Weeks 1 -3 - Introduction & Plan

 My name is Zachary Wilkins, and I am currently studying BA Game Art at Teesside University. Going into my second semester of Third year, I am creating this blog as I am going to be documenting the process of creating my Final Year Project to hopefully look back on and then expand upon in future projects, implementing the learned skills to push my abilities further. 

Introduction

Working Title: 

'Drew's Easy Diner'

Overview

 For my Final Year project I will be creating a hyper-realistic environment which will then be presented within Unreal Engine 5. The environment will be the interior and exterior of a traditional 1950s style American diner and will include the parking lot and the main dining area.

This environment will be heavily inspired by The Two Whales Diner from Life is Strange Season 1 (2015, DontNod Games), substituting the painted, stylized aesthetic of Edouard Caplain (Lead Artist, Life is Strange) for a style more akin to Tate Mosesian’s and Rogelio Olguin’s realism in
Uncharted 4 (2016).

Deliverables

• One (1) Realistic Environment rendered in Unreal Engine 5 that I will present on my
  Portfolio, containing the following
• A fully developed Interior
• A fully developed Exterior
• At least One (1) Hero Asset
• Multiple scatter / clutter assets
• One (1) Developmental Diary / Blog

I have also set a stretch goal of gathering cinematic footage of my environment that will also be presented on my Portfolio, and during ExpoTees.

Rationale & Motivation

 When it comes to the reasoning behind my decision to make this environment, there are three main sources of inspiration…

The first is that I have found that my passion for games lies within their environments, having broached the initial anxiety I had around them in our previous module, Upskill. Due to an incident in first year in which I had a particularly bad experience creating an environment based around Alien Isolation, I avoided making environments for a long time, focusing mainly on props and other hard-surface assets as a rule. However, after looking into the skills in a dedicated, structured, and ultimately safe way in which I was able to experiment, my confidence grew to the extent that I want to pursue this pathway further.

The second is that the environment itself is heavily inspired by two of the most influential games I have ever had the privilege of playing. My dream career involves working for Naughty Dog (Santa Monica, CA, USA). And while they were once over known for their work on Crash Bandicoot (1996 – 1999), the studio has since moved on to more realistic games with the Uncharted series (2007 – 2018), and the award-winning franchise The Last of Us (2013 – 2020). The latter of these, 'The Last of Us’ (2013) is the sole reason I am at university, as it was the game that inspired me to become an artist. As Naughty Dog’s game environments and games have expanded in size, detail, and complexity, I feel I would be more suited to apply for a role at their studio by developing my skills with larger environmental work in a hyper-realistic style, according to the job listings available in the careers section of their company website. 

 The other game is Life is Strange Season 1 (2015) by DontNod Entertainment (Paris, France). The reason for this is purely sentimental, as the game itself has led to me meeting people I would consider my best friends, despite us living continents apart. The game resonated with me as a teenager, and as such I reached out to other fans of the game online. Through doing this, I met my friends Tristan, Nick, and later Steffi, who in turn helped me find myself in a turbulent time in my life. Had I not played this game, we never would have met; and as such I would like to pay a small tribute to the game that led me to them, and to my friends for supporting me throughout my time at university and beyond. The theme of my project was inspired in no small way by the ingame diner The Two Whales, as this is where the main character meets her best friend for the first time, which then later plays a large part in the ending of the game. I felt this was appropriate to conclude my Undergraduate education.

Finally, I simply want to prove to myself that I am, in fact, capable of creating something of this scale to a high standard. As I mentioned previously, I have spent so long fearing attempting something this complex that I’ve held myself back from developing the skills I know I could potentially gain. I want to challenge myself, and ultimately become a better artist through said challenge.  

Area of Investigation

The main responsibility of an environment artist is to have many skills, and learn to use them in a way that we are able to balance an entire project with planning, optimization, and prioritization. As such I have decided that the following will be suitable areas for investigation when thinking about the scope of my project.

