Aftermath post-mortem

For the past 8 weeks, Damon and I as a team have been working on the After Math Project. Throughout this time there have been some ups and downs, however overall I feel as though the final result turned out very well.

Throughout this project, I created the 'pitch' and 'mood-board' documents, researched all that was to be known about the Lindisfarne Priory, created a master wall texture using Quixel Suite, created more textures using 'textures.com' and Photoshop, modelled, UV'd and textured the modular wall kit to create the Priory, composited everything into UE4 from Maya2018, and composited the camera shots in After Effects.

Both Damon and I had equal roles in organising the audio and both consulted with Dan our audio guy.

Damon and I have worked together once before on a Project and managed very well, and so that previous teamwork helped greatly towards this Project. There were times that we did not see eye to eye however they were quickly resolved by simply being polite and explaining our opinions. The only other issue that we encountered was keeping to the authenticity side of our project, where I would ask Damon to create an asset and he created it without doing research, and so some assets had to be recreated to fit the time period. I know now how this could have been avoided if I created a more detailed Art bible, or at least some sort of asset reference list (possibly on Trello). However this issue only happened a few times and was easily sorted.

As for the actual project itself, I have explained in previous blog posts the ups and downs of the process, however in short the main issues we had was importing in aspects from other UE4 scenes into our Lindisfarne scene, and dealing with the slight lag as a result of using such high resolution assets from the Kite Demo Collection in UE4. I also encountered problems when it came to baking the lights and adjusting the lights in general to give the scene a atmospheric, mysterious feel. On the positive side however, the particle effects that we replace in the scene worked much better and added a higher quality to the overall scene. Also replacing the flora from the Soul City package to the Kite Demo Package made a huge difference.

Overall, we could have spent more time on this Project and spend more time on documentation in terms of Trello, project plans etc, however realistically, for one our team was a meager team of 2 in comparison to everyone else being in teams of 3 and so of course our end result might not be up to their standard. And 2, as unconvincing as it may seem, factors such as travel, limited access to technology, family responsibilities, lack of motivation and having just moved to Brisbane, had a big impact on our functionality. Yet, excuses aside, I still feel as though I have improved my skill sets through this project, have learned from scratch how to use UE4, and have learned to understand the importance of documentation and preparation for projects, especially for the inevitable time where I will begin working in bigger teams.

If I were to go back and change anything,

for 1. I would probably want to have an extra team member,

2. I would have spent more time building up a more relevant art bible to avoid re making assets as discussed above, and pitch document,

3. I would have designated more time to the final composition and created more interior spaces complete with assets rather than just the 2 rooms we ended up creating, and

4. I would have asked Damon to create a few more assets so that it would have been easier for me to assemble the scenes.

I still really like how this short animation turned out, and although I lacked much motivation, I did still enjoy creating this environment, especially when it all started coming together.

For the future, I would probably do more research and create a few sketches so that I would have a better idea earlier on how it would turn out, and to avoid changing ideas here and there. In other words, I think I would have enjoyed this whole process more if I had a better understanding on what I wanted to create in the first place, and what was expected of me.

Goodbye Aftermath, thanks for the journey.