The Abandoned Factory
Parts and assembly of an abandoned factory project.
Final Product
This is the Final Product of my work. Near the end of the project, I focused heavily on the environment where the factory was located. Because the factory itself was old and being taken over once again by nature, the environment needed to fit well with the factory. I spent a few weeks in class discovering new free assets and various strategies such as adding rocks to the tops of the mountains, adding grass, and darkening the texture color. In addition, making the clouds and natural light match appropriately was a struggle but eventually, all of the pieces fell into place.
Video
This video was one of the easier parts of the project as a whole. I have a little bit of prior animating experience so the keyframes were fairly simple to navigate once I watched the tutorial. I had difficulty with the blueprints which allowed for the video to work well in the engine. After recording the video I noticed there was a little bit of choppiness but I was able to get rid of most of it. If I was to redo the video I would explore Adobe Premiere more in an effort to increase video quality and smoothness. I would also like to add more (and possibly homemade) sound, music, and sound effects.
Assets
These are all of the assets that I modeled and textured. Because each part took so long to make as I had never done this before, it was difficult to have a clear vision of what all of the parts would look like when put together. Nonetheless, having reliable images to work off of helped a lot in maintaining a common theme. If I was to do this project again, I would definitely more precisely map out what the final structure will look like so I don't find myself missing parts.
Prior to making the four parts shown below, I had never done any work in 3-D modeling programs. I followed the tutorials nearly exactly for these parts so I would not find myself with problems I did not know how to solve. While working on these parts my main focus was to get a good handle on the workings of Maya and the other programs I made edits to the mesh with. I had some trouble with the window frame specifically but the messed up mesh added to the aesthetic so I kept it different from what was outlined in the tutorial. It was interesting to me how the needed faces were just deleted but in the end, it ended up being for the best. I did eventually get the hang of how the software worked and was able to make my own parts.
These four parts were most likely the most difficult ones to make. The process of making the round roof on the right was much more difficult than I expected primarily because it had to fit exactly with the truss pieces. The texturing and smoothing were a struggle because of the size and uniqueness of the part. I modeled and textured the ring and flat roof piece on my own. They were the largest two parts I modeled on my own and were a struggle. I had a difficult time making the ring connect all the way across and ended up getting it on my fourth different approach. The flat roof was complicated because the surface was bumpy. Because of the bumpy texture, the UV maps were very difficult to do but I managed.
All four of these parts were needed to make the factory feel like one complete building. The flat floor acted as the base for the project and introduced me to using multiple textures for the same object. I was worried that the rust texture would be too visually obtrusive but in the final result, it caused a very cool effect. The wooden planks utilized this repeating texture as well and it was interesting to make a collection of different objects as one singular mesh. This limited customizability but increased productivity in the long run. The truss parts were difficult to make because they had to line up with the round roof and also the variety of face sizes made smoothing and UV mapping difficult. The triangle support piece was created after I put all of the other parts in Unreal Engine. It was necessary to fill in gaps that I did not plan for.
All three of these decorations were made fairly quickly compared to the creation time of the other parts. The barrel worked out very nicely and for it, I had to learn how to combine two meshes into one. The challenge I faced with the rock was making every side unique. The rope introduced me to a tool that allowed the size and shape of the rope to be bent and elongated into whatever shape I wanted. Overall these three parts proved to me that I was ready to tackle more complex objects for personal projects in the future.
Final Notes
Learning so many new programs was a struggle but I think the end result was definitely worth the struggle. Because of my work here, I feel very confident moving forward in my game art career.
Comments (0)
This project doesn't have any comments yet.