[WIP] FEZ Inspired Environment/Level Design - Masters Work
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My first go at an environment design since an attempted parkour gym in my first university year. And its for a masters no less. This thread is more on recommendation than familiarity. In the words of Persona 5, it's 'So you know that we're out there!" I've never used Polycount before. But I'm all for progress posts and feedback, at least on paper.
This WIP is my work for an Environment Design and Research module. We're to make a level/environment with assets and visual cues taken from an existing game. Modular assets as often as possible, working to grids and good measurement practice, with some unique assets thrown in, with examples of trim sheets and use of more advanced texturing tools such as Substance Designer.
So FEZ, somewhat revolutionary indie game by
Polytron. A 3D puzzle platformer that takes advantage of cubic assets, a
pixel artstyle and 90 degree camera rotations to make it look like a
convincing retro 2D platformer. I've chosen it for three reasons -
- I've played it to, or close to 200% three times by now
- It's modularity and use of gridded assets is plain to see, and easy to adopt.
- And it's within my own scope, geometrically speaking. Part of the modules is research however, and I've never used Unreal shaders, so I want to try something new when it comes to building the level, given FEZ's pixel tile aesthetic.
Always about two or more birds with one stone. And passion before skillset. I love FEZ, as a game designer and as a layman. It's my two favourite genres combined with clever design. Of course I do.
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Following a playthrough of FEZ, by JoshJepson on Youtube, I've been sketching some examples of the in-game sprites and tiles. It only took a minute or so of eyeballing to work out where the 'grid' of the level is. I know enough about about old 2D games to know about the 1x1 ratio of the pixel tiles, and that 2D levels are really just coherent buildups of square textures. The see this practice most apparently you need only look at how you build levels in Super Mario Maker.
FEZ's naturally cubic assets lend themselves arguably better than any other to this kind of grid. And I've made this as reference to that. I've been sketching any architecture or common assets I've seen in the game as I've watched Josh's playthrough, and mapping them to a sheet of squared paper in coloured pen; my favoured choice for matching the solid colours you get with FEZ.
You'll notice the number notations. That's how many tiles they make up in game. I've drawn some of these on different scales. The cubes on the left make the most frequent appearances. It's hard to determine their material, but they pack together to form the underside of many of the generic platforms.
Very easy to make too. Each side has a different bevel style, in accordance with the varieties in the diagram. You would only see three sides at most, on a corner piece, and the tops would get covered with grass and vegetation. I've repeated one cube here to demonstrate the versatility. They lend themselves to normals very well.
Architecture is appropriate to its game location, using the resources close by. All doorways are 2x1, but the doors and frames differ according to the environment around them. The snapshot at the top is from a ruin, abandoned but intact, made of carved purple stone. There is trace of rubble, and plant life has dug into it. You also have some water spilling down.
The cabin is from a woodland area, and uses logs in similar accordance, with a more makeshift door, and is abandoned. The house from the picture above is from the populated starting area, and has framing and plastering and wood frame in place of metal. There are more environments, but I ran out of paper room.
This is my favorite area. Brickwork, metal plating, industrial signs and mechanisms, pipes and pillars, good variety. Block out goals: See if I can create the assets appropriate for an initial replication of the top section.
There's a fair amount of repetition on the structure. I'm adopted a 1mx1m = single square tile, measurement principle for the sizing, and used an 25cm snap size. I've taken some popular forms for both the metal and bricks, and crafted them here. These are the high detail assets to demonstrate the form. From left to right, row by row -
A Doorway, and the main warp gate, with its pedestal next to it.
The generic fez cube, and multiple variations of the metal plating on the building which currently share a single texture map
And three modular brick forms for a corner, a tiling edge, and a single brick. Once again, these are all using a single map.
I've baked nomal and occlusion maps ahead of time, using substance painter and then applied a some vector3 nodes in the material blueprint for the colours. FEZ derives it's detail from the pixel and voxel art, so getting the edges marked out is a good start. You've got basic brick and metal here. They're obviously missing finer detail, but for now it's a good start.
Some pieceing together in Unreal to replicate the reference structure. If there's abetter way of lighting the othographic views in Unreal then I want to know, but the normal data does provide some good likeness. In perspective you get a better idea of the form.
