This is a post-final update just to show nearly every piece of architecture that I modeled for the project. I made all of these from scratch, using the picture from Update 1 as a template for the theme and style.
This is the small, vestibule like entrance. It's the building between the outer landscape and the inside of the walls, because it didn't seem right to make some sort of gate in the wall.
This is the section of wall that the above piece connect to. It's not as wide as the standard wall size, it pretty much is the width of the vestibule.
This is the corner wall bit that I made for the turns in the wall.
This is a bit of the taller wall that I used as the connector from the front area to the library. It is tall to accommodate two floors, and so its a bit more impressive to look at from the outside.
Here's how the wall sort of worked - I made a top section, and two bottoms that fit. One is completely closed and the other has a door on one side.
These are all the pieces that I used to construct the interior of the library. The ramps lead to platforms that sort of "climb" up the walls to a top area. There's also the pillar, just for aesthetics.
This is just the roof that goes over the library, which covers the area that the secondary building doesn't on the top.
Here's a sort of "cut away" showing the way the platforms on the interior and how they fit together.
This is one of the "barn" shaped buildings that face the front courtyard, where the outside "tri" arch wall goes. This one in game has a ramp inside it that leads to floor two of the taller hallway mentioned above.
This is the second "barn" that mirrors the first. It has multiple doors, and in game has a bridge leading across the top. This building is sort of an extra room with some clutter assets below, and it also serves as the path to the second courtyard, which you access via the aforementioned bridge.
Here's the short tower "Tower01" and all it's variants. Like the taller walls, it has a standard top and different bottoms. I made three bottoms to fit my needs; a single opening, an "in-line" opening, and a corner opening. The corner openings work in place of corner walls, so you can still move through the exterior walls freely. The "inline" variant works by letting you pass through the tower straight. The single opening is just for tower's I want you to be able to go inside, but that don't serve as a connection to another area.
This is the exact same as above, with the tall tower, "Tower02"
These are some more misc. bits I made. There's the divider walls, (bottom middle) that serve as barriers and accents, the "courtyard wall tri-arch" which meshes onto the open faced barn. It's a unique piece that lets you walk through similar to the outside walls, but serves as the front face of a building and also allows you to walk through it between the inside and outside. On the right there is the ramps, which took the place of where terrain would be before. They can be accessed from the library and allow you to have more open space a bit higher up.
This is just an extra picture showing the detail of the library in fbx form (so I just selected all the geometry in Unreal and exported it.) This is also a bit of a showcase of the amount of assets we were working with; this is a corner of the library and it has hundreds of books, some benches, scrolls, chests, wall torches, and (in game) has candles around. This was sort of the crossroads of where my set dressing job met with performance - I never got any clear indication of how many assets to place and the sheer number worried me that it might slow down the scene. But I was never told that it was an issue so I didn't use anything sparingly.
This is just a third update, post-final, to really show what I've done for this project. There's even more than this that I haven't taken screenshots of, but that's mostly because they're just simple or boring parts that are just shapes; planes for floors, blocks that block off areas and stuff like that, nothing that took any more than 5 minutes to make. It was a really good experience as a sort of juxtaposition from the last project - In the last one I had pretty good detailed images of the chapel I was making. I could get a sense of scale from the average human height and I could cross-check details that needed to be there. On the other hand for this one, I was able to go with a reference guide, but really make it how I wanted it in the end. It allowed me to build the sort of level I'd want to play, which is why (even though it was a ton of work) I'm glad I was able to model the level architecture as well as set-dress and place all the assets my team made. I know every detail of this castle now, in and out, and I can confidently say that I am proud of my work.
I am upset that it didn't come together in the end. It's really tough not getting to see a finished game after spending hours upon hours in here over the last few weeks. Throughout the course of last night, even, I took on a few different roles I didn't think I would. I imported all the UV'd architecture and assets. I replaced every bare FBX item I'd modeled with the UV'd version in Unreal. I manually placed all the assets, I added lights to the candles and chandeliers I placed. I tried to make a dining room that had a hint of a class structure, but looked like it had just been abandoned in a hurry. I tried to put in clutter in a sensible way so that the Nav-Mesh would work for the AI and player to move around unhindered. I made areas with stools and items around that were meant to look like a group of friends had been sitting and talking to each other there, and I tried to make spots where people would naturally store piles of supplies - under ramps, in corners, and against walls. In general, I tried to make some sense of a story in the level, where the place had been maybe evacuated or abandoned in a hurry - stuff is knocked over or bumped askew, but yet the plates and cups are still on the table, candles and torches still burning. Tables have been placed in the courtyard and flipped to be makeshift cover. Books have been strewn about the floor, and nearly all the scrolls are gone because the inhabitants maybe tried to take the most valuable of their texts and spells with them when they left.
Later in the night, I was the one "on call" for Unreal Engine trouble - when it came to importing and exporting and trying to migrate the project, I was trying to make it work. Once we got the level I made transferred, I was importing every different texture map, AO map, roughness, and metallic map. I made the materials for every item and asset from what I'd imported, and I tried my best to apply the dozens of materials to different parts of items when I was unfamiliar with what went where. The final result to me is disappointing that it didn't come together, but regardless of that I am proud of the work I've done, and even more proud of the work of many of my teammates, who spent just as long as I did doing amazing things in their own areas.
