Game Designer
The first stage of the development for the level was the process of white-boxing the geometry of the level. At this point simple geometry brushes are placed in the level to provide an accurate representation of the design of the level
Production Stage - 1
Overview
This is a Renaissance themed test level that I created within roughly 6 days. Below I will display and detail the process through which I created this level. The level does not have any game mechanics unfortunately at this time but you will be able to run around in the level and have a look through the different points of interest.
Renaissance Test Unreal Engine 4
Finally basic light is applied to the level
During this period basic concepts regarding the design of the level are clarified as they take visual shape.
as well as its scale.
Furthermore, the most important vistas within the level are created
Additionally during this time, more locations within the already established geometry are conceptualized and created using said static meshes.
During the stage 2 most of the static meshes are introduced into the level, during this time it is better to replace most if not all of the geometry brushes with static meshes. The reason behind this is that geometry brushes take up a lot of computational performance while static meshes do not.
That being said, the problem I had during this stage was trying to convert the already placed geometry brushes into static meshes. Unreal engine enables the users to convert geometry brushes into static meshes in this way but there are certain problems when doing so.
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The converted static mesh does not have collision, as such collision has to be recreated either by hand or by using the auto convex function in Unreal which tries to create collision settings that would fit the shape and scale of the mesh.
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The converted mesh has overlapping UV coordinates which essentially makes the mesh black (light becomes useless at this point as the textures of the mesh are entirely blacked out.
To solve these issues a 3D modelling software has to be used to properly create the collision settings and UV lightmap. Unfortunately I was not able to bypass these problems as I do not have access to 3D modelling programs that I am familiar with because of the licenses. (3DS Max). As such, the geometry brushes remained in the level, textured materials were applied on them and prop static meshes were placed as well.
The static meshes used in the level need to provide the already established scene with more conceptual depth so that the players are able to understand what they are looking at without anything being explained to them. The props also need to make the scene more believable (not necessarily realistic)
Production Stage - 2
Production Stage - 3
During this stage, even more depth is added to the scene, smaller details are applied. Such as: Lighting and volumetric levels
Grass, flower and bush instances, as well as swords, more crates and other props.
Moreover, certain images of authentic paintings were added to the level to boost the sense of authenticity required by the theme of the level.
Finally, background assets such as mountains are included in the level and Navigational Meshes are added for the use of AI.
