[Unity] Portal Test Chamber Scene

MrBFox

Decided to start a new project, I am aiming to create a bunch of props and modular assets that could be used to build a Test Chamber Scene in Unity.
This will be to test and improve upon my current workflows for Trim Tiling and High to Low poly Hardsurface modelling.
Some new things id like to try out during this project is Working with Substance Designer possibly (just for the trial period) and getting more time working with bringing assets into Unity and working with Timeline and Cinemachine.

Ive given myself a deadline of One Month (end of april).

So to start things off ive done some visual research, utilising both Google and playing a few levels of the game and taking screenshots.

Then followed that up with some breakdowns of the screens taken while playing, figuring what could be trim, what could be tiled and what will be hero props.

next stage will be blockout and figuring out the scale.

MrBFox

made some proto-assets and brought them into unity for a quick block-in, recreating one of the early levels in the Game.
The Orange Box (170cm tall) is my human scale ref.

Skinner3D

Curiouser and Curiouser. ;D Interested to see how this develops.

MrBFox

Been working on some lookdev for the the Tiling Textures that will be making up most of the scene (left to right: Non-portal Wall, Portal Floor and Portal Wall), made some quick High Polys of the tiles, brought them into Substance Painter and and used the ceramic tile material as a starting point.

Ignore the UV issues witht the blockout  scene, theyll be swapped with the propperly UV'd assets when ready.
Main issue I can identify at the moment with the materials is Portal Floor could have used a lighter value closer to Portal Wall, and Non-Portal Wall could be a darker value.

MrBFox

Updated  Wall/Floor modular assets and blockout added a window frame for the observation areas which act as th major light source in some levels.

MrBFox

And some footage of the scene so far.

Obscura

Hey. I got this feedback on one of my works earlier, and I think its true for your scene too. I was recreating some rooms from Doom3, closely mimicing the architecture. The feedback was like I should do something with the shapes, because everything looks very blocky/boxy. This was partially an optimization decision back in the old days in these games. If you think about this, it makes total sense.

So. You use very little amount of geometry yet, and if you stay with the simple rooms, I think you could easily model out the Big extrusion/bevel on the floors/walls. You would also gain better shadowing and occlusion. 

Keep going.

MrBFox

taking @Obscura feedback into account, remodelled the tiles to include bevels extrusions as geometry, to be smart about this I looked at Portal 2 ref, where the construction of many objects is seen at many points, so to be smart I modelled out a frame a nd some floor wall tiles with enough to offer some texture variations, these where then retextured in Substance and put together as prefabs in unity (in sizes of 2x2,2x4,4x4,8x8 etc) in such a way as some options are available for how their displayed either as the bare frames or as the portal/non-portal tiles.

Obscura

Hey. To be honest, this didn't really helped as much as I thought it would. The panels themselves looks somewhat better though. Maybe you should add some trim pieces along the edges of floors/ceiling etc. More stairs, more levels to it, because it still looks very... lowpoly, last-last gen. 

I have two things to say about the textures. Although I played both of the games, and I know the second one had some of this, I think the dirt and patchy leaks doesn't make much sense. In the game these panels are moved  by robotic arms, so scratches and mechanical damages would first of all make more sense, and would look better too. The dark metallic plate thing looks especially bad. Sorry.
My second thought about them, is that they look like they have some weird shading going on, they feel like they have metallic in them (the white panels). I always imagined these guys as either very rough thick and strong rubber, or plastic.

I think if you must want to stay with the boxy and such simplistic architecture, maybe you should go with a more clear style texture wise, and sell it with some clean renders. 

MrBFox

while this level itself is just a test to make sure the assets are working well in an existing level from the game, it is intentional that i I do want to stick with the boxy and simple architectural style, as it was as much a design choice to communicate to the player where they could or could not use the portal gun as much as it was a product of the technical limitations of the time.

and yeah Imnot happy with the metal tiles either, will get back to them later.
I guess where I was trying to go with the tiles was a ceramic surface, maybe switching from the Standard Metal to Standard Specular shader in unity would help?

Obscura

I think you definitely need to learn some pbr stuff. Switching to the specular shader would not fix this, the problem is in the textures. I checked out your stuff on art station and some of your other work also suffers from this. The bb8 for example. It has metallic values on non metal areas. If you are not sure about what do I mean and what to look at, here is some pointer. The "metallic" shader was made to simplify the technicalities from artist standpoint, and so they don't need to figure out what specular value to use. This is possible, because in the reality, 99% of non metal materials has very similar, or almost the same reflectance value, which is around 0.04 (4%), and most metals has almost full reflectance. This is why a black and white texture is tipically enough, and you should not really use much values in between. I would imagine your metallic textures has non black colors in the metallic map on these plates. Just leave it plain back and don't touch the slider either. Roughness (or in case of unity smoothness = glossiness) map can be used to make the reflections more or less blurry. Try playing with that instead. I would still highly recommend to do some reads on pbr, a good one can be found on the site of Marmoset Toolbag. It discussess the theory, which is generic, and works the same regardless of the engine.

In  my opinion, sticking with this boxy design won't really help you, and if you are making a portfolio piece, you should try to get as much out of it, as you can, and try out some new things, and adding more leveling to it won't break the feel of it, at all. It would just make it looking less last gen. 

Anyways, do whatever you feel is good.

MrBFox

Thanks, I think I get what you mean now, have some things to think about with where I want to go with the project.

MrBFox

been working on some props to fill out the scene, paying particular attention to the textures in substance painter, I have identified the source of some issues of non metal materials appearing metalic as being an effect of not paying attention to which channels are being affected by the filter effects (grease being a main one I use to add some roughness variation to materials).
model

MrBFox

modelbecause its been A while since ive used Unity heavily, this prop served as a refresher on exporting and importing Animated objects into the engine. I even went as far as setting up a blend tree and script to have the prop react to having objects set on the button, Ill have an example of this posted with the next in-engine update

MrBFox

little update on scene with new props added and continued tweaking of the wall textures.

Obscura

Just wanted to stop by to let you know that the textures are looking much better now. 

MrBFox

Been working on a Sentry Turret for the Portal scene, undecided if I want to treat this a medium poly asset or take it further as a high poly to bake off of.
One idea im currently thinking of on where I want to take the scene presentation-wise as cinematic or interactive piece, is having the player (or a recorded 1st person asset, still need to look further into what Timeline can do) solve the cube-button puzzle like normaly playing the game, getting to a next area to access the portal gun (planning to model it and add it to the scene) only to have the walls pull away (Portal 2 style) and find themeselves surrounded by turrets.

MrBFox

Been a while since the last update, other commitments have gotten in the way of progress, but I managed to get the turret retoped, textured and in-engine recently, have also continued trying to get functionality working between the button and door, for now have also turned off volumetric lights and scaled back post processing a bit just to help get a better read of the textures and materials.