Animation Strategies (Week 5)

Intro to Unreal

This lesson was probably the most useful and needed lesson in terms of my own academic journey and in helping me complete my assignment, as everything we had been told and shown about Unreal Engine up until this point, was very overwhelming and was making me think this software was going to be really difficult to learn. This is why when we had this lesson as an introduction into Unreal, I was more than ready to listen and learn and hopefully relax some worries I had about going into this software to make my environment.

Henry began the lesson by giving us an idea what we were going to learn today and how the afternoon was going to be taking in what we learnt in our morning class and using it to help us begin in creating our own environments and for me this meant my fairie realm.

We were using todays lesson to create a landscape and use the pre-maid project Henry had made, the kitchen. This kitchen environment was going to be out first mock set up, that we were going to learn how to add textures, materials and set the scene up for filming.

Starting off the lesson I was already having difficulty launching my software, as it seemed that the newest version of Unreal was not going to download smoothly for me and I would have to download a different version, in order to do today’s class and even create my environment. This was an issue I had with Unreal back even in the summer when we were first told to download it in preparation for this class, as it seems that I can download the software easily and have it working for me, but then it seems if it isn’t used everyday for work. It will not open or even start and I need to re-download the entire software again which is a pain.

So, when this morning the software was acting up and I was already stressing about being able to take in as much as I can for this class and learn. I can say that it caused me a bit more stress than I wanted, but I decided to take some notes until I was able to get my Unreal working.

In beginning the lesson our first task was to open up the scene Henry had already set up for us in Unreal, which was a simple kitchen environment and we had to set this up and personalise it with some online free assets. Assets which we could add to the scene would include a fruit bowl and fruit for the kitchen counter, table and chairs for the open area and even figurines to add some personality to the space. This was a simple enough process as it was just teaching us the steps to import items which were already made and ready to be inserted and was going to be the way which we are going to have to import our entire environment from Maya. This was a simple process to learn as it was just clicking some buttons and if you have your models named correctly, you will know what to choose and where the models should go, easy enough.

The next step to practice on Unreal after the scene was set up and proportioned correctly was adding in the textures and materials which were already pre-maid in Substance Painter or another texturing software. I already know that for my own textures of my models I am going to use the software I am most familiar with, Substance Painter. Im not sure if Substance Painter is even the best for making textures or if I am even using the software to the best of its ability and I may need to take some time and try out other softwares. Although it is the software, I am most familiar with, so happy to use it for now.

Now creating textures and colouring the objects outside of Unreal, just to have to then export them into the software at first seemed really confusing. I was trying to wrap my head round all the different boxes and connections that I had to make and was worried that if I was to mess up just one of the connections, it would set me back in the tedious process of connecting textures to their models. After a few times doing the same process of connecting the texture and having given myself the helping hand of naming all of the models and models components separately. It quickly became that adding textures onto the model wasn’t too much of a difficult process and I was happy this was another thing I was beginning to wrap my head around when it came to Unreal.

Continuing on from this Henry showed all the things we could do with textures and what different processes we could go through to make sure we get the desired look of the textures we are applying. He showed us how we could add in textures to create shine on a window, shadow on our floors and even create a story in the environment we are working on as Henry added bloody handprints to the fridge. That could almost change a simple, boring environment into a horror scene with a story to come with. It is a good thing that the internet and many artists have created textures for other artists that we are allowed to use for our scenes in Unreal, however for my own personal island I would like to try my best to use most of my own assets and the assets of my groups. Just so that the island is personal to me and I would feel better having created it mostly by myself.

After our environment was set up the way we wanted and the textures were added to each component of our scene, you could say that then the scene was basically done and what was left was just the lighting that need to be added to the environment. Henry had told us that lighting was going to be a really big factor in the finalisation of our environment and that the lighting which we added can be helped by his tutorial, but that the lighting we create for our own individual environment and the group environment, will have to be specific to that environment.

Henry showed us how he made sure the windows he had in his scene were well lit and presented a realistic representation of light shining in through the window. He also added light into the scene to cancel out too many shadows and added light to the overall environment inside and out. So that the scene does not look like a boxed environment, but that you are viewing inside an actual kitchen.

In my own kitchen scene where I am practicing what Henry is saying and how we could set up the lighting, I understand that the lighting that I am going to use in my fairie environment will be different to this kitchen scene and to just take this lesson as an idea of what lighting to use. However, the difficulty I am having with the island is no matter what changes I make, I can’t seem to see what changes they are making to the light and also because there is no structure to light in a scene in Maya. It would be easy for me to mess up and not to how to fix the problem which I am having, I think the way I will need to handle this part of the set up, is trying my best and improve on from there when I can.

Henry ended the lesson by then showing us how the scene ended up looking in the end with all the setup he had created and urged us to start looking to how we were going to set up our own environments.

So, for the afternoon portion of the class and for the rest of the day when the blackboard session had been recorded and now uploaded, I decided to put Henrys lesson on in the background so that I could listen to it while I worked on my own environment. This is because I had really understood the lesson which Henry did today in class and thought I was better to get my information from this lesson, as a YouTube tutorial and someone else explaining the setting up process might confuse me.

In my own environment I hadn’t quite finished off all of my assets and textures which I was going to be adding into the environment and also was waiting on the models from everyone else in the group, as we are all kinda on the same level with working on our environments. However, as I knew our introduction to Unreal was coming up and that it would help me to start working on setting up my own environment there and then, to start getting an idea of what lighting and all I would personally need.

So, I had an idea from my concepts which I had drawn up, that I wanted to create an environment with three separate islands and some with stones to connect them all together. The three separate parts to my fairy island that I wanted was a house and front garden, a forest and wishing well nook and a picnic garden to relax at. I think these trio of islands would be lovely together and really present a home environment where a fairie lives and has set up different areas in her floating garden, where she can explore and relax. This is the environment which I had set up and imported from Maya and for now will just include three large floating islands and a couple of steppingstones.

I had already created textures for my environment in Substance so along with Henrys tutorial,

I followed the steps to add in the textures and next was setting up the lighting to best showcase my island. The lighting which I will set up now may change when I add it in a lot more models and textures, as this will create more depth in the environment and therefore causing more shadows, in need of more lighting. Knowing this however, I am just allowing my self to set up the initial lighting and scene within Unreal, to give myself an understanding of how it all works and what I need for my island. This will help in the finalisation of my assignment and environment, as I will already have an idea of what to do and won’t be so overwhelmed.

I set my island up well and I think that the lighting I have added did well in creating the shadows and scene which I wanted to present. As we are coming up to the end up our semester one and the assignment which we are working on are soon to be due for submission, I will use the rest of this day and the next week or so, to finalise my models, create their textures and add them into the scene I have now created in Unreal.