SWOT analysis:
Strengths:
I have have excellent time management
The ability to be able to model from 2D reference or from free hand
Good research skills for essays and specialist studies
Being able to keep things as tidy as possible
Weaknesses:
One of my weaknesses is Animation
Another weakness is keeping focus on tasks at certain points
Opportunities:
Having lecturers to be able to help with work when needed
Having access to the internet where you can access videos for help
Being able to get 3Ds Max for free while being in College
Threats:
Covid/Lockdown accruing and not being able to access my work that's at college or not being able to do all my work at home
Possibility of not being able to make it to College due to busses being late or an accident possibly happening
Moodboards: Visual Research
Bed Styles:
Starting some basic research in how a lot of traditional beds can look trying to get a basic understanding of how they are typically laid out. Also getting some Wireframe looking images of how they look as well which could be very helpful in the creation of a different style of bed for my work.
This research is for the space filling of the room, having the model ideas for a mouse, keyboard and even a bin which allows small details to be added after all of the main modelling has been done. I think having space fillers will be very helpful especially in the recreation of my bedroom for my current objective for my final project.
More visual research on how I could model a dresser/chest of draws giving me good variety of what I could create, which having a good opting is very helpful for a broader section of modelling, as I'm still planning on making my room I could still add creativity and make my room more modernised or more vintage.
For this mood board I have gathered generalised images/textures for future ideas of what types of textures I would actually need for my Idea, although for actual texturing I would be using more high quality textures from proper websites with much more natural textures.
Bedroom Reference Images:
Over the weekend I made sure to take some starter images of my room to give me a start for my modelling, doing this gives proof that I'm not recreating someone else's room. Doing this also allows me to be bale to reference model making my times much easier knowing what I'm modelling and not making it up as I go and claiming it to be mine.
More reference images:
To make sure that all section of my model have a reference imagine I'm making sure to take more images from home as I go along, being able to show more angles of my home bedroom allows to show that in my models I'm not making anything up and that there's no possibility that I'm copying others.
Modelling research: How to model
Theoretical research:
Idea 1: Modelling Bedroom (realism and Main Idea)
"The player's primary logic operates within the known possibilities of physics. Keep in mind gravity, weight, mass, density, force, buoyancy, elasticity, etc. Use this as the starting point, but do not be limited by it." This is from GameDeveloper.com an article about basic principles for gameplay and design.
"When addressing anyone, ask yourself, "Does this draw the audience in?" This applies to (but is not limited to) the player, the spectator, your fellow developers, the publisher, and their marketing team. If it's not a good idea, there's no need to continue until it becomes a good idea or is replaced by something better." This is from GameDeveloper.com an article about basic principles for gameplay and design.
"Color theory encompasses a multitude of definitions, concepts and design applications - enough to fill several encyclopedias. However, there are three basic categories of color theory that are logical and useful : The color wheel, color harmony, and the context of how colors are used." This is from Colormatters.com a website which talks through the importance and what colour theory is.
In my work I'm going to be applying physics to my level because I'm going to be making my final project go over into Unreal I don't want objects to have the wrong type of physics that would allow someone walking into the room to run through objects which is not something I would want inside of the room due to how unrealistic that would be and how unprofessional it would be to have the wrong type of physics in the game that being the same for not having anything inside of the level floating. having items floating inside of the level would definably not fit my main idea of me modelling my bedroom because nothing is floating which would mean I wouldn't be sticking to my main focus of my idea.
Colour theory would be a very large thing inside of a level due to the fact that with lighting you're going to want the colour to reflect properly and much more professionally because you're going to want a good amount of dynamic contrast between the colours but you're going to want the chosen colour to make sense, that and because my idea is to remake my real life bedroom I'm going to want the get the correct colours into my textures which wouldn't be to hard but because I'm modelling in 3Ds Max I need to make sure that when I transfer it over to Unreal I'm going to have to make sure that the colours go over properly and don't get obscured by the lighting I input.
Because I'm making a scene and not a game for my final project I need to really consider how appealing the scene is, this is something that Universities and future job interviewers are going to want to see I need to make sure that it's made thoroughly and has the necessary modelling styles made professionally. To do this I would need to make sure that there is no model clipping when i export it because putting that online on something like SketchFab is not appealing at all being able to see where you've taken short cuts and put models overlapping which is not professional at all, taking shortcuts when tying to make your scene makes it very unappealing when you export into a FBX.
