This week we have returned to uni a little refreshed for the last stretch of the project, the Monday mostly consisted of catching up and going back over the level figuring out what's important and seeing what major changes have to be made. The first thing we touched upon was the level lighting, which is making the level appear quite flat at the moment.
Before, the skylight in the level was set to movable so the distance field ambient occlusion is enabled which gives the level a slight overcast quality which we wanted, the problem is this lighting setup with out large use of buildings and complicated assets were leading to a lot of level slowdown.
Old lighting setup during Easter, some clouds breaks, quite cold.
Amber noted how nice the lighting looked in the test level I have been using for the foliage over Easter and we eventually decided that I should try to replicate more of a late afternoon lighting scenario with more breaks in the clouds and more colour in the shadows, giving the level more warmth and a bit more of an overall pop to the visuals.
New lighting setup, not built in this screen so there's a few artifacts.
This week I have also worked on refining the trees by adding a texture and changing some of the directions of the branches, changing the colour of the grass and also getting some of the larger environment pieces in like the lighthouse. There is still a lot of assets that need to go into engine so that's what Hazrat has been working on, it's the main thing that's standing out as needing work in the level at the moment before we get down to smaller assets and eventual polish.