For our final project at Pixel Blue College, my class got to collaborate on a large, to scale gothic castle. Putting it together in Unreal Engine, it's game ready and walkable.
We started with brainstorming, role assigning, and concept artwork. I was assigned as Art director from the get-go. Alongside that, I helped to direct the project and did concept art, 3D modelling, textures, and all of the Unreal Engine work.
The first step was finding real world examples of the things we needed, and learning about how castles were made. From there, we could start creating unique designs for our castle.
Once we had our ideas sorted, I began sketching designs for our modelers to start following. For the sake of time, I gave out quick ink sketches in an isometric perspective since it seemed like the smoothest way to get clear reference. I did front and back views where needed, as well as more detailed shots for props and smaller details that needed clarification.
Not all of the small details and props made it in due to time restrictions and some technical issues. However, even if our final models aren't quite what was planned I learned a lot about how to plan my scope for these kinds of larger projects.
We did our best to work in layers. So as I completed concept work, modelers took them and began doing a low resolution pass. My concepts consisted of high resolution castle details and the buildings around the courtyard, as somebody else took on the main castle design.
Once concepts were done, I began modelling as well.
We kept our geo low poly, and simple to try and avoid any issues down the pipeline. Once we had more people on modelling, we began passing them off for a high resolution pass and textures. The work flow went from large to small details, meaning we started with the main castle parts first before working on more detailed elements like windows, houses and decals.
By this point, I was moving between Unreal Engine to block in our layout and Maya for modelling as needed. We had a simple block-in of the castle imported in Unreal, which I used to start building up rocks for our mountain. At this point, I focused on getting the general mountain shape I wanted. Pathing and level design came later, once I started importing the finalized models.
While the block in was a singular object, we were creating an asset library consisting of castle pieces. So, I needed a way to separate the new individual pieces from the old block-in, leading me to temporarily use a bright red surface to make them stand out against the original.
Around this point, I started adding FX for the snow by editing an existing Niagara Emitter. Due to the scale of our castle, it was a challenge making a single emitter that gave me the heavy snow effect I was looking for. So instead, I made one base emitter and placed multiple around my scene until I got the look I was going for. I also grabbed some fire presets to place around the town and gates for polish and visual interest.
Afterwards, I began building up rocks closer to our castle in order to fill gaps. I also began slowly getting textures, so I learned how to create material instances and we packed our textures for optimization. Same as before, I moved between texturing and working in Unreal.
We quickened our workflow by creating smart materials in Substance Painter and sharing them among the group. This way, we had consistency in our materials and could spend more time on small details. For example, our main smart material is a metallic stone texture with wear and tear on the edges. We used it as a base for the castle elements, and spent extra time making sure small details like brick size and condensation buildup made sense.
From here, I got all my textures as well as any updated models and finished the main castle and town elements. Now, the main jobs were level design and filling out space. We wanted the town to look once lived in, now abandoned.
I got some props from Quixel Bridge and began scattering them around town. I also took my laid out fences and began making them look crooked and broken, like its been so long they've been warped by changing land mass. I let the town have imperfections to push this idea. The town is crooked, outside elements long since been pushed over and effected by the elements to show it hasn't been taken care of.
After adding few finishing touches for polish, such as foliage and sound effects, the castle was finally finished!
Though the process was long and not without it's frustrating moments, I learned a lot about game development and working on large scale projects, and I'm excited to put what I learned to use in the future.
Finished Asset Zoo
Sound Cues (fire, birds, wind)
Houses. Models/Textures
