DMUGA Week 30 - Optimising and Polishing (FMP #17)
Weekly Summary:
I made some good progress on level building this week, I populated the courtyard some more and got it to a fairly good standard which only needs a bit more of a touch up (Waiting on Andy's assets for the temple dome and pop foliage to finish the start area off and the courtyard). In addition, I made my way through the cave tunnel and forced myself to tackle the problem that it is boring; I tried to spice it up a bit. This is currently still in progress, but hopefully with another few more days on it, I can get it looking ok enough enough to hand in, and then make my way into the final cave.
Monday - Wednesday:
My work images will be in the "level so far" section, as LODs are self explanatory, and no-one else touched the level this week (so you can see the level progress I made from last post to this post).
Asset work:
I took this time to do some more optimising as our frame rate still wasn't where I would like it to be, and I know it could be better.
I therefore made some LODs for the following assets:
-CatacombWall
-FloorPlant 5 & 6
-LongLeaf 1 & 2
-Grass Patches x3
-Ivy 3D 1 - 9
-Lantern
-LotusLeaf
-Stalactites x2
-Stalagmites x2
-WalkwayTrim
-Wings x8
Level work Dom and Mark:
I also called for us to go through what exactly was left and what is our main priorities in order to finish. Plus, find what was causing the fps drop. Dom worked out that the reason for the drop in fps inside the cave was mostly down to the directional light being on when we don't need it to. He therefore turned it off during the cave which gained us a good 35-40fps.
I worked on the cave/camp-fire some more (lighting + placement), and cut the top part of the cloth for the shack as Andy didn't want to come back to it again, and I didn't feel it was worth the time it'd take to use Z-brush and learn how to do ripped fibres.
I finished off my LODs that I feel would be necessary to raise the fps, and went out with Dom to Aylestone Meadows to record some sounds for:
-Ambient fountain water
-Wood footsteps
-Dirt footsteps
-Concrete footsteps
-Grass crunching
-Climbing up
-Shuffling
-Ambient bird sounds
There are so many problems with LODs still in UE4 which in the version we use (4.10.2), are not fixed:
- Y-Axis 90 Degrees before import
- Bug with adding material ID's every time you try to import a new LOD
- This is associated with another bug which completely RUINS your mesh; the LOD is half gone and not unwrapped.
- Light-maps for the LODs in the foliage actor are broken
Nevertheless, we get an ok frame-rate which is fine for hand-in.
Andy:
-Wooden supply box sculpting and tried to bake but it caused errors
-Unwrapped the final temple wall piece that we need
-Imported crafting set textures but has errors on the bottle.
Dom:
-Fixed the objectives so now fully work
-Re-positioned the torch on the player
-Got the main menu to work with a controller
-Turned off directional light in the cave to increase the fps
-Made the higher resolution images for the buttons that appear on-screen & in the world
-Used laptop & microphone to record sounds with Mark as listed above
Thursday - Friday:
Level work:
I worked more on the courtyard to get it to where it is in the images below, optimised some more light-maps, and culled some meshes at a distance in an attempt to improve the fps as much as possible.
Andy:
Off Ill with the flu.
Dom:
-Re-positioned the torch & Boat.
Level Progress:
