Callum Pascoe - Specialist Subject Blog

Games usually need some tweaks to their visual fidelity in order to run at an adequate frame rate. As a result game engines usually have some sort of in built tools to decrease the quality of the overall fidelity of the rendering, whether that be in the form of reducing the amount of pixels rendered per frame, or other more asset based adjustments like reducing the resolution of all textures/materials in the scene, particle size and complexity or how level of detail is adjusted per the distance of the object from the player. Different adjustments should be made depending on what platform the game is trying to run on as different hardware have their own strengths and weaknesses that need to be accommodated in order to retain consistent performance. Rigorous testing is advised to find what does and doesn't work well on certain machines to avoid unnecessary visual cutbacks when they are not needed and to make cutbacks when necessary. Different scalability options have their own perfor...

Ambient Occlusion is a post process rendering technique that darkens the edges, corners and the like to make assets appear like they are reacting light more realistically. There are multiple different rendering techniques to achieve Ambient Occlusion, Unreal 4 using Screen Space Ambient Occlusion or SSAO. Using this technique means that normal maps in materials will also have an effect on the final look. Like any additional rendering technique Ambient Occlusion comes with a performance resource cost. You can adjust the intensity of the effect as well as the radius of the effect. Most AAA games use ambient occlusion to help make their assets blend in more with each other and create a more realistic scene as a whole. AO Off AO On

Today I have made some large steps towards starting to create a more finished looking level as opposed to adding more assets as I have been previously. I have added the Unreal 4 default materials to a large bulk of the assets. These look nice but don't fit perfectly on some assets due to their complexity. Ideally all materials and textures will be my own but I am not against using these defaults as I think the current look is fairly good. The major addition I have made today is how the scene is lit as I have completely overhauled the lighting from the previous default settings. The bulk of the lighting comes from a skylight which simply illuminates the level so that the player can adequately see the environment. A skylight has no obvious source position and covers a very wide area. Balancing the lighting to achieve clarity whilst still looking like night time scene was fairly tricky but I am happy with how it looks now. The rest of the lighting comes from a directional light ...

I have made more progress of the interior of the Cathedral, adding a variety of different assets into it to bulk it up with pews, candelabras, a set of thrones and a podium

I have added arches to the sides of the central building to add more complexity and depth to it. Whilst it is an improvement something about the proportions of them is slightly off. I have also re-used this arch asset around the level to just give the level as a whole more complexity. Overall I have made small additions to the exterior areas and I feel that the level is coming together quite nicely. The flags on the outside and elsewhere in the level are animated to move slightly. However I am not using the flag physics method I found during my research where I turned a high poly static mesh into a cloth actor and use a wind actor to dictate it's direction. As I stated in my research this technique is quite performance resource intensive for such a minor object. So instead I have come up with a different solution where-in I use the technique that I researched used to create moving grass by simply creating a basic material and using the grass wind modifier. This way the stati...

I have continued to work on the level, mainly working on the external appearance of the main building in the centre, adding a roof, doors and towers on the side. I may revise the look of these towers at a later date but currently my goal is to fill out the level as much as possible to make it more complete and detailed and will make revisions to specific assets once I am happy that the level has enough assets within in it. Whilst the central building is looking much better than it did previously I still think it is missing some features and detail as I feel it's simple box structure is fairly apparent. As a result I am considering adding big arches to the sides of the building to stop it from appearing so box like. I have also made small stacks of the miscellaneous assets so I can dot them in appropriate places around the level. I am quite happy with how these collections add to the level. I have also made various different arrangements of these objects so that the same col...

I have started to put together the level using the assets I have made. Progress is coming along nicely and I am happy with how the level is starting to look. Currently I have re-used the gate asset for the various fences and tops of walls hiding the majority of the gate asset under geometry. However this isn't very optimised due to the engine rendering the polygons that aren't visible. Due to their being a high amount of these gate assets, certain areas are prone to FPS drops. Thankfully UE4 allows you to replace static meshes whilst keeping their location and scale parameters the same. This means that I can create a separate model in 3ds max where I will delete the unnecessary parts of the gate model and just simply replace them all in bulk with no fuss as opposed to having to place them all individually again by hand.

In order to make my level feel less empty I need to create an array of smaller assets that I dot around for set dressing. Due to their small size and the fact that I will likely be placing a large quantity of these assets in my level I should ensure that the polygon count for these minor assets is low to prevent performance resources being used for such minor objects