Idea 2: Woodland Campfire scene (Horror)
Colour theory for this idea would have needed to have been heavily focused due to the fact that it would need to be really dark and dingy lighting. All of the texturing would need to be all dark due to barely being able to see because of the lighting that would be implemented into the scene after all of the assets were created. For assets like a tent that would be in this scene that would have a more vibrant coloured texture which I would have to make sure is slightly more viewable because there would still be some light being immitted from a campfire, which was defiantly something I would have added to the scene to give it some contrast of realism yet it still being in a dark eerie woods.
For a woodland setting I would need to be very aware of space because of how dense a forest can be and because I'd want it to be really creepy and scary due to the fact that it would be in a darker setting. The space made out for the trees compared to a campfire in real life would be a lot more spaced apart for a realistic space of a fire in the woods, that and the space from a camp fire to the tents would need to be really spacious on a safety level despite it being a viewable scene.
Idea 3: Abandoned Church Grounds (Horror)
For this scene, if I was to be able to add sounds (if it was playable as a level) the kind of sounds I would need for a graveyard would be sounds like foot steps which is something really common in horror games; hearing movements that aren't actually there. This gives the sense that something could be behind you when you're inside of the scene, being able to make it really immersive just because of the sounds around you from trees rustling, or the abandoned door creaking. However, because the basis of this idea is for it to just be a viewable level, because I'm not making a 'game', in theory I can still add sounds for a viewer because I need to export it over to Unreal. Then I'll be adding lighting which means I would actually be able to add sounds if I have the time to be able to do so.
Colour theory would be a really good part of this idea because of how dark a lot of the textures would be, I would have to make sure to implement a lot of darker and rotted textures due to the fact that the scene would have an abandoned building. Another good thing about thinking about colours is how they would fit together nothing would really be able to be to vibrantly coloured because that wouldn't fit the theme of it being a horror it would make it seem way to happy ruining the atmosphere of a much more horrific setting.
References:
Game Developer. 2022. The 13 Basic Principles of Gameplay Design. [online] Available at: [Accessed 18 March 2022].
Colormatters.com. 2022. Basic Color Theory. [online] Available at: [Accessed 18 March 2022].
Mouse creation research:
Due to the fact I'm not sure on how to thoroughly create a gaming mouse I went onto doing some research on how to create on more professionally.
A lot of the videos I found were to create really basic mice instead of them creating high detailed mice they would model a lot more standard types of mice which was really helpful for a way around not being able to make one thing from my room however in the future I defiantly want to go back to this model and try making a higher contrast model.
Unreal lighting research:
In Unreal engine there's a lot of different types of lighting because I haven't used much of Unreal I'm not to sure what would fit best so in doing some basic research the idea of using Directional Light, it would be very helpful for the idea of making my scene be in a specific season and more specifically if it was to be set in summer I'd be able to have a high positioned directional light to make it look mid-day as well as bright and not dark and dingy for if it were set in dusk and more of a winter set season.
IES lighting profiles: They are a 1D texture but are not actually a texture file. When adding this lighting into a project there's a curve that is shown which is how the lighting is actually shown, you have the ability to be able to change the lighting being able to change the brightness for darker or lighter regions of a project.
Unreal has got a option that allows you to add your own fog called "Atmospheric Fog" which would allow me to create more seasonal based themes for summer, winter, autumn and spring being able to have the possibility of having small amounts of fog for 3/4 seasons because in summer there's rarely fog however there being a option to possibly be able to make my scene more abnormal could be great for being able to make more than one scene.
In past research I talked about how lighting could heavily effect the texturing of my scene which is still a huge case and could potentially be a problem however during my search I haven't currently read anywhere that the styles of lighting I have found out about destroy the visuals of texturing, although if my textures do get obstructed by lighting I know I'll be able to research that and find out how to fix that almost immediately if that is to happen.
https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/BuildingWorlds/LightingAndShadows/QuickStart/
Texturing skills and processes:
Texturing in 3Ds Max is something that Isn't to hard to pickup while being in you project all you need to press is "M" which will open Material Editor Mode from there you can drag and drop really basic textures which will then allow you to just drag and drop textures onto models. However if you don't use the more complex mode of the texture editor where you have to drag in roughness maps and base colour maps to a texture option, your textures tend to be really stretched because scaling would all be wrong if you're not doing it from this more complex material editor.
PBS texturing: Doing this allows the creation of much more realistic textures, being able to paint and detail you own textures in Substance painter. The fact that doing this is possible would highly increase the production of higher quality models just due to the fact that the texture would have a good seem because you have been the one to create it then allowing you to more easily wrap it to a model if not paint it straight onto one. The process for creating PBs textures is a rather complex path because if you're going to want to make the textures outcome outstanding you're going to want to go through a lot of trail and error which could unfortunately slow down production rates on a smaller project.
