Week 1 4-10th of February
The first week of the project was one for planning. Since we were given free reign over the content and structure of the project I was a little overwhelmed with choices for a direction to take. The deciding factor was the fact we had to use already created assets within this project. With that in mind I remembered an old project where we had been tasked to build a house. It had no interiors, it was designed as a backdrop, but I know I can build a workable house from it.
I imported the house into the unreal engine and found it was sound, if a little small, and set about constructing the interior.
After a couple of days I had a workable interior to the house, fitted with custom collision. I could walk around it, after importing some stairs from another project.
With the basis complete I set about creating a mood board to aid in my interior design.
Week 2 11-17th of February
With the house in place I decided to import some windows, I had created with it. I needed to make them three dimensional (they were front only, decorative design too). This was done quite quickly and before long I had a fully modelled large and small window for the house.
At this point I tried to add some more edge loops to my house, it needed balancing. For some reason, time after time, the house, or interior, was deleted upon adding them in various places.
I decided to re-build the house at this point. For two reasons. The first was for the continuing structural headache (no matter how many times I fixed one deletion issue, another would follow), the second reason was the real clincher for me. As I said before the original felt a little to small inside. This was confirmed by a few of my peers. It seems my original model was created for it’s best purpose, backdrop decoration.
After a couple of days I had a new, larger, functioning house, with the same imported windows, stairs, and a recently remembered porch I had imported too.
Week 3 18- 24th of February
My new house stood ready, complete with custom collision. I now needed to start furnishing the interior with basic functionality, doors, skirting boards, etc.
I set about creating a front door, with casing, and interior doors. I will use the front door as a back door for now until I add furniture to it, letterbox, keyhole, etc. The internal doors were simple rectangular boxes with stepped casings. I imported them, when complete, to unreal and added blueprints, via trigger boxes, to them, for opening and closing.
My house looked a bit monochromatic, so I created a master material for texturing. A master material is the best, and quickest, way for me to texture my meshes for this project.
After some research, and consultation with my peers, I had a working master material, with which I began to add some colour to the scene.
Week 4 25-1 of March
I started by creating a simple skirting board in Maya. When I had my basic model, with deleted, unseen, faces, I set about duplicating and fitting it to all the walls in the house. When done I combined them all and imported and fitted them to my model in unreal, I then created a white glossy material and added this to them, the results looked good.
Next I built an under stairs seat, modelled after a picture I had found online. I then imported this into unreal and textured the seat with a matt white and the shelves, which sat above the back and side of the seat, with the same white gloss the skirting boards have.
At this point I realised I had a model of a house with no environment.
Seeing as the scene is built on a quayside I set about creating one. I referred to a previous model I had started working on, with an office instead of a house, in Maya. After re-scaling the size of the quay, with enough room for the office if needed, I measured the size of the edge blocks, that run around the waters edge, and modelled a cube. My plan is to manipulate each side of the cube with a slightly different topography. This would allow me to have a choice of several different faces so the ground and sea wall would not look uniform. I imported it into unreal and added a granite texture I found at a free texture site. The size of the detail was too large so I researched a way to deal with this, a “Texture Coordinate” node in the material itself. This gave me a way to manipulate the material to my liking. Now all I need to do is bake the cubes detail onto flat faces. I will attempt to do the cube as one piece, if this does not work I can break it up into it’s six faces and construct the edge of the quay with planes.
Week 5 2-8th of March
This week began with the final creation of the quay cube. I quickly realised that the model was too expensive for a scene. I needed a fresh approach.
I began to model a mod pack for the quay, having a height of four individual blocks, with each row offset in an equal pattern, much like bricks in a wall. Having spent a few hours creating this I again realised the face count would be too high for a non-descript part of the scene. Too many edge loops were being used in the construction of the quay.
I simplified it once more into a mod pack of individual faced pieces, a top face, a corner piece, a horizontal edge, a vertical edge, and a half vertical edge.
This idea turned out to be the easiest to model and the cheapest too.
Once created I imported them all into the engine and constructed the quay.
I then set about creating a random selecting material for each piece. As I would be using one model for each piece the same material would become noticeable and monotonous.
