I do believe on my part that the allocation of tri’s was efficient I did not end up going outside of my appointed triangle limit. White boxing the room went well and gave us a better understanding of the geometry of the room. I believe that our team worked cohesively- all feedback was constructive and we met frequently for crit and scrums.
Additionally, I do feel that the team’s physical model of the room was a success, it was a relatively accurate recreation of the room and the wall paper textures and fabric give it more character, whilst also making it original.
Another issue I stumbled into was that I was too cautious with my triangle budget- my appointed triangle count for all 3d models was around 7,000 triangles, in total I used up around 4,000 of those triangles and thus my assets were very edgy. Secondly my unwrapping for the room could have gone much better, especially with the texture sheet. As I hadn’t practiced tillable texture and it was new to me when exporting into the unreal engine, it certainly affected the quality and accuracy of my tiles. With my texture sheet I could have made a more allocative efficient use by scaling the most important materials larger and scaling the less important down. I could have also used up as much of the texture sheet as possible initially.
I do not think for my team that was communication was the best, there was no dominant leader role and not enough feedback was going through the team. It could have been more beneficial for the team if we were all to work as close to each other as possible.
Texturing was a challenge, because of how many times I had to re iterate the sheets until the look was right, although it increased my experience it was very time consuming. Furthermore, the textures did not match exactly up to the original image. I think my biggest issue in this project however was my time management, had I kept referring to the brief and worked faster to get an idea, model it and then export into unreal for testing I probably would have not run into the issues that the team and I experienced so late into the project. I simply took too long.
I learnt the ways in which to post process an environment in the unreal engine, this would be beneficial in future practices and future team working projects. The effects that it can have are especially great as you can create interesting atmosphere with what you have created.
The most important lessons I have learnt from these projects are to not be afraid to voice my honest opinion, also to maintain a frequent line of communication throughout the project. This also means working next to team members as well as speaking more to them. I found that teams who were working near each other and were more honest with crit were more successful in the end result. Had I asked for more feedback on my assets Perhaps the outcome of the project would have been better. I have also learned that it is most important to refer to the brief for every query that I have, instead of relying on word of mouth and other sources, the brief is the guideline for the project (somewhat of a ‘bible’). Last but not least I have learnt to stay better structurally organised. I made to do lists but never stuck to them and also I spend a lot more time on small details which wasted valuable moments.
I will also make it my goal to work as fast as possible in order to make the most of the short time that we have been given, this includes not becoming attached and also not getting bogged down by detail. Furthermore, I intend to continue to iterate in order to search for interesting ideas, instead of staying to close to my comfort zone.
I will also export any meshes, models and textures into the unreal engine as soon as possible. It is perhaps the best way to approach the trial and error method. Exporting in to engine as soon as possible will also allow me to assess where I am in my project.
I could say that I would work longer and harder but that would be incorrect, I need to work smarter in my next project. I can easily spend 8 hours working on a painting or model however, working for long periods of time as a domino effect on the next day and so on until my productivity drops significantly.