> CONTENTS < . Intro . Fable . Modern . Breakdown . Assets . Level . Style . Research . Blockout . Visuals . Technical . Experiment . Conclusion . References
> INTRO < The scene that I decided to reimagine is a memorable area in Fable: The Lost Chapters. The building is called “Heroes’ Guild”, it is the home of the heroes; it has sleeping and dining quarters, the map room, library, guild shop, training facilities and more. I will focus recreating the map room with hand painted textures. The aim is to recreate the scene as closely as possible with hints of more assets such as sconces to help brighten the room. I chose this environment because it is where I spent a lot of time to level up, get quests as well as using it as a fast travel point. So remaking it will be nostalgic and allows me to put my love for the game towards it. The reason why I have chosen this game is because it is an iconic game with a timeless style. It was a popular game around 2005, when Xbox 360 was released, due to this, it is easily recognisable. With today’s engine capabilities, I feel that the Fable could be brought into next gen gaming.
FABLE GAMES Entrance door
View from door
Centrepiece
Under balcony
View from balcony
The left page consists of screen shots from Fable: The Lost Chapters, and on this page, are shots from Fable Anniversary. The reason why I have taken screen shots from Fable Anniversary, is to show their remastered version. This gives me a creative goal to achieve. The lighting in the first game is warmer with tones of oranges and browns; however, the Anniversary game is in cool blues with hints of warm tones from the candle lighting. I will go along with the Anniversary version for lighting because it gives a better composition of the scene. The textures are quite blurry and varies in sizes due to the texel density. They have improved the texture quality in Fable Anniversary, although it lacks in depth and some parts are still low quality. Here I can also experiment adding dirt between the cracks with vertex painting.
With a higher poly budget, it will allow vertex painting to be possible and give me more polys to work with on the centrepiece and emblem that are dotted around. There are a couple assets that I would like to add detail to such as the wooden bannisters and the platforms.
MODERN GAMES The Witcher 3
The lighting in this scene really makes the room; the warm tones from the candle with the cool blues that is coming from the exit. It balances and softens the area for the character to stand out.
Dragon Age: Inquisition
There is a similar colour scheme, the warm tones that fills the stone walls and wood with hints of blue. The lighting and textures are an improvement from older games. In my scene I will add the oranges and blues.
Skyrim
The mood of this room is saturated and dull, there is no colour contrast with the musky white lights. There is little variation in the textures; majority of it is filled with different sized stone texture with hints of wood, cloth and metal. This is to give the game a â&#x20AC;&#x153;grittyâ&#x20AC;? realistic look.
World of Warcraft
The textures are quite simple in this game to optimise gameplay. However, the textures are clean and easy on the eyes. The stones themselves have little variation, enough to not spot d uplication.
Torchlight II
This is a hand painted game, it is bright and easy on the eyes. This scene uses analogous colours with bright lighting to bring out the details. The textures can be improved by fixing stretched materials.
I chose to look at the first two games because they are new, this means that the textures and lightings would be better to aid me recreating my scene. The two games after are well known games that most people can distinguish, the differences in textures does define the game. Here you can compare with Dragon Age; the texture and lighting are different due to the perspective of the player. I want to apply similar lighting from The Witcher 3 and the textures from Torchlight II to build out my environment. This will hopefully make my scene unique.
BREAKDOWN IMAGES Door
Recreating the door to a high standard is relatively important because it will be an asset that I want to add more into the room to separate from the other rooms, this will keep the focus in the map room.
Centrepiece
The centrepiece will be a challenge to create as the references are pixelated and unreadable. Also I want add more iterations to the table. This would benefit from the use of world machine.
Ceiling
The ceiling varies in wooden panels, cemented pillars, stones and intricate design. The metal work on the windows is something that I will experiment with alpha planes.
ASSET LIST
LEVEL DESIGN & CONCEPTS Sketch
I sketched a room plan that I am going to remake. I looked through the videos that I recorded to fill out this sketch, however I do not think that it was clear enough to separate the two floors.
Level Design
By breaking down the environment, it helped me visualise the first floor better. I could see where there needed to be arches.
Here are some concept sketches and break down of a few assets. I want to keep as close as I can to the game. The door is fairly simple, however I would like to sculpt the emblem detail in Zbrush and bake it on a low poly cylinder. The only thing that I would like to improve is the map table, I want to make it smoother by adding more instances around the table. This is because I want to look like itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been carved out of stone, then adding the little indented details into it to look like the stones have been separated. Overall, the outcome of the scene should have a soft hand painted texture with small details around the room.
ART STYLE Hand Painted Environment
Here are two examples from artists on Artstation, I chose these two pieces because of the lighting and details in their painted textures. My scene will be filled with stones and wood, finding a similar style will help my artistic work.
