Environment Evaluation
What Went Well
I feel that the final product of my environment came out overall well with only a few issues overall. These issues are relatively minor to the product I was aiming for, with the issues being mainly with a few objects lacking collisions, a few textures that could use improvement, and the overall performance of the environment. However despite this I feel that the environment as a whole has a high quality. This is due to the fact that most of the models and textures being of a high quality with a focus on detail and a consistent art style. I feel that the strongest point of my environment is with the lighting and post processing. I feel this is as the focus on making my project work with Ray tracing allowed the overall quality of the project to rise, as it was visually more realistic, as well as helping familiarise myself with technologies that will become more prevalent in the future of environment design. I also feel that the post processing, helped contribute to the overall final product, as the post processing allowed for the environmental atmosphere to become more apparent, as well as helping the horror theme become more pronounced. This was the lower exposure as well as the film grain and depth of field helped create a more found footage view where the perspective of a film camera can help add to the horror theme of the environment, this also helps create a sense of immersion in the environment.
What Went Wrong
There were a few issues with the overall environment. I feel that with the environment there is a lack of scatter and small objects around the rooms, this can lead to rooms feeling empty. This could be fixed in the future with the addition of more papers scattering the floor, as well as other small objects, mainly the store room having boxes and other objects on the shelf. There are also a few objects where the texturing process resulted in the normal affecting the lighting in unexpected ways. This could be fixed in future with redesigning the assets and retexturing them. Additionally in future the environment would have to be more optimised as currently due to the inclusion of ray tracing, subsurface scattering, and other technologies, the environment runs poorly on older machines, unfortunately I was unable to test its performance with more modern machines, however on a full release there would be settings to toggle certain settings as well as lower texture size to improve performance.
Self Evaluation
What Went Well
Over the course of this project I feel that I had a few very strong areas among my strengths as well as some parts that did not go well. On of these strong areas I feel was my ability to problem solve and learn new skills to navigate smaller issues. For example when I was unable to find a wall texture I was happy with, I first attempted to create a texture in Substance designer, this was successful, however I was still unhappy with the results, this lead me to create a smart texture utilising multiple textures and masks along with paint layers in substance painter, this wall I was eventually happy with. I also was able to navigate issues with Unity, where over the last month unity would repeatedly throw various errors relating to texture importer errors as well as general errors when attempting to build the lighting of the scene. This was solved several times by creating new projects and upgrading unity when needed.
What Went Wrong
I feel that in this project I had a few issues with myself and the way I worked. These were mainly minor but if feel identifying them and working to solve them in the future can help me progress with work better and complete projects to a higher standard. I feel that at times I can be a bit of projectionist, only able to see the flaws in my own work, this makes me unable to move on from an asset or other part of the project until I am happy with the result or I begin to notice it taking time from other projects. This is something that will take time to work on, however I can start this process by creating a schedule and giving myself set mini deadlines where I have to complete certain parts of a project by a certain date to stay on task. This should help me focus less on perfectionism and focus more on completing the tasks. This idea also would help with my other issue, where I occasionally poorly manage my time, leaving too little time for important parts of a project to prioritise something I either enjoy more or feel is worth more of my time. Focusing on these points is a long term goal but by identifying them I feel I am better able to work towards solving them.
