Preston White
PrisonModEnv_BannerPro.jpg

Modular Prison

PROJECT SPECS

The Prison Mod Environment was a semester long project (15 weeks) focusing on creating a modular environment, optimized for games, and based on reference. The original concept was done by Fernando Acosta for Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate.

  • 3DS Max was used for hard surface modeling of all 33 modular assets. Assets were prioritized into 4 levels of importance.

  • High priority assets (walls, floors, ceilings, etc.) are power of 2 measurement.

  • Atlas and Seamless Textures utilized. Working meshes using Atlas textures converted to Game Res and High Res. Baked NOR and OCC texture maps. Game Res modular meshes used Seamless textures.

  • Substance Designer used to generate 4 seamless PBR materials, and their variants.

  • Photoshop and CrazyBump were used for additional texture manipulation and organization, as well as creating the Atlas texture for all prop assets.

  • Rendered in Unreal Engine 4, and Material Blueprints were utilized for final material creation, and set up for vertex painting.

CONCEPT AND BREAKDOWN

The first step in creating this modular environment involved breaking down the original concept into pieces that could be used to build the entire scene. Using levels of priority helped determine a level of hierarchy that could be followed in developing the assets, and helped pace the project.

PROOF OF MODULARITY

To build the final scene, 33 modular assets were created with optimization and efficiency in mind. It was important to match the reference image, but also important to create the modular set in a way that would allow designers to rapidly prototype gameplay changes with ever-evolving environments.

The modular set was originally created for an interior prison scene, but was easily adapted into an outdoor prison yard with 24 of the 33 pieces being used.

RENDERS

TEXTURES

Seamless PBR materials made specifically for use in Unreal Engine 4. Materials were authored with 8-bit Grayscale textures and the ability to add color through material blueprint with masks. Materials were created in Substance Designer, and with little modification, variant texture maps could be created and plugged in to allow for vertex painting. Case in point, the Tile material was created from the Brick material, and the Metal material was given parameters to control the wear and grime amount.