In this post, I will be constructing and showing my design processes for my environment and assets that will be wanting to use for the video sequence.
Before building anything for the bedroom, I had to decide on the theme of the room, most kids tend to have toys and posters on their walls representing something they find an interest in, this makes the room more stylized and unique to the person themselves. There are many themes to explore, for this project, I decided to hold a theme that I enjoyed when I was little which was Dinosaurs. I have always found these creatures interesting and cool, there are elements to dinosaurs that can also seem intimidating and scary which would work great within my video.
Imagery of a Dinosaur Themed Children’s Bedroom taken from Pinterest, I will be taking inspiration from both of these visuals when building the main bedroom. I really like the green tones of the room, the plants from each image dangling from their object makes me want to add it to my own environment which could be waving in the wind on the window.
Now that I have an idea of the theme and have some inspiration for assets, I want to make a 2D sketch of the environment, this will help me when modelling it in the 3D space as a reference.
Environment Block out Version 1, to build this environment I used a variety of cubes warped and cylinders stretched within Unreal Engine itself. I wanted to create a simplistic but effective design for this environment, I did this to not clutter the area with highly detailed assets which could distract the viewer and so the prototype can render smoothly without any problems.Overview of Environment with doodles of asset locations mapped out
Stuffed Dinosaur Models –
Stuffed Dinosaurs Concept Design
Here are screenshots of all of the stuffed Dinosaurs created within the software NoMad. I found this programme rather similar to Zbrush it contains all of the right tools that I needed and was more easily accessible in my opinion, it also has a polypaint feature which I used to texture these. I decided to go for a bold lined art style, I mainly did this to make the assets stand out from the rest just so the player can interact with them when scared.
UV/Texture Maps –
All 4 Texture maps for the Dinosaur modelsScreenshot within Unreal Engine of the models placed on the bed, I have positioned them to be surrounding the player so they can look to each side of them for comfort.
Nightlight Design –
Nightlight Concept Design, I felt like I was missing an element to my environment so I thought of this which goes behind the viewers head and glows in the dark. Its purpose it to give the user a sense of safety, surrounding them with a circle of light so they can see so far in the dark.Screenshot of the nightlight completed, I made this asset within NoMad, I tried to stick with the same boldness art style as the other dinosaurs to make it pop out from the rest. To make the shape I started out with a standard sphere and flattened it, then with the move tool dragged the other body shapes out. For the detailing I added som scratches to the asset using the clay build up tool with subtration enabled.
Vector Dinosaur Head –
Screenshot from Sketchbook Pro of a Dinosaur head, I sketched this as a silhouette to be used in the darkness which appears in areas of the animation, for example peaking out of the wardrobe.
Rug Texture –
Screenshot from Photoshop of rug texture, to make this I used a photo of the ground/grass outside and added an oil paint filter on top off it to make it so it will fit in with the rest of the environment.
Draw –
Made this Draw within Maya and reduced its polys within Zbrush with decimation to make the appearance similar to the environment.
Assets All Together –
Assets all together, in the end I ended up sticking with the basic build up of shapes used from the blockout. I found them to be effective and not conflict with any of the other assets which was great, its simple but works with the added assets. I do really like the result of appearance of the room, its everything that i could ask for, the only that I didnt end up being able to make was I wanted another dinosaur in the bottom left corner.
