IBY'S DEV DIARY

Niagara I was also exploring the new Niagara particle editor In UE4 and I thought i'd try recreating the dust particle from the starter content which uses the old Cascade Editor. I have had some experience with the Cascade Particle in the past and stacking modules but Niagara on the other hand, is amazing because it gives you more control like make your own module using the node editor and then stack them up to get the result you want.I then decided to convert the dust particle to Snow. In Unreal engine v4.20, Niagara was at experimental stage and it was missing Rotation Rate module like cascade has. I didn't want to try using the node graph and make my own module as i was still getting my head around the main  area. With some help from UE4 discord server, i was able to get rotation rate via this hacky workaround. i kept nesting dynamic inputs until i got the rotation rate. Its actually funny how nesting dynamic inputs can give the result you want and makes it a lot eas...

Now that the first project has been completed I now have an idea of what I know and what I don't know. So far I have an understanding of the workflow of an Environment Artist but I feel I could enhance this environment a lot further by making things more dynamic. Looking back at the first blog post I can confirm that learning more about animation techniques is really something I would like to explore. By animation techniques, I mean exploring the different methods of making things move in games whether it's through the use of materials, VFX, rigging and animation, blueprints or other methods. However, I feel learning animation techniques is a massive subject to cover especially for one semester so I hope to split these animation techniques into smaller projects. These are the main animation techniques I have found so far: Complex Materials VFX Pivot Painter Rigging and Animation Blueprints Sequencer There are probably more techniques but I will try and mak...

I was hoping to get this project done by Halloween but the texturing process turned out to be longer than I expected it to be. Anyway here is the completed scene: Artstation link:  https://www.artstation.com/artwork/OyoeDJ Stylised Pirate Captain's chair by Iby on Sketchfab Texturing Process I was initially thinking of using Zbrush for the texturing but since speed is important for this small project, I needed to find a quicker method of texturing. I did some googling and found this Texturing process by 3DEx where it shows you the process of making stylised material in Substance Painter:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7nwuTkvnQc . It wasn't exactly what I was looking for but I did a bit of tweaking to the smart material and ran with it throughout the texturing process. 4 variations of Wood Textures used throughout the scene I started on the Tileable Textures first as I will be using them quite frequently. Wo...