When this was done I created a beach from a plane, in Maya, and imported this. After an alteration to the model, I needed steeper sides to keep the topography of the beach after importing and resizing in unreal.
Week 6 9-15th of March
This week I began to construct some furniture for the house interior.
Firstly I built a corner sofa. Imported it into the scene and added a material from the Unreal free giveaway, ‘Materials’.
I then built an accompanying coffee table and a tv for the wall.Texturing them in the engine.
With a check to my trello board I see I am still on schedule for the project completion.
Week 7 16-22nd of March
I needed more furniture in my living room so I built a second table/ side furniture. This would allow me to furnish it with more items to make it feel more homely. Like a lamp, coasters, and any other knick knacks that would add to this effect.
I built the table and found one of my colleagues did not agree with my high tri count approach to modelling. He stated that it will cost the efficiency of the engines rendering. I agreed but pointed out that this is a showcase and not a game. He was not impressed and we agreed to disagree. It did, on the other hand give me a reason to test the efficiency and believable factor of lower based geometrical models.
In short, you can build convincing models but only at a cursory glance. The more geometry required to build a more convincing model negated the need of the rising tri count. I resolved to find a more efficient process, probably with the use of maps, at a later date.
Week 8 23-29th of March
With time, and other work, a factor I noticed that the kitchen was lacking in some separate spaces I need, notably a utility room and toilet/ shower.
To remedy this I needed to go back into maya and model some additional walls and amend the skirting board structure. Once done I imported this into the engine, where it fitted nicely and added some extra geometry for me to play with.
Week 9 30-5th of April
I decided to build a washing machine for my utility room. I then imported it into the engine and placed it in the utility room. For efficiency I can use the base structure for an accompanying dryer. I would only need to remove the round door and replace it with a square one. Also some small changes to the control panel would need to be made.
I also imported some free textures from PBR textures.com, for the kitchen floor. Firstly I tried a floor tile texture but found it looked more suitable in the bathroom. I then tried an oaken, plank, floor. This was much nicer and closer to the look I wanted, though there were some burns where the texture tiles met. This, again, needs addressing with some research in how to remedy it.
When done I moved back to the living room and added an Egytian dagger I had modelled some time previously. I built a stand for it, retaining some of the daggers key geometrical features. Then placed it into the cabinet I had previously made. Even though it was on piece of adornment it still managed to add some lived in fell to the room. So I added a small ensemble of candles (three different versions of the same candle re-sized and ordered via an actor class blueprint), these I placed on the original coffee table, adding a further fell of character to the soulless room.
Week 10 6-12th of April
This week I modelled and imported an old style of desk and chair textured it, imported it, and set it in place in the scene. Looking lonely I modelled a lamp and imported the original model of the house for a showcase under the lamp.
Week 11 13-19th of April
This week I modelled, imported and textured a complete bathroom.
Week 12 20-26th of April
I found a way to use an imported texture as a multi purpose texture. If I import a plane into Substance Painter I can place any material/ smart material on it, export it, and place it over any mesh for a well fitting texture. I did this with a walnut texture and proceeded to place it on every wooden mesh in the house. It made a difference.
I then modelled a lamp for the living room. I wanted this to be a workable lamp, so I made a blueprint actor around it. With a toggle for the light and some visible text for an aid to which button to press.
Week 13 27-3rd of May
Firstly I imported an old candle and made it into a blueprint actor. Duplicating it twice, then resizing and reshaping two of them to make a set. I placed it on the coffee table.
I then moved upstairs and modelled a bunk bed, with sofa and cupboard. Along with an accompanying desk, to which I used the same chair from the desk and chair from the study, I changed the texture to one the blended into the room.
The other bedroom I modelled a double bed with a chest of drawers for the base and a high cupboard, with spotlights, for a head. I then took the foot of the bed, in Maya, and modelled a bedside cabinet, placing one of them on each side of the bed.
Week 14 4-13th of May
I built some units for the kitchen and imported them into the engine. Where I found the auto generated collision was unsuitable. I amended this with some custom collision, re-imported it and it worked fine.
I then imported a hob texture, from the internet, and placed it on the hob.
My Blueprint Factory 