The unreal texturing process is a lot different to how it works in 3Ds Max there's a lot more options on how to texture visually in 3Ds Max there's still a lot of processes but from research Unreal texturing seems a lot more complex.
Model Creation Research:
Doing more research into how to make models that I am unsure my self on how to make, doing this research is defiantly really helpful finding out new ways of making models and learning new skills for the creations of these models as well as the technical skills from the videos that I am able to put into all future models.
These small bits of research I feel defiantly helps my ability to model grow much more because these tutorials go through how to make it slowly meaning its much easier to pause and re-watch to make sure I understand what is needed to be done here.
Modelling process:
3ds Max
The modelling process of 3Ds Max isn't something that is super complicated to pick up due to the fact there are plenty of easy ways to model, most of the time starting of with a simple shape Is easier than you would expect having a square and being able to extrude and shape that Into you end goal won't ever really take to much time unless the shapes you are after are super complicated but In that case in 3Ds Max you can add more segments to allow the creation of more in-depth creations. Another process would be modelling from a 2D shape into a final 3D model which Is a process I have used many times before and something that will be very handy in my final project for smaller more specific models that only need to be seen from one angle that being the creation of an object like a keyboard needing to see only the shape and length of it as well as the key layout.
A more complex modelling process could be for a creation of a whole scene for example a train station the complexity of creating that would be very difficult so it would more than likely be easier to make models separate outside of the room layout so that you can scale the once they are inside of the building. Being able to follow online tutorials from YouTube makes more in-depth modelling processes much easier having that step by step for getting the final product this is extremely helpful especially if you're very unsure on how to get a product created getting that extra help and having a guide to follow by pausing and un-pausing the video and being able to skip backwards to ensure something isn't missed really helps your modelling process getting to re-watch and ensure the process and information of how it's done can be fully learned.
Final Project survey:
Initial thoughts
In my survey I asked "Do you think using real life reference is a good idea" which got a good overall answer of "yes" in the survey I should have added a reasons box but just from the 18 people out of 19 saying that It was a good Idea I thought that It would be a good idea to trying to stick to real life reference from images from my room itself, having the reference Images that I do have Is really helpful for the modelling process because I've seen the models In person which means I'm having the visual image and the memory making It much easier to finalize.
Another question I asked was what season the level should be In if the level was to be created fully and there was a really wide variety of answers, Summer got the most responses with 8/19 which Is really good to see that more people would prefer and that makes doing the lighting of a level much easier because I would be able to follow the response of the season and just have a bright light this also then matches the responses to me asking what lighting should be used and the more collective response was Mid-Day lighting from skylight, having these correlate in responses makes me think that the people who answered It actually payed attention instead of rushing through which Is much more helpful, because I'll be able to follow the questionnaire for the creation of my scenes final lighting. For the other seasons more people preferred Winter over Fall which was really interesting because having a Winter scene could add a lot of detail having to make it a lot darker which matches what more people said for lighting having it more dark and less lighting, which again could be something that looks really good, all of the feedback for the lighting and the season of a full level was really helpful because It gives me a good idea based of a small group of people on what more people would prefer overall and that allows me to set to a variety of demographic.
In my questionnaire I asked what style the models to be in and to my surprise more people said It should be In high-poly over Low-Poly which goes against what I am creating for my final project but if I was going to do work based of off this, I would really enjoy being able to make the whole scene In a High-poly style but due to the time of the final project I went with Low-poly for the reason, with timing I would enjoy making the models more detailed and with higher contrasting texturing which was something I might need to add to a new survey asking more detailed questions for the future of my work.
One of my plans for my final project was to possibly add the ability to walk around the room in Unreal Engine and so in the survey I asked if people would enjoy being able to walk around and the majority was a yes answer, which was really good to see because if I was to have the time to be able to make this possible more people would enjoy the release of my scene just based upon a smaller amount of people who answered, I feel like if I was to go based of this that only 3 in 19 people would thoroughly enjoy the walking aspect of the scene.
For one of the first lessons in this final project I thought of three different Ideas on what I could create and so in the survey I asked which one they would prefer with a small amount of detail in what the level should be, the responses for this were really close in the preference in what my other Ideas were that I would highly consider making one of them in future work in University or in the work place. The first idea that got 8 responses was a Woodland campsite with a more dark and dingy lighting with a highly horror based scene and that had 8 out of the 19 responses for that one which was really good because that was my third Idea and so if I had chosen that less people would've been entertained by the level over the Idea of an abandoned church with ruined gravestones and a partially ruined and destroyed out house, this idea got the higher end of the answers which was really good because of the fact this Is what I would have chosen if I haven't considered my bedroom scene the amount of potential there is with an idea like this one is astronomical just based of small detail like tomb stones and their layout.