Final Year Projects - Jesse Olchawa
Collection of my best projects and renders from my final year at De Montfort University. Take a blast through the 1970s; taking a sip from a freshly made “Grease” milkshake in the “Pink Lady Diner” or head over to one detectives’ study with just one more thing up his sleeve, in “Lieutenant Columbo’s Study”.
Final Year Projects - Jesse Olchawa
The Pink Lady Diner
My final year university project at De Montfort University that took around 5 months of work, recently brought over to Unreal Engine 5 from 4 (to experiment with Lumen). “The Pink Lady Diner” encompasses a traditional American diner cart influenced by 1978 musical masterpiece “Grease”.
Featuring a full soda/milkshake bar, worn red leather sofa seats, greasy kitchen, and lipstick vandalised toilets. Envisioning the player as a part of the crew, closing, and cleaning the messy diner as the sun begins to set following a rowdy day of high school teenage mischief.
Want to see the diner in action? Watch the animated short I made set to the song of "A Teenager In Love" by Dion DiMucci.
//Headphones are recommended for best experience.//
Day vs Night - Lighting Render Comparison Video
One of my most recent developments (apart from bringing the diner over to Unreal Engine 5) is adding new lighting scenarios to help put my assets and textures to the test. Specifically, the early morning sunshine and cold night-time variances. With a diner bubbling with neon and glowing emissive materials and models alike it was a fun challenge to explore how the scene would look when not operating at peak hours. My personal favourite (don’t tell the diner I told you this) is the night-time look. The contrast of blues and dark tones allows the diner values to rest and have a smoother colder expression. Especially showcasing the silhouettes of my bulkier assets such as the Wurlitzer 1015 jukebox.
Overall, both times of day came out great and I even was able to make a sunny morning for static renders. I opted to not record a video of it since many of its shots did bear a lot of similarity to the daytime renders.
The Groovy Shots - Static Renders
Here are my final static renders, some of which you might recognize from the video short above. With Lumen I was easily able to duplicate the scene and experiment with value control to highlight the diner in 2 new lighting scenarios: the warm morning sunrise and the cold closing night variant. To create these, I toned down much of the emissive values and lighting with the main color correction work coming in from post processing. Utilizing custom made Look Up Tables (LUTS) to help control value and tone in warmer and colder aspects. Furthermore, the temperature settings made substantial impacts to how the scene was rendering in real time. Helping control the mood the primary directional light was giving off and correcting how colors might look under darker conditions. Looking forward to what I could work on next; I would love to be able to plug these values into a blueprint so the dinner could naturally transition between these times/colors in gameplay. Making for an even more dynamic game environment.
Scene Breakdown - Textures and Lighting
Here you can see the value breakdown of my texture maps, lighting and models primarily taken from Unreal. My post processing does quite a bit of desaturation to ensure cohesion in my final renders alongside denoising the brightness from said saturation.
Alongside these surfaces have a lot of roughness information to help give refraction and Lumen a lot to work with. Considering the mud, dirt, and grime present over the worn diner. In my metal maps I also tend to stick to white or black values since grey values tend to mess with what engine can classify as a metal. Overall affecting the final render.
Hows Its Made - Development Screenshots
I first began building the diner by creating modular greybox walls to block out the general length and shape. For scaling I also greyboxed a series of counters, tables, and core furniture to place and get a feel for how color values might appear in the first lighting pass. Originally to highlight the neon and emissive elements of the diner; I wanted to create an overall sense of nighttime lighting.
However, I soon realized that with the foliage and sign work I had planned outside, keeping it very dark lost visibility of my work, and so I opted to change it closer to daytime. Another large development was my change of color palettes during development for my furniture. With the name "Pink Lady Diner" being influenced by the "Pink Ladies" in Grease I wanted to use a lot of the color in scene. To counterbalance it I realized that my research included diners with pink and blue and began to use it as standard for a lot of furniture.
Utilizing feedback, I realized that whilst keeping closer to the name’s sake of the diner, the colors were drawing away from a traditional 70s diner feel. Alongside becoming quite difficult to look with all the bright colored clashing noise. Furthermore, having to dial it back, with a blast to a classic red theme instead.
Hero Asset - Wurlitzer 1015
My greatest achievement through the project must be my hero prop; the Wurlitzer 1015 jukebox. A staple iconic and highly recognizable jukebox made originally in the late 1940s. I knew I wanted to pull out all the stops in function and detail for my model. I began by modelling the high poly with the help of planar image reference of the side and front in 3DSMax. Being an inorganic shape, I found it easier to model and utilize splines for much of the tube modelling than a sculpting program such as Zbrush. (Which I used later for my foliage).
Despite this the high poly ended up coming out at 50k tris. Following the dated age of the jukebox I was able to find inner schematics and opted to fully model the interior record mechanism as well so I can animate it later, which too added to the cost. To keep low poly costs down I ended up combining mesh geometry to cut town on tris and deleted any faces that were not visible (including the bottom face). My final low poly mesh coming to a 12k~ tris; being a substantial improvement. To maintain quality in my UV unwraps I further split the jukebox into 2 texture sets: the higher quality exterior and the slightly lower interior record mechanism. As much of the exterior contained text and smaller details that would be viewed closer to the player’s view than the interior, hence needing higher quality.
