Asset Management & Moving Forward

One thing we've not really fully addressed on the blog directly is our file management and how we are going about keeping things in order and ensuring the group follows the asset list and naming structures appropriately. Anna has made the Excel Document easy to follow, understand and update, and separated it into sections of similarity.

While everyone knows how big their assets need to be, how dense the tri count should be etc., below I have roughly pointed out the size of each's texture sheets on the majority of our asset list. You can also see our naming system. Each asset tends to have a prefix relating to what type it is, allowing for easy searching when building the level in-engine.

Also, everyone should be placing their fully finished assets and textures into separate folders from the versions they previously worked on, so when handed over to Anna and Mike it means they have less to search through, and know what they need to place in engine.

In terms of the actual textures, we're sticking with the standard, diffuse, colour specular & normals for each asset. If we have things up to date in the final weeks, we'll look into adding a gloss map for a few of the larger assets as well, to compliment the specular levels.

I think we all understand how to export properly now - I personally spent a lot of yesterday having to re-import my Bakery Stall over and over, for various reasons; too large, then too small, then skewed because I forgot to reset the X-Form. But we eventually got there, alongside re-saving all the .tiff files as 'CryTiffs'.

Now it's just a matter of fleshing out the level. We have the basic blockout, where things need to be, what is cornered off and what isn't. Now it's down to a few of us polishing up and constructing the level, while others work on the assets to flesh it out further, and really up the immersion levels. As was mentioned in a previous blog post about our catch-up with the tutors, we were pleased that they liked the idea of immersion and attention to detail, opposed to building a larger scale London set with less focus on such things.

Once we have the vast majority (talking around 80-90%) of the assets in the level, and its pretty well polished, eroded streets and muddy alleys, buildings slotting together nicely and such, we'll begin looking at things such as particle effects, fog, smoke, boats bobbing in the water, flies around meat, that sort of thing. Anna is already looking into ambient sounds, making the skybox and a matte painting to assist with the LODs on the opposite side of the Thames as well. I believe Shay is also looking into fire effects for the fireplace in her Tavern Interior.

 - Jamie.