Thursday 9 May 2013

Evaluation

Well that's the hand in. Overall I would say this has been a great Hons project but it still has its down sides.

This was my first attempt at creating an environment in UDK. I had used UDK before so had some basic knowledge of the UI, controls, features, kismet and such but had never used UDK for art based projects.

The amount I have learnt over the course of this project has shocked me. I have also noticed a huge increase in my knowledge of 3ds max too. I thought I was able to model fast before this project but I have somehow managed to improve upon this workflow meaning I am able to do so much more with less hassle.

The environment itself turned out ok, however I am my own worst critic and I am never happy with something. I could work on something forever constantly wanting to change things and add new features when I learn something new. I feel like this project came a year to late. Since I had not done a lot of what I did in this project before I felt like as the project progressed I would improve and work after that point was a higher quality. I found that with each normal map I created from high poly baking I improved and gained a better eye for details and compositions.

If I had done this project the year before and did another environment for my Honours knowing a lot of what I didn't when I started this I think the end quality would be something I am more pleased with. This is why I feel that this environment is a test drive and more of a learning resource rather than a portfolio and finished environment. I will continue to work on the environment and try new things, but I think the way forward now is to create something from scratch again.

What I learnt or improved from this project:

Greater understanding of UDK in general
Material Editor
Post processing
Particle effects
Asset placement
Modular functionally
Texture creation
Normal map use and generation
Modelling workflow
Unwrapping skills


What I have identified as areas to improve:

Organisation with asset names, UDK package
Texture painting
Material knowledge
DirectX11 features (displacement maps)
Normal Map creation


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