3D Week 2 Assignment: Minecraftish Level

This week's assignment involved creating a box in Maya, designing textures for the boxes, and then creating a level with the textured boxes.

First I began by creating the box in Maya:

The box then had to have each side separated from its other sides to create a UV layout that would allow each side to look different:

I then went into Photoshop to develop different textures to use in my level:

Beginning texture design in Photoshop

The four textures I designed for my level. The water cube has a transparency while in Unreal

After I finished creating my textures and uploaded them into Unreal, I began to design my level. I knew that I wanted to do something with lots of water and grass, and originally, I had planned on a large cave. Eventually, I scrapped this idea, as the layout became increasingly complex and not easy for a player to navigate. I decided to focus less on a cave, and more on developing a river structure, and maybe return to the cave idea. 

An image that I looked to for inspiration 

In my new design, I tried to focus more on the player's ability to move around the environment. It is much more open, the blocks can be climbed, and the caves that I did add can be walked into. To create the mountainous-looking terrain and caves, I used an original shape and then created a group that acted as a stamp. I also had to consider lighting. The caves and the angle of the sun created shadows that I found too harsh, so I added some point lights of varying color to make it appear more like a sunset. Below are some images of the completed level:

I wanted to add trees to the level to give it more of a jungle feel, but unfortunately did not get to that point after I decided to change my design.