I had a bunch of props disappear from last time, I'm really not sure what happened. It wasn't like I forgot to save it was only a few here and there, mostly from the past week but some from way before that. While working to replace those I finished round 3 of asset gathering, hopefully my last large haul and just have a few things here and there to import. I completed most of the bug wall. Filling out the rest of the moth and insect boards as well as drawing inspiration from

Having some issues with lights disappearing from my laptop file to the Monty computer file. They have the same project settings, on the same Unreal version, and no known other changes. I'm curious whether or not it is a graphics card thing where one can handle the lights and the other can't. Or if it has something to do with the laptop being a mobile graphics card vs a computer. Sofia pointed it out it seems the whole chandelier light was missing. I will investigate further.

I know some assets have the emissive issue as well as some lights are missing. A lot of light fixtures are put in now and the circus room has a few more assets.

Today I wanted to talk about the emissive texture import issue. In the first image you can see the that the model does not receive any shadows and gives off a bright, over exposed look to the texture. It looks out of place and poor quality. After some troubleshooting, I've discovered it is the fault of the parent material in the engine settings. If I change the parent material from "MI_Unlit_Opaque_DS" to ""MI_Default_Opaque_DS" it turns that emissive glow to the texture and

I went to a local vintage store and took particular note of how different people set up their venues and decorations. I also paid close attention to how the areas were lit up as that is something I'm struggling with in my scenes. There were standard warehouse fluorescent lights up at the top of the ceiling. There were also large lamp fill lights that hung closer to the stations and often pointed directly at them. Then there were sometimes a few decorative lamps or led lined g

After merging pieces of over 200+ assets I have procured quite a beefy content folder with a total project size of 30 GB. I went through and cleaned out all the individual pieces but surprisingly, this only cleared a couple gigs of data. I went through and searched each of the folders and found that my renders have been saving each frame from all my iterations in 2k. Deleting those got rid of 6 gigs. I also found an autosave folder which had multiple levels, assets, and more

I have continued work on texturing and finishing up the Marquee sign asset and doing the chasing lights animation. I found out a lot of the geometry had the normals flipped. I had to go in and separate the geometry to fix those and then recombine everything. I tried to start the animation in Maya but realized it would be better to do it in Unreal, so I didn't have to deal with importing and exporting animations. I originally thought that I could keyframe the material, just sw

I imported over 120 assets to add to my project since last time. Found a bunch more wonderful resources from many museums across Sketchfab. I went through the same process of dragging the pieces into Unreal, rescaling, and recentering the pivot point, then merging and baking the transform for easy layout in the future. It's a long process but definitely worth it in the end. Ruby finished modeling the circus marquee sign and I started texturing it. Next will be continued addin

My roommate took me to this shop off of Bull St called The Olfactory Co - Purveyor of Fine Continental Soaps, Teas, & Oddments. It had all the elements of an oddities store I was looking for, the odd layout, the strange and random decor, every inch of the walls had something to look at, even the ceilings. Photography was not allowed inside the building, but I took a lot of mental notes and found some pictures online. It was really insightful and inspiring to the project. I ha

I am currently importing a lot of props from Sketchfab, which requires a lot of menial task of optimizing it best for Unreal Engine. Due to Unreal's long loading times this can often take a significant amount of time for each object. I realized I could auto combine the assets during the import. But after comparing the two results I found the auto merged asset had these cracks in them (left) while the manually merged one did not (right). I will stick with manually merging them

I spent a long time reorganizing my file and outliner. I added a lot of objects in the structure phase, and I am going to be adding a lot more with all the props, so I wanted to make sure I was properly organized before moving on. I also renamed all boolean and merged assets that were just labeled "combined" or "boolean" to be the actual object they represent and sorting them into categories based on room and what the object is in the room. I want to add in the physical light

For some of the more intricate models I can not find for free online, I have a lovely person who is happy to do some models for me. My main concern is having a blinking circus marquee sign in the circus room. I've been making some sketches and some mood boards to send to the modeler to get that handled. I will do the chasing lights animation myself and the texturing if the modeler does not have time. After rushing to do all the architecture of the building I have spent a long

I put in all the walls, floors, ceilings, and molding in for all the rooms. There definitely needs to be some refining here and there, but the base is done. I had to split apart a lot of assets in order to Frankenstein together the idea I wanted. I can't wait to add in more subtle things such as vents, outlets, wear and tear, etc.

Added in the architecture to the last hallway room. I had to auto uv the arches I had made to allow the plaster texture to sit right on the arched hallway. I added in the runner rugs although I might change up the textures, but good to have them in place for now. I added in the floors and ceilings in as well. I chose to go with the wall plaster instead of white popcorn ceiling as it would make sense for the wall to just keep going in this case. Had to adjust the interior mode

I have added in the foundations of the first room. I'm really happy with how the lighting is bouncing off each of the walls and items so far. I will continue to refine the materials and colors, so things look mismatched but not out of place. Part of me wants to fully finish this room before moving on, so we will see how that goes.

I started off by making task sheets for all elements in each room and what needs to be done as well its progress so far. It was good to get all the ideas I have in my head on paper and tangible as it was difficult to keep it all in my brain. I downloaded a bunch of interior design assets, separated them out and made sure everything was to scale and center pivot. I migrated all the assets over to my main project level. I have some various doors, walls, moldings, etc.

I connected with Matthew Ward, creator of Gearbox on linked in and sent him a link to our Hyperdoc. He was grateful I had reached out to him and loved the work we had all done. He asked me if there were any tutorials we used and so I pointed him to the tutorials page but said a lot of things were shared through word of mouth or from the professor. Other small things were just found scouring random forums from several years ago. We had a funny exchange with that: I was given e

We made a post-production task worksheet and assigned everyone with deadlines. We saw the first rounds of the rough cut as well as some of the VFX shots which are coming together. It was really interesting to see how it all came together on film. There were a couple continuity things that I missed which I was a bit bummed that I missed but nothing super crazy. I hope the color grading team can bring up the exposure, it felt way dark for me which I noticed on set too. I made s

I added more pauses in the timelines. I also created a title sequence and added back in the music and sound effects. I know there are still some refinements I can make to the movement, but this is what I have for now.

I've changed the animation of the camera to tracking an empty actor, so it wasn't just wildly rotating. While I feel it's a lot better there are still parts where it needs to be slowed down because the camera movements are two quick, yet in parts where it is slower, it feels like the character is moving in slow motion, which also sucks.