Final Sprint

 This final sprint was mostly just polishing up the assets and code we had in the game! I worked on a number of things. The first task I had was to fix Professor Oaks skin weights so they don't clip as much because of the thin geometry on top of each other.

The next task I worked on was changing out the font of the widgets for a more readable one. Although we liked the charm the pixel font gave, being a call back to the original games, it was difficult to decipher in VR. The font we are using now is the one that is used in the modern Pokemon games: Gill.

I also finally implemented the credits to where it wont be conditional on the players world rotation and put it on the white board.

Sprint #5

 Hey there! This sprint on Pokemon VR, I worked on making camera facing widgets for the speech bubbles I had made previously. VR does not work with the regular camera facing option so we had to figure out a way around that. The widget rotates based on the VR Pawns position. I replaced all the text boxes with this widget feature. I also added in the Pokemon font for the text in the game. I am planning on changing the font to a bolder one that is easier to see. I also fixed the beaker VFX so it's parented and moves with the object. I started to work on the credits to have this feature but haven't finished implementing it. 

Sprint 4

 Hey everyone! This sprint I worked on creating a credits screen for our team. We want them to include a gallery of 2D artwork our teammates made of us with our favorite pokemon! Here's a video of the credits rolling.

I also worked on addressing some of the feedback when it came to the dust particles being too big. I also made the bubbling effect for the beakers which is shown below. And I added a time plus a sine node to the computer tower emissive texture so the red light blinks.

Sprint #3

 This sprint, I worked more on more backend things that aren't too visible. I reskinned Bulbasaur and Charmander to their updated mesh with better UVs and textures and uploaded those versions to the engine. I also uploaded Gary to the engine and retargeted him to the old Gary. I also implemented the Sudowoodo dancing when you water him. I also updated all the VFX I made previously to have depth fade so they don't obviously clip through objects. 

Sprint #2

 

This week I focused on a couple things. I remade the spawn and status VFXs and rigged Professor Oak. I skinned his updated mesh as well. 

For the VFX, I referenced the effects from Pokemon Sword and Shield. I also started doing some research on camera facing widgets in VR and I was having a hard time finding a solution for that in particular.

Sprint #1 Delivery

 This sprint I was tasked to make is the rig for Squirtle. I added IK to the arms, legs and feet. Plus pole vector controllers for the knees and elbows. It also has a quick first skinning pass.

I also made a quick watering can VFX in Niagara.

Sprint #7 'C' Level Delivery

 

This week I worked on a number of things! I first worked on retargeting Charmander's attack animations onto the new rig. After that I worked on creating three different effects: a speech bubble, a pokeball screensaver, and Squirtle's bubble attack. I also rigged Sudowoodo with IK arms, legs, and feet. This week was packed with a lot of tasks and I got all of them and more done!

Sprint #6 Delivery

 Hey everyone! For our Pokemon VR experience, I worked on the Bulbasaur skin weights this week and a dust particle VFX in Niagara! I struggled a bit with the skin weights on the bulb but after consulting with one of the animations, I put all the influence for the bulb on one of the spine controllers.

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Sprint #5 Delivery

Hey everyone! So I was reassigned to work on the Pokemon team from now on and here's a gif of what I worked on! I mainly just re-did the skin weights on Charmander and also deleted all the keyframes from the scene so that the animators will be able to reference the model instead of importing it when they animate. I also started to weight paint Bulbasaur, but it's still in progress. I'm excited to be on this team and I cant wait to see what we'll accomplish together!

Here's also a link to an Unreal Forums post I made: https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/fieavr-pokemon/505195/8

 

Sprint #4 Delivery, Asset/Feature Complete

This week in common art, we got a lot done! I first worked on changing out the robot hands to human hands, where I had to retarget and remake the animation blueprint. I then worked on connecting the boat to the spline track. After that I worked on making the lanterns spawn above the player once they reach the middle. I helped Anthony work on the rowing as well. I made the fireflies disappear after we reach the middle too. Lastly, I helped debug the animation state machine to work with the blueprints that trigger them.

