Film room project Evaluation

One of my personal choices for a film room would be the Gryffindor common room, The main elements that made this room stand out to me, The grand stone structures contrasting against its antique interiors. It has contracts of natural lighting from the windows and a big roaring fire place as the focal point to the room, casting warm orange lighting over the whole room. The room has lots of image source material, clearly showing the whole room, even high shots, clearly showing the layout of the room.

My second personal choice would be one of the circular rooms from Alien. I am unsure what the room is called, However it has a strong focal point to the room with a centre of seating and round table. I was drawn to this as I loved the plastic geometric sci-fi interior. It is a fairly small room with few assets leaving time to focus on the main elements of the room.

My final choice would be the main entrance from Crimson peak, it is quite a large room, however there a few main large features such as the stair case and piano. I was drawn to this room because of the old architecture and lighting, as it has a large beam coming from a hole in the roof, creating spot lighting in the centre of the room, which produces a haunting atmosphere. During the film snow falls through the hole, which would make  an interesting animation to add to the scene.

After debating different film room scenes, we chose the bar room from Kingsman secret service, personally I thought that this was a good choice among many other good ideas we looked at. Independently, I chose this as I liked the traditional, cosy and worn look that English pubs have. It has a strong focal point to the room, as it has a large wooden bar. The room has a main focus of natural lighting from two large windows at the back of the room, creating gods rays beaming into the room, which would illuminate dust particles. The room also has curtains to distract from the outside world. The film has two bar fight scenes set in this room, with clear shots of the whole room, making it easy to collect image source material. The majority of the assets in the room are made from wood materials, creating a dark atmosphere. It has a variety of different textures and repeated assets to fill the scene. All of the assets depicted in the scene are from real life, making it easy to replicate materials rather than from a fantasy scene.   

  

First we created an asset list, categorising them into main structural and small assets, we also determined our triangle limit and texture sizes for each asset. We then created a white box of the room in UE4 to scale the size of the room and assets, using our screen shot of the film room as a guide. Once the white box was finished, we exported it to 3ds max to use it as a guide to start modelling. Within the first and second week of the project I had finished modelling all my assets, during this time I had problems with the see through mode, however I solved this by changing object properties from by layer to by object. Once I had modelled my assets, I created a copy of each asset and made a high poly version. I did this so that I could bake a normal map of the high poly version onto the low poly model, which would capture the details of the high poly but at a lower cost.

white box.

Bar stool asset creation.

Main door asset creation

windows asset creation.

Wine glass asset creation.

Before texturing we imported our models to the white box in UE4, to test our assets in scene and eliminate any problems before moving on. Our models were in cm and UE4 is in Inches, also a few assets extended through the floor, this was solved by re-scaling in 3dsmax. 

After modelling all my assets I began unwrapping and texturing. I had learnt more about unwrapping such as relaxing and rescaling to the same size, which I applied to my process and found I could work faster, which I now finished unwrapping my low poly assets. As I made low poly and high poly versions, I baked the normal maps using tutorials and asking for help. I then started texturing diffuse maps from photos of surfaces. Most of my assets were wood, which I used a tillable texture and edited by adding a highpass layer to smooth out the lines, a colour layer to match the wood from the scene, then added decals. while texturing I shared progress with group members, to replicate the same colour and brightness of textures for the scene, this is import as we didn't want the room to look mismatched . I did this process for all textures apart from the wine glass which only needed a plain diffuse colour, as this would mostly be edited in UE4. I also realised that my assets need to be multi-sub materials, as each asset has different surface properties, such as the windows are wood and glass.

Bar stool UV and texturing.

Main door UV and texturing.

Wine glass UV and texturing

Windows UV and texturing.

Next I exported all my assets with textures to UE4 to work on material PBR. I created an asset folder with the models and a material folder along with folders for each separate asset material, including diffuse maps and normal maps. As I imported my assets with multi-sub materials, I began editing each separate material with different surface properties, for example I edited the window material to have wood and glass properties, Which I use the diffuse map as a base colour. When first editing the materials, I had problems with them looking too shinny where they shouldn't, also roughness and normal maps being too intense, which I then looked into tutorials and the unreal website for guidance on PBR. For the wine glass I used a translucent material, with the diffuse as a base colour, opacity, metalness, reflectivity and refraction, I used the same glass properties for all my assets with glass surfaces. For the windows, barstool and main door I use similar materials for the wood, with multiple roughness textures, no metalness, normal maps of the high poly models, that are blended with other normal maps describing the wood surface. I saved I content and copied it to the group project folder to open in the main level.

