Building Alliances: Fungal Artillery Textures, Enemy Orthographics and Film Model
Texture Checking - Fungal Artillery Model
One task I had been given was to load up the Fungal Artillery tower model, which I had previously helped in UV Unwrapping. Katie had created a new variation of the model which had triangles removed from the topology. This was done because mesh geometry made solely out of squares - otherwise known as 'quads' - is more optimised for importing into Unreal Engine. We believed, however, that this alteration in the model topology could have caused issues in the UV unwrap I had created. As such, I loaded the model into Substance Painter and added a wood texture to it to see whether or not issues in its geometry would arise. I noticed that some seams were noticeable in the model and in how the texture wrapped around it, but - what with the small scale of the model - decided that it would not be an issue: the textures would, as we had decided, be simplistic and not bear continuous detail in the final game. Though we may not necessarily get around to creating such textures in the time we have left, this decision has informed our design process nonetheless.
I also produced orthographic diagrams for another Pellet enemy design and for a design for a 'Film' enemy, which is a class of microplastics that had not yet had a finalised design. I made these to show further variations for potential enemy designs and to illustrate further how the microplastics are a hostile force invading the body. The 'Poking Pellet', in my mind, represents a more powerful variation of the pellet enemy design, bearing a slender and sharp beak that it uses to slice and poke at player Towers. According to its more powerful nature, the design appears more overtly hostile than the soft, round form that the design Seb came up with bears. It is more angular and more pointed in form, with a clear method of attack which would signpost to players that this enemy is of greater physical threat.
The Film microplastics are, as we had previously discussed, weak flying enemies. Compared to the Foam enemy that Seb designed, they are not as strong or voluminous, looking more flimsy and frail in nature - a bit wishy-washy and weak. I based this final design off a Film sketch I did which was somewhat based off a Jellyfish. I chose this because of the visual similarity that jellyfish have to my idea of a Film-based enemy, being very thin and almost fabric-like in movement: the motion that jellyfish make to move through water is reminiscent of how, in my mind, the Film enemies move through the air. When designing the Film enemy I also considered technical restraints, such as how the enemy could functionally move. In my mind, the flowing fabric like 'dress' of the Film enemy, which hangs from its hexagonal head, would be comprised of multiple loop cuts that would allow for the dress itself to be animated. I believe that this would allow for the creation of a more animate set of movements that the Film could follow, which - whilst not necessarily being a fabric simulation - could show its flimsy, cloth-like form.
3D Asset - Film Enemy
When creating the 3D asset for the Film Enemydesign, I began with a cube that I used the mirror modifier on. With this modifier symmetrically mirroring the alterations I made to the cube's form, I could create one quadrant of the hexagon shape with simple extrusions, mirrored on the other side to create half of the form and then again vertically to create the top half. This created a full hexagon which I bevelled the edges on, creating an edge loop on the middle of the underside of the model which I could extrude down to create the cloth-like film dress. This narrow point of extrusion also meant that the film itself was incredibly thin, which fit well with the flimsy and weak idea I had for the design.
I then UV unwrapped the model. I did this in wide bands that drew across the entirety of the form of the model, cutting out specific segments for where the hexagonal head would lie. With this complete, I could create a basic bloc-colour texture that could show the differences in colour and material between the head and dress segments of the model.
The blocky, low-poly model of the Film enemy bears very simple geometry. This is due to how I created the model, being a block form that I physically manipulated into the silhouette of the orthographic design. Whilst I felt that such a design process worked fine for other blocky enemy designs, such as the Fragment Slasher, for the Film I wanted to create something with a more highly-detailed style, perhaps with more intricate folds to represent the flowing nature of the fabric-like material that comprises it. As such, I exported the model into an FBX file and loaded said file into the 3D Sculpting Software Zbrush. I then used specific functionalities of this software (such as the 'Dam Standard' brush, which carves ridges into the source model) to add and subtract matter from the base mesh, using the 'Zremesher' functionality to greatly increase the mesh geometry and add fidelity to the wrinkles and lines I could create. When I was happy with this development, creating a more fluid shape, I then again exported the model into an FBX file. From this stage I would be able to re-import the file into Blender, which I may then be able to bake onto a lower-polygon version, retaining the detail whilst removing the majority of the high mesh's geometry. This would be good for our project, as the lower polygon mesh would be more optimised to run on less powerful machines, which our game may cater towards.
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