This blog post serves as a mid-way postmortem, reflecting on the process of the part of Project Chronovia I made for my university capstone project. I will briefly discuss what went well for the project and what didn't work out as expected, the project's future, and my plans for moving forward.

What went well

When starting, I had considered using the Unity engine for this project as I had a bit more experience using it working in this art style and as a Unity publisher,  but in the end, I decided to persist with Unreal Engine 5, and I am happy that I did. There is no way I would have been able to complete as many of the environments as I did at the level of quality I achieved if I hadn't used the Unreal Engine. The tools packed into the Unreal Engine allowed me to build a majority of the project entirely in the engine, making the entire process straightforward and pain-free on the technical side.

On the art side, I believe the project's strongest element was the environment's aesthetic and feel. As the environments were the primary focus, I put a lot of effort into making the world feel like a dark, dystopian fantasy and felt I was able to capture that feeling in the final product, especially coupled with the music.

Overall, the entire process went smoothly without any significant issues. I am extremely happy with the final outcome, which far exceeded the expectations I had when going into this project.

What didn't go well

Suppose you have followed my blogs surrounding this project. In that case, you probably know that I had a very limited amount of time to complete the project (Starting production in August and completing in October). This time constraint was probably the biggest hurdle while working on this project, and while it didn't stop me from completing the project on time, it did slightly impact the project's quality in some aspects.

The first was that I had a tight schedule when creating the 3D assets. This time limitation had an impact on the amount of assets I was able to make per area and also the detail I was able to add to each model. Because of this, I had to sacrifice quality on some of the basic models to make more time for higher detail/landmark models. In some cases, such as the Mortisoria kingdom in the background of the first area, I had to improvise and draw the castle as a sprite on a plane rather than creating a proper model to not fall behind the deadlines I had set for myself. Ultimately, this also had an impact on the environments themselves. While I was able to fill environments with objects to achieve the overall aesthetic successfully, I would have preferred to have extra time to make multiple unique and detailed objects to raise the standard of quality overall.

The project's second and most significant aspect affected by time constraints was the character animations, specifically the NPCs I wanted to populate the city with. In my original vision for the city, I wanted multiple variations of NPCs walking around to make it feel alive. However, In the end, I ended up with a handful of the same character animations walking in a single side profile walk cycle. In the end result, not having a lot of variations didn't affect the overall outcome as much as I thought it would, and ultimately fit the theme of the city being depicted as an imperial dictatorship where its citizens are not likely out walking around. Still, I would have at least liked to be able to add front-profile animations to suit the render sequence better and possibly some military-looking characters.

The Future of Chronovia

I have plans to continue the character's journey across the world, and now that I am free from the time constraints set by my university commitments, I am free to work on Project Chronovia at my own pace. I plan to continue building on the world, refining models in old areas, adding new areas, possibly even larger, more fleshed-out areas, and finishing the sequence of the character's journey to the holy land of Terre Sainte. In saying that, I will continue to post more production blogs and update my Trello as I progress through the project.

You can check out my Trello here to keep up to date with my progress. Similarly, you can follow me on Artstation to get notifications for future blog posts and other projects I may work on.

In case you missed it - Here's the final render for my capstone project

Thanks for reading! I look forward to posting more in the future!

This is my last production blog post for the final stages of my capstone portion for Project Chronovia. I will start with my process for creating the characters and animations, followed by working in Unreal Engine sequencer and the final render for this project, along with a brief reflection and the final render.  

Characters and animations

With less than two weeks left to complete the project, I didn't want to spend much time on the characters and animation apart from the main character, who is important to the overall narrative of the render. I went into this section of the project with the mindset of just getting the main character finished and implemented in the engine, with everything else being a bonus if I managed to have enough time left over, especially considering I still had to put together the sequence and do the render, which would be a process of trial and error.

For the main character, I began by using a character template I made during the prototyping stage for the colour palette and proportions matching the world's scale in-game. I then started in Aseprite by creating the sitting pose for the intro to the render and using it as a concept phase for how the character would look. Because the main character is escaping from a desolate wasteland, I wanted to reflect that in the design by giving the character tattered and old-looking clothes. After finalizing the character's look, I moved on to animation. Fortunately for me and my limited time, the character only needed one single-direction walk cycle as the character's path is linear by design.

To animate the cycle, I made several layers – starting with a basic frame/silhouette with each limb coloured differently. Once I was happy with the overall look of the cycle, I drew the character base over the frame layer and cleaned up any weird shapes in the pixel art before adding the character's clothing and accessories. This process became tedious and time-consuming, but once the animation was complete, I reviewed each frame for some polish and shading, generated the normal maps and imported the flipbook into Unreal Engine, ready to be implemented.

