FMP 7- Props 1

 Nothing particularly exciting or challenging this week, as the first set of props are fairly simple. I began with the larger props, so I can base the clutter props on the placement and textures of the larger ones. The main props are the desks, teacher's lecturn, chalkboard, filing cabinet and wall posters. I might make broken versions of these props for the second classroom if I have time, but I can still add variation through placement, clutter props and decals if not. I have also unwrapped half of these main props, which was a bit challenging as I needed to maintain texel density while also avoiding too much overlap to guarantee a good bake.

The props have high and low poly versions, so I can sculpt more details into them if I need to and the baked maps will be slightly smoother. Each prop has a downwards bend, like they've been warped unnaturally by gravity; this was another style choice taken from Little Nightmares. I may end up not using some of the high poly meshes if the bake takes too long to get right, which should be fine anyway due to the lack of sculpted details in the style guide.

I decided to only make one drawer for the filing cabinet, which will be duplicated in-engine. This is because the drawers should be able to open during play, therefore requiring a separate mesh. I also created a separate UV sheet for the drawer, because the main cabinet would not have been able to get close to the 1024/m^2 texel density with a 2048 resolution otherwise. I have not unwrapped many props with so many large chamfers before, so it took me a while to figure out the best way to do it, but I settled on converting the middle loop of the quad chamfer to seams. Once I changed the smoothing groups to match, it seemed to bake perfectly. 

The desk followed a similar procedure, and again needed two UV sheets to meet the texel density, even with a couple of stacked islands. The metal and wood sections were therefore separated by material IDs. There are gaps in these unwraps which I will fill with clutter prop unwraps later on, before I texture everything. I may be falling slightly behind, but the final clutter props/ detailing week should include a couple of days for me to fall back on.