Taking the final low poly into Substance Painter I textured both sheets here with an additional gradient made in Substance Designer. The extra map helped animate a material shader that panned the UVS across all the bubbler tubes; like a real Wurlitzer 1015 would rotate colored plastic sheets around the inner light. Further function of music, synced lights to these tubes and the record arm mechanism were all blueprinted in Unreal Engine.
Foliage - Cacti and Desert Grass
To help blend my interior to exterior landscape with my HDRI I made a series of cacti and desert grass to populate the roads. I settled on basing the sunny diner in the state of California, particularly Edison and ended up doing research as to what local foliage I can go about replicating. I ended up settling on the Saguaro cacti for the tall signature cacti shapes and smaller Beavertail cacti to provide diversity amongst my desert grass. I then went around modelling and baking these varying foliage chunks down to planes in 3DSMax with the exclusion of the Beavertail as I wanted to try model the micro bump detail the spikey cactus contains.
I took base petal shapes into Zbrush and went to model the high poly there before baking everything down in Substance Painter. My taller cacti, however, had their own sheet as I realized a tiling texture would lack any real wear or variance in the joining arm sections/dirt from the roots down below. With textures finished and projected onto curved planes I finalized the meshes by stealing normal from spheres and projected the data onto my set collections of foliage. This would allow smoother and rounder shading in the engine.
To help populate foliage naturally I plugged the foliage collection with set individual density amounts into my world landscape materials and set it to spawn on specific "grassy" dirt before going to paint in the areas on my map. With very optimized foliage you may also notice some of the beavertail cacti reappear in pots in my scene to help further tie both locations together.
Modular Assets - Full Showcase
However, it has also proven a great learning experience in the diversity of assets I have had to work on, coming from foliage to food, old analogue tech to worn red sofas and much more. Some of the fun I had was dividing into research to find posters to display and decorate the diner walls. I ended up stumbling onto a marvelous book by Jim Heimann and Steven Heller called “70's All-american Ads” (Heimann, J. 2004) that provided an insightful look at the groovy time. With advertising, movie posters, food and about anything printed I was easily able to replicate and place onto the walls to feel more ingrained in the past.
Schedules - Planning and Setting a Brief
Going back to the point of making everything, the final diner would not be possible without a concise plan. I knew that by outlining a strict timetable I would be able to budget enough time to spread my assets evenly, fitting enough time for feedback and polish in the final stretch. Alongside this I set myself a brief to ensure that any extra ideas or assets I might want to make stays in guidelines to the rooms I wanted to achieve. Following on stretch goals helped motivate me in terms of my roadmap as these elements of adding extra life to the dinner came as a reward for doing the most challenging task first. Making the diners in front of the house, bar, kitchen, and toilets. In the end I was able to meet all my brief requirements and stretch goals with a close finish.
Research and Inspirations - The Grease Obsession
Above are some of the many research boards I made from my blog (Olchawa, 2023). As mentioned beforehand, having Grease as my primary influence and (hereafter obsession) led me to add much of the musical to the first boards. What became most important was a deeper retrospective of smaller elements such as the narrative of the historically noteworthy events in 1972, figures in the public eye and even smaller factors of prices to keep elements realistic. Whilst it is important to do quite a bit of this core development first (to ensure you have a strong start to a project) I did keep researching elements as I went along. Since there is always more to learn and gather sources about, considering too that some pictures may not be accurate. Refer to my blog post about fixing radioactive jams and fruit for more.
Evaluation + Whats Next
In conclusion the project was a great blast to work through and taught me lots about managing my time efficiently to produce a more vast and larger environment. I ended up meeting my stretch goals of adding SFX and animating my hero asset, Wurlitzer 1015 jukebox as well within the 17 weeks. By going further to convert the scene to Unreal 5.1 with Lumen I got to play around with more elements of lighting in real-time that is something I look forward to delving into more next. I want to work on more projects with Lumen and experiment with using Nanite to optimise my meshes. However, if I were to redo the project, I would go into redesigning the diners core structure to make for a more visually compelling and larger restaurant space. Rather than keep to the limiting constraints of the traditional lengthy diner cart design. Which would also make for a more interesting play space to explore and set puzzles in games.
Columbo’s Office
Columbo's Office takes place in the messy and muddled home study of one sharp Los Angeles police lieutenant. Portraying evidence, events and much more from the opening first episode of the hit 1970s series Columbo, can you guess who might be the killer? Made over 4 weeks for Unreal Engine 4 with further upgrade to 5.1 as of recent, this was my first official project to be set harshly in technical means. The final diorama aims to be as game ready as possible texture and geometry wise. All assets made by me in 3DSMax, Substance Painter and Substance Designer. Read more about my development below.
Columbo's Office - Realtime Render in UE5
As my first jump into adding an animation to static meshes, I have composed a short video showcasing the typewriter and phone in action. With a light sprinkle of particle effects of smoke and dust. Mesh's animated in 3DSMax and presented in Unreal Engine 5. Audio from Columbo.
