impact as the Sci-fi room, so when placing the floor tiles down I made wooden planks to place over the floor to give them a 3D feel, to make them come off the floor, so that they weren't just flat textures.
As the kitchen was the final room I worked on I didn't spend too much time designing the floor as creating a tiled surface with hundreds of tiles would have been too costly for time and performance, so I opted with a flat surface in which I placed a tiles texture on, then positioned it accordingly to get the best detail.​
Creating the kitchen
In the two videos below, shows my progress when creating the countertop among other items for use within my kitchen interior. The first video shows myself creating the main focal point within my kitchen by using the multiple techniques that I have learned during my first term on this course, I was able to create the shapes required by editing the base poly and detaching the desired polys after modifying them to my liking, by doing this it enabled me to quickly and efficiently make draws and cupboards for my interior. I kept the original base poly in the scene so I could use it for size reference when modelling the final version of it, once I was happy with my result I removed the original poly and placed my newly modelled one in its place then organized my assets into their correct names so that if I wanted to change a particular object then I could just look it up in the list quicker thus making it easier to navigate my interior.
I started to create the top cabinets for my interior, as you can see in the video I decided to change my approach when making the base shape as it was more efficient to make it from one larger shape rather than two smaller shapes. Once finished I added the rest of the objects back into my interior and started to make a few more items to go into my interior, such as a wok with something cooking inside it, to a knife block complete with knives. Then as my interior had a large amount of space above it I decided to add an air vent by reusing the same one I had made for my sci-fi interior as this was a far quicker method to just creating the same asset again with just a slight variation.
As you can see in the video to the left, I created some items to fill in the spaces in my interior along with a light to create some atmosphere within the scene to achieve the look I wanted.
Once finished with the lighting and the objects, I decided to try and incorporate all three of my interiors into a presentable render that suited the style of design that I had chosen. Just before I go on to evaluate my works progress I just wanted to show the process that I chose to better understand how I was to create my interior as you can see in the image below.
In this image, you can see how I created the base room then started to add the rough shapes of my scene then working from that.
Reflective Evaluation
Upon finishing my isometric interiors, I have gained a great look into the actual process that goes into developing a game, from creating an idea, creating concept art, performing research and finally developing a prototype from a concept. All these parts are just the start of development, other areas in which were covered were the business side of development and how a company is structured towards producing a final product and what job roles are involved in the process. Such as a concept artist whose job is to create concepts for the rest of the development team to use, to a 3D modeller who uses the art produced by the concept artist to recreate it in a 3D environment and to provide suggestions to change or improve what the artist has created all of which is important to the process.
During my time creating these interiors I faced many problems with designs and my fair share of program crashes (about 20 times), but due to 3DS creating a backup every 5 minutes I never lost too much progress sometimes for the better as looking back on my designs I didn't feel like they reflected the interior properly. Due to this, I did lose some hours trying to find inspiration on what to place in my interior as some of the research I conducted didn't suit some scenes while others did. Other problems faced were object manipulation as some objects did not work the way I had initially thought because of this I did change the way I approached this by finding new ways to shape and manipulate the object. By discovering these new methods I made note of them so that I wouldn't get those issues in the future when creating new assets or interiors.
Throughout the development of my interiors, I have changed my direction when it came to producing my final interiors. During the first couple of weeks, I spent my time recreating my workplace from memory and also started to created my prototype room, which at the time was going to be in my final project but through some research and finding a grasp on my own level of skill I changed tactics and decided to design and sketch up the three final interiors you can see above, this was not as hard as I initially thought as once I started to create drawings again I practised my skills by drawing some fanart as seen below.
I'm really pleased with how this came out as I have not really been an artistic person, I drew this image freehand from a reference on my phone whilst on the train visiting family.
Also in class, I decided to redraw the image in photoshop turning it from a traditional image to a digital image, about the size of a post-it note.
While reflecting on my work, I understand that there are many aspects of my project that I would change due to either a change of taste or my skill level or both. With that, the improvements that I would make to my work are plentiful albeit hard to produce, where I have a great knowledge of computers and how to use them, I don't have the skill or knowledge of creating with them to make something, but through this course I have discovered that I may have the skill after some practice as practice makes perfect. If I were to travel back in time and do this project again I would certainly change the way I started to design my interiors as when I first started creating them I didn't quite understand the scale of the room that I was making and how much time would go into creating assets for said room although the way in which I had evidently approached this was fundamental in my learning process, by working in this way I was able to better understand how to use the tools at my disposal.
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Furthermore, I was able to reflect on the project from sending a short questionnaire for my peers to fill out in regards to my project. From the questionnaire, I have gathered some key points to pick up on to better myself for future projects, the feedback received is as follows;
The scaling of my interiors is correct according to the feedback, so by using my method of keeping the original poly I was able to better design the objects to better suit their surroundings.
With theming one of my interiors, I asked what time period better represents it and the responses are accurate (2100) to what I had imagined for the interior so by completing the appropriate research to this time period I can better insert these themes into my future projects.
The same is said of the genre of the interior which is split between a modern setting with sci-fi being the other, I am happy this is the result as I was trying to convey this within my work.
In regards to the objects within my scenes, the survey shows that the style of the objects I created are accurate to the interiors, which is nice to know as it shows that I am using the correct methods and stylings to represent these objects.
The lighting within my scenes are correctly lit according to the feedback which is really good as one thing I thought about when creating the scene is how it would be lit and how that would affect the final product, aside from some feedback suggesting that the lighting in interior 3 is too dim.
As far as textures go I have applied them correctly and the feedback I received supports this as their style matches. One key problem I came across what finding the right textures to use in my project, so I resulted in using the textures in the 3DS material library, by adjusting the UV map of these textures I was able to give the illusion of them being three dimensional although they were only two dimensional. I wish to improve upon this in my next term by using photoshop and creating the textures to use in my projects.
On the questionnaire, I asked if my interiors could have other additional objects or suggestions in which the feedback supplied the answer with most of the votes being for more clutter to be implemented with Easter eggs being second. By asking this I am able to better understand what could be missing for my project in order to give more life and depth to my interiors.
After reviewing this feedback, I will be working from this to apply these suggestions to future projects whilst on this course. In conclusion at the start of this course, I was prepared to enter the world of games development as my interest in the subject has not subsided throughout the years, with my passion to be able to create my own assets for the games I play, I feel like this course was ideal with learning the techniques and methods behind this process so that I can move on to start making something out of my passion and turn it into a reality and eventually secure a position as a games developer.
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