These are the next assets. You've got cable wires strapped to the structure, and metal platforms jutting out as extended platforms. Every overhang on the structure is supported at regular intervals by metal supports, rivetted into the walls.
Wires were first. Excuse the garish green; I tried to emulate the green sky of the level in the max scene to test the mood. I've put the chamfer & turbosmooth methodology back into practice, and made these three parts for scene application. I'm aware there are spline tools in Unreal Engine, but I've never used them before. Could give it a try for the pipes.
A similar thing for the metal platform extensions. An edge piece and a corner piece. I've put the chamfer & turbosmooth methodology back into practice. for the high poly baking. Not the most applicable for these kinds of assets, but good practice nonetheless.
Once again, these pieces currently use a single map. They're all metal parts. The spherical rivets will be baked out as normal data. I'm wondering if there's a suitable blueprinting method of applying these riveted supports though. There are hundreds of the adourning the underside of the structure. Maybe a means of checking the collision vector of a block and applying these at intervals wherever it's pointing downwards. Then again, that would probably take me more time to make than lining the structure manually.
Did two passes through substance painter to make the maps. Top ones are for the wires, and the bottom two are for the metal pieces.
Credit to Tom Elgon. He explained to me how to create material masks so I can layer colours. The support rivets are a gold/brass colour, as opposed to the dark grey. I've made a mask from the normal map to isolate the rivet, then applied it into the lerp's alpha node, then applied the gold colour.
I've done the same thing with the brick pieces, using a material instance, and pale pink to create the painted corners.
With these new pieces, this is what the test scene now looks like. A good forward step. I've used the three cable wire pieces in the modular fashion to create the wall lines you see in the game, and duplicated a larger version of the support piece, as there are size differences, depending on the item being supported.
More to come
These are the blockout core cmponents. These are to be single meshes, barring the platform extensions, which have been reworked into modular pieces.
The trim sheet's changed a little bit. Tiling the house components wasn't working as well as I'd hoped, so they've become their own square sheet. With the house components and the door removed, I've reconfigured the initial sheet to still fit in a square space.
You can see the baked result of the trim sheet on the left here. Using it as a guide, I've manually taken the UVs of each map and lined them up with the the normal data.
And this is channel 2. I couldn't have given you an answer if you'd asked me what lightmaps were a few weeks ago. That's not the case anymore. The main map is guilty of uv overlap and overlay, so i've modified the lightmaps to fit apart from each other.
This is the normal map for the house structures. And I've adopted a similar approach.
Next up, I've made every other asset that will use the trim sheet. Top left, you can see a revolving platform, a doorway and door, and the new version of the portal box. The one on the right is for the components of a ring of pillars which line the base of the main blockout piece. You can see it put together in the bottom picture.
The trim sheet put into full practice, with every asset that uses it ensembleed in the scene view, and their UVs arranged in the 1 by 1 space.
And last of all, I've either tweaked or made up a set of component meshes that fill out the scene - Piping, wires, supports and struts. And I've made high poly meshes for baking purposes. Things like rivets will get baked down. You can see each modular piece in the picture on the right. They have their pivets set to 0,0,0 on their export. I've just arranged them here for presentation.
From top to bottom, Normal maps, Occlusion Maps, and Masks for Linear interpolation in Unreal Engine.
Left to right it goes, the universal map for the blockout pieces, the map for the houses, and the combined map for the component meshes. since each one is a small asset. Currently each one is 1024x1024.
This is how the materials have been set up. I'm currently using Normal & Occlusion maps, with 3Vector nodes set up with masking and linear interpolation for the colour, specular and metal. You could correct me and ask for roughness instead, but the look is okay for the time being. Each 3Vector is a named parameter, then I've made instances for every material type in the scene, which use the given maps. You can see the parent material on the left, and the instance put into practice for making a bluish metal, with gold secondary colour.
So with these considerable additions, the scene is getting promising.
My present state of construction. It's coming together. You may also notice the sky sphere. I've done some mock up lighting to better emulate the look of the game. I'm using three directional lights, and a customised sky sphere. If I can work out how to change the clouds, that could be fun. FEZ has square clouds, a little like smoke rings from a pipe.
The scene is still missing vegetation, a small handful of extra assets, and decals. But we're almost there.