Day: April 25, 2019

Map Creation

As I’ve already mention several times, I want my level to be based on the real-world location. During this late stage of project, I’ve created a top view of my environment.

I’ve used a Google Earth image to draw over it and create outlines for my map. I would like to say that this speed up the process, but I guess it rather slow it down as I had to be more accurate with my drawings. However, this was a vacuous process in general.

An image taken from the Google Earth
The final outlining of the square area of the place

I really like the outlines of the entire area, but as this square is huge, the final map will have to contain just a close up of this piece.

With the use of the main objectives and collectables, I’ve draw over my own version of this terrain, by adding items required in the gameplay. The most important ones included the outlines of the lab facility and shed, but I have also added other information to the top view. I have also decided to include the walkthough with several main points on the way and possible moving directions.

The final top view of my level

Although some of the objects are not yet in the asset list (that’s why I’ve left a space for the updates in the list), I was able to place most of my objects withing this smaller square area. This is still a huge level, but I’m now sure that I will be able to fill it with goods. I can’t wait to start working on it!

Unreal Engine 4.22 released!

These are an amazing news for the game developers as Unreal Engine has become a very important aspect of game creation. This is also an important aspect for me as an environment artist, because new features improves many aspects of world creation.

The new version of UE introduces new features of creating photorealistic real-time experience (real-time tracing and improved build times of up to 165%).

Epic Games have improved a multi-user editing called VURTUAL PRODUCTION, which let multiple developers to work inside the same UE project at the same time. This feature seem to be incredibly powerful and will allow designers to work more precisely and together on the multiple parts of the project. I can only speculate how would that improve the speed of production, but I guess this may also cause some problems. But we will see that in the future…

The most important feature added would be the Real-Time Ray Tracer. This update will allow artists to create more realistic reflections, soft area shadows, better indirect lighting and improved ambient occulusion.

There are also other improvements (sound, virtual reality wireless support, render time), which would be more important to other designers and not as much for the environment artists like me, so I don’t know much about it.

REFERENCE LIST:

Wilson J., (2019), Unreal Engine 4.22 released, Epic Games, [ONLINE]. Available at: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/unreal-engine-4-22-released (Accessed: 25 April 2019)