Evaluation

Overall I think the outcome of my FMP is to a high standard even with all the hardware compatibility problems I faced and lockdown living conditions limiting me, however I feel I adapted very well to this and quickly changed or removed parts of the project that I would be unable to complete or test from home. The main changes were the removal of VR due to not having a VR headset at home so I was unable to test this feature, due to this change as well as being unable to UV Unwrap my environment models I decided to shift my focus over to character design and created my highest detailed sculpt to date.

The backstory and reasoning behind the look and style of my character is the result of Alien life trying to come to earth to make peace with the humans seeing this as a weakness trying to take advantage by capturing and experimenting on the aliens. Once the humans figured out that there alien tech is powered by connecting to the aliens DNA, the experiments began to get worse and worse such as limb removals for testing until they had created a new technology that worked with alien or human DNA and took the advancements from both types of technology to form a new type of energy. The humans thought they had made a breakthrough however what really created was an abomination. The human and alien DNA created a deadly infection to the humans that wiped out everyone at the research facility. The aliens were immune to the disease as it was mainly their own DNA that caused the disease and took refuge on the third stage of the facility which was made to be a carbon copy of the alien’s home world. The alien leader character I worked on had his legs removed in the experiments and they replaced it with a jetpack device and turned him into a similar machine to a cyborg with lots of armour and weaponry.

I am very happy with the outcome of the character I think it’s the most detailed and best sculpt I’ve done so far and I think the whole idea and look is very unique and will stand out on my portfolio, at the moment I have work in progress posted for this character because of compatibility issues and being unable to texture my work. However I will be redoing the retopology in blender and modelling the armour and weapons so that I can use the character for a new game idea I have and will be working on as an indie project once I finish university to continue to improve my portfolio whilst working on a project I feel very motivated and passionate about to complete and potentially get noticed by adding it to Kickstarter once it’s in a playable state.

Good Points

This project I feel I have improved massively in ZBrush again and know a lot more tools and faster ways around the software, I have gotten more used to modelling in real world scale and making sure everything fits together by creating modular pieces.

My knowledge in UE4 has been restored as I felt once I began to use Unity, I forgot a lot of features in Unreal Engine, however I feel comfortable in the engine again and also looked into learning material blueprints and got the displacement snow sitting on top of models working perfectly.

My level building skills have improved as well, and I am a lot more confident going into designing maps for my next indie project from everything new I learnt and done for this one.

Art Style was a big part of this project. I wanted to switch it up again and go back to photorealistic mainly so that my portfolio showed a wide range of styles ranging from stylized to photorealistic. The mega scans assets massively boosted the look of my environments alongside my own models with the same material blueprint to add snow to them on the first stage. I think the modular pieces for the 2nd stage matched the sci fi hard surface style I was looking for and I was very happy with the models I created, if I was able to texture them they would of looked exactly how I imagined.

Bad Points

As mentioned in the FMP Changes and Problems post I faced a serious problem. Having recently upgrading to a Ryzen 3900X CPU (Processor) and the GB 5700XT GPU (Graphics Card) I ran into a common incompatibility issue with the newer AMD Parts and the Unfold3D features in Maya. The fix was only brought out with 2020 version of Maya however due to this being my last year of University I was unable to upgrade the license and was stuck with the broken version of Maya that was not compatible or optimised at all with my newer hardware.

COVID 19 and the lockdown rules also made it more challenging for me as I did not have all the resources that I would usually have. Both of these were completely out of my control but still affected my final project a considerable amount.

Even with both of the problems mentioned above my time management still could have been better, the whole final year has been all over the place and I felt I always had to shift my focus to other assignments before I could work on this one, having said that I still could’ve managed my time better as I had a quite a lot of work done towards the FMP back in January if I continued that work rate I could have had an even better final product.

Also, my document management outside the game engine was quite messy and unorganized. I didn’t face any problems from this and still managed to find all my work as it was still in one location but it would of made life easier If I managed my work into separate folders outside the game engine like I did for inside the game engine.

In general, despite all of the uncontrollable issues. This project has been more practice of me working like a professional and each time I do projects like this I face less and less common problems and I feel with all the spare time I've spent during these past 5 years I have learnt so much and I feel very confident in almost every piece of software I use now.

Career Goal and Future

In terms of an action plan for what I would do next time on a project like this. The answer is very simple in my case as my only problems were out of my control and hardware related so if there was a next time it would of simply been me changing over from Maya to Blender earlier on in the project but because I had done so much work already by January and it was all already created in Maya it wasn’t sensible for me to try and recreate everything in Blender as I'm not as skilled in it yet in comparison to how much i know in Maya.

Like I mentioned above I will be working on an indie project with a few people outside of University on a game idea I have been working on and building upon for a few months now. In the worst-case scenario this project allows me to boost my portfolio further, but best-case scenario is that this game could amount to something and gain an supportive audience through Kickstarter. For this project I'll be doing every possible job I can but if I get offered a job in the industry then I would like to focus on being a Character Artist purely down to the fact I enjoy it a lot more to regular asset modelling and it keeps me thinking and challenges me more also the pay is better for character artists.

I think the character I done for this project will have a big impact to my portfolio as it is highly detailed and incredibly unique.