Spending Time With Pigs

Ahh, blog! How I have neglected you! I'm sorry, so sorry... Weep, weep...


What's happened is that our group project has taken over in a war-of-the-worlds-esque scenario, in which all able bodied people are torn from their daily lives and really don't have time for anything, to be honest.


TEAM PIG


The class has been split into four groups of mighty power, houses of grandeur, and given a hefty challenge: To create, using the Unreal 3 engine, one of the university buildings. The building in question is pretty wacky, with a cavernous 4-storey hallway, complete with criss-crossing walkways, classrooms on top of miniature buildings, giant windows, girders, pointless stairs and more. There's also a long tunnel which is straight out of some kind of nuclear bunker. It's a very interesting building, but rather difficult to model.


I declined the offer of being a team leader in order to settle into an Art Director position, which is difficult with no experience, let me tell you. You see, rather than having this level look identical to real life, which would be hard enough, we have to modify it in some way. All of us have gone down the 'dark and dingy' route, like the predictable swines we are. On the up side, the dark, dingeyness can hide anything of dubious quality, which is what I call the 'Max Payne Effect'.


This has taken over everything, as we've had to scramble to put together some kind of pipeline, sort the building into areas, write an art style guide, do concept work, make an asset list, and then produce the assets. This is all while the tech lead only blocks out the entire building in Unreal 3, which just boggles my mind.



Surprisingly, however, things have turned out quite well and we're continuing onwards like an efficient machine. Hopefully we'll have some really cool things to show off soon, if everything goes to plan. Initial imports into the editor, leading to the first area being finished, are good. It's all looking a bit next-gen.