Glass Castle Production / Sprint Blog 2

 Glass Castle Development Progress (Sprint 2):

    During this sprint, Modeling work has been focused on prop creation for world 2. One other priority is to finish texturing and construction tasks from the previous sprint.

     When it came to texturing the modular parts for the townhomes, I had to think of something simple. Once I have gotten the toon shader installed for Unity, I discovered problems with my textures for one of the last models I made. The toon shader does not like normal texture maps. It makes the models have strange shadows that look very bad in the game engine. Understanding that textures for the modular pieces have to be very simple and have no height information for the texture maps. This goes for the haybale model too, but I did put a little height information in this one because I need the model to not look flat, so some height information was needed.

    Prop creation was focused on this sprint. Starting with the haybale, the model was very simple to make using a cube primitive and adding edge loops to give it more geometry to work with for the detail. Texturing was a bit tricky due to not having a very heavy amount of height information for the texture maps. I considered using a photo of hay, but I decided to make my own using photoshop. one thing I was told to do was that this prop had its own 2k texture. Most other props I make after will share a texture map, so it was a bit odd that the haybale had its own texture. Most props were very generic so making them was not hard to come up with design-wise. However, some did confuse me. The well and the electric fence were some. They had their own issues. They needed to be modeled differently or needed an understanding of the look of said models.

Tasks Completed:

• Modular Pieces Textures for the small housing unit
• 2K Texture maps

• Creation of different variations of Village Housing Units.
• Using the Modular pieces from before.

• Haybale Model

• Haybale Texture

• Barrel Model

• Small Crate Model

• Large Crate Model

• Well Model

• Modular Fence Models

• Electric Fence Models

Tasks In To Verify

• Blacksmith Forge

Tasks In Progress:

• Textures for the props
• Barrel Model

Tasks Incomplete:

• Modular Pieces to make Housing Units for World 2
• Textures for the props
• Small Crate Model
• Large Crate Model
• Well Model
• Blacksmith Forge
• Modular Fence Models
• Electric Fence Models

Issues Encountered:

• One issue I had during this sprint was figuring out the vision for some props. The ones I had issues with were the well and the electric post-fence models. The issue I had with the well was if the well was going to be interactable or not. Hearing that the well was going to be an object the player will go into, the model now had to be redesigned to have the player fit in. The change made is making the diameter of the water well hole ten feet. The electric fences were another thing I had an issue with. Due to the aesthetic of world two being an arid environment where technology is not present, I had to ask how this is going to look without making an electric fence look too modern. After discussing we decided on a sand pillar with metal spokes coming out of the sides of it. 
• The last issue here was the texture for models had to be changed. As stated before, the toon shader was giving me problems and the textures need to be simpler. The trouble is that the toon shader was given during sprint 2 and one of my previous models had problems. Having the height texture info for the models gave weird shadows in Unity and the Farmhouse model textures needed a rework without height information. Once it was reworked I will now texture everything simpler so in Unity it does not look bad.