Glass Castle Production / Sprint Blog 3

Glass Castle Development Progress (Sprint 3):

    During this sprint I was mainly focusing on texturing the props I constructed from the last sprint and some modeling after that. 

    When it came to texturing the props from the last sprint, I still had to make the textures very simple. However, it came to my attention that normal information can be used in textures, but it has to be used sparingly and if it helps to give a defining shape without making it look bad in Unity. Most of the textures did come out soothingly for the props except ones that had height information that made it look bad in the game engine. 

    The models that were made during this sprint were no trouble at all. One of the props I did need some clarification on. That were the marketplace booths for world 2. However, the way it should have been modeled for this game is not out of wood as one would do for village markets but make it out of stone. Once I understood the vision of what this prop was supposed to look like I created 3 different versions of it. The hitch post and horseshoe were simple to make and that did not come with any issues. However, this sprint did have some texture difficulties.

Tasks Completed:

• Textures for the World 2 props
• Small Crate Model

• Large Crate Model

• Well Model

• Blacksmith Forge

• Modular Fence Models

• Electric Fence Models

• Barrel Model

• Market Booth Models With LODs

• Market Booth Textures

• Hitchpost Model

• Hitchpost Textures

• Horseshoe Model

• Horseshoe Textures

Tasks In Progress:

• Creation of modular assets for Pueblo Style dwellings

Tasks Incomplete:

• Textures for modular assets for Pueblo Style dwellings

Issue Encountered:

• The issues encountered during this sprint had to deal with texturing difficulties that I could not understand why it happened. First, one problem had to deal with the textures of the blacksmith forge. 
  
  
  
• This is a screenshot in Unity of what happened with the normal information in this model. I have no idea why the height information is just missing on certain faces of the model. When I check in substance painter, I notice that normal information is flipped in these faces. I know that the UVs are not flipped since the base color and roughness/metallic maps come out fine in unity. it is only the normal that is affected. My solution for this was a bit tedious. I had to UV the model a different way, so the normal information did not flip in Painter. Even with this fix, the issue still appeared, but it was in a place in the model where the player could not see it, so I had to deal with that. I wish I knew what was causing it though.

• The last issue was the crate props textures, both big and small. One issue was that some faces on these crates were shaded very darkly which messed with the look of the crates. I did not know why it was messed up since I kept trying to reimport the models to fix it. One of the times I imported back the models, it fixed the problem. It took about 5 reimports till I got the textures back in the right condition. Still, I wonder why this happened.