Bar stool cushion material.

Bar stool wood material

Main door glass material.

Main door material.

Windows glass material.

Windows material.

Wine glass material.

Film room scene week five progress.

reflecting on my film room group project I can see that most members worked well as a team, we kept in frequent contact, posted updates of work progress and scheduled meet ups outside of lesson time via our Facebook group. However I felt some members of the group did not keep up with work schedules and put in an equal amount of effort of the whole group, which was made aware to our tutors. Our time management of the project worked to the deadline, we created asset lists, with texture and triangle limits, also established time limits for asset creation. Our asset creation and engine workflow progressed well, for instance we distributed our white box and assets through the group for ensure consistent scale of assets that accompany each other in the scene. We aimed to have essential work finished by week four of the project, allowing the last two weeks for final engine work. Material creation captured the traditional look of the scene and PBR enhanced our assets to look how we wanted them. During the project we stumbled across some problems with all stages of the work progress, but were solved quickly by the group.
After finishing the initial submission and reflecting on my project performance, I know what improvements could be applied. I would used time management more efficiently, so that I could complete task quicker to leave extra time for inevitable road blocks. Also so I could have more time to develop my assets in engine to make them look at their best.

Overall I feel happy with the final product of our film room group, It captures a good representation of our chosen film scene, The materials throughout the scene match the colours, saturation and traditional worn look of the pub. It mirrors the dark cosy atmosphere of the scene with the main lighting focus through the windows at the back of the room, creating strong beams of natural light. The assets populating the room are consistent good quality, which work well with PBR materials and reflect the lighting from assets where needed. On reflection, improvements I would apply would be to, increase contrast of lighting with stronger god rays from the windows, which would illuminate dust particles. Also edit the lighting colour and intensity from the windows. The size of the room feels slightly too big, which did not capture the cosy feel of the pub and the animation of the video render could of looked smoother if the camera speed was slower. However, the overall look of the room captures the film scene well and I feel I developed my knowledge and skills further during this project, which I can apply to future projects.  

We chose to recreate the post-credits bar fight from Kingsman: The Secret Service because it was the most balanced scene we could find in terms of asset distribution, difficulty, lighting and mood. The still is simple, but effective in conveying a mood of subtle tension through camera angles and character body language, but the scene itself is fairly simple. Light coming through the windows in a ‘god ray’ style evokes and evokes a very different mood to what the scene implies, giving the impression of a warm, welcoming British pub.
The still we chose also allowed us to take full advantage of the fact that the pub was home to a fight scene, with the swooping camera and multiple angles used giving us a clear indication of space, as well as a view of all the assets we would need to make, meaning very little would need to be guesswork or left out.
The still also offered opportunities for us to practice creating many different kinds of surfaces and textures, with wallpapers, woods, plaster, glass and upholstery all available as materials we were able to recreate.

As a team we were required to evenly distribute out assets and make a work plan for the coming weeks, something we immediately established as soon as the project began. Our planning began by organising a Facebook group where we would establish meet-up times, progress, updates and general discussion of the project. We knew this would be essential to keep track of everything so this was a very early step.
Another early group organisation tactic was the asset list- we went through the stills we had of the scene, individually picking out assets and putting them into an excel document, where we would decide triangle counts for each asset. While doing this, we also organised assets into a priority list based on size and importance. For example, the benches were going to be higher-poly models, finished and put into engine first before something like place mats. This allowed us to create the ‘feel’ of the room first and make sure that the scale was correct, as well as ensuring that if we stumbled during development the essential, room defining assets would be done in time. During this, we set up a time frame for what needed to be done and by when, aiming for the essentials to be completed by week four, ensuring a two week long polish, and giving ample time to deal with any inevitable road blocks.
During the project, our team would also lend our models to each other in order to keep a consistent scale for assets that sit closely together or work in tandem, such as chairs, benches and tables.