Sci-fi Garage Update - September 19th

The October 10th deadline for Design Practice 3 is slowly creeping up, and I've been putting in many, many hours of work. Over the last couple of weeks since my last post, I've made a load of new props and made some very drastic changes to the lighting and colours. I'm pretty sure that the difference between the screenshots in this post and my last post will be the most drastic difference of any two consecutive posts so far. I've spent countless hours in Maya, Substance Painter and UE4 (including a couple of all-nighters) and I've now got my asset creation workflow down to a fine art and modelling and texturing has almost become second nature!

I went into the games studio this week to seek feedback on my work and I've now begun to action the feedback. While there, I converted my scene into UE4 version 4.17 (it was previously 4.15), which features volumetric fog. I've now applied volumetric fog to the scene and I'm really happy with the results. This is how I've achieved the bloom effect on the APC's headlights. I also used to make a hazy lighting effect around the windows. I've turned the APC so its at a very slight angle. I've added some mid-intensity blue-tinted lights alongside the APC to add more highlights to it, and used post-processing to darken the shadows to create more contrast. I've tweaked the APC model itself slightly too: I've adjusted the angle and geometry of the flag so that it looks more like its hanging the flying, and I've altered the angle of the gun so its aiming upwards at a more severe angle.

Here's a list of all the assets that I've done since my last update:

• A metal barrier with emmisive lighting.
• A notice board with papers including blueprints of the APC, post-it notes and various technical information about bullets that I copy-pasted from the internet. One page displays the date "June 17th 2047" which is a subtle way of putting a timeframe to the scene.
• A metal table.
• A military laptop (a.k.a "toughbook"). This was the most demanding asset that I have made since the APC itself, and it is over 5k tris as its meant to be a bit of a "hero prop". It is a fictional design that draws from a number of modern examples. The laptop features emmisive textures to create the effect of the screen being lit and an underlit keyboard. It took about 3 days to model and texture, but I might tweak the texture some more yet.
• A fire exit sign, again with emmisive textures. This adds to the scene's realism and industrial feel, while also allowing me to inject a little more colour into the scene.
• A big map, featuring hand-drawn tactical information. This is another focal prop and its meant to give the impression of important military manouvres happening and being commanded from the hangar.
• Metal folding chairs with padded pleather seats and backs.
• A first aid box.
• 3 different coloured spray paint cans (green, red and blue). The paint cans share the same texture sheet for better optimisation.
• A wooden shipping crate. The crate bears markings of "DANGER" and a military-esque star logo. Having more wood texture in the scene adds variety to the materials and should help break up the metal and concrete.

 I feel like I'm making good progress on the project and I'm very close to the "finishing touches" stage. I've begun to think about the presentation video and will likely get to work on it within the next couple of weeks.

Here's some pictures of the scene: