Diagon Alley Blog
Week 1
Researching Ideas
For the first week of the project I looked over the brief which is to “Model, texture, light and present in UE5.1 a Victorian three-storey terraced building with a shop on the ground floor facing the street of Diagon Alley”. To start this process I first wanted to research what my shop would look like and what it would be. I figured that to follow the theme of Diagon Alley I should research into some Victorian styled houses to better understand different architecture to create my own shop. I Found the images on the Right and used these to create my own design in photoshop which I will use as a start in maya to begin blocking out the shop's basic shape. The idea for the shop is a fortune telling shop meaning that the windows might have large draping curtains inside them and the hanging sign for the shop is going to be a crystal ball.
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I have created a quick sketch to show the general shape and look that I want for the front of my shop, I realise now that the proportions of the doorway are off however when I create the block out in maya I can fix this and make sure that all proportions of the shop are correct.
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Another part of the Assessment is to post the results of my Drawing for Life/ Games classes in the blog so I will leave them at the end of each weeks update. Being Week 1 of the term it was an introductory session so no drawing was done so I have posted some sketches I did in my free time.
Week 2
Blockout Phase
For this week I blocked out the main shapes of the shop. I started out by making the main shape of the building as this provided a good foundation to be able make primitive shapes for the other assets of the building. As well as this I started by making the stairs up to the building before realising that the stairs would be larger than the plot I was allotted as the brief requires the shop to be 6 metres by 6 metres. To solve this I remade the stairs to face them to the left. As well as this I remodelled the roof and window to better fit the Victorian aesthetic that I was going for. After this I modelled some corner stones for the building to give it a better sense of depth with roof tiles to give the roof better depth also.
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For this week of life drawing I did...
Week 3 and 4
Modular building
For this week and reading week I focused on creating a modular toolkit so that when I import the assets into Unreal Engine 5 I can easily create the shop I want and can reuse the models instead of having to texture each one individually. As well as this I updated and remade a couple models for the previous week like the windows and the stairs. As well as this I have added a hanging sign as it is a requirement from the brief. As well as this model I have added a chimney which I can reuse and resize to have different sizes when I import the models into Unreal. I have also added a cut-out in the stairs in which a window will go as this will make the building stand out more and give it more of a shop window front to fit into the Diagon Alley theme.
Week 5 and 6
Tiling and Trim Sheet
For week 5 I finished making the modular tool kit so I can start to import the model into Unreal Engine 5. After this I used substance sampler to create a seamless brick texture so that I can import and give the building a good base material. I did this in sampler as it can easily create seamless materials and is a lot easier and quicker to use than substance painter. I want the building to have a purple, turquoise and dark blue colour palette to fit the Diagon alley theme of shops and to have a fantasy theme that would fit the mystical aspect of being a fortune telling shop. I also created a basic trim sheet using substance painter and creating a new material and assigning this to the edge blocks on the building as well as the trims for the stairs.
