Task 2 - Creating the assets for my Environment 4.1.18

Creating the assets for my Environment

The crystal bushes in Maya

Following the asethic of my crystal/underwater theme, I made some crystal pillars that resemble the tress in a real environment. Using my moodboard as a reference and the character scale, I made the assets to the right scale. In addition to this, I also made some small crystals that will resemble the bushes. Making these was easy, but what does concern me is the amount I need for the scene. Having all of these individual pillars will be a bit tricky to manage, but there is way around in the Unreal Engine.

The UV layout for them are very simple. Even though you wont see the top and bottom UV's, I still decided to add them because I want them to have some clear textures ion them. The same process has been also applied to the crystal bush.

Lightmaps were also applied to the crystal pillar. At the moment the crystal bush lightmap is missing, but it should not have a huge effect on the model when it is taken into the engine. It was the pillars that were the most concern for me since I have a lot of them in the scene.

The Crystal Pillar and Bushes in the Unreal Engine

With the crystal and bushes in the engine, my scene is now starting to match my main idea. There is still some more work to do however. I can add some additional effects to make these assets further stand out more. but at the moment I need to address the placement of these assets and how I can manage them.

The group function in Unreal

Although I could not get them as a full group in Maya, I did find a way to organise all of the indivual assets in Unreal. By selecting a group and press "CRTL + G" I can select all of them as just one group. It will save me some time and to further improve this, I put all the groups into a folder. That way I wont see a lot of the assets in the folders tab.

Rocks

A rock in Maya

I want the environment to have more then just crystals, so I decided to add in some rock designs for the scene. Still following with my aesthetic, these will have a colour scheme that will match with the main landscape. By using a guide from the internet, I made some layered rocks, to give it that alien look.

The rocks UV

Even though the textures are not in yet, I have done the UV's for them. The model had some tricky parts, so it was tough to get the UV's right for the asset. I have fill out the full space of the texture sheet and I fell like there are some parts that still need some clean ups. This will be looked into another time.

The rocks in Unreal

When I imported them in the Unreal Scene, I did not encounter any issues with them. They still need to have there textures added to them, but other than that I am happy with them. My idea for the textures would be to use the crystal ones and do some alterations with them. I will try that out, once I have gotten past the block-out phase.