So for this week we have started a 2 week collaborative project across this course with the other specialism groups. As before Christmas the Concept artists have created some concept designs for the asset artists to make in groups as an asset pack to be given to the games designers for their game. Which I find interesting for a project as it simulates the game industry pipeline and brings course together. With the project we have been given the theme of the wild west in a low poly style. The task we have been given is to make a selection of assets from a list but the amount of assets we make is limited to a point system where we have to have 8 points each. With starting this project I had a rough start due to my mental health which had gotten worse. Where I got to the point that I didn’t know if I wanted to carry on with uni or not which put me behind. Luckily I managed to sorted myself to carry on with uni the best I can even though I am a couple weeks behind. So I got in touch with my group to see where they were at with the project and what assets they could do with.
So the assets I have chosen are the Pick Axe, water trough, hitching rail, Fence, Moonshine bottle and a Mine cart. With creating the assets I am going to create all the assets then sort out the UV and finally the textures for them. With the assets they are low poly for the style but also they are for a mobile game so I don’t need to over complicate the designs. So I decided to start off with the Pick axe which turned out rather well for its shape and scale. One issue I found with making the assets is that its difficult to find a concept art design that works from the variety of concept art. To solve this I narrow it down to one that I can work with. Another issue I had was with the Moonshine bottles handle as I couldn’t get it to look right with the curvature. This took me some time to play around with experimenting with the amount of tris and curvature. With the assets complete I went over then again to check that I haven’t over complicated them by adding in to many tris. As I don’t want to put to much pressure on the mobile games engine. Going over them I found that most of the assets had to many tris which I can easily reduced them down. Making it easier for the games engine and my UV maps.
With sorting out the UV’s on the assets, I found it difficult at first as I didn’t know if I was doing them efficiently and doubting myself that I was doing right. So it took me some time experimenting to find the best way to make the UV’s. When sorting out the UV’s I found that with the mine cart I had accidentally extruded a section without knowing. This was simple to solve I just used the quad draw tool to remove the accidental extrude. Overall the UV’s turned out well which I doubted myself when I first started that I was doing it right. But they have turned out well as they are laid out well and they look neat.
With texturing the assets I have gone with using Photoshop as I don’t need to go over the top with the detail of the textures. Due to our UV’s are only 512 pixel by 512 which is low quality so theres no point in going over the top with the details. With texturing my assets I went with simple colour however it felt quite basic. So I played around with the brush settings to create bark textures and rusted metal. Which I think turned out alright however I feel like I could have improved with experimenting with the methods on texturing my assets. As I feel like I could have spent more time on them but then again I didn’t have that much time to finishing them off.
Thomas Morphew Games art 