Polycount Projects - Rooftop

Yeah - A rooftop scene!  Made one a while ago as part of my degree.  This one is a lot more... better.

Here is the link to the relative forum

The supplied image is meant as concept art for us to create a 3D scene in a game engine.  UE4 is hands-down winning the New-Gen game engine battle, and my engine of choice.

Concept art created by Grey Shuko

What I have been doing with these projects is setting myself challenging goals to help push my skills a bit further and keep me keen.  For this project I imagined my own brief, giving the rooftop a game-genre, console platform, and resource limits.

Personal Brief
Game Type:
Point and click/adventure
Platform:
Desktop and Mobile
Limitations and challenges:
Two week time limit. Start from totally blank UE4 scene, 2048px Maps x 4 maximum.

Cool!  With these in mind I can really focus my attention.  My first aim is to match the asset placement in my block out.  In 3DS Max 2014 there is a great "Camera Match" function - this really helped to figure out the camera lens and field of view - Allow my to place objects as perfectly as you can (keeping in mind most concept art warps perspective).  I am looking forward to using camera match to present 3D sculpts in the near future.

This is my blockout - trying to strike a balance between what I see and what works in game engine.

Process Break points
1)  Block Out - match perspective, scale and lighting
2)  Low Poly - Create all assets needed, repeating and using modular assets as much as possible
3)  Into game engine - Unwrapping/UV'ing, finalising needed assets, finalizing material and asset groups.
4)  Texturing - Quite a long process, including baking high-poly versions of most assets
5)  Rendering - play a lot with lighting, materials and post processes.
6)  Extra Touches - short video with elements to emphasise the "Point n Click" idea

I am aiming to get up to 5) soon - compressing the project into about week (I started late, but at 3) already).  I plan on not doing any more major projects for a while and concentrate on personal projects and getting a decent job.  I do have a few other projects to polish off - three characters waiting to be rigged and put into UE4 with animations.  I was struggling to get the CAT rigs into UE4, but will fix up.

Anyways - Keep it real :D