Submission

Now I am preparing all the files to be delivered. Ensuring everything is present and named properly, no clutter in the max scene and so on. I have checked with my client what naming convention he wants me to use and we decided to use full length words, such as: "_Normal" or "_Metallic" because it is easier for him to assign them in the corresponding slots in 3Ds Max or Unity. I think it is also straightforward enough to keep everything tidy as well.

I am updating my portfolio page as well with all the work and make sure that all the contact details are accessible, all the artwork is a one-click process and getting prepared for the employment phase.I want to highlight the deliverables again so that there is a clear understanding of what is going to be graded.

Deliverables 

A 3Ds Max file (2015 version) containing the circus assembled as a whole 3D model, presented with the corresponding textures, organised in a sub-object material, named accordingly.

All the textures used for the final artifact created to the predefined art style and naming convention, decided by the client, as a .TGA file. Since it needed to be PBR, I chose the metallic/roughness workflow because for me it is easier to work with the values. Mandatory files include albedo maps, normal maps, metallic maps, roughness maps (these needs to be glossiness maps inside the alpha channel of the albedo or metallic map to be imported into Unity. I chose the latter one to keep the specularity all in one texture). Ambient occlusion, height or other maps can be present, but not a requirement.

Unity Renders for marketing purposes (I also included a playable build with the circus as a bonus) submitted as .pngs

Blog URL: http://circusmaximusproject.blogspot.co.uk/

Postmortem

What went well

- initial planning and research
- workflow and asset creation process was consistent
- regular meetings with the supervisor tutors
- post processing and game engine implementation
- achieved all the milestones
- satisfied client
- delivered on time

What went wrong

- small amount of reference material
- considerable amount of time spent on getting accurate and believable representations
- cluttered working space (pieces not named appropriately, untidy materials)

How it can be improved

- more time management and clearer working space
- more research on the workflows used in the industry for such assets

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Video Editing

Hello everyone, I am not too far away from the deadline and I still have some tidying up to do so I can rest assured that I tried my best to achieve professional standard work. I have just recorded the videos and now I am in Premiere trying to put them together so I could have a nice portfolio piece at the end. Again, I had to watch some beginner tutorial so I can get used to the interface as I am not using it very often. Here I have some previews:



The recording process was madness as I fiddled with different settings and encoding presets and so on until I got a good quality video with as less stutter as possible. Now, the video editing step is very important because I tend to screw things up right at the end of the projects so hopefully this won't be the case. This helps transforming the video in a more enjoyable experience and pleasing to watch. I posted the video on YouTube and Vimeo, since both are free and the more audience, the better. I added the dissertation on my ArtStation portfolio website. Here are some renders from the build:



Now I have to prepare my deliverables for submission. I will discuss all my naming conventions for the textures and models appropriately with my client and get the clutter out of the way. I am very lucky now that I did that 3Ds Max scene tidying up in advance so now is not that much left and I will be finished soon.

References

Gaming Careers, 2016. Best Export and Render Settings for Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2017. [Online]
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[Accessed 2 May 2017].

Johnson, M. W., 2017. How To Export HD Video in Premiere Pro CC for YouTube, Vimeo, & Facebook. [Online]
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Kriscoart, 2015. LEARN PREMIERE PRO IN 20 MINUTES ! - Tutorial For Beginners. [Online]
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PremiereGal, 2017. How to Export Hd & 4K Video to Vimeo from Premiere Pro CC 2017. [Online]
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[Accessed 2 May 2017]. 

Post Processing

Now after all the struggling and pain in order to make the circus look appealing, comes time for the stuff I love doing. I forwarded a current version of the Circus to my client to see if there are any suggestions or if something needs changing.

I started enabling High Dynamic Range (HDR) and I used Unity's standard assets pack with image effects to get my screen space ambient occlusion to bring out the creases, antialising to smooth all the sharp and harsh edges, depth of field to create a more realistic overview from the player's perspective and so on.




The global fog helped enforcing the dusty effect even more, and after that I did some colour correction in a very new way. I put a colour correction component on the camera and then took a screenshot of the game view, put it in Photoshop, did all my exposure, brightness, saturation and all the parameters I needed to tweak, and used it as an LUT ( Look Up Texture ) that stored all the colour information and brought it back in Unity. It changed the look drastically.



After I exported the build to test it out, I thought that I should also do a camera fly through animation to combine it with a gameplay footage as that will be a nice transition between clips. So I just started again in Unity, this time, disabling the FPS camera and enabling main camera with same post process effects so I can maintain the same level of quality.



Now all that is left is to create renders and record some video and go into Adobe Premiere to edit and blend all the clips together so I have a nice presentation reel of the circus, and I am nearly done.

References

ConnorDuke - Game Development Tuts!, 2015. How To: Color Grading In Unity 5! - YouTube. [Online]
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAnjIkmvwms
[Accessed 30 April 2017].

Unity Technologies, 2013. Unity - Color Correction Lookup Texture. [Online]
Available at: https://docs.unity3d.com/432/Documentation/Components/script-ColorCorrectionLut.html
[Accessed 30 April 2017].