For the 3rd week of the diagon alley project, I focused on converting my blockout to a modularly constructed set. I read up on professional/industry use of modular construction at the beginning of the week to familiarise myself with this technique and how it’s used in practise. This article (Roach, 2019) by Benjamin Roach and Kirill Tokarev gave a clear example of how easy it is to create a complex looking scene from a small modular kit. Utilising scaling and texturing techniques helps to break up the Dark Souls scene and disguises the repetition of the models used.
Something that’s also heavily emphasized not only in this article but in another (Kai, 2020) about modularity is the usage of foliage to break up modular elements within the scene. This is something I would like to incorporate into my shop as it suits the aesthetic of a tea room as seen within my reference boards – lots of foliage and greenery which makes the shop look cutesy, cottage-esque and inviting.
During the in-person workshop this week, we carried out an exercise in modularity by modelling a dungeon modular set. This helped familiarise me with the techniques used to create a modular kit and how much time can be saved by creating one.
Before I started creating my modular piece, I needed to decide on which blockout I wanted to go ahead and develop into a final piece. As you can see I added a further blockout, refining my design from the 3rd blockout. Another addition is the teacup and teapot sign at the front of the shop; I used quad draw to create this, using a plane with the texture of my planned design for the teacup and teapot to guide me. I then used multi-cut tool to prevent any n-gons being created.
There were elements from all different buildings that I liked, and some things I needed to tweak when I decided on which one I was to develop into a final building – once again, things like geometry, silhouette and size. I didn’t like the width of the 3rd blockout, however I preferred having 2 windows per story rather than 3 as It looked more natural and less cramped. Although it was an interesting experiment in shape, I didn’t like the overhang of the 2nd story on the 3rd and 4th blockout. My intention with the overhang was to add a topsy-turvy, makeshift element to the shop that I observed within the Diagon Alley walkaround and Hogwarts Legacy Hogsmeade tour, however instead it made the building’s centre of gravity look off and the silhouette from the side was displeasing in my opinion.
Therefore I crafted a final blockout, incorporating all my favourite bits from each building into one.
You can see I carried over the teacup and teapot signage from prior blockouts, as well as the double chimneys and dormer windows. To make sure the scale of the doorframe was right for this blockout, I stood in my own doorframe and outstretched my arms in the same A-Pose as the scaleman to gage the space. I also changed the shop front window to cylinders for the time being rather than how they were before in the 3rd and 4th blockout as I felt it would be easier to have the shop windows as separate meshes from the rest of the building.
I extruded where the shop front would be as I had plans to put foliage on the building at it would sit nicely there. I also corrected my geometry, so I had a cleaner base to start my modular kit from in comparison to the previous blockouts that had many unnecessary edge loops.
In regards to constructing the actual modular kit, I started piece by piece converting pieces into modular meshes. The first piece I started with was columns to hold up the shop front, which I created by extruding a cube and using a plane with a guide I drew for myself in Photoshop to help me create the shape I desired. I had to alter the design slightly as it was a bit too complex for me to model in Maya, but I gave it a good go and ended up with a satisfactory column.
I then duplicated the columns and snapped them to the corner vertex of the building. I snapped the two inner columns to the doorframe. Then I rendered in Arnold to gain an understanding of how this would look in-game. In this render I have altered the stair shape slightly to be more flared outwards, still experimenting with things.
References:
Kai, J.C.Y. (2020) Making a modular scene less repetitive, 80lv. Available at: https://80.lv/articles/concrete-evergreen-making-a-modular-scene-less-repetitive/ (Accessed: 6 February 2023).
Roach, B. (2019) Recreating dark souls 3 in UE4, 80lv. Available at: https://80.lv/articles/dark-souls-3-in-ue4-production-interview/ (Accessed: 8 February 2023).
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