Sprint #3 Delivery, Sound & VFX

 This week I actually focused on retopologizing Pascals model so that the other tech artists on my team can get started on working on Pascals rig. The one on the left was the proxy model. The one on the right is the one I retopologized. I also helped Thomas figure out how to make the color changing blueprint for Pascal.

Sprint #2 Delivery, Beginning/Middle/End Part II

 This week I worked on the functionality of the level! I got the boat to work with thumbstick movement and then also worked on the trigger box events spawning the particle systems, music, and interactable lanterns. Here's a quick video of me explaining this and showing how it looks in VR.

Sprint #1 Delivery, Beginning/Middle/End, Part I

This week I worked on modeling Pascal in Zbrush! We had to restart the model and model him in a quadraped pose. I'll be starting the retopology next week! I also helped fix up the level a bit for presentation.

Week 15 – Final Delivery (Cut Round 01)

These past few weeks have been just working on finalizing the proxy scene we have for our Tangled experience. I worked on creating the boat movement, the lighting, general pipeline stuff, and a bit of the VFX. 

For the movement, I got the boat to move in a path, but the only issue was that the path seemed to be offset and the boat would move in the shape of the path where it wasn't supposed to.

I added volumetric fog to the scene, adjusted a lot of values including the saturation and gamma in the post process, and adjusted the lighting on the ships and the lantern that you can interact with.

I also fixed the reflections in the water and adjusted the water material!

I am proud of what our team was able to come up with in the last couple of weeks.

 

Week 13 – White Boxing And Concept (Part 01)

 This week I worked on fixing the lighting and the blueprints for the grabbable objects are also in the level. We changed project settings for planar reflections and enable the mesh distance fields so we could have edge foam in the water on contact with different objects. Here are some of the slides that I worked on as well:

Here is a video of us explaining what we worked on:

   

Week 12 – Art Style Guide (Custom Style Guide/Starting Prototype)

 This week we kept on polishing our art style guides and ended up changing up some parts of the project. We decided to move away from having Rapunzel and Flynn in the scene, and are focusing on using Pascal as the main interactor for the experience instead. These are the slides I worked on for this week: Inspiration, Lighting/Atmosphere, Pascal, Shape Language (Pascal).

We also started the proxy this week! Our team recorded a video of what each of us worked on, which is linked at the bottom of this post. After recording this video, I did work on adding a glowing material to the particles, fully whiteboxing the whole level, fixing the skybox, and adding more exponential height fog and atmospheric VFX.

Week 11 – Art Style Guides (Discovering Your Own Art Style)

 This week we edited our art style analysis of Tangled to focus only on the scene that we're working on for our VR Common Art project. The scene we focused on was the lantern scene towards the end of the movie, where Flynn shows Rapunzel the floating lights and sing the song "I See the Light" together. The slides I mainly worked on this week were the characters slide, the shape language for the characters slide, and the technical considerations slide. After analyzing this scene a bit more in depth, I am even more excited than I was to start working on it.

Week 10 – Art Style Guides (Art Style Range And Breakdown)

 

This week in Common Art, we were tasked to analyze the art style of Tangled: the movie we are basing our VR experience on. We all contributed to more of  the slides in the presentation, but these are the slides I worked on the most! I focused more on the characters shape languge, which over all is very round for all the characters, the very warm lighting and the technical considerations we should keep in mind as we proceed on with this project. I'm very excited to start creating this VR immersive experience.

Week 09 - Art Style Guides (Understanding Story)

Hey there! This week at FIEA I worked on creating this side story about Pascal from Tangled with my teammates! These are the slides I contributed to.

Week 06 - Use of Perspective

 This week the theme was transport! We all were supposed to model a 3D object and make an illustration in photoshop with a render that focuses on perspective. 

Here's my reference board:

I decided to make the Mugen Train from Demon Slayer. Here's my final illustration.