(Wheat, 2016)
(Meta, 2016)
League of Legends
League of legends is well-known game with timeless textures. Their textures are more organic but learning how to create the contrast and depth is a great way to learn focal points and choosing the right colours.
RESEARCH Hand Painted
Here is a diagram from LoL dev blog; you can see the different coloured squares that separate the colours to use to make sure the environment will not over power the characters and special abilities. (Riototown, 2014)
Adding to the special effects, I would like to add particle effects in my environment. They will be applied on lit candles and a specific platform that will glow. There are 2 platforms; a blue glow indicates travel and green to level up. The reason why I chose to look at contemporary artists and games is to give me a good understanding of what is aesthetically pleasing. The challenge is to make these textures feel 3D without having to add model details in. I will look at YouTube, follow projects and ask advice from my peers.
3D BLOCK OUT
I created my block out in half to symmetry it later, this so I can work around it easily and add details in without too much clutter.
The wall was something that needed to be tweaked as there is a gap between the stairs and the room. A ceiling needs to be attached above the stairs and with a curved roof over it all.
VISUAL REFERENCES
My Photographs
Games
Bastion and Transistor are both isometric; their textures are stylized, vibrant and clean. Bastion has a lot of different rock textures. Transistor has better lighting such as the rays coming through the window and large light boxes.
TECHNICAL PROCESS Texel density is the “procedure of making sure your meshes and textures are the proper height, width and depth”. (Diaz, 2013) This ensure no one texture looks out of place by being too high res or too blurry.
Dota and LoL both have similarities on how their environments were created. To achieve their “hand-painted, yet graphic style” they modelled stylized trees and rocks and contrasting with soft foliage.
They built a story through concept art and real world reference. After unwrapping their very low poly models, they would use “Invisible technology” technique in which “painted elements define edges and hide the tech”. (Riototown, 2014)
EXPERIMENTATION I picked out a small asset from the scene to test out size and the amount of time to create a texture. In total, this map took me 30 minutes. However, I feel that the map size I chose (256 x 256 px) might be too small. This is because I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t paint finer details, especially on the wood. (Leolouch, 2016)
I took the asset into unreal to try and make a flickering light. From Google; I took a candle flame and cropped it out in Photoshop. By creating a material blueprint with the texture on, I created a particle system. Here I tweaked some numbers to change the amount of time it flickers, life time and the glow of the candle. I am satisfied with the outcome but could use more tweaks such as less flickering and more soft movements in the flame. (MetalGameStudios, 2014)
> CONCLUSION< In conclusion, I am happy with my decision to hand paint all the textures. Creating the texture list helped me visualise how many textures I need to create, and how many I can reuse. From the texture map that I tested, it felt flat so in the future, it might be worth enlarging the texture map a little bit so I can paint more details and create more contrast and depth. I have also tried to merge the seams to make it look more professional. I want to experiment with the “Invisible technology” technique by creating low poly models and texturing them in a way that makes it feel more organic. With the base of the candle texture done, I can tweak it some more to make it perfect for the scene and can reuse it on all my candles to light up my environment. I want its movements more random and give it a warmer colour tone. The centrepiece will be created in Game World Engine and exported as a mesh then imported into 3ds max to be cleaned up. I might consider “matte painting” this to bring it to life and hopefully bring the whole scene together.
REFERENCES
Wheat, J. (2016, August 22). Stylized dungeon scene, Jacob Wheat. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from ArtStation, https://www.artstation.com/artwork/2OweA Meta, T. (2016, August 22). Jungle hall low poly, personal work, Tarn Meta. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from ArtStation, https://www.artstation.com/artwork/2Y93g Riototown. (2014). Dev Blog: Defining the riftâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s visual style. Retrieved October 22, 2016, from League of Legends, http://na.leagueoflegends.com/en/news/game-updates/features/dev-blog-defining-riftsvisual-style Diaz, T. (2013, December 03). // Texel density for game art by Tim Diaz (page 1 of 2) / 3ds max, unreal Dev kit, project overview, Texturingtutorial from 3dtotal.Com. Retrieved October 22, 2016, from 3D Total, http://www.3dtotal.com/tutorial/1813-texel-density-for-game-art-3ds-max-unreal-dev-kit-by-timdiaz-udk-bricks-tutorial-environment Leolouch. (2016, September 21). Vrykul house - world of Warcraft inspired hand-paint environment. Retrieved October 22, 2016, from Polycount, http://polycount.com/discussion/177676/vrykul-houseworld-of-warcraft-inspired-hand-paint-environment MetalGameStudios (2014, April 19). Unreal engine 4 Tutorial: Candle fire particle (english) Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEzg5g9ikds
By: Diana McRae