Art Team Devlog 1

Aaron’s Work:

I have added all the assets in the Polygon Dungeon folder, the Monsters folder, the Animals folder, and the Nature pack with bushes and plants. The original dungeon asset pack I added had messed-up pivot points, so I found a better asset pack that works perfectly. The monster pack has monsters that are too large but can be manually scaled down as needed. The rigs for the monsters and animations of the monsters work great. The animal pack has wolves that are fully rigged and animated. The animals also work perfectly in Unreal Engine as well. My time was spent making sure that the files migrated over properly and that the assets I imported would be ready to use. Christian made sure to double-check the functionality of the assets I brought in, and I can confidently say that we will have no issues using the assets provided. The only thing left to do is check the animations that I have imported, which Aidan and Elian are taking care of, making sure the animations can be retargeted to the Synty characters. I have also imported a fully rigged low-poly character that can be used if the animations have issues.

Aidan’s Work:

I have been learning how to properly import character models and mocap animations, as well as animate in Unreal Engine, in case something needs tweaking or we need a freehand animation.

Christian’s Work:

Much of what I did this week was organizational stuff. I started by adding the main asset packs we will be using on this project, those being the Adventure, Horror Mansion, Knights, and Nature packs. I also created the devlog Google Doc for the art team, made a designated foliage folder in which I separated all the foliage assets from all the packs (except the Nature pack) so that we don’t have to dig around for them. I then got to work comparing the assets to make sure there was consistency in size and appearance, tested the new dungeon pack after the initial one was found to be unfit for the project, and created a simple dungeon concept in my own test level.

https://imgur.com/a/xxL1kW5

Elian’s Work:

I started off by reading the two videos that Brian posted within the art channel on how to set up the Synty character models for the player character and other animations. I ended up really messing around with it and trying both ways, but ran into multiple problems. I started by creating a new level and a copy of the player blueprint, changed the mesh to be that of one of the female peasant models from the Synty Studio pack. Tried adding a skeletal mesh following the video, but copying over the file leads to the bones within the rig not being targeted to the mesh or having any of the original skin weights. I also could not find a way to change the skeleton mesh to be that of the Synty character, as stated in the longer video. The second video is much shorter and more concise, which I believe might work, but I will most likely need to mess with the original asset for it to work. I am also going to mark off all the animations that we do have off of the game design doc list, so that we have a better idea of the ones we still need.

Elijah’s Work:

I looked through all the asset packs for which ones had VFX and which didn't, and I then separated them into their own folder. I then put all of the effects and their materials into an Unreal project, and they all worked with there being 2 caveats to them: 1. being that I needed to apply the materials themselves to each one, so they're not just a bunch of gray squares. The other one I couldn't quite figure out this week being that even when I applied the material to some of them, they looked different from how they looked then in the packs, although that might just be a texture issue. Besides those two things, all of them are functional. So I did put the material on some of them and even messed around with one of the many fire VFX to make it bigger and bluer.

Jacklynn’s Work:

I was sick for most of this week and did not get as much done as I had planned to. I did some basic concept art sketches for planning a few of the first floor’s room layouts and familiarized myself with some of our assets to get accustomed to the workflow of artpassing / decorating.

Kyra’s Work:

Progress Report Video

Lu’s Work:

I built a simple level with pickable potions and weapons (the items float and spin before being picked up, similar to the props in Mario, and there are sounds when picking up). I also added interactive items, such as kicked pumpkins, to make the game more interesting.