Game Scene Final Project Post


 

For this project, we had to create a scene in unity based on a a game of our choosing. After deliberation with my team, we decided to create the first room in Control. Control is a very story and narrative driven game but one of the biggest draws and accolades is it's visual style. We hoped to capture the vibe within our game. 


The first thing I did was gather reference. I basically took every pic of every nook and cranny I could to basically give us a large sample size to look at. I was the lead texturer of the project so I was in charge of making the props and models look good. 


After receiving the first set of UV maps, I got to work. In Control, there is this stone/concrete/marble material that's present within the walls of the game. It's a very smooth yet firm material. This was my first challenge as I wanted to create that as close as I could. It took a lot of trial and error but I used the reference a lot for inspiration. I first applied a base smooth concrete layer and added on the other aspects such as the roughness and cracks and details. There was also withering at the edges of the concrete. Its subtle but present and this was something I wanted to make in the game to lessen the work of the modelers. I used anchor points and masks to create a scalable and modular withering effect on the edges of the model. 




Next was the other models and props. This was a case of reference and texturing. I wanted to stay as true as I could with the texturing to the actual game and I felt as I was as close as I could. One thing that helped is that a lot of the textures within Control are not as complex as something where you need multiple textures or intricate detail. However I'm not saying it's as easy as drop in and you're good to go, because I still had to adjust a lot of values to get that consistency. Other aspects of the texturing went well as I made my concrete a smart material, so it was scalable and usable on other textures when needed. 

 

In Unity, I took it upon myself for the lighting and getting the scene ready for baking the lighting. This was a little bit of a process because I wanted to get some of the moody lighting that's present within the game. This was done through light baking, a process in which light is calculated rather than having realtime lights. This process would allow for more realistic lighting. This is done by using what's called Indirect Lighting in its calculations. While the scene was being built, I was experimenting with the settings and trying to get the best possible settings so that we can just bake and call it a day. Once the scene was ready to go, I used the settings I had and the lights I had placed, to bake the lighting. One happy accident that came out of this was that because of the emission of certain objects, the light emanating from them actually created a great low moody light naturally rather than having to depend on area or other type of lighting. 





For this sprint review, I finally got around to more texturing as almost all the UV sets got sent to me for texturing. I first started off with the props and getting them done. I noticed a lot of props but also main pieces have a lot of overlapping or similar materials so when I saw a material being used more than once, I saved them as a smart material. This proved super helpful and time saving as there was consistency between the similar materials and also made my job easier to import in. 





There were some small issues in the models I received, mostly in the actual UV layout. I went back to my modeler and once those got fixed, I went back to texturing. 





The process for texturing was very dependent and focused on getting it close to the reference. While I know the project is based on being inspired, I wanted to get as close to the textures on the models as I realistically could. One example was trying to sample colors from the in-game screenshots I took from the game. 






 For sprint 4, I got to do more texturing as I got more texture sets from my modeler. It was a little easier because a lot of the models, specifically the concrete models because they all share the same base texture with a little bit of variation between them with things like tiling and stuff. This meant I could save the previous texture I made within painter so future models can use this same texture. 



One thing I ran into was the destruction/noise not mapping properly onto the ceiling texture as the noise needed to be on the parts that stickout, rather than on the edges of the models. This wasn't that bad of a fix as I changed the anchor points to not be influenced by the metal edge wear and UV mapped the noise and withering on the actual beams now. 

I have been waiting a lot because I need to get UV sets from my modelers to be able to texture with the UV limitations we have. Thankfully I have some things to model as a buffer while I wait. 


For sprint 3, I finally got around to texturing one UV set that we needed to do and that was the middle section with the stairs and the concrete pillars. These textures took a lot of time and going back and forth to achieve the similar look to the game. There was a lot of guesswork in what type of material. I first thought it was some sort of marble texture but after looking and talking to others, we decided that it was a very smooth concrete. So in painter, I decided to then approach the concrete pillar first because the other parts would be driving from this texture. 


I first applied the basic wet concrete texture and it already yielded pretty good results. It didn't have the roughness details I wanted so I added different roughness maps and masks in order to give it the "dirty" look that is present in the one in the model. 



  For Sprint 2, I worked more on the prop modeling side for this sprint as the UV sets weren't ready so I worked on the telephone, box, and fire extinguisher model. This revolved very much about looking at the reference within the game and translating that into the model. 


The telephone model was a fun model to make and it had me kind of thinking on what is something that I can make something through texturing and something that is on the model itself. The example was the little emergency button on the bottom of the telephone model. So there is a whole button that could have been done through texturing but wouldn't look nice so then I approached in a low poly way and it would look way better. I think this was a nice exercise that helps me in the mindset of future modeling as well because now I can work with my team and wonder about hey, what should be normal textured or what should be on the model.


 
 




I also had textured the props to get an understanding of what a preview what of what the textures could look like within the scene and a guide for when they eventually get textured later in one UV map, I have something to go off of already.


For sprint 1, there was a lot of conversation surrounding what game we wanted to do. The first couple of ideas were good and I pitched we do Control. With deliberation, the group seemed to actually like the idea of Control the most and so once that was the game that was picked with the group, we all started to work on our own given task. I was very focused on maybe looking into designer and getting a lot of reference for the group. As the person who owns the game, It was up to me to provide a lot of the reference for my groupmates. I took my time playing the game for about an hour and took pictures in any place necessary. This might not seem like a lot but  I made sure I got good pics so anyone can see what they need for reference. This would be integral to our game as it allows us to have a one to one base of things to look back at. I tried to take as much as I could and capture everything I could so we could include it within the unity scene. 



One thing that I was curious about was maybe working on going into designer and thinking of making custom textures. However, after a talk with my designer and teammates, we realized this would be out of the scope of the project as I'm still a beginner. It would be just better if I do the texturing in painter and it's robust library.