The Office - Static Renders
Here are the final renders from my diorama showcasing some different angles and close ups on varying points. Being the detective’s study, I figured these shots and composition of the diorama best frame the mess and chaos of a much-organized mind. (Hint: the killers hiding in plain sight!)
(Slide to see what the same scene used to look like in Unreal Engine 4!)
Scene Breakdown - Textures and Lighting
To assist my breakdown of shots in a more comprehensive manner here are different renders of the same shot. Being a dark and mysterious Los Angeles night the lighting leaves much to be in darkness of the primary room, focally drawing on the typewriter. A core piece of evidence that is further contrasted with my color and roughness values in the scene. Being a much shorter project taking the overall span of about 5 weeks I knew my assets also had to be highly reusable. However, with just enough detail and shine to bring about narrative detail and interest.
(Original renders taken in Unreal Engine 4)
Modular Spread – Small Asset Zoo
Having to be produced in a short span I knew the diorama had to make most efficient usage of its small but effective asset range. I ended up making around 60~ number of props to help fill the office with a lot of meshes being messily arranged onto the floor. My primary hero asset, the typewriter taking up a steady 9k~ tris on its own with the rest of the sets being very low poly. I must say if I was to start the project again, I would indefinitely add more geometry to all my models as in the realm of LOD meshes I would be able to get away with adding more definition to props considering their culling out of bounds. Being previously quite hesitant to add geometry in the means of optimized has unfortunately left quite a lot of the mesh silhouettes very pointed/polygonal.
Development Shots - Greybox to Unreal Engine
Seen here are my development screenshots over the 5 weeks, beginning with a rapid and very blocky greybox. Greyboxing was crucial to this project as composing my assets and figuring out the total amount I needed to make to fill the narrative of the office helped me develop my plan later on. Additionally with shapes and composition being the focus of greyboxing I could also setup primary cameras and lighting with the intent to swap out when having the final meshes at the ready. I made all my meshes in 3DSMax for this project with textures being baked/procedurally constructed in Substance Painter and Designer respectively. The final render is within Unreal Engine 5 which was not the original projects design but ended up giving a large polish to my renders as seen with the shadows coming from the blinds. Raytracing is still something I am coming to learn but must say am quite excited for the future of gaming since the lighting results are staggering!
Simulations and Crashes - Making of the Mess
One of the most fun elements I had to work out, minus the animation segment, was how to scatter the floor mess. Files and folders could have manually been dropped and scaled about, but I figured it would be much easier to attempt to simulate it in 3Dsmax. Fortunately, it's quite easy using the MassFX Rigidbody modifier allows setting weight and gravity for objects to collide and become simulated. Be warned though in my end it tended to crash if you cleared the simulation so saving before is most recommended. As the location is simulated as an animation by clearing the keyframes till the final one lets you keep the final arrangement. From there on if there's any clipping issues you can delete and combine the group of meshes as see fit to polish the mess before exporting to engine.
Evaluation & the Brief - Making the Most of 5 Weeks
Much like my diner I knew I had a strict deadline to meet to deliver my project and needed to ensure I was getting the most out of my time. This diorama project is part of a 2 total project deadline that required me to produce a small scene full of game ready and optimized assets. With the primary theming of "Captains Table". Taking police captain as a quite literal theme alongside of my top detective media of all time, (Columbo!) I knew I hit the jackpot in fitting the brief. I then went onwards to further split this development into weeks/day chunks where I would solely focus on modelling, UV unwrapping texturing and engine work exclusively.
To help maintain a straight and to the point pipeline in working on assets in larger groups rather than individuals. This would also save me time on having to jump between programs as I would focus on a block of working in 3DSMax for high poly/low poly modelling for example. However, in retrospect if I was to redo the project again, I would add more time to polish and feedback as there are quite a bit of geometry and texture polishing, I could have done should I have added a bit more time to jump back and tackle it. But with a strict 5~ week deadline enacted I must say the end result came out quite nicely and stays true to the episode of Columbo it was based on. (Give the series a watch its in the public domain after all!)
(If you want to see the full development blog click here and navigate to the Captains Table album)
Bibliography
Heimann, J. (2004) 70s: All-American ads. 1st edn. Köln, America : Taschen.
Poly Haven, poly haven (2023) HDRIs • poly haven, Poly Haven. Available at: https://polyhaven.com/hdris (Accessed: (13/02/2023)
Dimitrios Savva, J.G. (2022) Fouriesburg Mountain Midday HDRI • poly haven, Poly Haven. Available at: https://polyhaven.com/a/fouriesburg_mountain_midday (Accessed: (13/02/2023)
Olchawa, J. (2023) Artstation - Jesse Olchawa, Artstation Blog - Jesse Olchawa. Available at: https://www.artstation.com/jolchawa (Accessed: 23 May 2023).
Columbo (2017) Internet Archive. Internet Archive. Available at: https://archive.org/details/columbo (Accessed: 26 May 2023).
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