Stéphane Charré talked a little about the way you can use pre-made assets with the available game assets.
Stéphane Charré talked a little about the way you can use pre-made assets with the available game assets.
Introduction
My name is Stéphane Charré. I’m From France and I’m currently studying 3D Game development at Objectif3D. I have a 3years degree in programming, but my strength and passion is in 3d and video games, which I’ve been playing ever since I was a child.
Before being a student I’m a self-taught passionate and I try, as many as I can to work on personal projects, trying to grow up my skills and experiences in the gaming industry.
During one month I’ve worked on Unruly Heroes as a Level Artist for Magic Design Studios.
Project
“Industrial Farms” is a quick and efficiency looking project. We can’t really link this art as a game ready level. It has been made to test and demonstrate how I could achieve something decent in a short amount of time.
Involving myself in the concept idea for a couple of hours allows me to plan things to avoid. It’s really important to know when you can’t afford some details in the composition.
Inspiration comes from everywhere. I almost collect original ideas from Artstation, films or in my everyday life. Concerning this scene I assemble some of my passions and desires. For example, I always wanted to create large open wheat fields surrounded by animated windmills.
Composition
The composition is pretty simple here, it was mostly designed to feel the industrial props (gears and mechanic objects) fitting with the natural wheat fields movement. I started to think on the first concept few weeks ago, waiting for the idea become clearer in my mind. It revealed that a sunset could render great behind the main structure.
At the beginning the river shouldn’t be empty but a sort of desert ambiance took place as long as the scene was built. As you can see in the video the camera pops out really quickly at the start when the terrain and the main props were set. It allows me to get a base point to build the rest of the scene. To be honest, as the scene isn’t a fully playable level the block out part wasn’t really necessary. However, for my part, you always need at least to have detailed ideas or sketches when you decide to get into a level art project. Throwing yourself without anything can be a waste of time.
Assets
The scene involves the Polygon asset franchise made by Synty Studio. Few other assets were home made using 3ds Max (windmill). I tried to respect the Polygon style as much as I can, taking examples and references. When you do not create the asset by yourself you need to understand the creators’ modularity logic. It’s essential to test how the assets work together, what you can achieve when you mix them.
Polygon assets, gears and wood stuff
Windmill 3ds Max
Ship and windmill
Medieval Low Poly Windmill by Alpha16 on Sketchfab
The animations were made at the end. I used the UE4 blueprint editor. It basically consists to tell the object to rotate in the axis you desire. Be aware to place the pivot point correctly before anything else. I also used the SimpleGrassWind blueprint option to animate the wheat plant.
Rotation blueprint
SimpleGrassWind blueprint
Depending on the animation. For the basics (rotation / translation / scaling) you can use UE4 blueprints or your favorite 3d software. In 3ds Max the way to make these animation is very elementary.
Textures
I used the textures given by the asset packages. It provides a large variety of colors. Concerning the post processing, the final render was made across hard hours of labor. The UE4 engine provides a lot of options, so I tested out multiple possibilities. I finally succeeded in a decent outcome of which I created three different versions.
Render
I used UE4 4.17.
Excepting the post processing part (which was actually the biggest challenge I had) I found some difficulties to build this industrial building at the middle left. It was a hard task to build something coherent and not too messy.