•  Exploring and experimenting with different software and developing industry-standard skills and Workflows used to create game-ready environments.
• Exploring the art-specific elements and tools in Unreal Engine 5 and researching updated Engine workflows
•  Exploring the use of optimization methods in Video Game Environments such as Trim Sheets, Decals (etc.)

As a more generalist area for investigation, I will research in depth the architecture and history of the American Diner, which I will later implement while developing the assets for my scene, with the main focus being on the architectural structure of the diner, and the technology used within to be historically accurate.

 

To do this I will try to find as much media as I can in which there are American diners, such as the following:

 

• ‘Grease’ (1978) Directed by R. Kleiser, [Feature Film] USA: Paramount Pictures 
• ‘The Founder’ (2017) Directed by J.L. Hancock [Feature Film] USA: STUDIOCANAL Ltd.
• 'America on a Plate. The Story of the Diner’ (2016) Unknown Director [TV Documentary] BBC

Technical Overview

 Literature Review

 Throughout the development of this project, I plan on using both textbooks and online sources to gather information relevant to the work I am undertaking, searching as and when I need to learn specific skills. However, during my primary research, I have found the following texts to be extremely helpful, and will use these through the entirety of this module.

• Morris, D. and Hartas, L. (2004) ‘The Art of Game Worlds’ First Edition, Lewes, UK: ILEX
• Victoria & Albert Museum (2019) ‘Video Games: Design / Play / Disrupt’ [Exhibition Accompaniment] London, UK: V&A Publishing [Pp. 114 – 125]
• Galuzin, A. (2016) ‘Preproduction Blueprint: How to Plan Game Environments and Level Designs’ Second Edition Unknown Location: World of Level Design
• Schreier, J. (2017) ‘Blood, Sweat, and Pixels’ First Edition, NY, USA: Harper Collins Publisher [Pp. 31-63]
• Naughty Dog (2014) ‘The Art of Naughty Dog’ First Edition OR, USA: Dark Horse Publishing 

Of course, these will not be the only texts I use throughout this module, but they have been useful to build a solid foundation to work from. I will also utilize online videos, web pages, and other forms of informative text to complete the steps I need to take.

 

What I'm Going to Do

The final product will consist of a large-scale yet contained environment, and an Asset Showcase, presented in Unreal Engine 5. I will use industrystandard workflows, following it as best as I can with as much accuracy as possible, to create a high-quality, optimized scene that will depict the interior and exterior of a 1950’s American Diner, focusing heavily on the hard-surface aspects of the scene as this is my main area of interest and what I aspire to pursue as a career. According to Martin Teichmann, Environment Modeller at Naughty Dog (Gnomon, 2016), the workflow used within Naughty Dog’s environment creation is as follows:

• Concept Art / Moodboards / Basic Idea
• Level Design Blockout
• Art Blockout
• First Pass
• Overpaint by Concept Artist (I will use this step as an opportunity to gain peer and lecturer feedback as I am not a 2D artist)
• Texture Pass / Final Pass 

Naughty Dog also uses a high-to-low Poly Workflow, which I will use as and when I need to in order to optimize the final pass of my scene and make it game-ready. As such I want to make sure I reach a minimum of 60 FPS while simulating gameplay. To do this I will also be implementing basic Tech Art skills such as the implementation of Master Materials and LODs, to reduce the impact on the Engine’s memory usage and as such keep my scene from lagging. 

 

All work will be completed using the following software, utilizing the previously mentioned workflows and further investigating the techniques used by artists at AAA studios:

• Autodesk Maya
• Marvellous Designer
• SpeedTree
• Substance Painter / Sampler / Designer
• Adobe Photoshop
• Unreal Engine 5

All assets will be correctly labelled and categorized in-engine, in .FBX format, with either 1k, 2k, or 4k texture maps.

Methodology

The first part of this module will be to spend time making pre-production resources such as Moodboards, Asset Lists, and diving into the resources I have gathered to set a good strong foundation to build my project on. 

After this, I will move into a Greybox, which will become an Art Blockout in Autodesk Maya. 

