My (good) work for 2nd year at Falmouth Uni

Spooky Graveyard. 29 April 2021.

My final project for 2nd year at Falmouth Uni. For this piece I chose to push my lighting, foliage creation and Unreal technical abilities.

This project was a great opportunity for me to combine all I had learnt in Uni up until this point. I feel I did quite well especially in foliage creation, particle effects and the more technical aspects of unreal such as vertex painting. Areas I need to improve in would be lighting, focus of shot and overall scene composition/layout. These will be topics I will address in my next environment piece.

Forest Ruins. 25 February 2021.

My entry for Search for a Star 2020 - 2021. I managed to get to the finals with this piece. For this project I chose to focus on organic modelling, a topic which I had never covered before. I really enjoyed learning about foliage creation and developing my Unreal Engine scene creation knowledge. Learning about some more technical elements such as terrain material blending and different material type setup was the most useful things I took away from this project.

While I was happy with this project there are several major oversights I failed to spot. The asset seems when connecting to the ground are visible and ugly, this is especially obvious when looking at the grass. The outer scene seems empty and the skybox is visible beyond it. The colour of the sky blends in with the rest of the scene, I needed to choose a more contrasting colour such as orange. These are topics I addressed in Spooky Graveyard.

Yubaba's Office. 5 December 2020.

This was my first project for year at Uni. The scene is based of Yubaba's witch office from Spirited Away. This was my first time working strictly to reference, surprisingly I found this to be a very enjoyable experience. I experimented with a more realistic aesthetic for this piece. The project gave me a great opportunity to expand my Unreal Engine knowledge and taught me a great deal about efficient modular modelling workflow, a lesson which I carried on into all future projects this Uni year. 

Working with Marvelous Designer to make the curtains and pillow fabrics proved to be a fun experience, its such a powerful niche software. This project served as a great introduction into year 2 of Uni where the bar was significantly higher. My major shortcomings in this project were the lack of lighting in the scene, this really took away from the detail in certain areas. For the carpet I should have made greater use of trim sheets!

Conclusion:

My time at Falmouth University for 2nd year has been a non stop learning experience. I have discovered so much about Unreal Engine and have addressed many of the major shortcomings I had last year. I feel I have definitely improved a lot. However I also feel I have stagnated and become too comfortable in one art style. One of my main aims for my next projects will be to play around with more varied styles. Overall, I am determined to drastically increase the quality of my work over the next year up to a near professional standard.

Its been a blast so far and I cant wait to see where my journey into environment art takes me next. I always relish the opportunity to make something new and exciting. Looking forward to the next project and learning new things along the way!