FMP 4- Tool Implementation & First Trim Sheet

This was a disappointingly slow week due to the fact that the HDA did not want to build in the perforce level, supposedly because of a missing file path. Working with the head of IT, we figured out that running an empty Houdini file in the background fixed this, but that problem wasted a big chunk of the week. In other news, a rough blockout has been created, which revealed a few things that needed to be tweaked. I also began modelling the mod kit for the classrooms, with a trim sheet and masks ready to be applied to it.

Yes, it seems as though there are too many rooms for our group to handle, but only two or three of them will be explorable. The other rooms will be entirely procedural, and only as stretch goals. The beams being misaligned was the main problem I needed to fix, and I have found the source of this error, however they cannot be aligned perfectly due to the odd number of wall sections. I have a temporary fix, but it only works if the room is a certain size. The corridor beams also needed fixing, as the corners being deleted vary in size due to the variation in corridor width. This also is not fixed properly, but it is so specific and quick to fix manually that I decided to skip over it for now. 

I have also had to change the input system, as having the fbx file locked into the HDA means the tool bakes as one huge mesh. I have decided to therefore use the unreal attribute to fetch the required piece directly from the contents folder, which gets rid of the need for the manual transfer of fbx's while also keeping input automated (as long as the naming convention remains consistent). I will implement this change next week.

The walls were quick to model, as the repeated, liner trims meant that I could model and unwrap one piece before duplicating and editing it. The trim sheet was slightly awkward to map UVs onto, because of its vertical asymmetry, but I got the result I wanted. 

This plaster material involved several blurred cells warps and noisy sloped blur greyscales, which adequately wore down the edges between the paint and plaster layers. The plaster layers are made up of different grunge maps with scratchy noises added on top. A useful point made in a recent lecture led me to add multiple slight colour variations to the paint, even though it seems like a plain white. The effectiveness of this subtle variation made me realise how little focus I had been putting into the albedo up until now. 

The trim sheet will also be supported by vertex painting, to add variation to the textures. The material blending will be controlled by masks created in the Substance file shown above, which I have saved as a smart material. This allows me to apply dust, dirt and wear to objects extremely quickly. I used user named channels to store the masks before exporting them. The reason I did not put these in the trim sheet as wear trims is because I wanted to use baked maps to generate the wear. 

Most of this week was spent thinking. planning and fixing, so desite the lack of progress I should be able to speed up the workflow in the coming weeks.