From there, I will move into the creation of my assets. As Stef Velzeboer says in his Artstation tutorial ‘Environment Production’ (2022) I need to focus more on the larger parts of the environment, and on getting the structure of the architecture done, along with the iconic elements of the diner, before the smaller details. 

Once these assets are done, with both high and low poly variants being ready (and the low-poly asset being unwrapped), I will move into the baking and texturing process by using Substance Painter, Designer, and Sampler. I plan on using Substance Painter as my main texturing software for assets, while using Sampler and Designer for tiling textures such as the floor and wall tiles. 

Having already moved my blocked-out assets into Unreal Engine 5, I would then move the finished assets into my scene, ensuring they are all labelled correctly using the prefix ‘SM_[AssetName]. 

After that, I will apply the materials, implementing optimization techniques such as Master Materials and other Technical Art techniques I am familiar with using the following Prefixes:

• Albedo – T_[AssetName]_D 
• Normal – T_[AssetName]_N 
• Packed Map – T_[AssetName]_MRAO

When the materials are implemented, and the environment is built (including the exterior) I will use SpeedTree to create foliage to scatter around the environment, adding final touches and then attempting to use the cinematic functions within Unreal Engine 5 to render some beauty shots for use on my Portfolio.

What Could Go Wrong?

The main problem I will encounter will, ultimately, be time constraint. 

As I have a job alongside University, I need to factor in my 16 hour contract when considering how much time I am able to spend on this project. The recommended 30 hours per week will be doable, but it does mean that I also need to prioritize downtime into my plan, too. 

My lecturers have told me in semesters prior to this that I don’t take enough down time. So I am going to make sure to take at least one or two hours a day to unwind and step away, as I know that I am a very likely candidate for burnout. 

I have also experienced problems before with backing up files, etc. So as such I will ensure that each piece of work is backed up two or three times as a minimum. 

Ultimately, though, the problems I may face will be easily managed with prior planning and prioritizing, which is also in line with Riot Games’ ‘So You want to Make Games: Environment Artist’ video (2018) which states that a good environment Artist knows how to prioritize and how to balance what needs to be done, as opposed to what can be done later, or can be missed altogether.

Ethical Issues

 Since my environment is based around the 1950s, I will need to take care with regards to how I present this period of American History, and consider the potential repercussions of any decisions I may make over the course of this module.

 The 1950s in America are known for being unapologetically racist (J. Goldblatt, 2021), with racial segregation being present in almost all walks of life, all businesses, and even public transport. As someone who has never experienced systemic racism, I do not feel it is my place to speak on behalf of those affected by these issues, and so as such will avoid implementing all traces of segregation within my environment.

 To do this, I could do one of two things. The first is that I could set my environment in the 1950’s and simply disregard this issue pointblank, opting for a sleek, newly-built aesthetic at the expense of historical inaccuracy. Alternatively, I could set my environment in modern-day America, with the Diner being a little more worn, a little aged, but with no trace at all of any form of the aforementioned ethical issue

 After considering this for quite some time, I have opted for the latter – as I don’t think it would be right to ultimately pretend that racism at the time didn’t exist and erase the issue completely, but I also do not feel comfortable using the language of the time within my work to be presented to industry.

There is also the issue of the use of flashing / flickering Neon lighting in my scene as this can contribute to photosensitive epilepsy. According to Epileptic Society (Date Unknown), Photo-sensitivity is not a common form of Epilepsy, but I can counteract this by putting a simple trigger warning on screen prior to any cinematics I have running detailing that there are flashing lights within the footage. When displaying, I can also warn viewers via word of mouth.

Project Plan

It is worth noting that I plan on spending 30-40 hours per week working on this project, as this constitutes working a full-time job, and would emulate the experience of working in Industry.

I want to allow myself time away from the project to avoid Burnout. So in allowing myself some free time, this should hopefully help keep me motivated and excited to see it through to completion. Accounting for 8 hours of sleep a night, my 16 hour contract at my part-time job, and time it takes to do general household stuff, I think the 30-40 hour weekly guideline will be appropriate to complete my goals.