The Park Bench
When I was in Austin earlier this year, I was introduced to Stranger Things by my roommate and art director, Mark. I immediately loved the series. Taking place in the 80’s, in a small town in Indiana no less, it had many elements that I personally identified with. I was a bullied kid who loved games and technology-much like the kids in Hawkins. Sure, I had an N64 and later a PlayStation 2 and GameCube instead of an NES, but it was an experience I identified with.
A photo I took while in Austin that serves as a reference for my scene.
Plus, and this cannot be stressed enough…I really should have grown up in the 80’s.
The Sony DD-100 Boodoo Khan Walkman. Clearly beat up from the world ending and all.
Stranger Things acted as the catalyst for me to start my current personal project which I have been calling The Park Bench.
The Park Bench is significantly more than just a piece of Stranger Things fan fiction. In fact, it’s not fan fiction at all. Park Bench is a small little diorama of sorts that combines some elements of the 1980’s with the dystopian return of nature inspired by The Last of Us. My goal is to tell the story of a bench and the people who used it to spread messages to others (along with any items that might have been left). I’m pretty excited about this project!
As it can be with all working artists though, time can be an issue. I got this started in February this year with reference photos and some initial modeling. By the time I was ready to hit it hard, I ended up needing to put in some extra time at Bluepoint. After that, the project sort of stalled for a bit. I went back here and there to work on it, but it never really picked up again. I knew I’d be back in Philly for the fall so I planned to really get at it hard once I got back.
So I did. In between contract hunting and school prep, I got my scene going again. I didn’t get a crazy amount of work done unfortunately, but I was able to work on fixing up my bench bakes and start working on the Substances for it.
Teaching inched ever closer and I knew I’d be very behind on everything if I didn’t approach this project with a more iterative mindset.
Two birds, one stone
I am an Unreal Engine specialist and evangelist. I think it’s one of the best tools out there for making a game, and I am not shy about making that known. The final version of The Park Bench will be in Unreal, of that there is no doubt.
Drexel is locked, at least for now, in with Unity. I’m teaching an ‘Advanced Game Art Production’ class this quarter using Unity. I’ve used Unity a number of times in my life as a freelancer, but it’s never been at a deeper level than “make sure my assets work…and I’m done here you go”. That won’t work for my students. While there is a degree of cross engine information that I can share, the nitty gritty of Unity is something I need to experience to teach appropriately.
A WIP screen from Unity. It’s come along way since the days of Unity 4 and 5.
I decided to cross pollinate my personal work and my teaching materials for Drexel. I am using my assets and basic setup for The Park Bench as my primary teaching tool for my Unity class. That’s why I’ve been using Unity as my engine of choice for the early version of this project.
It’s been working well enough. I’ve been learning quite a lot about how Unity functions and I’m actually fairly happy with it’s current state at the technical level. Long gone are the days of Unity 4’s poor material system, and the earlier versions of Unity 5’s Normalized Phong BRDF for light distribution and reflections. Unity 2017, while not perfect and not the engine I’d probably use for most of my projects, is a HUGE step up from even Unity 5.x.
The cross pollination between personal and Drexel work has worked well before (Playstation Vita was used as a demo multiple times for my 3D Modeling Classes) and I feel it’s working well again.
The Park Bench moving Forward
Marmoset screenshot of my bench. I’m using Gametextures materials here, I plan to make my own towards the end of development that will enhance the carved messages in the bench. Right now they aren’t as prominent as I’d like and get lost.
I started this scene without my usual write up of goals I wanted to achieve. That is ok. Not having that write up has been helpful quite honestly, as I haven’t felt too pressured to worry about anything other than “make great art”.
There is one stated goal I have known from day 1. I want to put this project into VR.
I have a Daydream Headset for my Pixel, and I recently set up my Oculus Rift. I’ve worked with VR before, but not in a truly interactive way. One of my biggest goals with this project is to allow for the player to walk around, just a little bit, in VR. Scope out my scene. This will do the following:
- Familiarize me with VR development in a game like scenario
- Work with different rendering technologies (Forward Renderer)
- Work on maintaining consistent quality from Non-VR to PC VR and Android VR
Outside of making my own materials for my assets as needed in Substance Designer, the only real focus I have is making my scene work in VR at the highest quality possible.
I expect this scene to take a while, at least until December. Between school, contracts, and Thanksgiving, I’m going to be a busy bee. I’ll be leveraging the quality of Gametextures materials (it’s what is currently used on my bench) to help me speed up my scene construction and set a quality bar for my Substances. I plan to replace them all with custom built Substances so I can get a better understanding of the program (it’s been a while since I used Designer). That, and any additional assets outside of what’s key for the scene, will have to be saved for a final polish pass later on. Until then, it’s time to build it out.
-Dan