Terra Marie- Week 11 Dev Log

October 31st - November 6th

21 hours 50 minutes

*Preface: To anyone in the group reading this, I have this many hours because I had many inefficient work sessions this week. However, in correlation with the previously mentioned issues of time allocation in prior weeks, I just want to say that the hours don’t matter, the work is what matters. Whether I have 2 hours, 12 hours or 21 hours, it is more important to me that I feel like I have done all I could to work towards a successful outcome, show the process behind what I am creating, and explain how I plan to achieve goals moving forward. To me, this is a way of showing the group how much I care about our creation. The amount of effort and thought we put into this project will reflect in the final outcome.*

October 31st - 3 hours 30 minutes

I created joints for the updated arrogance model and oriented the joints. I also was watching videos to get a general understanding of the rigging process from beginning to end.  I am not good at rigging and haven’t done it in a while, so I wanted to be sure to familiarize myself with what to do before I started. Daelyn met with me and explained a few things as well by showing me her rigs and her process. 

  Figure 1.1

November 1st - 2 hours

Meeting with Daelyn to discuss the schedule and future project plans. There was still much to be done, so we focused on how to restructure how we divided tasks, and also talked about plans for the re-design of the Hub.

November 3rd - 1 hour 

Created the questionnaire for playtesting. I had to look up references from other questionnaires and read a few articles to decide what questions would be applicable to my group.

November 3rd - 30 mins

I did a map layout design for the Hub. The group decided that having two different levels was no longer necessary. There was also the issue of not knowing how to utilize the space of the first map that I had greyboxed. So, taking Daelyn’s vision (as we discussed in the November 1st meeting) and the inspiration/reference photos that the group had shared in discord, I tried to come up with a space that would fit everyone’s ideas.

Figure 2.1

November 4th - 4 hours 15 minutes 

I started level design in unreal engine. Using the new assets had become an unexpected challenge. I tried to map out the level design as close to what the layout design stated, but getting certain shapes with the rocks was a little difficult. Also, the assets were huge, so I ended up scaling everything several times and having to reshape it. I think starting this without a greybox set me back, but I had no choice but to jump right in due to the timeframe of the project.

Figure 3.1

Figure 3.2

Figure 3.3

In addition, when working on the house, the floors didn’t have bottoms on the meshes, and the ceilings didn’t have tops on the meshes. So, lining everything up to look as it should’ve looked, based on the house layout design I did in week 8, was a struggle.

Figure 3.4

Even though I felt that I worked inefficiently this day, I still was off to a good start for the next working session. 

November 5th - 3 hours 15 minutes

Worked on level design in unreal engine. For this session, I played around with how I could make the islands look more natural. They all had flat bottoms and sharp edges. It just didn’t look right. I figured if I flip the mountains upside down, I could create the illusion of these islands being ripped out of the ground and lifted up… if that makes sense. I wanted to give the islands a more dynamic look. I didn’t do all of them, but I tested what the mountains on the bottom would look like for a couple.

Figure 4.1

I also “finished” the house design. We didn’t have many assets, so I finished it based on what we had and took note of what we needed for future iterations. 

Figure 4.2

This also felt like an inefficient session due to once again having to fiddle with getting everything properly spaced. The problem with ceilings not having tops, floors not having bottoms, and walls not being solid all the way through, was that it created the issue of light leaks. Figuring out where those were and how to fix them took up time as well. But in the end, it ended up looking nearly exactly how I intended, minus the few spots where we need additional models.

November 5th - 1 hour 30 minutes 

I started to try to rig the arrogance model, but I failed. I had watched a video on how to do IK leg controls, but somehow I messed up along the way and it just didn’t turn out right. I tried to follow other tutorials, but couldn’t understand them as well as I could understand the first video. At that point, I figured my original failure was just user error – aka my fault and not the fault of the information in the video. So, I just gave up and created the controls ahead of time, so that I could save time from doing that in the next session.

Figure 5.1

November 6th - 3 hours 55 minutes

Since my last rigging session didn’t go well, I worked with Daelyn during this session. I followed the leg tutorial again and ended up getting it right. So, I was able to duplicate the process on the other two legs as well. I did make the same mistake I made previously on one of the legs this time (still can’t figure out where I messed up), but getting the controls went much smoother. Dae also helped me along the way with understanding how to parent and group the controls. I ended up finishing all the controls for this rig during this time.

November 6th - 25 minutes

Brainstorming names for each of the characters.

November 6th - 1 hour 30 minutes

Dae and I started the meeting 30 minutes early to discuss individual schedules for the upcoming Wednesday. Then the group meeting started, where each of us discussed the names we had come up with for the characters, progress on the previous week’s task, and expectations for the upcoming week. I worked on skinning arrogance while in the meeting, but I had a few issues. So, I met with Dae briefly after the meeting before we ended the night. Sunday was essentially an episode of a show I like to call “Rigging with Daelyn.”

Figure 6.1

I was proud of the progress made that day and glad that I could receive the help I needed in order to make the progress needed.

Figure 1.1 | Arrogance Model bone orientation

Figure 2.1 | New Hub level layout design

Figure 3.1  | Hub level layout in unreal

Figure 3.2  | Hub level WIP

Figure 3.3  | Hub level WIP

Figure 3.4  | House WIP

Figure 4.1 | Day 2 Hub level WIP

Figure 4.2 | Day 2 House WIP

Figure 5.1 | Arrogance with controls 

  Figure 6.1 | Arrogance skinned WIP