Month: August 2019

Evaluation

I’ve been working on this project for about last three months, so it’s really hard to be critical about the work that I’ve been making for so long, trying to finish every detail to the high standard. At the end of the process I am very happy with it, but I can also see some weak points and areas for improvements.

For the most of the project I’ve been struggling with time, which pushed me to do several thing differently than I’ve planned (I haven’t used SpeedTree, gave up on baking down HP to LP etc.), but it tought me that sometimes we just have to carry on with what we have. I’ve still managed to get the wanted result, but instead of using a shortcut I had to work harder and find another way around it.

Because of time, I also had to use few assets from the marketplace in order to have a properly finished product, but I believe, that if given some more time, I would be able to create similar assets by myself.

However bad it may sound, I’ve been able to successfully produce a substantial amount of work and finish everything on time. I have also succeeded in recreating the real-world location and use its terrain as a base for my own design. From the beginning I’ve been working on a well-planned level design and was able to fully create the entire scene on time.

During the production I have been making many important decisions, including a significant change in colour from light to dark. I believe this improved the general mood and atmosphere, but probably also had a small negative impact of visibility and clearness of the level as well.

I am not as good at technical work and optimization, which definitely needs some improvements. At the end my work was running smoothly at constant 60 frames per second, but that’s not all I should be worried about. I’ve been struggling with lightmaps and lighting in general, so I am not happy with some parts of my work.

During the project I have also successfully managed all my files with naming conventions and folders. It may sound unimportant, but when working on a big project like mine, it becomes a crucial responsibility.

During the entire process, I had several major problems. The most crucial was the baking down a high poly to the low polygon mesh, which wasted some of my precious time and I still couldn’t get it right. At the end I had to work around it and get the similar result by using completely different method. It didn’t work out as bad as it sounds, but a successful bake would change the result dramatically.

In the overall, this project had a huge impact on my future, as I’ve been able to work on my strengths and weaknesses. It also gave me an opportunity to work on a big scale like never before, at the same time pushing me to improve in many aspects.

The future of games

Many developers are always aware of the upcoming hardware specifications as these will affect the possibilities of the future gaming. The next-gen consoles are planned to support 8K graphics and ray tracing which will affect the standards for the game development. Sony announced that their future release will have a custom made, eight-core AMD CPU and GPU which will definitely improve the process speed and possibilities it gives to the game engines.

The latter is a technology that greatly improves the visual fidelity in games, as it mimics the way light moves and bounces from object to object, particularly reflective surfaces, and refraction through water, other liquids and glass. Given the proper optimizations, games could exhibit more realistic lighting and shadows as a result.

Sam Loveridge, GamesRadar

The upcoming unofficial name of PS5 (as many have already called it) will be backwards compatible with PS4 games, which makes it easier for developers so far. The only huge difference will be the loading time, as the recent experiments have proved a significant change (from 8.10 seconds to load to ONLY 0.8 seconds!).

But what’s in there for the future?

Someone suggested some time ago, that the next-gen consoles may be the last to see as an actual hardware that people would buy in order to play games. The streaming becomes more and more popular after a release of such services as PlayStation Now or Nvidia’s GeForce Now and their subscriptions. The user can play games by accessing a large library of games from the servers from around the globe to play instantly on their own device without any additional costs of buying a new hardware. This saves the time and money of the user and makes gaming even more affordable.

PS5 will also support an advanced streaming and cloud technologies and combine them together. The console is said that the process of accessing the games will be more seamless than ever before.

So what can we expect from the next-gen consoles and the development of the games? Here is a list of the next-gen titles that will be worth checking for the upcoming standards for graphics and visuals:

  • The Elder Scrolls 6
  • Starfield
  • Cyberpunk 2077
  • Beyond Good & Evil 2
  • Halo Infinite
  • Dying Light 2
  • The Division 2

It’s said that the next-gen consoles will be released around holiday 2020, so there is still some time to figure out the new boundaries for creating the next-gen games.

Loveridge S., (2019), [online] ‘PS5 release date, specs, games, backward compatibility and more’, Available at: https://www.gamesradar.com/sony-ps5-release-date-news-specs-features/ [Accessed: 12 Aug 2019]

Hurley L., (2018), [online] ‘5 games that are definitely coming to PS5 and Xbox Scarlett, and 4 that might’, Available at: https://www.gamesradar.com/5-games-that-are-definitely-coming-to-ps5-and-xbox-scarlett-and-4-that-might/ [Accessed: 12 Aug 2019]

Dino RIG and animations!

Today I’ve been working on textures as well as finally rigging and animating the dinosaur that I’ve created a while ago. I’m not a good animator, so I didn’t expected the best results, but what I’ve managed is well enough for the environment artist work.

The Low Poly Dino with a bone structire inside 3DS Max

I’ve been working on the bake for some time, but I couldn’t get it right, so I had to create my textures in more old-fashion way – painting it in Photoshop and using it as a base for the normal maps. I’ll also be adding a tillable reptile scales normal map to get the random look of some scales and the missing details to my dinosaur. I am not sure how well would that work at the end, but I’ve created the textures so far that I’m happy with.

The Isle – an Early Access Game

I’ve heard about this game for a while now, but I’ve never considered it as a must have before. Now, while working on my own project related to the dinosaurs, I’ve been paying a closer attention to this game.

The Isle is intended to be a gritty, open-world survival horror game, where you can explore vast landscapes of divers locations. Its world is nicely crafted with an focal point on the foliage itself. You may play as a dinosaur and try to survive the ongoing fight with other species and bigger carnivores.

However the first trailers came out in the late 2017, the game is now still in the early access available on Steam. This production is similar to what I would like to achieve in my own project, but on a much smaller scale. However my main focus won’t be the dinosaurs, but the environment, the game shows useful when it comes to comparing my own level of details and work to the current standards.

The isle – Official Trailer

I have to admit that an idea of becoming a dinosaur is really interesting. It changes a point of view into many aspects of a gameplay. Also the exploration of the environment may have many different focus points and depending on the size of the dinosaur, may have a higher or lower point of view. This changes the way the environment has to be produced, to be able to view it from different heights.

The density of the plants in this production isn’t as I would expected to see in the similar environment. I’ve planed my own work to have a very dense foliage resembling some sort of wild jungle rather than a open landscapes. That’s interesting to see slightly different idea of creating a similar world.

Sugar Dunk, Nov. 2017, ‘The Isle – Official Trailer’, [online video] Availiable at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Dv9RRrW0UI [Accessed: 03 Aug 2019]