Imagined Worlds Project

Week 3 Progress

Week 3 was the last week of our Imagined Worlds Project. This week I was tasked with helping other parts of the class that needed help as well as producing any last minute quick concepts that I was requested to make by the 3D modelling part of the class. You can see some quick rock concepts that I was asked to make, however these were never made into 3D assets. Another piece of concept art that I was tasked to work on was the interior of the central spaceship hub, however I did struggle with this and unfortunately failed to complete this task.

With this week being the last week before Sprint 3 ends, the class was heavily focused on producing any 3D assets that were needed as well as UV unwrapping them so that they could also be textured within the texturing software 3D Coat. Any assets that were ready and finalised, were imported into Unreal Engine by Michael so we could start to block out a basic level – the aim we set to meet by the end of this sprint. Blueprints for the game were also receiving touch ups during this stage of development, ensure whatever ones we had in place worked.

Scrum Meeting Documentation

Now onto the 3^rd week of our sprint 1, me and the rest of the class were approaching the deadline for Sprint 1. This week we were mainly focused on the production and finalisation of 3D assets as well as the importing of said assets into Unreal Engine so that a prototype game could be blocked out.

Problems I Encountered

This week has been long and filled to the brim with pressure to meet the up and coming deadline for Sprint 1. As mentioned in the scrum meeting documentation, this week we focused on finishing assets and importing them into Unreal Engine. A long the way the 3D modelling team had encountered issues with some 3D assets having broken geometry and UV maps. The personal issues that I encountered was with one of the final pieces of concept art I was requested to create – the interior of the central hub. I have limited experience creating 3D interior concepts so I struggled with this work, and unfortunately I was unable to complete it; Thankfully the rest of the class was able to create a central hub interior without the need of a concept.

Sprint 1 Review

Sprint 1 of the Imagined Worlds Project was most certainly an experience! Throughout the 3 weeks me and my class have worked tirelessly as a team to create a working prototype for the game idea we created, and overall I am extremely proud of the progress we all managed to make over this small stretch of time; However I was disappointed with the performance of some members who set us back, given that through motivation and quality of work e.g. broken UVs on 3D assets. Olivia and Emma who worked on concept art took too much time producing concepts, long past it was acceptable to still be working on concept art. Dominic and Richard Lowton produced 3D assets that were unable to be textured due to broken UV maps and geometry – some of these assets went unused and or were fixed.

I believe that over this project, I have learned how to work under the pressure of a deadline with an industry standard production pipeline. Over the course of the sprint I have also learned to work with a large group with varying disciplines, example 3D modelling, animating etc and have found that this experience has honed and developed my communication skills and leaderships skills, as I was the supervisor of concept art, and had to direct and give work to the other concept artists, Olivia and Emma. At first, I found the project to be extremely stressful do to the pressure of the sprint deadline and general stress of working with a large group, although as the first week progressed I slowly got used to this.

Early Concept Art Produced

Below are depicted early concept art that I had produced during pre-production and production. The majority of the early concept art was centred around the main protagonist of the game – everything else developed around the creation of this character as we progressed through Sprint 1. Originally I aimed to created more designs for the character, however my class liked the first initial sketch that I had produced for the protagonist so much that we immediately decided to stick with it. Later on during production we planned on having different outfits for different planets that the character would visit, however this was inevitably scrapped due to time constraints. The last image is of one of the enemy NPCs that would attack the player, however due to time limitations the concept could not be used within the time frame of Sprint 1. I should also mention that at the start of the project, there were plans to have a tutorial NPC in the main player hub, however once again due to time constraints this idea was scrapped.