Character animation process

After completing the main character, I had half of the day left to attempt to push out some extras to make the world feel more populated in the final product. Because I animated the main character in multiple layers, my idea was to use the main character animation as a base for these extras. I figured I could add some new clothing and hair layers, add basic and plain coloured clothing and recolour them to make variations, and it wouldn't take me as much time as starting from scratch. Fortunately, this process was very straightforward, and I could make three variations of a generic NPC in next to no time, leaving me with more spare time to add a couple more characters.

I eventually added another generic NPC for the city area, an idle animation of them smoking a cigarette, and the Mortisorian Bulwark – a large turtle-like creature I had designed when sketching concepts for the Mortisoria Mire area.

Mortisorian Bulwark

I was extremely happy with the amount of extra animations I was able to complete, considering the time I had to make them and was increasingly excited when moving on to the render sequence.

Sequence and the final render

After the animations were complete and working inside Unreal Engine, I created a new sequence and began working on the camera placement and structure of the final sequence. Originally, I was going to draw up storyboards. However, I didn't really know how I wanted it to play out specifically, just that I wanted it to showcase my environments as the character walked through them; also, I felt the time wasn't on my time, and I just needed to get in and make it work. I needed the sequence to somewhat sync with the music, so I began by adding the music and then adding the cameras and working on an area-by-area basis, similar to how I created the world. I experimented with different camera angles, found the ones that worked best, created camera sequences timed by the music, and added the character wherever it seemed necessary. This process, while time-consuming, ended up being straightforward and went smoothly without any notable issues. Once I was happy with the sequence, I altered some settings in the Unreal Engines movie render queue and began the render process.

About 5 hours into the first render, I had an issue with the animations playing on a loop on each frame, resulting in the character looking like a long-exposure shot. I closed the render, tweaked the render warm up count values and started again, resolving the animation issue. The render output for this project was a PNG image sequence. I chose this option to add basic adjustments such as music fade and text elements in After Effects. Once I had finished polishing in After Effects, I exported it as a 4k mp4 and uploaded the final render to YouTube.

Reflection

This part of the project was probably the most stressful out of the whole process purely because of the race against the clock, but I got there in the end, and I am incredibly pleased with the results I achieved in such a short time. However, If I had more time, I would have created a few more animated characters, including some front-face walk cycles for the city, as the side-facing walk looked slightly off in the first city shot. However, as I continue working on creating the world of Chronovia in the future, I will take these lessons and spend time polishing and refining the project based on my experiences working on my capstone portion of the project.

Although I am done with this portion of the project now, I have plans to continue to work on the project. As always, you can track my progress on Trello here as I continue to work on the project in the future. Additionally, you can follow me on Artstation where I will continue writing blogs for the project.

Thanks for reading!

In this post, I will cover my process of developing the final two environments for my capstone portion of Project Chronovia. In my last post, I showcased the creation of the Mortisoria area, a dark wasteland that leads to the entrance of the following areas – The ancient mountain ruins and the City of the Imperial Vaelthur Empire.

The Mountain Ruins

These ruins are what remains of a lost civilization deep in the mountain ranges between Mortisoria and the kingdom of the Imperial Vaelthur Empire and serve as a pathway between the two kingdoms. Over many years, the ruins have been overgrown with toxic fungal spores, making the journey between the two kingdoms almost impossible for people attempting to escape from Mortisoria.

Although it is the second last environment I created for this project, the idea for this area inspired how the swamp and mountain entrance were designed. I knew I wanted a unique environment to showcase in my project, and I had the idea of incorporating giant mushrooms and spores after watching the film Nausica. I initially planned for the swamp area to have the spore overgrowth but felt it would become crowded with too many elements. I then moved my attention to the mountain pass/ruins area and thought it would be cool and made more sense narrative-wise to add the spore overgrowth to the design of that area instead.

My process for creating this area was the same as the previous areas. I started by doing a basic block out of the terrain in Unreal Engine, took a screenshot and drew a concept over the top of the image, which I then used to create a list of assets to start making.

Blockout/Concept for the Mountain Ruins area

The assets I needed to create for this area were much different to the previous areas, which were more organic based, whereas this area is based around large buildings and structures. This, in turn, became the biggest challenge when creating this area, but it was also a great learning experience that helped my approach when creating the next area. Once the assets were completed, I imported them into Unreal Engine, put together the scene based on my concept, made minor adjustments to assets and layout as needed, and finished with VFX, lighting and post-processing.

The mountain ruins, overgrown with vines and fungal spores.

Once everything was finished and polished, I moved on to create my project's next and final area – The Vaelthur Empire City.

