Blog #2

In the third week of FIEA things are starting to heat up. We’re getting past the point of intros and syllabus week and jumping into more complex assignments. In Level Design we’ve begun working in Maya working on figuring out the basic controls and working on creating objects that can be imported into Unreal Engine 5. In Tech Design we’ve been creating a simple turn based game and learning about cleaning up code by reducing code size and simplification of code blocks that can be reused. In RPP we are submitting the final drafts of our board game prototypes. In Houdini we are importing our volcano islands into Unreal Engine 5and finally In Video Game Design we are doing more audience/demographic research.

Finalized map of Werewolf made in Unreal Engine 5. (See blog post 1 for more details on this assignment).

Houdini: Volcano island. This project began with cylinders on a plane which was then given masks and sculpted with noise and erosion nodes after applying masks to the terrain that needed to be sculpted. This is my first time using Houdini, but with the application I have the ability to quickly iterate on mass scale designs and procedurally generate worlds, villages, cities, towns, volcanos, etc. One beautiful part of this application is that it is non-destructive so adding more nodes can quickly and powerfully iterate on previous designs to make them more flexible.

Lamp post: Simple first design made in Maya on the first day I have ever touched the program. Right off the bat the camera movement is significantly different than modeling in UE5. But I can tell from the beginning that there are significantly more options when it comes to modeling and sculpting. It's a system I intend to spend a significant amount of time mastering for the flexibility it can offer in modeling levels.