Week 29 : Break out the paint brushes

Back from Easter and back to work. Work this week has comprised all of applying textures into the level. There's been lots of back and forth trying to get our textures to work just right.

As you can see our first pass wasn't good enough. The ground blended into the walls and had all kinds of muddy look. We also had some issues with UVs overlapping and some roughness glitches. With our art style being very cartoony using roughness and normals too much may look strange so we're being careful.

With some tweaking we've made it look far better. We're still in need of some splashes of colour to make it look somewhat less dull but it is coming along.

The main issue I'm having with applying these textures is that we have two texture artists both working at different rates. This means one may be finished while the other still is working which is why we have lots of blank textures so far. I really want to see everything textures atleast slightly so I can get a good feel for the colours and level. Inevitably we will have to send them back and change things it is always the case.

Being set in the forests and gardens of wonderland I really wanted to try out foliage. Unreal Engine 4 comes with a foliage system which seems very dynamic and efficient. It even has ways to work with the terrain mapping we used to use. After programming some wind into the grass to make it have some motion I tried out the inbuilt foliage systems. It definately needs some tweaking but I like how it looks while you play. The major issue I'm having is again waiting. These flowers and grasses look garish now but should fit when all of the level is painted up. I just have to wait really, work on as much as I can in between breaks.

The level is really coming alive with colour, starting to look more like our concept art. That I always think is a success. We're on the home stretch. Our more fantastical dreams with this project that we never expected to get too aren't too far now. I'm glad I sorted out all of the gameplay systems early because it lets us use this time just to make the game look perfect without having to worry too much about how it plays anymore.