The Imperial Vaelthur Empire City

When creating the Vaelthur Empire City area, I took a different approach to the design than the other areas. Instead of screenshotting and drawing a rough concept, I built this level as I made assets. One of the main reasons for this approach was that I didn't have any specific plans for how this area would turn out. All I knew was I wanted it to be a modern-looking industrial city with large industrial structures looming in the background. I started by drawing some basic brick and concrete textures and modelling buildings in Blender with different types of architecture. Once I had a building model I was happy with, I made multiple variations and imported them into Unreal to see how they would look in-game. I then continued to build out the area as I went along, making assets as needed to fill out the environment. Once I had a base layout I was happy with; I finished by adding and polishing filler and decorative objects before building the large empire pyramid structure for the background. Finally, to finish the area, I did the usual lighting/post-processing process I used for the previous environments.

The Imperial Vaelthur City

Reflection

At this point in the project, I am feeling the pressure of the deadline, with the last two areas taking much longer to make than expected. While I'm happy with the overall result, I would have liked to spend more time adding finer details to the city to fill it out and make it look more lived-in, but how it turned out also works with the narrative with the depiction of an imperial dictatorship. However, I stretched my time thin while creating the assets for these two areas, even going over my desired deadline by three days, leaving me with less than two weeks to complete the entire project, with so much more work needing to be done.

What's next?

Now that all the environments are polished and completed, it's time to move on to the final stage of the project: adding characters, animations, and the final render sequence. This section could be considered a bonus to the project as my primary focus is to showcase my 2D, 3D and environment art. However, I hope to still complete everything on time despite falling slightly behind with the extra time spent finishing the environments.

Thanks for reading.

I look forward to posting more progress soon. Otherwise, you can track my progress on Trello here.

This blog post covers the development process of Project Chronovia's first area, Mortisoria. Mortisoria is the Kingdom of Ruin, located on the lower region of the world map. The lands in Mortisoria are the most affected by Deus Nibiru's corruption, making its dark wastelands the largest source of Neonicite. This glowing ore grows from the corruption and is used as a power source by the Vaelthur Empire.

I started with the Mortisoria area, as Mortisoria serves as the beginning of Project Chronovia's narrative and is also one of the least complex areas to make, allowing for further experimentation when it comes to asset creation and the overall aesthetic of the project.

My Process

For Mortisoria, I divided the area into sections and focused on one section at a time. To plan each section, I began by creating blockout landscapes in Unreal Engine, screenshotting, and drawing some concept sketches on top of them. As the narrative follows a refugee escaping from the Kingdom of Mortisoria, I wanted the Ashlands section to be the opening point for this narrative, with the character camping in a cave and the kingdom in the background. Following the Ashlands is the Mortisoria Mire and the entrance to the mountain ruins.

Concept Sketch for the Ashlands section; some models added for height reference

Mire & mountain entrance concept sketch

The sketches also help me understand what assets need to be created to make each area.

Once I have finished the concept sketches, I can begin creating the 2D and 3D assets needed to populate the scene. My process for achieving the pixel-3D look slightly differs from how you would typically create 3D assets. For these assets, I will start with creating the textures/tilesheets and then create the 3D models using these textures rather than the typical modelling and texturing afterwards. I feel this workflow is more efficient for this art style and allows me to create all the models in the scene with only one 256x256 texture.

For the pixel art textures, I use a combination of Photoshop and Aseprite. I use Aseprite to draw all the tiles, normal, roughness and emission maps, which I then consolidate into one 256x256 tile map in Photoshop. I then take this texture into Blender to create the 3D assets, which are then exported and ready to be imported into Unreal Engine.

In Unreal Engine, I begin by setting up Materials for both models, VFX and landscape tools. Once set up, I start level-dressing with terrain painting, placing the 3D assets into the scene based on the designs, and adjusting to get the best result possible. When the scene composition is complete, I add lighting, VFX and post-processing to finish the scene. Finally, I will begin polishing by slightly adjusting the completed scene as needed for the final render.

Results

Mortisoria Ashlands

The Mortisoria Ashlands is a dark wasteland where the kingdom of Mortisoria is located. The terrain is composed of floating debris of the planet, sharp, jagged rock formations and fissures glowing with the corruption of Deus Nibiru.

This image showcases the introductory area of Project Chronovia. Here, you can see the cave where the refugee has taken up camp, with the manacing kingdom of Mortisoria looming in the background.

Mortisoria Mire

The Mortisoria Mire is the swamp surrounding the kingdom of Mortisoria, filled with the bones and remains of those stuck in its muddy terrain. As Mortisoria represents Deus Nibiru, the god of death and destruction, I wanted to incorporate the theme of death into this environment.

The tree of Mortisoria, where the cultists of Mortisoria hang traitors and outsiders as a sacrifice to Deus Nibiru.

Throughout the Mire are large mushrooms grown from spores blown into the area from the mountain ruins.

Mountain Ruins (Entrance)

The mountain ruins are an abandoned ancient civilisation that an overgrowth of various fungi species has taken over. For this area/next area, I wanted to move away from the more generic biomes you usually find in other fantasy game worlds and create something more unique to this project.

The entrance to the mountain ruins is covered in spores and the growth of fungi.

The ruined stairway and gateway leading into the mountain ruins.

Reflection

My biggest challenge with this project has been the scope of my project versus the time constraints of the due dates. While my project is progressing well, as I began production, I realised that the asset creation process takes much longer than I initially anticipated based on my prototype stage. I have managed to speed up some asset creation by re-using textures from other areas and modifying them slightly to suit the areas I use them for. However, while this has helped, it still hasn't sped up the production enough for me to complete the creation of the entire world as I originally planned. Because of this, I have decided to focus on one area at a time and create the final render up to whichever area I finish up with. I have decided to do this so I don't have to sacrifice the quality of each area by rushing to complete them on time. That said, I hope to complete the Mountain Ruins and Vaelthur Empire capital city areas and the animation sequences by the due date (October 20th). I also plan to continue the project and finish the render with all areas as a proof of concept for a game world and as a portfolio piece by the end of this year.

Overall, I am pleased with the results I have achieved within the time constraints I have been set and have made various improvements to my workflows as each area is completed. The most notable improvement I have made is with foliage - In my prototype, foliage was a static plane model with a grass texture applied. Now, my foliage consists of multiple planes with a grass texture. I also modified the material applied to the model in Unreal Engine that uses a wind node plugged into the world position offset of the material to give the effect that the grass is lightly blowing in the wind. I then continued using this material on other objects that the wind may move as I created new areas.

Thanks for reading. 

I look forward to posting more progress soon. Otherwise, you can track my progress on Trello here.

Project Chronovia is the capstone project title I am working on for my final university assignment. My goal is to enter the game development industry as a 3D and Environment artist, so the idea behind this project is to use it to showcase my skills in these areas, which I have developed throughout my degree and as a freelance artist and asset store publisher.

Chronovia is the name of the world; hence, the project title is Project Chronovia and has a high-fantasy setting. For this project, I will work in my 3D pixel art style within the Unreal Engine 5 game engine. My vision for this project is to create an entire game world in Unreal Engine 5 from start to finish and display it through video renders showcasing each area. The narrative of Project Chronovia follows a refugee escaping the corrupted, ruined kingdom of Mortisoria through various environments in search of the holy land of Terre Sainte, a land free of corruption. I believe a game environment should feel alive and tell the story of the world, so for this project, I want to be able to tell the story of the world through the environments without any need for dialogue.

Project Chronovia is a solo project, making me responsible for the entire development process. I will create most of the assets myself with limited help from free Unreal Marketplace Assets such as Skyboxes, post-processing LUTs, and some particle effects. Apart from that, my role in this project is to create everything else from scratch, including:

• Narrative & lore
• Environment concepts & designs
• 2D pixel art & animations
• PBR pixel art textures
• 3D models
• Game materials
• Environment design & creation in engine
• Post-processing
• Particle and VFX
• Lighting
• Sequences & renders

Pre-production prototyping was concluded at the end of July, and production has started on the project as of the beginning of August 2023. I will have until the end of October 2023 (3 Months) to complete production.

I am building one area at a time and will use this blog to log the project's development at each stage. After each area is completed, I will post a blog and include my development process, any issues I encounter and how/if I solved them, a reflection on the area, and some lore to give context to the environments I have created. I also have a Trello dedicated to the project where you can track my progress.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to sharing more progress soon.

The Ruined World of Chronovia

The world of Chronovia serves as the battlefield between two gods: Deus Selenea, the god of light and life, and Deus Nibiru, the god of darkness and death, who fight for control of the Sephirot Stone. As the eternal battle rages on, the world of Chronovia is torn asunder, leaving only fragments of the planet behind.

The devastation of the planet is reflected in its landscapes and inhabitants. Chronovia is a sombre world characterized by poverty and division among its three nations. Despite most of the lands in Chronovia being partially destroyed, not all of them have been left in ruins. Some of the remaining lands still look beautiful, with stunning landscapes that have managed to withstand the devastation.

Concept of the world of Chronovia & the environments I will create for the project

LINKS –
Trello